The Rescue

19

Tough titties, thinks Bettina, reading the text twice, then deleting it. In fact, she’s having trouble getting Strickland out of her mind, and she cusses herself for this. She wishes he’d never seen her video, never walked into the Coastal Eddy. But then, well, she’s kind of glad he did. And did she have to be a bitch? Bust his ass for flowers?

It’s late now, the Alta Laguna Park playdate with Felix and Dan Strickland is a full twelve hours old. She’s got her work laptop set up on the small Queen Palms desk, the Winchester Model 12 propped in the corner, and a bourbon glass sweating into a paper towel beside the computer.

Felix has been morose since the park, where she dragged him away from his former master. He rests his head on his front paws, eyeing her, his forehead creased. She wonders why she feels so bad about keeping him when she has every right to — moral, ethical, financial. God-given and approved by fate. Finders keepers. Did she believe for one second that Strickland would give the dog back to her if their roles were reversed?

Being locked in this tiny motel room for two nights and a long day and a half has given her more than enough time to interview the Laguna Beach Art Festival directors by phone, and get their bullish chamber-of-commerce-ish thoughts on this year’s event. It has taken her some hours to write it up, though, earnestly boring as they are. The fact that people use reporters to further their own agenda is her least favorite part of the job. Turns her into a flak. She’d love to work for a paper or a show with enough weight and independence to just tell the truth about stories that matter.

Today has been one of the longest of her life, and she sees by the bedside clock that it’s become tomorrow.

She’s about to pour a nightcap when a new message lowers into her email feed.

She doesn’t recognize the sender:

Five black-and-white photographs are attached. They’re all of the same subject, likely taken on a cell phone with a rapid-snap setting.

They’re dark, fuzzy shots of a black-clad man in a black ski mask, gun in hand, caught mid-stride along railroad tracks in what looks to Bettina like a switching yard. Taken from behind and aside, at night.

A medium-sized dog carves a path out ahead of the gunman, his body pale, his saber tail raised, his head down.

Felix, she sees, her heart in free fall.

The man has his gun in one hand, raised high and pointed slightly down. Man and dog are at some distance from the photographer.

The man could be any race, any nationality, anybody. The Roman, Bettina can only assume.

But the dog is Felix, no doubt.

My new friends, thinks Bettina — El Gordo and the Sinaloa Cartel.

Who now know where their devil dog is, and what I look like, and where I work.

Two of my friends are in Laguna Beach now... and if you will not give him up I must order him to be confiscated...

Her heart thumps and sweat cools her forehead.

There’s a giant miracle in all of this, though: Godoy wants to buy Felix, not kill him!

She checks the curtains and turns off all the lights except the small desk lamp. Surveys the Queen Palms Motel and the parking lot and the cars sliding up and down Coast Highway in this dark early morning.

Forwards El Gordo’s message to Arnie and Billy Ray. Thinks of sending it to Dan Strickland but she doesn’t quite trust him. She wants to, just can’t.

Billy calls immediately, tells her to pack, and that he’ll be there in twenty minutes.

She checks the window again, pours out the bourbon, and packs her things. Felix sits up and watches, sensing her worry and change of mood.

She hears a car pulling in below, then car doors closing. And, a moment later, footsteps on the noisy, wobbly concrete-and-steel steps that connect the motel floors.

Then voices: alcohol-slurred English and laughter. She tiptoes closer to her gun and the hackles on Felix’s back lift like spines. He stares at the door in hypervigilant silence. The men pass by her window, blurred shapes through her curtains.

She sits up in bed in the dark, the gun across her lap and the dog sitting bolt upright at the foot of the mattress, full attention on the door, no more than twelve feet away.

Billy’s text message pings in.

Besides the cars outside, the next sound she hears is Billy coming up the stairs.