At that, she laughed. “Wow, you’ll be as much of a workaholic as I am.”

  “Too late,” he pointed out. “That’s partly why I understand what makes you tick.”

  “I’m glad somebody does.”

  “Oh, you understand perfectly well. You feel alive when you’re with the animals,” he noted. “And, so far, you might not have met anybody else who shared the same depths of caring for these animals—or for you, in fact. I get it. Believe me. There’s nothing quite like being with somebody who doesn’t care as much as you do, to make you feel like you’re unlovable and not worthy.”

  “God, all that stuff was just so hard,” she murmured, staring at him. “To even think about going back down that pathway is terrifying.”

  “I know,” he agreed. “I was there too. Remember?”

  She nodded, then looked down at Toby. With a big grin for him, she said, “Come on, Toby. Apparently it’s time to get to work, so we’ll walk down there together.” Then looking to Bauer, she asked, “When do you want to do dinner?”

  “You mean, besides tonight?”

  She nodded. “I presume we’re not talking anytime soon and will wait until this mess is over.”

  “Either way, I’ll be right here beside you the whole time until it is. So how about this weekend?”

  She stared at him. “Do you really think we’ll have answers that soon?”

  Such hope filled her voice that he had to laugh. “I figured if I don’t give you a deadline and an actual date on the calendar, you might back out on me. Thus this is my attempt at locking you in.” She frowned at him, and he nodded, understanding her reluctance. “And I said, No pressure, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, but that didn’t last long,” she muttered, but no rancor was in her tone.

  He smiled. “I’m cooking dinner tonight, so for now how about the weekend for our dinner date?”

  “Maybe the weekend,” she conceded, with a short nod. “We’ll see where we are—at that point.” And, with that, they headed toward the clinic.

  Chapter 7

  Mags felt a weird sensation all day, always expecting to see or to hear something wrong throughout the day. But when nothing happened, she was relieved, yet almost disappointed. There was a kind of flatness to the day, a sense of letdown. She wanted answers, and she wanted them badly, but apparently nobody was inclined to give them to her. She had asked Bauer during the day if he’d heard anything from the cops, but he just shook his head. She looked at him for more, but people were waiting for her, so she asked in mild desperation, “Can you find out?”

  With that, he nodded, then headed out to the backyard.

  He’d stayed close all day, and she appreciated that. He’d even come in with coffee once or twice and had insisted that she stop and take a quick break and eat something. She’d grumbled at him the whole time, but he stood there, stoic, ignoring her arguments.

  Yet she had quickly plowed through the food and realized that she was much better for it. When she had gotten up and tossed away the garbage, she looked over at him. “How did you know?”

  “You were starting to get a little snappy,” he replied.

  She gave him an eyeroll. “I doubt anybody else would use that term.”

  “No, I think pissed off and angry is what I heard bantered around,” he stated, with a bright smile.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Not kidding, sorry.”

  She sighed. “It’s this waiting. I mean, I get that it’s supposed to be overwhelming, and now that someone was caught, everybody is expecting me to be happy and settled, so who cares about answers,” she explained, “but it doesn’t feel right.”

  “Oh, I agree with you there,” he confirmed. “Badger and I are doing what we can, and I’ve got phone calls into the cops as well. Plus Badger is trying to get a history on our intruder from last night, and we’re looking for some background on all of it. However, so far, I don’t have anybody getting back to me, which typically means they don’t have squat.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “I guess that’s fair enough.”

  “You keep focused on your day. I’ll stay focused on Toby and on getting answers,” he reminded her. “Rest assured, the cops haven’t forgotten about us, and somebody will get back to us, as soon as they have something.”

  “Do you think so?” she asked, looking at him strangely. “I figured maybe they’re hoping if they ignore us long enough, we’ll just go away.”

  “That’s not happening,” Bauer declared. “So just hold down the fort and stay strong. Hopefully we’ll get some answers by the end of the day.”

