Bait (34 page)

The effect was almost magical. Susan's head lifted from Jon's shoulder. She looked around at Maddie, and gave a shuddering gasp.

“Would you?”

Ten million dollars,
Maddie reminded herself.

“I'd be glad to,” Maddie lied, trying not to think about how her neighbors were going to react to having a mad dog in the house, to say nothing about how her own nerves would hold out. Then she had an instant vision of McCabe's probable reaction, and that almost—
almost
—made the whole thing worthwhile.

EIGHTEEN

Fifteen minutes later, Maddie pulled into the McDonald's on Clayton.

“Fine,” she said to the yodeling dog in the shaking plastic carrier on the front passenger seat. “You want food? Let's get you food.”

As she drove around to the drive-through window, her cell phone began to ring. Not that she heard it, exactly. Zelda made hearing anything almost impossible. But it was in her jacket pocket and she felt it vibrate.

Fishing it out just as she reached the plastic speaker where they take your order, she snapped “What?” into the phone as she rolled down the window and yelled “large fry” at the intercom. Not that she exactly heard anyone ask for her order over Zelda, but she assumed.

“What are you
doing
?” McCabe's voice said in her ear.

“Feeding this damned dog,” Maddie replied, heard a snort of laughter, and snapped the phone closed. She drove on to the first window and paid for the food.

“Doggy's not very happy,” the clerk observed as he handed back her change.

Duh,
Maddie thought, but managed not to say it. Moving to the next window, she practically snatched the bag from the girl who handed it over. Fishing out a fry before she even thought about rolling up the window or driving on, she thrust it through the grate.

Zelda's histrionics stopped as abruptly as if Maggie had shut off a valve.

“Thank God,” Maddie said devoutly, and drove on, rolling up her window as she went.

Her cell phone rang again.

“What?”

“Stop right there,” McCabe said.

She was still in the parking lot just a few yards beyond the pickup window.

“What? Why?” As she automatically hit the brakes, she was looking fearfully all around. The parking lot was well lit and ...

“We're getting a couple of Big Macs. Want anything?”

“No.” Maddie glanced in her rearview mirror. Sure enough, there was the Blazer, stopped at the intercom. Apparently, being so close to food that wasn't salad was more temptation than McCabe—and Wynne, who was driving—could stand. Zelda snuffled, and Maddie hastily poked another fry through the grate. The smell of fresh, hot grease wafted to her nostrils. “Okay. Fine. Get me a large fry. And a hamburger. And a chocolate shake. No, wait,” she added with a glance at the carrier, “make that about four large fries.”

“I like a girl who eats,” McCabe said, laughing.

“The fries are for the
dog,
” Maddie growled, then disconnected, pulled into an empty parking space, and spent the next few minutes feeding french fries to Zelda and watching as first McCabe and Wynne in the Blazer and then Gomez and Hendricks in the van went through the drive-through line. It was still raining, not hard but a little, and the swish of the windshield wipers coupled with the sound of the droplets pattering down against the Camry's roof were practically music to her abused ears.

Her phone rang.

“What now?” she said into it, knowing it was McCabe.

“A kid who works here is bringing out your food. I didn't want you to have a heart attack when he tapped on your window.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“You know, next time you decide to make a stop we haven't been told about, you might want to give somebody a heads-up before you do it. You lost Gomez back there.”

The van had been in front of her as she'd driven past the McDonald's and had her eureka moment about the fries. The Blazer had been behind her.

“It was an emergency,” Maddie explained.

“McDonald's is an emergency?”

“You're not up here riding with this
dog,
” Maddie said, heard another snort of laughter, and snapped the phone shut.

Sure enough, in a couple minutes a kid in a McDonald's shirt tapped on her window, passed her two big bags of food, and disappeared back toward the restaurant.

“We're set now,” she said to Zelda, and took off.

