Part 10 (1/2)

If he had, he didn't mention it. He looked disappointed, as though he'd hoped to catch them with their toes over some sort of invisible line. ”That don't change the facts. This is private property.”

Brenna snorted. ”Of course it is. It's all private property around here. Maybe your buddy would do well to keep that in mind.”

He frowned at her. ”That's supposed to make sense?”

”It'll make sense to Rob, if you tell him. Or don't. I don't care.” Brenna gathered up the leash and stalked back down the road, Druid at her heels and grabbing wary looks over his shoulder.

”I wouldn't,” Masera said to the man. ”Doubt he'd like you making a scene like this.” In a few quick strides he'd caught up with hera”or nearly caught up with her, because she wasn't having any of it and poor Druid's short little legs flew to keep her pace.

She wanted to ask him what that was supposed to have meant, but she didn't. She didn't say anything at all, not until they'd gone through the fence, across the pasture and back up the hill, and were heading for the barn gate. Even then, she didn't look at him when she said, ”Send me a bill.”

”Call it a favor,” he said.

”No.” Favors like that always cost her, somehow. One way or another, she'd pay. She'd owe him.

She still didn't look at him, but she heard the shrug in his voice when he said, ”I didn't think so. See you around, Brenna. Stay inside at night.”

Brenna shuddered, and slammed the porch door closed behind her.

Chapter 10.

URUZ.

a.s.sertion

Brenna spent the rest of Friday doing what her hand would allow of her, and was glad enough to learn it included target practice. She made mental effigies out of the targets and put Masera in there along with Roger.

She aimed for the spot a.s.signed to tender portions of their anatomies.

She called her mother and told her Sunny was gone, her mother told her brother, her brother called her. Somehow he made it sound like he thought she'd be better off in town so she wouldn't have to deal with such things, instead of that he was sorry for her loss. She cried, and she called Emily, and Emily insisted that she come over for a picnic in the Brecken family room, where they all discovered that Druid, in the presence of little girls exclaiming, ”Can I give him a potato chip, pleasepleaseplease” was quite capable of sitting up on his haunches. Unlike a dog with longer limbs, his short front legs didn't fold neatly at his chest, but stuck out to make him look like a child reaching to be picked up.

Upon returning home she went straight to bed, and refused to think about the strange jumble of events that her life had suddenly become.

When she woke up on Sat.u.r.day, it was with the already formed intent to return to the Parker homesteada”and first thing, while she was at her best and everyone else was barely waking up. After all, Rob Parker owed her a look around after making himself so at home on her own property. And if that wasn't enough, Masera's intense curiosity about the place was.

After all, he'd also been curious about her.

Which meant the more she knew about him, the better.

So she ate, still stiff-handed and with only a twinge of guilt over not going in to work. Just because she could dress herself didn't mean she had any business waving sharp-edged instruments around people's pets. Or had the strength to act quickly and decisively if something else decided to bite her. She stuck her head outside, discovered the day was overcasta”standard operating procedure just south of the lakea”but had a warmth to it that inspired her to put nothing but the vest over her deep green, long-sleeved waffle s.h.i.+rt as she went out the door.

Druid, she left behind.

The birds weren't as enthusiastic in proclaiming their newly established seasonal territories as they'd been when she woke, but it was early enough that the vireos and robins were still going at it; as she walked the tree line dividing the pastures she heard a scarlet tanager at work. In the woods across the road a thrush serenaded her oh-so-casual stroll along the shoulder, which was about when she thought, out of the blue, Basque. Something so obvious that it made her realize just how upset she'd been two nights before, or she wouldn't have missed it then. Basque, and the elusive accent. Masera had been brought up speaking the language, at least at first, she'd bet. And he apparently had friends who still spoke it more naturally than Englisha”the person he'd spoken to two evenings before.

Which meant he had family living with him, or that he lived with family. People she might be able to talk to, if they spoke English at all.

It was a line of reasoning that stopped her short, to see how quickly she'd come to such certain conclusions. She laughed out loud, startling the birds to silence. Since when had she developed deductive powers of any note? Since when, Brenna Lynn.

He spoke the Basque language. So did someone else currently in his residence. That's all she knew, all she really knew.

Well, no. She also knew that she'd reached the lane, and that suddenly she wished she'd had some excuse to bring the rifle along. Tucked under her arm, casual . . . a nice visual statement of confidence.

Stupid. Like she would ever even point a rifle at someone else. Even an empty one. She knew she wouldn't, couldn't; she could well recall the one time she'd done so accidentally, and the horror that had engulfed her as she jerked the empty weapon down to bear at the ground. She wasn't even sure she could bring herself to shoot a marauding feral dog, not even one that was headed her way with toothy intent.

Which left her staring down the driveway, the birds going about their business and an unusually bold Red Squirrel stopping to take a good look at her. She sighed, jammed her hands into her vest pockets, and hunted for the resolve she'd had not so long ago. And found it without too much difficulty . . . of all the unknowns whirling around her, this didn't have to stay one of them.

She took a deep breath and started up the lane.

It must have been a good quarter mile before the barn came into view; no wonder it had taken Mr. c.o.c.ky some time to reach them after Druid first sounded off. The lane curved, first one way, then the other, and dumped her from close woods into the old barnyard without much warning. To her left, the barn stood long and lowa”an old dairy barn, she thought, its long row of windows long broken-out and a cavernous working barn stuck on one end for hay and machinery. Before her, the old house foundation peeked above the weedsa”some crumbling stone here, half a chimney there, and one strange series of steps that led to nowherea”old porch steps, she thought.

