“What if she doesn’t have to pee?” Annie asks, voice high and edged with hysteria.
“Then—then, I don’t know. We hit her over the head?”
“Emery.”
“Do you have any other ideas?”
“Fuck. I hate you for this.”
“Don’t worry, I hate me enough for both of us.” Conscious of the angle of the security camera, we heft Luca out of the back seat, grunting with the effort.
Without an ounce of coordination, we manage to get most of him on the gurney, his deadweight landing awkwardly, one arm flopping over the side, his uninjured leg hanging off the other. My stomach twists as I rearrange his limbs under the blanket; we’ve saved dozens of injured animals, but none of them ever looked as corpselike as Luca does right now.
“Okay,” Annie says, straightening. “Now what?”
“Now we wheel him into the building and act normal.”
“Normal. Right. Oh—” She hands me the lab coat. “Put this on. You’re a mess.”
“Thanks,” I say, slipping it on over my dress. “And if Carl asks, we just tell him it’s a Great Dane.”
Annie is my hero, the most competent person I know, and the one I look up to most, but she does have one flaw: She laughs at the worst possible moments. I get it; it’s how her brain copes with stress and impossible situations. Like now, when she bursts into a cackle before snapping her mouth shut again. Silence hovers between us. “Sorry,” she says. “I feel a little like I might be hallucinating all of this right now.”
If only.
Together we push the gurney up the ramp and through the loading dock door. I grit my teeth and do my best to look overworked and stressed as we pass the first security camera. It’s not a stretch.
“Please tell me everyone else has left for the day.”
“I was the last one here,” she says.
Well, that’s one thing in our favor. Walking from the back of the building and through the lobby to the second elevator on the left, we wave at Carl behind the broad marble security desk.
“Late night, eh, ladies?” he calls out.
“This is a Great Dane!” Annie says too loudly before letting out another ill-timed laugh.
I glance at her out of the corner of my eye as we keep walking. “Jesus Christ, Annie,” I mumble. “Take it down like a hundred notches.”
“I’m fucking nervous,” she hisses back, pressing her hand to her forehead. “Five years at this place. You’d think I’d be better under pressure.”
We get the gurney into the elevator, and I push the button, my fingerprint silently being read. “Safe to say you’ve never rolled a dead pers—”
An arm reaches in, stopping the doors from closing. “Hey, I had a quick question.”
My stomach lurches as Carl stands there. I can feel Annie’s panic beside me, hot and humid, like a boiling kettle. She stifles another laugh. My heart is a screeching beast.
“We’re actually in quite a hurry,” I say, trying to smile.
“Yeah?” He leans forward, angling to see what’s under the blanket. I can only pray that Luca’s arm hasn’t slipped out again. “Hey, what do you have—”
“A Great Dane,” I interrupt, leaning to catch his eye. “What was your question?”
Distraction seems to work, and he straightens, grinning at us. I’m sure being a night security guard is a lonely job, but my God, Carl, your timing is abysmal.
“I’ve always wondered, why do y’all always use this particular elevator? There are six of them here, but you always go in this one,” he says. “Don’t they all go up to the tenth floor?”
Beside me, Annie swallows audibly. “We like this one best?”
