Cutting Edge

NINE

Tired, tired. and why not? It was five A.M.

Hitting the SNOOZE control on her alarm clock, Julia Gordian stirred for work on Sunday thinking she could use about four more hours’ sleep, which would just about equal the number she’d actually gotten. Not that she felt she had any right to complain. There could be some good, not-so-good, and downright bad reasons for a person to stay awake into the early morning, and though it had been all too long since she’d enjoyed what was undeniably the best of them — plenty of opportunities for that had come Julia’s way since her divorce, some of them sorely tempting, but she hadn’t quite mustered the will to jump back aboard the dating merry-go-round — a baseball game like the beauty she’d watched on television last night made her bleariness seem a fair price to pay.

Julia scooched up under the blankets, fluffed her pillows, settled against them, and drowsed a bit, giving herself a chance to ease into the day. Her mind drifted, touched on this and that like a helium balloon in a light, variable breeze. She wondered if Dad’s flight had landed in Gabon yet. Ought to be there by now. Or almost there; he’d left San Jose at three or four the day before. Africa, God. A long, long way for him to go to make a business announcement. He hadn’t sounded thrilled about it over the phone Friday night. A necessary spectacle, he’d called it. Then the subject changed. The two of them going on to lament that they’d never made up their postponed lunch date. Things had gotten in the way. Dad’s hasty preparations for his trip. Her commitment to the rescue center. Nobody to blame, just the problem with tight schedules… so why had they both sounded so guilty? They’d promised to see each other after he returned, and then Dad had transferred the receiver to Mom’s hand.

Julia had talked to her for a half hour or so, and then gone out to the grocery to buy some microwave popcorn and other snacks for the game.

She felt her eyelids grow heavy now and lowered them, visualizing its wild final inning. Funny, she thought. Until Craig came along she’d cared nothing for pro sports. Baseball in particular. A bunch of guys packing their cheeks with sunflower seeds, tobacco, and bubble gum as they stood around tugging at their jockstraps. Then she’d watched some games with him during the ’98 season and gotten interested. The following year hooked her. Funny, really funny, how her appreciation for what went on around the diamond had outlasted her marriage. But it was something positive to carry away from it. And she believed a plus was a plus, worth taking wherever you could.

Last night’s game had been one of those simple, fun charges to Julia’s battery that helped make it a little easier to be philosophical… especially since her favorite team had snatched the win by a hair. Scoreless going into the ninth, Seattle’s pitcher throwing a no-hitter. Then a lazy single at the top of the inning, followed by a crushing line drive that led to a one-run ribbie. That had seemed to be the whole ball game right there, but a two-out solo homer by the M’s at the bottom of ninth tied it. Then three more shutout extra innings by both teams. Finally, the bottom of the thirteenth, bases loaded, the winning run bunted in on a one-out, two-strike count.

Julia smiled dozily to herself. Poor Rob. He would be driving to the Fairwinds right now with the bill of his yellow-and-green baseball cap pulled down low over his face to hide his dejection…

She felt a cold, wet nose prod her hand and slitted open her eyes. Jack and Jill stood at the bedside, fixated on her. Jack was blowing air out his nostrils, a plaintive murring snuffle, as though he wanted to dispel any chance of her settling into a deeper doze until the clock bleeped again.

“Uh-uh,” she said in a groggy voice. “Get out of town.”

Jack paused in his noisemaking, but they continued to stare.

“Can’t you guys bring me something to eat for a change?”

Jack’s ears whirligigged, his head cocked in seeming perplexity. Meanwhile Jill did an antsy little tap dance with her forepaws and rested her snout on the edge of the bed. Then both began to whine in an annoying, sour duet.

“Miserable, rotten creatures.” Julia sighed, gave each of them an affectionate bop on the nose with a fingertip. “Better feed you two before the neighbors hear that God-awful routine and accuse me of animal abuse.”

She shuffled out of bed toward the kitchen, put up her coffee as the dogs inhaled their food, and then went into her little exercise room. This was her off day from running, and it could not have fallen on a better one. To judge by the chill of her house and leaden sky outside her window, it was going to be another drab gray morning; classic northern California rainy season weather.

Julia did fifteen minutes of stretches at the freestanding ballet bar she’d owned since high school, another fifteen of light weight lifts. Then she showered, downed a breakfast of coffee and banana yogurt, and walked the beasts. By seven o’clock she was in her Honda 4×4 and headed out toward Pescadero.

Julia’s drive to the rescue center took under an hour, good time. But traffic was thin at that time of morning, especially headed westbound into the country. Approaching the electric company station across the blacktop, she noticed some road cones arranged around its painted land divider, and then spotted a couple of PG&E vehicles outside the green metal shed — a hatchback in front with its flashers blinking, and a large van pulled halfway behind the shed on its concrete apron. Several workmen stood nearby in hard hats, coveralls, and orange safety vests. One was balanced high on a roadside utility pole, and another two were out in the blacktop by the cones.

This was, Julia realized, the first time she’d actually seen anyone at the station, which she’d assumed was either a storehouse or routing center of some kind.