Five more minutes, and she was turning down her street. The blacktop gleamed slickly black and reflected the headlight beams like the surface of a wavery mirror. Inside the car, the faint smell of wet earth and perfumed dog mixed with the stronger scent of fast food. The radio, which she'd turned on as soon as she'd started the car in an effort—futile, as it had turned out—to drown out Zelda, played Britney Spears's latest hit. Zelda, appeased by a continuing infusion of fries, was actually proving to be decent company. Maddie ate, too, slurping up her milkshake between bites of hamburger and the occasional fry—she wanted to be sure to save plenty for Zelda—and the two of them munched companionably. Maddie had an uncomfortable déjà-vu moment as she pulled into her parking lot, but, she reminded herself, her windshield was bulletproof now. If the hit man was on the job and tried taking another potshot at her, the bullet would, presumably, bounce off. Or something like that.

Just so as not to attract any lingering bad karma, Maddie nosed the Camry into a different spot. Beside her, Zelda gave a delicate little burp. Then a far less delicate sound emerged from the depths of the carrier.

Followed by the most noxious odor Maddie had ever smelled.

“Oh my God,” she said, staring in horror at the carrier.

Zelda whined.

M&M's. French fries. Scarfed up with abandon by a dog who'd been on a strictly controlled diet.

Forget that howling fit.
This
was what Maddie called an emergency.

Trying not to gag at the smell, Maddie slammed the transmission into park, turned the car off, slewed around, and reached into the backseat. The halogen shed fuzzy pale light over the motley collection of cars in the lot as well as the tall bushes and scraggly grass at the edge of the pavement, and provided a modicum of illumination inside the car, just enough for her to see that the carrier was ominously still. Equally ominously, its occupant was silent, which, since she hadn't hit Zelda with a fry lately, struck Maddie as possibly being a
bad thing.
Maddie groped frantically around in the backseat. Somewhere back there, along with the duffel bag containing Zelda's belongings that Susan had handed over before escaping, was a leash.

Zelda whined again.

“Hang on,” Maddie urged her, trying not to breathe. Her questing fingers touched duffel bag, briefcase,
leash ...

“Got it!”

Her phone rang as she turned back around. Cursing under her breath, she fumbled to open it.

“What?” she snapped.

“What are you doing
now
?”

“This dog's got to go.”

To Maddie's horror, another one of those long, slow, wet raspberry noises came from the carrier. The smell rose and spread like a mushroom cloud. Talk about your WMDs. ...

“You shouldn't've offered ...” McCabe's voice was impatient.

“
Poop.
She's got to go
poop.
”

Dropping the phone, Maddie thrust another french fry through the grate, then took advantage of Zelda's momentary distraction to unlatch it. The dog bounded out, but Maddie was too fast for her. Hooking a hand in her collar, praying that the animal was too full of food to feel like biting anything else, Maddie snapped Zelda's leash on her.

She would have sunk back in relief, except for the smell.

Gagging, she thrust open the door, swung her feet to the shiny, wet pavement, and got out in the rain, sucking in the revivifying smell of wet honeysuckle and steamy asphalt, holding on to the leash with a death grip all the while. Behind her, Zelda got out, too, jumping to the pavement with surprising agility.

And let loose with another of those ominous sounds.

“Come on!”

Maddie slammed the door and half dragged her over to the grass. Zelda immediately hunched and did her thing.

“Thank God,” Maddie said. Zelda gave a little grunt, which Maddie took for agreement.

“What the hell do you think you're doing?” The muted roar behind her made Maddie jump and whirl toward the source of the sound: McCabe, of course. She knew who it was in mid-levitation. Backlit by the halogen, he was a menacingly large shape that practically radiated aggravation as he came toward her in quick strides from the Blazer, which was now parked beside her car. Any sensible human being would have been startled half to death by his near bellow— and, apparently, it was enough to startle any sensible dog, too.

Because Zelda jumped at the sound right along with Maddie, and rocketed away into outer darkness.

Maddie stared blankly down at her empty hand. She was no longer holding the leash.

“Zelda!” Maddie cried as the full enormity of the catastrophe hit her, then yelled, “Now look what you've done!” at McCabe, and took off in hot pursuit.

