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“Did they shoot him?” I asked, my voice thick with emotion as I watched Gentry.
Dallas took out his phone and typed, It’s a BB gun. The blood on the floor is probably from them shooting him with it. The blood on the door is from Gentry breaking his claws trying to get out.
A hoarse cry escaped my throat at that, and I pressed into Dallas’s side. His arm went around me. He kept up the whistling until Gentry finally lay still. The bear had curled himself into a ball, his back to us.
When Dallas’s phone rang a moment later, he handed it to me. I could barely speak as I explained to the vet what had happened. He assured me he was on his way and then hung up. Sirens rang in the distance.
“I’m going to go meet the police,” I said.
Dallas nodded and then took the gun from his waistband and laid it on a shelf. He reached for my hand, but I shook my head. “Stay with Gentry. He needs you.”
Dallas began shaking his head, but I captured his chin gently with my fingers. “I’ll take Loki with me. It’s safe. They’re gone.”
He was clearly torn between staying with the bear and coming with me, but he finally nodded. I let my fingers skim over the gash next to Dallas’s left eye. It was the only injury he’d sustained.
“Be right back, okay?” I said softly.
He nodded, then kissed my forehead.
As I left the building, Loki at my side, I spared Dallas one more glance as he knelt in front of the cage and resumed his whistling. The tears I’d finally managed to stem threatened to fall again as a terrible question popped into my head.
What if the attack had been my fault?
They were words that kept repeating on a loop as I left the building and went to meet the police.
Chapter Twelve
Dallas
“And you’re sure it was Jimmy Cornell?” the sheriff asked for the third time. I didn’t bother typing my response again. I merely nodded and returned my attention to Gentry, who was pacing back and forth in front of the door leading to the outside enclosure. I’d managed to calm him down somewhat, but the arrival of the police had gotten him worked up again. As much as I would have liked to let him outside, I knew he needed to stay in the cage so the vet could administer a sedative before examining him.
“You sure, son? You recognized him?”
“He’s mute, Sheriff,” Nolan groused. “Not blind.”
The sheriff had wanted to hear our stories separately, so he’d questioned Nolan while his deputy had accompanied me to check on all the other animals to make sure none of them had been targeted. Fortunately, they’d all been unharmed.
Gentry had been the only casualty.
Upon our return, the sheriff had agreed to let Nolan stay inside the building while I was questioned, since it was so cold out.
On the condition that Nolan not interrupt.
A condition Nolan definitely was not happy about and that he had yet to actually follow.
Sheriff Tulley shot Nolan an irritated look and then scratched out something on his notepad.
“You didn’t recognize the other two?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Gonna need an actual answer,” the man drawled.
I resisted the urge to deck the man and got my phone out. We’d been at this for an hour already, and I just wanted the man gone so I could take care of Gentry.
No, I typed and then showed him my phone.
“Fine,” he said.
“I’m all done here, sir,” the sheriff’s deputy said as he showed the sheriff the three evidence bags holding the cattle prods and the BB gun. The younger cop’s eyes met mine for a moment and I saw a flash of something in them that I couldn’t pinpoint.
“Good. Take it to the office. You finished?” he asked the woman who was dusting the door for prints.
“Almost,” she said. There were black smudges all over the inside and outside of the door. “Looks like the lock’s been picked,” she announced. The woman had already taken Nolan’s and my prints to exclude ours from any she might find on the door.
The sheriff grumbled and then wrote another note on his pad.
“Any reason you know of that someone might wanna pester your…”
The man waved his hand at Gentry.
“I mouthed off to Jimmy the other day in the store he works at,” Nolan said softly. When I looked at him, he refused to meet my eyes. He had his arms wrapped protectively around his body. “I got him into trouble with his boss. He knows I work for Dallas.”
I could tell there was more that Nolan wasn’t saying.
“What is it that you two boys were doing out here so late tonight?” the sheriff asked, his lips curling into an ugly sneer.
I could see Nolan was about to answer him, and if the jut of his chin was anything to go by, he was going to tell the man it was none of his fucking business.
