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They took sloppy turns, spilling the water over the rim, drool hanging from their jowls as they each guzzled down the contents of the bowl.
I was leaning down to retrieve it when one of the dogs—Mercury, I think it was, the older of the three—stiffened, his nose wiggling hard, like he was smelling something.
Before I could even think to stop him, he was barreling into the house, making the bowl roll away.
Sensing their brother was upset about something, the other two started sniffing as well. Then, sure enough, they were pushing their way into the house, running with their noses down, all seeming pretty fucking serious about what they smelled.
“Guys, come on. Out,” I said, clapping my hands when they ignored me. “Outside,” I tried again with a little more baritone in my voice.
But these were hounds.
You couldn’t stop them when they were on the scent of something.
But… what?
Inside their house.
It wasn’t like these were outside dogs. Their beds were proof of that. The half-chewed bone in the corner. The food and water bowls.
So what was so off in their house that had them so frantic, all joining together in their path toward the closed door at the back of the house?
The bedroom, I assumed.
My skin prickled, a slow, uneasy feeling working its way through my body.
Maybe Cohen was in there?
Tripped and fell? Had a stroke or heart attack? Needed help?
Deciding that those things trumped his privacy, I followed the dogs across the floor, reaching for the handle.
“Come on, back up,” I said, trying to wedge them out of the way. But it was useless. They were determined to get in there first.
So I pushed open the door, finding a bedroom.
Like the rest of the house, there were no frills.
There was a queen-sized bed pushed against a wall to accommodate the thick dog beds on the floor. The bed had simple gray sheets and a thick black comforter that was pushed to the bottom of the bed.
The nightstand showed more signs of the absent Cohen.
A gun.
A book.
What looked like a bottle of aspirin.
A cup of water.
No signs of the man, though.
Or at least I thought so until the dogs all had their noses to the wall.
Then I saw it.
Hell, I smelled it too.
Blood.
That bright red, copper-scented mark slashed across the wall.
“Fuck,” I hissed, my stomach tensing.
Then the dogs were at the closed door at the side of the room.
Bathroom, I assumed.
Fuck fuck fuck, I thought as I rushed across the room, needing to push the dogs out of the way as I reached for the doorknob with a sick, sinking feeling in my gut.
I pushed open the door, half expecting to find resistance, but it swung, knocking against the wall, revealing the whole room.
It was a bigger space than I’d expected.
But, then, maybe this was a multi-purpose sort of area. To dress whatever meat he’d hunted kind of thing. A fully tiled room from floor to ceiling with lots of space to move around.
A sink.
A toilet.
And a shower.
A shower curtain that had dark red marks on the inside.
More of that coppery scent met my nose as I slammed the door behind me, keeping back the crying dogs as I steeled my stomach, walked across the room, and yanked the curtain to the side.
Expecting a body.
And I found one.
But he wasn’t dead.
Just beaten to ever-loving hell.
With tape over his mouth, his wrists, and his ankles.
“Fuck,” I hissed, reaching automatically for my knife as the man stiffened, watching me with one good eye, the other swollen shut. “I’m Sway,” I told him as I cut the tape on his wrists. Then went to his ankles as he pulled the tape off of his own mouth. “I’m here with… oh, fuck. Fuck!” I yelled, heart hammering in my chest.
“With who?” Cohen asked with a voice so rough and scratchy, like he never got a chance to use it and it had gotten rusty.
“Murphy,” I said, watching as his jaw tightened and his one good eye went panicked.
And I knew.
I knew.
“Help me out of the tub,” Cohen demanded, trying and failing himself, falling back with a hiss. “I can help,” he added.
“They came to catch her, didn’t they?” I asked, wondering how the fuck they could have known. Not where, not if they’d been watching her. But how they knew when.
Had they found us in Shady Valley?
Been watching?
Knew she was working on a project and figured she would be testing it out soon?
Reaching down, I grabbed the man’s elbow, and yanked him ruthlessly to his feet. He hissed, but didn’t complain. The way he stood said something was wrong with his side. Ribs, probably. And maybe his knee, given how he wasn’t putting much weight on that leg.
“I don’t know who they were,” he said. “But I know we don’t want Murphy to fall into their hands,” he said, moving past me to open the door, powering through the pain that had to be ricocheting over every nerve ending with each step.
