Chương 14
She heard dogs behind a metal door to her right. Many dogs. Nails scraped concrete. One struck the door hard enough to shake it.
“Why gasoline?” Nina asked.
Dominic’s eyes flickered.
Lorenzo noticed.
“Where are the other men?” he asked.
“Loading the van.”
“Tell them to stop.”
“You are still giving orders.”
“It is the only language you understand.”
Dominic’s smile tightened. “Your father understood gratitude.”
“My father understood fear. You benefited from the confusion.”
For the first time, Dominic’s expression slipped.
Nina moved one step toward Ghost.
Pike tightened the chain.
Ghost choked.
“Stop,” Nina said.
Pike grinned. “He used to make that sound for hours.”
Lorenzo’s hand moved toward his jacket.
Dominic lifted the pistol. “Do not.”
Everybody froze.
Ghost’s eyes stayed on Nina.
She began humming.
The six notes sounded small beneath the barking dogs.
Pike jerked the chain. Ghost’s front legs buckled.
Nina kept humming.
His breathing changed. His head tilted despite the pressure on his collar.
Dominic said, “Enough.”
Nina repeated the melody.
Ghost dragged one paw forward.
Pike struck him with the chain.
Lorenzo moved.
Dominic fired into the dirt near his feet.
The gunshot exploded through the barn.
Dogs screamed behind the metal door.
Ghost lunged.
Not at Dominic.
At Pike.
The chain ripped through Pike’s hands. Ghost struck him in the chest and drove him backward into a wooden stall. The pistol in Dominic’s hand swung toward the dog.
Nina shouted, “Basket!”
The barn doors burst open.
Rocco and two guards entered from the front. Another guard appeared through a side opening. Their weapons remained low because Ghost and Nina stood between them and Dominic.
Pike crawled toward the wall.
Ghost stood over him, teeth at his throat.
“Ghost,” Nina said.
The dog did not move.
She hummed once.
His ears twitched.
“Come.”
Ghost backed away from Pike and staggered toward her.
Nina dropped to her knees.
He collapsed before reaching her.
Lorenzo crossed the space, but Dominic seized Nina’s shoulder and pulled her upright. The pistol pressed beneath her jaw.
Ghost tried to rise.
“Stay,” she whispered.
He remained down, shaking.
Dominic dragged Nina backward. “Drop your weapons.”
Rocco looked at Lorenzo.
Lorenzo’s face had emptied of everything except calculation.
“You do not leave this property,” he said.
“I left you once before.”
“You hid. That is different.”
Dominic’s fingers tightened around Nina’s shoulder. “You should have taken the money.”
“I spent it,” she said.
He hesitated.
“On laundry baskets.”
Lorenzo’s eyes flicked toward her.
Nina drove her heel into Dominic’s shin.
The movement was not fast or graceful. She lost her balance immediately. Dominic cursed and the gun shifted away from her throat.
Lorenzo struck his wrist.
The pistol fell.
Rocco kicked it across the dirt.
Dominic hit Lorenzo in the mouth. Lorenzo staggered, then drove him into a support post. The two men grappled without elegance, shoes slipping in mud tracked across the barn floor.
Pike reached for the gun.
Ghost rose.
Nina caught his collar.
“Stay with me.”
Pike’s hand closed around the pistol.
A siren sounded beyond the trees.
He froze.
More sirens followed.
Dominic stopped fighting.
For one strange second, everyone listened.
Rain on the roof.
Dogs behind the steel door.
Ghost breathing against Nina’s arm.
Lorenzo had Dominic pinned against the post, one forearm across his throat. Blood ran from Lorenzo’s split lip.
“Do it,” Dominic whispered.
Lorenzo’s pressure increased.
“Lorenzo,” Nina said.
He did not look at her.
Dominic smiled through clenched teeth. “You think police make this cleaner?”
Nina saw what Lorenzo wanted. Not justice. Not safety. An ending he could control.
She looked toward the metal door. Smoke had begun to gather beneath it.
“Fire,” she said.
Pike moved first.
He ran toward the side exit.
One of the guards tackled him.
Nina released Ghost and crossed to the metal door. It was secured with a padlock.
“Key!”
Nobody answered.
Smoke thickened.
The gasoline had not been meant as a threat. It had already been lit somewhere beyond the kennels.
Nina grabbed a shovel from the wall and struck the lock.
The blow jarred both arms.
She hit it again.
Lorenzo released Dominic.
Rocco restrained him while Lorenzo took the shovel from Nina and swung. The lock broke on the third strike.
The door opened inward.
Heat and smoke rolled into the barn.
Dogs surged forward.
There were more than twenty, some in cages, some tethered along the walls. A stack of bedding burned near the rear entrance. Flames climbed toward the rafters.
“Open the cages,” Nina shouted.
The guards hesitated.
“Do it!” Lorenzo ordered.
They moved.
Nina ran to the nearest cage. A German shepherd snapped at her fingers through the wire. She used the shovel handle to lift the latch and backed away as the dog burst out.
Another cage held two mastiffs pressed together in terror. A third contained a pit bull with one eye.
For a moment, Nina saw the dog from Newark, the one a stranger had shown her after taking six hundred dollars.
This was not that dog.
It did not matter.
She opened the cage.
Smoke burned her throat.
Behind her, Ghost stumbled into the kennel aisle.
“Take him outside!” she yelled.
Lorenzo reached for his collar.
Ghost pulled toward Nina.
She looked at the cages still locked, then at the dog she had spent six years trying to find.
This was the choice she had imagined thousands of times—Ghost within reach, danger around him, her hands finally able to hold on.
She placed his collar in Lorenzo’s hand.
“Get him out.”
Ghost resisted.
Nina cupped his face. “Go.”
He whined.
She hummed the six notes and pushed him gently toward Lorenzo.
Lorenzo led him into the rain.
Nina turned back to the cages.
May you like
By the time firefighters entered, nineteen dogs had been moved into the muddy field behind the barn. Three remained too frightened or injured to walk. One cage near the fire was empty.
The black line in Dominic’s ledger returned to Nina’s mind.