  With that, she pretended to be happy with it. He was right. Until somebody got back to them, there wasn’t much they could do but stay the course. Nearing the end of the day she walked past the reception room and noted it was empty. She turned to look at her receptionist and saw Sarah already packing up. “Are we done?” Mags asked hopefully.

  “Absolutely. You were caught up in surgery for so much of it that I don’t even think you saw half of the people who came through here.”

  “The surgeries were relatively light,” Mags shared. “A few stitches here and there, a couple cysts, a biopsy, an ear hematoma repair. Thankfully nothing major.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Sarah said. “You were definitely not yourself.” Mags frowned at her friend and assistant, and Sarah nodded. “You know it yourself.”

  “I do know it,” she admitted. “Plus Bauer even mentioned I was snappy.”

  “You haven’t exactly been getting a whole lot of sleep.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But tomorrow is a new day, and hopefully, with some sleep tonight, you’ll be back to normal.”

  “That’s the plan,” Mags agreed, with a smile. She walked behind Sarah as she left, locked up the front door behind her, then set the alarm for the front and headed into the back. She had Toby and one other patient, who’d been in for a fairly minor surgery. However, the owners had an emergency and couldn’t pick her up at the end of the day, sending word that they would come in the morning to get Millie.

  So, it was a simple case of just needing a safe place to stay. The War Dog was awake and happy and now would be content to just curl up in the corner of the house with Mags. Since Toby was coming home with her, so would Millie. Before she set the alarm for the back area, she turned to see Bauer standing there.

  He waved around the clinic. “I guess it doesn’t make much difference if you stay here or not.”

  “I normally stay if I’m worried about a surgical patient,” she replied, looking at him crossly. “In this case I’m not concerned at all. It was a routine procedure, and Millie is ready to go home. However, her owners couldn’t come and collect her tonight. But I’m uncomfortable with leaving her here, under the circumstances. Otherwise I would come down in a couple hours to check on her and again in the wee hours of the morning.”

  “Do you sleep better at home than here?” Bauer asked.

  “I do. Much better. Yet, if I thought anything was to worry about with Millie, believe me. I would be staying here.”

  “You wouldn’t,” he argued. “I would.” She glared at him, and he just shrugged. “Some things have to be done the way they have to be done.”

  She muttered, “I’m sure that means something to you, but it sure doesn’t to me.”

  He laughed at her, not even trying to explain it. “Are you ready to go home?”

  She nodded. “I’m hungry again,” she announced.

  “That’s good because I’m cooking dinner again.”

  “Right,” she noted. “That’s a good thing. Otherwise I’d be ordering something in right now, so I could take it home from here.” When he frowned at that detail, she explained, “Deliveries often get confused between the clinic and my house. Sometimes the delivery people just take the easy out and the shortest route and deliver it here. So it’s just way easier to wait here for it to come. However, if that were the case tonight, I should have ordered it a while ago. If I was alone, I would have just stayed and worked in the office.”

  “But you’re not doing that tonight,” Bauer stated, his tone inflexible. She glared at him once more, and he smiled right back. “Come on. Let’s collect the two dogs and go up to the house.”

  She nodded and walked outside and headed back up to the house, with Toby moving slowly at her side. Millie was on a leash held by Bauer. She was happy to be out of her cage too. As Mags walked beside Toby, checking his gait, she had to acknowledge that he was finally doing somewhat better. “He’s doing pretty decent,” she murmured to Bauer. “I spent an hour going over his bandages and checking on his lab tests, and I think he’s holding up okay.”

  “He looks to be just fine,” Bauer noted. “I’m really surprised he’s moving as well as he is.”

  “I think that’s sheer stubbornness on his part,” she suggested. “I’ve done amputations where they weren’t this mobile, not like Toby is. In his case, I don’t know whether it’s because of what he already went through or what. I don’t know, but he’s been pretty quick to get up on his feet and go.”

  Bauer nodded. “I imagine not all animals are the same, just like people aren’t the same.”

