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“But if they do, what’s the word?”
“Fass,” he said, pronouncing it Fahs. Which sounded German. That made sense, since a lot of attack dog training was German-based. “If you need it, ma, there is also Kehle.”
“What does that mean?”
“Throat,” he said. “It’s a kill command.”
“Oh,” I said, mind flashing with the vision of a dog ripping out a man’s throat. A shiver moved through me. But I had to remind myself that dogs were one of the weapons at my disposal. If I had to use them, I would. Then get some serious therapy after.
“You need to know it,” he said.
“I got it,” I assured him. “What was that?” I asked, hearing him talking.
“Not you, mama. Just had to make another call,” he said, just as I started hearing pounding on the door.
Tools?
That had to be some kind of tool.
“Talk to me. What is happening?”
“I think they have tools,” I said, taking a couple of steps toward the monitors and, sure enough, they did. “They do,” I told him.
“That door is hard as fuck to penetrate, ma. It won’t go down without a fight. And I am… twenty-five minutes away.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling a cold sweat spreading across my skin as a sick sensation rolled through my stomach.
“Do me a favor,” he said, voice soft, but strained.
“Okay.”
“Go get behind the other door,” he demanded.
“The door to the roof?” I asked.
“Yeah, mama. I think the main door will hold. But if it don’t, it buys me a couple more minutes to have you behind another one.”
“But… but… the dogs,” I said, hearing a hitch in my voice at the idea of leaving them behind.”
“Bring ‘em. But stand behind them. Let them be close to the door. You stay on the steps.”
“They’re kind of losing their shit right now,” I told him.
“Put me on speaker,” he said, and I did, then listened to him bark stuff at them in German, making them silence. “Now tell them to come.”
I did.
And, amazingly enough, they followed as I got into the next doorway, shut, and locked the door.
“Alright. I’m behind the door,” I told him.
He said something else in German to them that got them barking again as I went up a few steps, trying to get away from the sound, mostly, so I could hear A.
Val was the only dog that went with me, but stood in front of me, going between me and the threat.
“Talk to me, mama. Gotta know you’re alright.”
“I am,” I told him, swallowing hard as some god awful metallic sound came from the other room. “I think they’re cutting into the door or something,” I told him.
“That’s okay. I’m not that far out. They can’t get through both doors that fast.”
“There’s more of them than you,” I said, hearing another hitch in my voice.
“Yeah. Well I’m a lot more fucking pissed,” he said, and I could hear the red-tinged rage in his voice. So vicious that a shiver moved through me at the sound of it.
He told me he was two minutes out when I heard a thud that had me jolting, and the dogs losing their ever-loving minds.
“What is it?” A asked, voice tight.
“The door just fell,” I told him, finally letting my finger move to the trigger of my gun.
“I am there, mama. Less than a minute,” he told me. “But I’m gonna need to hang up,” he said.
I felt absolutely irrational tears flood my eyes.
What if this was the end?
For him?
For me?
What if I never got another chance to say it?
“Hey, A?” I said, blinking the tears away.
“Yeah?”
“I, ah, I think I… I love you,” I said, stumbling over the words, but never meaning them more than I did right then.
“I love you too, mama. Now I gotta go prove it.”
With that, the line went dead.
And I dropped down onto my ass on the step.
Shaking.
But with a warm sensation blooming through me.
He loved me.
If I died that day, at least I would know that I had truly loved. And I’d been loved in return. Not everyone could say that. I was one of the lucky few.
So I sat.
And I listened to the barks, the snarls, the yells, the gunfire.
Then… silence.
I scooted back as the dogs immediately shut up.
That had to mean A said something, right?
I’d been so busy listening to the blood whooshing through my ears, and my own frantic thoughts, that I missed it.
But the dogs were silent.
And dropping obediently down on their asses.
There was a knock on the door.
Maybe, if I was a rational woman right then, I wouldn’t have run to it, I wouldn’t have opened the lock, I wouldn’t have yanked open the door.
But I was a woman who was worried to death about the man she loved, who needed to see him again.
I wasn’t thinking straight.
So I yanked the door wide.
And there was a man there.