She tapped her brakes and was waved forward by a worker with a SLOW sign in his hand. He glanced into her window as she rolled past, offered her a smile, and she returned it, suddenly remembering the guy who’d stopped by the center last weekend. Barry Hume… or maybe the name was Hughes. Yeah, that was it. Barry Hughes. He’d mentioned he was a utility man with PG&E and had noticed the center whenever he was in the area. Julia crunched her forehead. Had he ever called Rob for an appointment? She hadn’t checked, although he’d really seemed to take a shine to Viv.

A little curious whether he might be among the crew at the station, Julia looked back into her rearview, but didn’t see him outside. Of course he could be in the shed or the van, she thought… not that it was of particular importance either way.

As Julia reached the wooden sign for the rescue center, it occurred to her that it might be important to find out about any trouble with the local power lines. The clouds had become more threatening after she’d left home, and she had even run into some patchy sprinkles farther east. A heavy fall downpour looked like a sure thing this morning, and since whatever work was being done on the lines probably would have to be suspended once it started, it wouldn’t have hurt her to ask the workers what was going on.

Julia considered pulling over, then scratched the notion. She had already hit her right turn signal and started up the drive, and saw no point bothering them right now.

Besides, if the lights at the shop didn’t come on when she flicked the switch, she supposed it would be all the answer she needed.

In the false PG&E van’s front passenger seat, Siegfried Kuhl waited for the Passport to swing in between the low tree limbs partially overgrowing the bottom of the drive. Then he glanced at his wristwatch.

It was four minutes to eight.

He counted down to himself, heard a few droplets of rain patter against the windshield in the silence.

At precisely eight o’clock he turned to Ciras. Seated behind the steering wheel, he made no more sound than the three Shutzhunds in the rear of the van.

“Confirm that the work on the line has been done,” Kuhl said, and tilted his chin toward the utility pole on the opposite roadside, its cables running straight over the treetops to their target.

Ciras reached for his dashboard handset and radioed up. After a moment he gave Kuhl a nod.

Kuhl looked satisfied.

“We proceed,” he said.

Rob Howell glanced at his dash clock and groaned in total disgust. A quarter after eight, damn!

He’d done it again, only worse.

His Camaro’s speedometer needle quivering over the eighty mph mark, Rob shot home from San Gregario Beach along California 84, bearing south-southwest through fog and drizzle, trying to gobble some highway miles without getting nailed by the staties. Under the best driving conditions he would have to lighten up on the gas pedal around La Honda, where the road really started to loop-de-loop, then slow his pace to a virtual crawl as he turned onto the even twistier local routes… and he had a hunch the weather would soon become a problem. Slated over with rain clouds, the sky looked about ready to spill its waterlogged guts and compound the hazardously poor visibility with a slick, wet blacktop.

Rob frowned, his face sullen under the bill of his Oakland A’s baseball cap. There was no question he’d started out the day on tenuous ground, not from the moment he’d read yesterday’s indecent game score on ESPN and abandoned any chance of falling back asleep. But he didn’t have any idea how he could have forgotten the weekly payroll ledger. How he could’ve been so careless. And what was more bothersome was that he wasn’t sure where it might be.

When he’d finished preparing the ledger on his home computer late the previous afternoon, Rob had copied his entries to a recordable CD, made a paper backup, then slipped both into an accordion folder, which had in turn gone into his briefcase on its chair by the door. That had been about four o’clock, four-thirty. Then, a short while before game time, say six o’clock, he’d pulled the folder just to give the printout a quick eyeball, and compare it with his updated employee list to be certain there hadn’t been any omissions… and that was where his recollection developed a few critical gaps.

Rob had been trying to mentally retrace his steps ever since he reached the Fairview at seven-thirty this morning, sat down at his desk to transfer the entries onto the hotel’s computer, and been dismayed to realize it was missing from his briefcase. He could remember browsing through it on the living room couch, where he had intended to settle in for the A’s-Mariner’s playoff seed duel. But then Cynthia turned in early — she had been fighting off a head cold for the past week — and he’d decided to keep her company and watch the game on their bedroom TV set. At some point in between, Rob needed to give the baby a feeding and had gone to warm up her formula under the hot-water tap. He distinctly recalled that he’d meant to bring the folder with him, re-deposit it inside his briefcase on his way to the kitchen sink… but might he have inadvertently carried the folder into the kitchen with him?

Could be, he guessed. Either that, or he’d set it down on the coffee table before getting up. What he did remember — or believed he remembered — was that it hadn’t been in his hand when he’d entered the nursery with Laurie’s bottle, eliminating at least one room as a strong possibility.