Beneath her feet and circling through what had once been small, square barn paddocksa”she could still see the remains of the board fencing and curling loops of cattle-wirea”the tire tracks were deep and fresh. There wasn't any place to live, and there wasn't any evident activity or construction, but Rob and his friends were finding plenty of reason to spend time here.

Slowly, Brenna walked around the barn, trying to puzzle it out. Of what had Mr. c.o.c.ky been so protective? What could they have been doing here, other than some equivalent of smoking cigarettes out behind the barn? She skirted rusty old equipmenta”not worth anything by the time the elder Parkers had died, no doubt, although if Rob bothered to clean it up, he might well snare some antiquers with ita”and an old claw-footed bathtub that she instantly coveted for a watering trough. Stacks of weathered old stove-split wood and greyed slat wood, an old tractor tire . . . nothing here that she couldn't find at just about any barn of this vintage.

Until she walked out back, and ran into a diminutive horse walker. No, too small to be a horse walker. Part of an old playset? She puzzled at it, nibbling at a rough spot at her cuticle. Winter was tough on a groomer's hands, though the splits at the ends of her fingers would heal faster if she'd leave them alone. Nibble, nibble, but the strange contraption didn't give up any secrets. Excepta”was that blood on the ground? Dried blood, worn and kicked up but enough of it left to show. And . . . what was that smell? She caught another whiff of it, but no more; she couldn't track it down. So she left the contraption and walked around to the working end of the barn, where there was a people-sized door with gla.s.sed windows.

She peered through a panea”or tried to. Dirt grimed them inside and out. So she knocked lightlya”not expecting anyone but taking all the right steps just in casea”and tried the doork.n.o.b. It didn't turn, but the door swung in anywaya”closed, it was, and even locked, but not latched. From the way it moved on the hinges, Brenna doubted it could latch.

Dim and oppressive, the tiny office was crammed with junk old and new. Old desk, old file cabinet, old chaira”each bearing the same layers of grime as the windows. Stacks of ancient, yellowed newspapers in the corner, a block of wood holding up one of the desk legs. In the layers of dirt on the board floor, recently applied footsteps carved a trail from the outer door to an inner door, and from each door to the desk.

On the desk, though, there were new layers. Magazines, but hidden under a folded newspaper, so all she could see was their spines and one t.i.tle. Sporting Dog Journal . . . the same one Masera had been reading? A glance would tell her so much . . . but she wasn't about to disturb the contents of the desk. Not yet, anyway.

On a set of low metal shelves beneath the room's one high window, sloppy jumbles of supplies caught her eye. It didn't look so much different from her own dog room shelves, actuallya”some basic medical supplies, some syringes, a tangle of leashes, harnesses, and thick, wide, double-ply leather collars. Some big plastic jars of bulk supplements, one of which she'd used for Sunny when the starving hound had first staggered into Brenna's life.

Dogs. It added up to dogs, but Brenna hadn't seen a single one. Hadn't even heard one. And as she puzzled over it, as she got up the nerve to nudge the magazines with a finger so she could see the covers, a man came barreling through the door with no more idea of Brenna's presence than she'd had of his approach. She s.n.a.t.c.hed her finger back as he recoiled in surprise, and before he could say the words piling up in his moutha”angry words, even mean onesa”she smiled and gave him Brenna the Naif. The one that went with her features.

”Oh, good,” she said, gus.h.i.+ng with apparent relief at having found someone there. ”I'm looking for Rob, have you seen him? He was over at my place the other day, visiting, you know, and I thought it would be neighborlya””

”He's not here,” the man said abruptly. This wasn't Mr. c.o.c.ky; this man wore anger like a second skin, letting it surface in a handful of tattoos and the heavy studs of a doubly pierced brow. Mr. Mean. Young, muscles showing under his tight T-s.h.i.+rt and the open black sh.e.l.l jacket over top it. And big. Big enough he didn't have to be c.o.c.ky to get his point across. ”Stupid of you to come nosing around where you don't belong.”

Oh, Lordy, that was more than a threat. But Brenna the Naif didn't know enough to respond to threats, and Brenna the Naif she stayed. Masera, she'd meet head-on. This man . . . this man she played, and for all she was worth. ”Oh,” she said, faltering, ”I'm sorry. It's just that Rob was so friendly when we talked, I thoughta””

From within the barn, far within the barn, a dog barked; several others took up the cry. Profound, ringing chop barks, quickly silenced. That answered one questiona”whatever the breed, it was big.

Mr. Mean frowned at her, a frown that went deep; his quickly sparked anger seemed to be fading to annoyance, but Brenna wasn't sure. He said, ”You have any idea what the h.e.l.l time it is, lady? Not visiting hours, that's for sure.”

She shrugged, but it felt weak even to her. ”I'm always up at this hour. I figured, if he's here, he's herea”and if not, no harm done. Just a little bit of a longer walk than usual, you know? Besides, I was wondering if Rob might want to sell that bathtuba””

”s.h.i.+t,” he said, with feeling, and she couldn't interpret that at all. ”Look, Rob doesn't want any visitors, you got that?” His voice rose with each word, until he was shouting at her, closing the distance between them as she backed up, backed until the edge of the open door jammed into her back and stopped her short. ”He doesn't want to talk nice to the neighbors and he sure as h.e.l.l doesn't want 'em poking around his private things at some f.u.c.king hour of the morning when normal people don't even have their pants on!”

Her eyes widened; she couldn't help it. It didn't mattera”even Brenna the Naif would know this was trouble. h.e.l.l, the Naif was already running screaming down the lane, leaving just plain Brenna to deal with this all on her own. ”I really didn't meana”” she started, but stumbled and tried again right on top of it, ”I thought he saida”I thought he meanta”I mean, people around here, if they say they'd like to talk again sometimea””