Unfortunately, it turned out that hot pursuit and high heels were pretty much mutually exclusive things. Maddie made that discovery as she rounded the end of the honeysuckle hedge, skidded in the wet grass, and nearly went down. Windmilling to regain her balance, she kept on going, kicking off her shoes as she went.

“Maddie! Come back here!”

McCabe was giving chase, too, but she didn't have time to wait for him. She had to get Zelda back. If she didn't, Creative Partners could kiss the Brehmer account good-bye. Panic made her short of breath. More thankful for the halogen light than she had ever dreamed she could be, she peered through the translucent veil of rain, doing a lightning scan of twenty feet of shiny, wet grass crisscrossed with swaying shadows. There! She caught just a glimpse of a golden brown backside disappearing beneath the four-board fence that bordered the house next door.

“Zelda! Here, Zelda!” she called frantically, running toward the spot.

Okay, for her going under the fence was not an option. Hitching up her skirt, Maddie swarmed over it, caught sight of Zelda scrambling around a kiddie pool in the next yard, her leash flapping behind her, and sprinted after her. The rain was hitting the surface of the pool, the sound a quick rat-a-tat that echoed the hurried beat of her heart. She was wet, and getting wetter by the moment. The grass was slick as ice beneath her pantyhose-clad feet. Tree roots and rocks and who knew what else bruised her poor, tender soles as she pounded after Zelda. The yards grew progressively darker as she got farther away from the streetlights. But she could still see, thanks in large measure to the light filtering through the curtained windows of the houses whose backyards she was invading.

“Maddie!
Stop.
”

Running, too, his feet making squelching noises on the soggy ground, McCabe was right behind her as she reached the next fence. Behind him,
way
behind him, she saw with a wild glance over her shoulder, Wynne was heaving himself over a fence. Even as Maddie put one abused foot on the lowest board, McCabe's arm shot forward. Grabbing the back of her jacket, he jerked her back. She fell against him, her back colliding with his chest with a solid thump, her feet slipping out from under her. She would have fallen smack on her butt if he hadn't hooked a hard arm around her waist just as she started to go down.

“Damn it to
hell,
” he said, hauling her upright. “Are you
nuts
?”

Both arms were around her now. Except for the fact that they were practically crushing her ribs, she could hardly feel them through the bulletproof vest.

“Let go.”
She glanced wildly up and back at him as she regained her feet and shoved at those imprisoning arms with both hands. “I have to get Zelda.”

“Don't be a ...” he began furiously, looming over her with a “that's it, I've had it” air that Maddie didn't have to be clairvoyant to realize meant that he was on the verge of losing his temper.

An explosion of ferocious barks split the air, drowning out the rest of what he said. Deep barks. Bass barks. Profundo barks. Mingled with a stream of high-pitched, frantic yips.

“Baron,” Maddie whispered weakly, sagging against McCabe as she named the rottweiler mix that was the scourge of the neighborhood cats. Then, in a voice strengthened by horror, she added, “Zelda!”

As the yips turned to yelps and the bass barks went insane, she fought like a tigress to be free.

“Stop it, dammit! You're going to hurt yourself!”

“Let me go! He'll kill her!”

“Shit,” McCabe muttered, thrusting her away from him. Maddie found herself colliding with Wynne's huge bulk as McCabe added to Wynne, who'd just come puffing up to join them, “Hang on to her.”

Wynne's arms obediently locked around her waist.

“Zelda!” Maddie cried, straining toward the fence.

To her surprise, she saw that McCabe was already vaulting it. He disappeared through the bushes as the sounds of Zelda being devoured reached cosmic proportions and more lights started coming on in the surrounding houses. Maddie could see a little of what was happening now, even through the rain and the screen of bushes that grew profusely on the other side of the fence, and what she saw horrified her. The huge, hulking shape that was Baron had Zelda cornered under something—a child's ATV?—and was barking insanely at her as he tried to get to her. Not that Maddie could see Zelda. What she could do was hear her. Zelda clearly recognized that she had gotten in way over her head. She was letting loose with her trademark howl.