Rob produced a long sigh. The drizzle had gotten heavier, and in fact was now closer to a light but steady rain, smudging the road ahead between occasional sweeps of his windshield wipers. He switched them from INTERMITTENT to SLOW and eased off the accelerator before pulling his cellular phone from its visor clip to try his wife again. These days he could barely walk and chew gum at the same time; was he kidding himself trying to simultaneously drive and play detective? But he needed either the CD/R or printout to input his payroll data into the hotel’s computer, and it had to be done by tonight. The staff’s paychecks were cut by an outside payroll service, and unless Rob electronically transmitted the information so its processors had it waiting in their system first thing Monday morning, nobody at the hotel would get squared away on time next week… and he would be the person to blame.

Ah, what I’d give for a home Internet connection, he thought. It hardly seemed an excesive wish. With cash being as tight as it had been since the baby came along, however, anything besides bare bones necessities was out of the question at the Howell abode, and probably would be for a while yet.

Rob was positive he’d feel a whole lot better knowing the folder’s whereabouts, but he’d left the hotel in such an agitated rush that he hadn’t even thought to call Cynth first. And although he’d been trying to reach her on his cell since eight o’clock or so, she hadn’t picked up yet.

He put the phone to his ear and redialed the call, his steering wheel in a one-handed grip. Still no answer. He wondered where Cynth was. She wouldn’t take the baby out of the house in this crummy weather, especially since she wasn’t feeling well, except maybe to go up to the kennels and check on the greys. But she always brought her cordless with her when she did that.

Rob frowned again, hoping his forgetfulness hadn’t gotten contagious.

After a minute’s consideration he decided to phone the gift shop. Julia would be at work by now and could track down his wife for him. She had a full plate practically running the shelter single-handedly and Rob didn’t like imposing his personal business on her, but he could not imagine a better case for an exception.

He called, listened. The phone at the other end rang. And rang some more. Thinking he might have punched in a wrong number, Rob disconnected, and reentered it. More unanswered ringing. How could there be nobody at either place? He wasn’t the type who was quick to worry, but this did invite a bit of concern. All Rob could figure was that both Julia and his wife were out back with the dogs. For what reason, he didn’t know. He just hoped some sort of emergency hadn’t cropped up that required their combined attention.

Rob pressed END, flipped the phone shut, and laid it on the passenger seat beside him. His hands at six and nine again, he gave his engine more gas despite the intensifying rain. The misplaced ledger had suddenly dropped down the ladder in priority, and indeed had almost entirely slipped out of his mind.

He was too busy wondering what the hell was going on at home.

Cynthia Howell was preparing the baby’s cereal when she happened to see the accordion folder on the kitchen phone stand.

A box of Gerber’s Wheat with Apples and Bananas in one hand, a small pot of warmed up formula in the other, she stood staring at the folder with sudden distress. Hadn’t Rob been working on the payroll ledger before the ball game? She believed so. And if that folder contained what she thought it did…

“Glumph owwp mooie!” Laurie blurted from her high-chair, slapping the food tray with a tiny palm.

Cynthia turned to her, sniffling. Her head felt fat with congestion, and she only hoped the cold germs she’d been carrying around the past few days wouldn’t jump to Laurie.

“When Daddy finds out what he left behind,” she said, “I’ve got an inkling he’s going to have pretty much the same comment.”

“Blehhk!”

“You bet.” Cynthia said. “That, too.”

She checked the time on the wall clock and frowned. It was a few minutes past eight. Rob had told her he liked to do the payroll the first thing after he got to the hotel on Sundays, get it out of the way to make sure the checks weren’t late, and she was surprised he hadn’t given her a frantic call by now. But it could be something else had come up that took precedence. Or maybe she was being too quick with her conclusions. This might be a different folder than the one she’d seen him poring over last night. Or he could have removed the disk and printout from it before he started out this morning, transferring it to a different one for some reason.

Cynthia poured the cereal into the bowl, added a little formula, and stirred them together.

“Pleoww!” Laurie said.

“I know, peapod. Breakfast’s coming. Just be patient with me another second.” Cynthia set the spoon down on a folded towel. The cereal was a tad too hot and really needed to sit anyway. “I’d better see what kind of upset to expect from Dad.”

She went over to the phone stand, picked up the folder, hastily examined its contents, and felt her optimism of last resort evaporate all at once. The CD and printout were inside. Rob had, in fact, forgotten the payroll ledger here at home.

Cynthia reached into a pocket for a tissue and blew her nose. She decided she’d better not postpone informing Rob of her unhappy discovery. The sooner he knew, the sooner he could start back for the folder, or figure out if there was some less inconvenient alternative. As far as she knew, though, he wouldn’t be able to get his work done without it.

She read the Fairview’s phone number off the bulletin board above the stand, lifted the receiver… and to her mild surprise got no dial tone. She frowned, pushed down the disconnect button, released it, and again heard only dead silence in the earpiece.

Perfect, Cynthia thought. Just perfect.

She tapped the button a few more times without any better result, then noticed the keypad lights were out and inspected the phone wire to make sure Laurie hadn’t crawled under the stand and messed with it, pulling or loosening the plugs from their jacks. Everything looked to be in place.

“Spo flig?” Laurie cooed behind her in a tone that genuinely sounded as if she understood the problem and wondered what they were going to do to solve it… although Cynthia had to admit her maternal pride tended to exaggerate the kid’s natural gifts from time to time.