  “That’s true,” she agreed, “and we do try to keep an eye on everyone, but Toby’s exceptional, and he consistently surprises me.”

  “I like hearing that he’s doing better than you expect.”

  “Maybe, but it still worries me that he’s overdoing it though.”

  “He’s only been on his feet a little while when we had him outside to go to the bathroom a couple times today,” Bauer argued. “I don’t think that’s been too much for him.”

  “No, you’re right,” she conceded. “I just don’t want him to have a setback.”

  “I’m with you on that, so we’ll just do the best we can. If he needs to go back in a crate, he will. He won’t like it much, but I can see that it might make you feel better.”

  “How sad is that,” she muttered. “I would worry more if I saw any fresh bleeding. Actually he’s using the other legs, and all the bleeding has stopped. The stump is showing decent healing. It’s the drainage I was worried about, but I cleaned all that out, and it’s looking pretty good.”

  Bauer nodded. “As somebody who went through an amputation myself, I understand the process. I understand how quickly we can heal, and I also understand how easy it is to do too much and to slow down that healing.”

  She didn’t know what to say about any of that. He rarely mentioned anything about his accident or his injuries. “Are you missing much?” she asked cautiously.

  “Initially half a foot,” he shared, “and, damn, if that didn’t make me feel like it’s only half an injury. However, the infection wouldn’t heal, so they ended up taking off more of the leg, not quite to the knee.”

  That raised her eyebrow. “The trouble is, even missing half a foot essentially means learning to walk all over again,” she added, looking at Toby, as if trying to process it in her own head. “It’s amazing just how much we need that pad, the sole, the whole front section of the foot for balance. The toes, for grip, gait, … just to walk properly. Of course, from your perspective, even now with more of the leg gone, you probably still think that it’s a minor injury in comparison to your war buddies and that you should have been through rehab faster.”

  “Exactly,” he replied, with a laugh. “However, there for a while, the docs were talking about taking off more of my leg if they couldn’t get the infection to go away. Thankfully I got lucky, and that worked out. Also, because of the work I used to do, I have this tough guy image to maintain, and it just didn’t sit right that something like missing a foot should hold me back so much.”

  “And, in another instance, maybe it wouldn’t have. It also depends on what other injuries you were dealing with at the same time that may have influenced the overall amount of downtime.”

  “Quite a few. I had a ruptured spleen, a punctured lung, a broken femur rebuilt with rods, a couple broken ribs, half a rib missing, plus my hand—lost part of it too. Thankfully it’s not my dominant hand. Still Kat thinks I would like to have a prosthetic, and she’s working on that.” She stopped in her tracks and stared at him. He gave her a quirky smile. “As I mentioned, a few other injuries.”

  “Jeez,” she muttered, under her breath. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “I am, and, as you pointed out, that may be one of the reasons I decided to venture down this whole relationship path again—although I was in hard denial, until Toby went missing, and I saw you again.”

  At that, she glared at him.

  “What? Did you think I would forget about our upcoming dinner date?” he teased, laughing at her.

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t push quite so much.”

  “Not pushing, just saying it out loud and trying to get you a little more comfortable with the whole concept. Trying to make the unfamiliar more familiar.”

  “It’s not working,” she stated gruffly.

  “Yeah, but I think, for you, a lot of it is just habit.”

  “What? This is a habit? Other than you, I don’t have men asking me out. So how the hell do you figure that?”

  “Because, outside of the insecurity and the sense of distrust that somebody might hurt you again, I’m not sure how much of what you’re feeling is because you’ve locked down the initial pain and eventually just kept it down, out of sight. So much so that, when I brought it up, you didn’t even know how to respond.”

  “Of course I didn’t know how to respond,” she snapped, as they made the last little way up to her house. “How can I respond when I wasn’t expecting it? I’ve never been very good at hiding my feelings.”

  “Good,” he replied, “because I’m not either.”

