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Head low, the dog charged soundlessly. The mercenary sprinted, unaware of the one hundred and twenty pounds of tooth and claw and muscle hot on his trail. The dog halved the distance between them in the space of two heartbeats. Shay regained the merc in her scope just in time to see Titus leap.
Then the two silhouettes merged into one writhing mass. Shay could no longer make sense of what she was seeing, but the sounds told the tale: Titus’s growls, an impossibly loud vibration that carried across the lawn, like the throaty idling of a muscle car. And the shrieks punctuating the growls as the dog savaged him.
Suddenly, there was an awful tearing sound. The shrieking stopped.
She heard the sibilant sound of tires on gravel.
A getaway vehicle, parked somewhere down the road. She sprinted toward it, traversing the front lawn.
She glanced at the first body as she ran past. Beside him, a drone that had seen better days.
Air FIRST One.
The stupid drone Chase absolutely had to buy for the firm. Telling her it was anunmanned aerial systemfor overhead capture of client facilities…
Now he’d turned the two-thousand-dollar titanium alloy quadcopter into a missile and had flown it into a man’s face at thirty miles per hour.
Love you too, baby.
“Titus!” she called as she drew closer. The animal’s blood was up, and she wanted him to hear her voice, recognize that the figure now running across the lawn was a friendly. He lifted his head, ears up.
“Come on boy!”
Chasing the vehicle along the road would be fruitless, so she angled for the woods. Titus waited for her as she approached, hopping in place by the ravaged mercenary, a big puppy again.
She hoped.
The dog charged off ahead of her. He seemed to know where he was going.
Who am I to argue?she thought.
She followed.
One moment, Titus was approaching the tree line, the next he vanished. Shay aimed for the spot where she’d last seen him, finding a well-worn trail, probably one Titus and his master walked daily.
Ahead, Titus barked.
Branches snagged at her clothes and stones bit her bare feet. But Shay felt none of it. She picked up speed as her eyes adjusted to the full dark. She knew the dirt lane to Wade’s ranch intersected the road somewhere. It was thin and wound through the woods, but she plowed on.
“Please,” she said aloud. It was all the prayer she had breath for. A tiny burning flare launched into the cosmos. She wasn’t picky. She would accept help from any being taking requests.
Ahead, she detected a slight change in the light. A break in the relentless trees. She heard a vehicle racing.
An SUV roared past just as she burst through the trees. Titus in pursuit. She planted her feet and raised the rifle. She led the vehicle’s driver side window, careful to avoid the bounding dog, and let fly.
She wasn’t sure whether her shot had found purchase until the SUV lurched, taillights tracing red back and forth in the night. Then they pitched suddenly as the nose plowed into a small gulley along the dirt lane. Metal and fiberglass impacted earth, followed by the steady blare of a horn. Titus barked over and over. Shay shushed him. She dropped the rifle and leapt into the gulley, Colt raised. She crouched, grabbed the door handle and jerked, stepping aside.
No shots followed.
A bloody man was slumped over the steering column. She lifted her foot and shoved him off the wheel. The blaring stopped and silence rushed in. The man fell down into the passenger side footwell. No protest, dead as can be.
Satisfied, she leaned against the side of the car and exhaled. She stared up into the trees for a moment. The taillights, pointing skyward, painted the branches an eerie red. To anyone else, it would have seemed like a hellish landscape.
Not to Shay.
She climbed from the gulley to find Titus waiting for her, tongue lolling, tail wagging.
“Good boy,” she said and headed for the house.