“Wish I knew,” she said stuffily, and considered a moment. A few minutes ago she’d heard Julia driving uphill to the center. After feeding Laurie she could take a walk over there, see whether the problem with the telephone was confined to the house. If it was affecting the entire property, and the business phone was down, too, then they would be able to report the trouble using Julia’s cell phone.

Cynthia reached into her house robe for another tissue and blew her nose again. That sounded to her like a plan.

She moved to the window. It was a dark and gloomy morning, and it occurred to her that she might have to get Laurie’s slicker out of the closet before they left the house. Also let the dogs in from the outdoor pen. Better find out if the rain had started yet.

Even before Cynthia pushed aside the curtain she could hear patters of moisture against the glass. But now something else caught her interest downhill. Two PG&E vehicles were entering the drive. A utility van first and then a station wagon. She watched them approach slowly, the van heading up toward the rescue center, the wagon turning in toward her house.

Cynthia glanced briefly over at the electric range on which she’d prepared Laurie’s formula. The indicator light for a hot burner pad was still on, telling her there had been no interruption in electrical power. Nevertheless, she had a hunch her questions about the phone outage were about to be answered.

She stayed at the window long enough to watch the station wagon come to a halt and a uniformed worker get out. Then she started toward her front door, hefting Laurie off her seat along the way.

The baby nestled against her shoulder, Cynthia opened the door just as the worker reached it, and was met by yet another of the young — albeit already eventful — day’s surprises.

“Top a’ the mornin’, laddies and lassies,” Julia said, amusing herself with an atrocious cartoon leprechaun’s accent. “Shall ye all do your morning toilet, mayhap have yourselves a wee bit of a workout afterward?”

Thirty pairs of keen, curious dog eyes looked at her from gated stalls to the left and right. Before she’d let herself get too settled in at the shop, Julia had decided to step out the back door to the kennels and let the rescues into their exercise yard, knowing they wouldn’t budge once it started to rain. Greys were as obsessive about keeping their living areas clean as they were balky about getting wet, and she didn’t want them bursting at the seams if the bad weather were to arrive and persist throughout the day.

Julia looked down at Viv, who was already out of her stall beside her.

“You gonna help me open these gates for your buds?” she asked with enthusiasm, dropping the cruddy Irish.

Viv wagged her tail, lowered her forequarters into the play position, and then turned over on her back, rolling about with her long front legs upstretched and her lips pulled into a distinctive greyhound smile.

Julia watched her for a bemused moment, then bent and rubbed her stomach.

“Why do I get the feeling nobody in this joint’s got the slightest clue what I’m talking about?” she said.

Over his car radio, the word Rob Howell had heard the WKGO 810 traffic reporter use was ponding. As in, “Drivers should expect some localized ‘ponding’ in sections of the Santa Cruz Mountains, especially along eighty-four near the Highway Thirty-Five turnoff, where we’ve seen periods of heavy rain over the last hour.”

In fact flooding would have been a truer description. By the time Rob reached the exit leading onto 35—his usual southbound shortcut — the rain was coming down in buckets and had so completely inundated the ramp beyond that he half expected to see a guy with a grizzled white beard, leather sandals, and a diverse menagerie of critters around him hammering together a wooden ark at the roadside.

Rob checked his rearview, saw there was nobody behind him, then pressed firmly on his ABS brake pedal and swung toward the gravel shoulder. The Camaro’s wheels splashed through water several inches deep, their mud guards creating a choppy little wake as he came to an abrupt halt a couple of seconds before he would have made his turn into the exit.

His face tightening into a frown, Rob sat behind the wheel and listened to the steady tattoo of the rain against his car’s exterior. From the look of things, the ramp had been washed out by a serious drainage overflow. He supposed it might be worth chancing the turn anyway, but knew he’d be stuck if the backup of water extended out onto the highway. It would be far safer to remain on 84 and take it straight to the Pescadero Creek Road junction — a slower, dippier route, but one the guy in the WKGO weather chopper had mentioned was clear of delays.

The latter it would be, then.

Rob released a long exhale and reached for the cell phone on the passenger seat, wanting to try Cynth again before he got back on the roadway. It had been a while since his last attempt at calling her, and he figured she ought to be within earshot of a phone by now.

But the unanswered rings from both his house and the rescue center did nothing to relax Rob’s expression. It just seemed strange… Cynth and Julia had to be around somewhere. Could the weather have caused an interruption in telephone service? He didn’t think it was that severe, at least in terms of the wind being strong enough to blow down lines, or snap any tree limbs that might get caught in them. But you never knew. You really couldn’t predict where squalls would kick up when unstable weather systems passed over the mountain peaks and ridges. Lousy as conditions were around him, they could be much worse farther on.

Rob chucked his cellular onto the seat again, returned to the blacktop, and within minutes had persuaded himself he’d gone overboard with his concern. There were a bunch of likely explanations for Cynth not answering, including the one that had just occurred to him. If service had been knocked out, she might be altogether unaware of the problem.

