Page 67 of The One Who Never Left: Colter

When she glanced up, his mouth had tipped into a faint, unmistakable smile, pride warming his eyes.

“This way,” Harvey grumbled with the roughness of someone used to cutting corners and calling it hustle, selling living things like commodities instead of lives.

Trailer-park tough, morally hollow, and deeply unserious about the damage he left behind. Harvey was the kind of man who treated cruelty like a business model and slept just fine afterward.

He led them around the side of the house, past a pile of scrap metal to a collapsed doghouse. The pen sat half-hidden behind it. Six puppies tumbled over each other in the dirt, squeaking and biting at one another’s ears.

“Oh my God,” Sutton breathed, crouching automatically.

“Don’t get too attached,” Harvey said. “I’ve learned they sell better that way.”

Sutton looked up sharply. “How old are they?”

“Five weeks. Maybe six.”

“And the mother?” Colter asked.

Harvey jerked his chin toward the shade of the shed. Sutton followed the motion and her stomach dropped. The mama dog lay curled tight, ribs visible, coat dull, eyes tired but alert. She lifted her head when Sutton approached, tail twitching weakly.

Sutton swallowed. “How many litters has she had?”

Harvey shrugged. “Couple.”

Colter flexed his size at Harvey. “Try again.”

Harvey snuffed out a cigarette on the bottom of his shoe. “What’s it matter?”

“It matters,” Sutton said quietly, kneeling beside the dog. “Her body can’t keep up with this.”

“She’s a dog,” Harvey said. “She does what dogs do.”

“She does what you let her do,” Sutton corrected as she stroked the dog’s head, feeling how thin she was beneath the fur. “She’s exhausted.”

Harvey crossed his arms. “You paying or preaching?”

“Both,” she said with her best mom-voice—the kind saved for the worst of infractions. “You want two hundred per puppy. That’s twelve hundred dollars.”

Harvey rubbed his hands together in a disgusting and greedy manner. “Now we’re talking.”

“We’ll pay it,” Sutton said. “If the mama comes with them.”

“No chance. She’s one hell of a dog. Been with me since before my wife.”

“She’s done and you know it.”

“She’s still breathing, ain’t she?”

“Barely,” Sutton shot back. “You keep breeding her, she’ll die on you. Then you get nothing.”

“Not your problem.”

“It will be,” Sutton said evenly. “When she collapses and you’re stuck with a dead dog that no one’s willing to buy from you, you’ll think of the twelve hundred bucks you passed up.”

“She’s right,” Colter added quietly.

Harvey glanced between them. “You turning soft on me now, Doc?”

“I’ve always been this way,” Colter said. “You just don’t like it.”