  She frowned at him. “I would have said that you have a hell of a poker face. I can’t read it at all.”

  “Never.” He shook his head. “No, I fail at poker, and everybody seems to read my face just fine. In your case, I think you’re trying not to read it.”

  That stopped her in her tracks. “That sounds an awful lot like you expect me to respond in some way that I don’t even know how to respond. And makes me feel like I’m in the wrong, and I hate that.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not expecting you to respond in any particular way,” he replied gently. “I’m just looking for honesty between us.”

  “Fine,” she said, raising both hands in surrender. “Honestly this conversation is making me uncomfortable.”

  “Okay, so we’ll change it,” he replied immediately. Then, sure enough, he did. “Did you sense or feel anything going on around you today at the clinic?”

  She unlocked her front door, then stepped inside, letting Toby step in just ahead of her. As she went to take another step, Bauer slammed an arm straight across her chest and quietly said, “Wait!”

  Bauer watched Toby, as his ears went back and his lip curled. “Stay here,” he whispered to Mags. Bauer reached down and unhooked the leash on Toby, and, with a finger to his lips, he stepped forward, sliding along the wall, until he could get close enough to see around the corner.

  And saw … nothing. The house was in shadows, so it was just dark enough to impede his vision. He waited until his eyes adjusted, and, as he stepped forward, he heard Toby at his side, moving stealthily. He reached his fingers down, but it was too late, as a man spoke.

  “There you are, you little bastard.”

  Bauer pulled Toby back, just as a shot rang out from the far end of the house and hit the corner of the nearby wall. He heard the startled shriek from Mags behind him, as he pushed Toby back to her, handed her Millie’s leash, and told her to get down to the clinic.

  Clipping the leash back on Toby, she whispered, “I’m not leaving you.”

  “Yes, you are,” he argued quietly. “I’ll try and draw him out, but, if he thinks he’s pinned, he’ll just shoot his way out. Go down and call the cops.”

  “I can do that from outside.” He gave her a hard look, as she raised her hands and stepped back outside again.

  Bauer returned his attention to the silence in the living room. “The dog is not here.”

  “It was,” snapped the other man. “The damn thing needs shooting.”

  “Why is that? What did he ever do to you?”

  “Bit me,” he snapped. “Dogs like that, they’re dangerous as hell. You can’t let a dog like that live. He’s a menace.”

  “He’s just a dog. One you probably kicked and provoked into biting you. Still, I don’t know why you’ve gone to such lengths to try and kill him.”

  “I won’t explain it to you,” he spat, “but I can tell you one thing. If he gets in my way again, I’ll make sure it’s not just the dog that gets a bullet.”

  “Wow, threats now. That’s great. You’re already breaking into her house, and here you are making threats on top of it. Isn’t it enough that we already have one guy in custody?”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll be fixing that too,” he declared, with a sneer. Then he let out a barrage of firepower that kept chipping off the corner of the wall. Behind the rapid-fire cover, Bauer thought he heard odd sounds, and swore, thinking the guy had bolted outside, but which way would he go?

  He can’t go to the clinic. Bauer had just sent Mags down there with the two dogs, and that wasn’t cool. Bauer had to make a calculated decision. Rather than heading anywhere, he raced out around the front of the house and checked to see where the gunman was, but he saw nobody headed to the clinic. With that in mind, Bauer bolted around the back of the house, which led to the more forested areas, basically a half-wild section where the gunman would have lots of cover. Bauer couldn’t see him, but he heard someone thundering through the brush.

  Bauer raced after him, needing to get a visual or at least some detail to help ID this guy, but, so far, Bauer was too far behind because he’d been more worried about this gunman going after Mags and the War Dog at the clinic. Cursing his inability to run fast in the darkness through the trees, he picked up as much speed as he could. He tried his best, forcing his body to pump out as much power as possible. Just as he came around a bend, the gunman threw himself into an old pickup truck and ripped off down the road.