He could just see her wrangling Laurie into eating breakfast about three feet from their kitchen phone, nothing further from her busy mind than the idea that her memory-deficient husband and provider was on his way home right now, and having conniptions trying to get through to her.

“Hi… aren’t you—?”

“Barry Hughes.” Anton produced an effortless smile for the Howell woman, tapping the forged power company name tag on his chest. “I stopped by here last week on my day off—”

“To inquire about adopting a grey, sure,” Cynthia said. “You asked if the shop was open, and went to get some information from Julia. I remember you’d mentioned that you were a lineman.”

Anton nodded. He stood facing her from the doorstep, his heavy work gloves stuffed into a back pocket of his coveralls. It had started to shower, the rain sizzling on the ground around him, sliding down over the smooth yellow surface of his hard hat.

“Wish I could say I’ve had a chance to make an appointment to look at the dogs, but life’s been all work lately,” he said, and paused. “The reason I’m here is to tell you we’re doing some maintenance on the cables—”

“Bfow!” Laurie interrupted with a big, gummy grin, reaching a tiny hand out toward him.

Anton chuckled, took it lightly in his own.

“That’s exactly right, doll,” he said, and then looked back up at the baby’s mother. “Anyway, I wanted to let you know your current might be down for a little while. Five, ten minutes at most. There’ve been some brownouts in the area… nothing major, just some spotty fluctuations… and we’re trying to trace the source of the problem.”

“Oh.” Cynthia gave him a questioning look. “I noticed the van heading up toward our kennels.”

He nodded. “Your lines look okay, but the couplings are pretty old. That’d be on the poles and outside your house and kennels. We’re replacing them as a precaution as we go along… before things really go bfow.”

Cynthia gave him a crooked smile.

“I think you might be too late,” she said. “Don’t know whether it’s related to any trouble with the electricity, but my telephone seems to be out of commission.”

Anton looked appropriately unprepared.

“Oh.” He frowned a little. “Are you sure?”

Cynthia nodded.

“I’ve been trying to make a call,” she said. “No dial tone.”

Anton stood there by the door another moment, looking thoughtful. The raindrops continued to dribble off his hard hat.

“Suppose we could have loosened a contact by accident,” he said. “Hopefully it’ll be something our crew can straighten out right away… you’ve already checked your inside connections, right?”

Cynthia nodded again.

“Just before you buzzed me,” she said.

Anton put on another smile.

“With a baby in the house, I sort of figured it’d be your first reaction. Kids always getting into things and all,” he said. “If you don’t mind, though, I’d like to give it a quick check for myself. Otherwise it becomes an issue with the phone company techs in case we nicked a cable and have to contact them.”

Cynthia adjusted Laurie against her shoulder. “Do what you have to,” she said, and moved aside to let him in. “It’ll get you out of the rain for a few minutes, anyway.”

Anton stepped through the doorway, wiped his boots on the mat, let her guide him to the kitchen, and held the receiver to his ear as she stepped back to give him some room.

“Nothing,” he said, and made a small show of examining the jacks. “It’s out for sure.”

She shrugged.

“I was just about to feed the baby, walk up to the center, and ask my husband’s assistant—”

“Julia…”

“Right, I almost forgot, you met her the other day,” Cynthia said. “Anyway, she has a cell phone, and I’m going to need to make an important call.”

Anton abruptly hung up the phone and turned to her.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” he said.

His tone flatly declarative.

No expression on his face now.

Cynthia stood there in baffled silence, looking as if she was certain she had misheard him.

“Excuse m—?”

“I said you can’t do that,” Anton broke in, and then flicked his right hand into the utility pouch on his belt and produced the weapon he had chosen for the job. A Sig P232.380 ACP. White stainless-steel frame, blued barrel. Powerful, accurate, and easily concealed.

Her eyes wide, her lips a wide circle of confusion and fear, Cynthia stared as he raised the pistol, stared uncomprehendingly at the terrible black hole in the center of the gun barrel. She instinctively pulled Laurie close, arms wrapped around her, backing away until she came up short against something hard. The table, a chair, a counter, Cynthia wasn’t sure what in her fear and incomprehension.

That gun. That great black hole pointing at her. Aimed at her from across the kitchen.

“No,” she said. Clasping the baby tightly against her chest. Laurie crying now, sensing her terror. “Whoever you are… no.”

Anton cocked the hammer of his pistol, a sound that sent a physical jolt through Cynthia.

She held her daughter close.

“No,” she repeated in a breathless moan, waves of desperate panic sucking the air from her lungs. “Please… take anything you want from me… please, please… just don’t hurt the baby… I’m begging you don’t hurt my baby—”

Anton leveled his gun at the spot where the screeching infant was clenched in her mother’s protective embrace, the small body against her chest, their hearts pressed together, beating together.

“It won’t hurt,” he said, and pulled the trigger.

Kuhl heard the dogs start to bark moments before Anton radioed him from the house.

“Phone lines are down,” Anton confirmed. “Everything’s cleaned out in here.” A pause. “The robin has a cellular.”

Pulled to a halt in front of the rescue center, Kuhl listened to him over the van’s radio and then had Ciras contact the two men posing as utility workers back on the road. They had strung a chain across the foot of the drive to bar access. The signs hung from its temporary posts — one facing the eastbound lane, one facing west — advised visitors approaching the center that it was closed for the day due to emergency electrical repairs. Anyone who attempted to disregard the warnings and somehow tried to enter the drive would be verbally redirected by the men or, if required, stopped by more extreme means.

Kuhl stared out at the rescue center for perhaps thirty seconds, rain beading his windshield, drumming on the roof of the van with increasing rapidity. The silver Honda Passport belonging to Julia Gordian was the only other vehicle in the dirt parking lot. Inside the center’s front door were two signs, one of particular interest to him.

Customized in the shape of a greyhound, the sign on the upper portion of its glass pane read:

A smaller changeable message board below it read:

It was the latter that held Kuhl’s eye.

He regarded it silently as the penned dogs downhill continued their raucous barking. He had expected his target to be inside the shop. The operation, then, would have been a fast and uncomplicated piece of work — his team entering as utility men, catching her off guard. Instead, they had found her sign on the door. And yet she must be on the premises even now. If not in some backroom of the shop, then certainly on the grounds. Her vehicle was here. She had not been seen leaving the drive on foot. And he doubted some unknown exit from the property existed… where could it lead? There was little but woodland for miles in every direction.

Kuhl listened to the husky, agitated barking of the greyhounds. He must assume the Gordian daughter had also heard it and could not wait for her to become alarmed.

Very well, Kuhl thought. Very well.

He shifted in his seat so he could see Ciras as well as the pair of men behind him.

“Prepare yourselves,” he said. “We take her now.”

Julia had been giving the rescues some exercise out back when the first droplets of rain sent the squeamish dogs into a mass retreat from the yard… all except Viv, who’d continued to play the role of devoted sidekick, sticking to her like glue even as the rest of the greys piled up against the cinder-block structure that held their kennels.

Conceding defeat to the weather, Julia let the dogs inside and returned each to its individual stall.

She had no sooner left the kennels, Viv close at her heels, when she heard the barking down at the house. A loud, excited commotion that abruptly gave her pause.

If you’re looking for a watchdog, the greyhound isn’t for you. I’d tell you a grey’s bark is worse than its bite, but you’re not too likely to notice one of them doing either.

It was a line Julia had used on the Wurmans the previous weekend, and, her efforts to discourage their interest in adoption aside, it was also the absolute truth. The outburst from their backyard pen wasn’t just unusual; she’d never heard anything quite like it. Not out of her own dogs, Rob and Cynthia’s, or any of those awaiting placement at the center. Greys just weren’t barkers. Julia knew a deep, throaty woof was about the biggest fuss you could expect to hear, and would be a rare occurrence from even one dog at a time. She also knew from experience that a single barking grey normally wouldn’t set off its companions in a group… but from where she stood outside the kennel door it was clear that several, if not all, of the Howells’ five dogs had joined in the uproar. Which made things seem that much more conspicuously odd to her.

Julia didn’t get it. And Viv’s distressed behavior was a fair indication she felt the same. The dog had sidled up against her leg for reassurance, her whole body shivering with tension.

Julia stood there in the rain midway between the kennels and the shop’s rear entrance, laying a hand on Viv to comfort her.

“It’s okay. Be cool.” She stroked Viv’s neck as the barking persisted, then remembered the dogs had let out a few sounds of complaint last week when a doe and her two fawns came straying from the nearby woods to graze in Cynthia’s herb garden. Although they’d stopped once the deer were scared back into the trees, Julia supposed the visitors could have returned with braver attitudes than before. There was no reason for her to conclude the racket meant anything was seriously wrong.

Still, Julia wasn’t inclined to ignore it. Viv was still trembling against her thigh. The dogs behind the house hadn’t settled down in the least. And she couldn’t help but wonder why Cynthia hadn’t stepped out and quieted them by now.

“Come on, kiddo, how about we go see what’s doing?” Julia said. A moment later she moved on, starting to hook around the shop instead of heading for the back door, wanting a straight, unobstructed view of the drive farther downhill.

Hesitant, ears pinned against her head, Viv lagged behind a second, and then went slinging after her.

Their course change proved a short one. Julia had taken only about a dozen steps before she halted again with a sudden, extremely potent blend of surprise and caution.

She reached down toward Viv, this time pressing a firm hand against her chest to stop her in her tracks. About twenty yards ahead at the side of the shop, a couple of men in power company uniforms stood by a window in the falling rain. One of them was leaning forward to peer through it with his face almost pressed to the glass and his hands cupped around his eyes. The other stood with his back to him, gazing out across the property toward the wood line, his head moving from side to side.

The discovery gave Julia the creeps. It was a strong reaction, sure, and she was ready to admit the uncharacteristic barking of the Howells’ dogs might have quite a bit to do with its provocation. She had, after all, passed the linemen working down near the roadside transfer station, or storage depot, or whatever it was. Julia guessed it might be possible they had attempted to reach her at the shop for some reason, found its door locked, and decided to see whether she might be located in a back room.

Possible, yes. Except she didn’t believe that in her heart. There was a lurking quality to their presence she would not allow herself to dismiss as anything else. Since when did utility workers go snooping through windows if you didn’t answer the door? She’d adjusted her message board to say she’d return in fifteen minutes — not a long wait by any account. Not even if they had urgent business. And as far as the guy facing away from the shop, his head turning ever-so-slightly left and right as his partner leaned up against the windowpane… Julia couldn’t help it, but he struck her as being on the lookout.

She debated what to do next. If she hadn’t left her cellular in her purse, and her purse in the shop, a logical first step would have been to check in with Cynthia down at the house. Minus that option, she could reverse direction, skirt around the back of the store to the other side, and take a look at what was happening downhill from there… or maybe from the woods edging the property. It seemed paranoid, sure. Could be she was letting herself get very carried away with things. And say she were. Besides possibly winding up soaked to the bone, what did she stand to lose by being careful? At worst she’d feel foolish later on, have a laugh at her own overactive imagination as she was drying off with a towel. And at best — who knew? Really, who knew what these guys were doing out here?

Or what they might have done at the house to get the dogs so upset, Julia thought, aware of their undiminished barking.

She backpedaled, her hand still on Viv’s breast, gently prodding the greyhound to join her, wanting to move behind the shop where the men couldn’t see them.

Viv didn’t budge. Her fur was slick from the rain but she seemed indifferent to it, almost oblivious, and was staring at the two men in coveralls with her ears raised stiffly erect and turned forward. Although her body remained tense, she was no longer trembling.

These were not encouraging signs. Julia had found that Viv took to baths with less complaint than many greys, but she was still water shy, and like all members of the breed highly sensitive to changes in temperature. Under ordinary circumstances a chill downpour would send her into a squirmy run for cover. Instead, she had not moved from her alert set and was studying the men with her head pointed toward them like an arrow.

Julia gave her another little push.

“Let’s go, Viv,” she said in a low, insistent voice. “Now.”

The grey offered a final bit of resistance and then complied.

Moments later Julia was hurrying past the shop’s steel back door. Viv stopped once to look behind them, but Julia got her attention with a light tap to the head and urged her on.

Julia had gone just beyond the door when she saw a second pair of men in power company uniforms rounding the opposite side of the building.

They spotted her at the same time, locking their eyes on her, staring straight at her through the driving rain.

Then they started walking rapidly toward her.

Julia froze with alarm. She did not know who these people were, or what they wanted. Didn’t understand what was happening. But there was no longer any question that they meant trouble.

A heartbeat later, she realized how serious it was.

As she watched the men approach, Julia saw both of them reach into their coveralls and suddenly bring out weapons, guns of a sort she knew weren’t pistols, but thought might be Uzis or something very similar.

She glanced over her shoulder, her heart lurching. The men she’d seen at the west window had turned the corner of the shop and were advancing on her from behind, those same compact assault rifles also having appeared in their hands.

They were closing in.

Four armed men.

Closing in on her from both sides.

Julia stood rooted in place another second, trying to think despite the terror whirling through her mind. She couldn’t go forward, couldn’t retreat, and recognized it would be hopeless to consider making a run for the woods. What, then? What was she supposed to do?

Her eyes darted to the back door of the shop. If she could make it inside, get to a phone fast enough, she’d at least have a chance to call for help. The police, her father’s security people…

It was her only option.

“Viv!” she shouted. “Come on!”

Julia hurled herself at the door, tore it open, and ran into the shop, Viv sprinting after her, following her inside a half second before she slammed and locked it behind her. She passed through the storage and orientation rooms to the rear of the counter, lunged for the phone by the cash register, snatched it up… then suddenly felt every ounce of blood in her veins drain toward the floor.

There was no dial tone. No sound in the receiver. Nothing but the flat, crushing silence of a dead line.

All at once Julia remembered seeing the workers, the men who’d been posing as workers, high up on the utility poles as she’d driven in from the road a little while ago.

The telephone wires, she thought.

Whoever they were, they had cut the wires.

She stood for the briefest of moments, her breath coming in broken gasps, Viv pressing against her leg in the cramped area behind the storefront counter. Then she heard a loud thump outside the storage room, another, and knew her pursuers were trying to break their way in through the door. One chance left, and not much time. She tossed down the receiver and grabbed her purse off the counter, snapping open its clasp, reaching inside.

At the rear of the shop, a crackle of automatic gunfire, then the sound of the back door bursting open. Steel or not, the bullets would have destroyed the simple cylinder lock in its knob.

She groped in the purse for her cellular phone, pulled it out, flipped open its earpiece. There were footsteps behind her now, hurrying through the storeroom. Only seconds left. Julia’s heart racing, she fingered the cellular’s ON button, listened to the inane electronic theme that sounded when it was powering up, waited with maddening helplessness for the little smiley face welcome image to pop up on the LCD screen—

She had enough time to see the figure of a tall, broad man appear outside the storefront entrance, just enough to note his utility worker’s uniform through its glass pane before the door exploded inward with a loud crash, the little clutch of bells above it jangling wildly, its wood frame fracturing, splintering apart as something stormed into the shop ahead of the man, an animal, a huge black-pelted dog, hurtling forward at his shouted instruction, coming straight at her, all fur and teeth.

That was when Viv leaped out from behind the counter.

Kuhl had kept his stubby MP5 subsonic extended as he kicked in the rescue center’s door, ordering Lido forward with the German commands demonstrated by Anagkazo.

The sight of a greyhound dashing out around the end of the counter caused him some small surprise and perhaps even a cold flash of appreciation for its pluck. But his cardinal rule was to be ready for the unexpected… why else had he acquired the Schutzhund dogs?

The grey leaped at his alpha in a blur of speed and collided with it midair, knocking it down onto the floor with its own momentum, snapping at it with a kind of rumbling growl. Its teeth sank into the alpha’s shaggy black hide and slicked its breast and neck with blood.

Kuhl swung his carbine at the greyhound from where he stood in the door, squeezed off a rapid three-round burst. Crimson spurting from its flank, the grey emitted a shrill yelping scream that sounded almost human, rolled from his alpha in a flail of limbs, and then lay heaped on the floor.

The situation remedied, Kuhl shifted his attention to his target. She stood behind the counter, staring at the greyhound’s still, blood-splashed form with mute horror. There was a cell phone gripped in her right hand.

Kuhl did not pause. He held his MP5 straight out and crossed the room toward her, simultaneously calling Sorge and Arek from the parking area. Back on all fours near the sprawled grey, his lead dog seemed essentially unharmed despite the deep bites it had sustained.

Kuhl ordered the alpha forward again.

“Voran, hopp!”

Go on, over.

Lido reared toward the four-foot counter, bounded over it, and fell upon the Gordian daughter — a leaping drive that knocked her back against the wall and then down onto the floor under his mammoth weight. Fixing its eyes on her right hand, interpreting the phone it gripped as a possible weapon, the alpha took quick action to disarm her and buried its fangs in her wrist.

She produced a sharp cry of pain, her blood mixing with the alpha’s saliva, smearing its teeth and gums with red-laced foam.

Kuhl saw the open cell phone drop from her hand and go clattering to the floor as the great canine held her arm in its bite. He came around the counter, slid the phone out of her reach with his booted toe, and reached down for it.

It was an UpLink, he noted aridly.

Kuhl examined its backlit main display screen and determined there was no active connection. Then he pressed the mouse key and went through its menu selections until he found the call history feature. The Gordian daughter’s recently dialed phone numbers appeared in the order the calls had been placed. Satisfied that the last she had made was not a 911, he highlighted the number and pressed SEND to determine who the recipient might have been.

An answering machine picked up after two rings, its greeting in the Gordian child’s voice — her home phone. Kuhl disconnected. Most likely the purpose of her call had been to remotely check incoming messages, but he wanted to assure himself she had not left a message intended to alert anyone who might discover it as to precisely what had occurred here.

When they learned, it would be at his will.

Poised over his captive behind the shop counter, Kuhl turned his MP5 down at her, peripherally aware his men had gathered in the small back room to his right. Sorge and Arek sat at wait behind him.

“Give me your remote play-back code,” he told her.

Silent in her pain, her eyes bright with defiance, she glared at him over the barrel of the submachine gun. Blood dripped from her arm over the alpha’s clamped, bristling jaws.

There was, Kuhl realized, much of the father in her.

He pushed his weapon closer to her face, decided to make a threat of what already had been done.

“The code,” he said. “Give it to me, or I will order the woman and infant in the house downhill killed.”

She kept looking up at Kuhl, her eyes boring into his own.

“I do not bluff,” he said.

A flicker of hesitation on her features. A blink. Then her silence broke.

“Six-four-eight-two,” she said.

Kuhl recalled the home phone number, interrupted her recorded greeting with the code. There were no incoming messages stored in the machine.

Good, he thought. His assumption had been correct. She hadn’t had time for hasty warnings.

Kuhl hit the END button again, moved the scroll bar down to the next listed number, and then dialed it as an added precaution. He listened to a prerecorded announcement for the business hours of a sporting goods shop. Yet another prosaic call.

Good and better.

“The people down at the house,” the Gordian daughter said in a croaking voice. Her arm still locked in the alpha’s mouth. “I don’t know what you want from me… but promise you won’t hurt them.”

Kuhl said nothing. He motioned to his men.

They closed in around her, rifles leveled.

“Wait, please.” A single tear spilled from the corner of her eye and tracked down her cheek. “My dog… at least let me take a look at the dog… I can’t just leave her—”

Kuhl interrupted her with a shake of his head.

“No, my caged robin,” he said. His face set. “No promises, no negotiation.”