a third, both dogs staying slightly behind the lead dog, and all three fixing her with that stare that sent a slide of ice bone-deep.
The trowel was greasy with sweat—slick in her bare hand. Her vision hazy, she saw the first dog stop. Watching her steadily, intently, he closed his rust-colored muzzle.
In all that thick silence, Josie could have sworn she heard his powerful jaws snap. He was thinking, reaching a decision. That, too, she would swear.
If she could wipe the sweat from her eyes, she could—run! Deep in her brain Josie heard the treacherous voice growl.
She thought about it. Her muscles tensed, needing the release of action.
No.
She didn’t dare take off in a race for her house. At gut level, she knew the pack would be on her before she could reach the safety of the porch.
For seven days, the male and four companion animals, all with distinctive rust circles over their eyes, had appeared in the woods, each day moving closer to her yard, her house. Closer to her.
She’d seen them at night, too, their shadows slipping silently through the trees bordering her property, merging in and out of the deeper darkness of the woods before disappearing.
Roaming through her house during the quiet hours as heat and night sounds seeped in through her open windows, she’d had an odd empathy for the animals, longing herself for the cool darkness of the woods, desiring an end, whatever it was, to the waiting that filled her days and kept her wandering through her heat-blasted house at nights. In those unending hours, she’d envied the pack’s oneness with the dark.
She hadn’t seen their eyes at night, though—only the heavy bulk of their bodies loping smoothly and silently before disappearing. She hadn’t been prepared for the brute intelligence that held her captive now.
Across the span of arid yard, the lead animal lifted its lip in a silent snarl. Like sentinels, two more dogs appeared noiselessly, fanning out behind the triumvirate. Sweat trickled into her mouth.
Knowing better than to move in any way that would seem a challenge, she edged backward, still on her knees, inching her way to the house. Passive, she let her body language acknowledge their dominance.
It wasn’t enough.
Again, the alpha dog lowered his head. The animals behind him shifted, restlessly pawing the ground.
In that instant, Josie knew she had no choice.
They were going to attack her if she stayed.
They would attack if she ran.
She had no possibility of reaching her house. Aroused by the chase, the animals would close on her in a frenzy of bloodlust.
In spite of the heat, terror struck her with utter, immobilizing cold.
And in that tick of time when the world hung motionless, everything suspended, even the drop of sweat poised at the tip of her eyelash, she wondered if this cold stillness was how it had been for her daughter. For the other children who’d vanished.
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. From the hidden spaces of her fears, that unguarded thought slipped fully formed into her mind. Had Mellie been this cold, this terrified? Unbearable, that sly thought. Oh, Mellie, she thought, the ever present grief stone-heavy in her chest. Mellie.
Thinking of her daughter, Josie blinked, and her vision cleared. The earth turned, slowly, with an almost audible hum, and she heard the chambers of her heart open, close, heard the swoosh of her blood through her veins.
And with the roaring of her pulse in her ears, she knew she wasn’t going to be one more victim. She had too many questions she wanted answered.
She owed Mellie those answers.
The first dog lifted one paw and bowed his massive back.
The hot, dusty air carried his low growl to her, the rumble coming from deep within his massive chest, the vibration palpable in the earth under her palm. With one hand Josie gripped the slippery trowel, and with the hand pressed against the earth, she scooped up a fistful of dirt and crouched, her legs shaky as she prepared to leap to her feet and run the sixty yards to her porch.
Incisors showing in a fierce snarl, the huge dog flexed his haunches and laid his ears back. As his powerful neck stretched forward and he lifted his forequarters, Josie saw a darker shadow glide from behind a clump of moss-hung trees, shadow separating from shadow.
The coarse hair on the dogs’ backs stood upright. All five animals growled, a low rumble that raised the hairs at the back of her own neck. Primitive, that response, electric.
Now or never, she thought. Rising jerkily to her feet, she flung the handful of dirt and the trowel toward the dogs now in midleap. In that instant of furious motion, she saw a long arm lift, a hand held palm out, unspoken command in the thin, outstretched fingers. Control in the index finger pointing to the ground.
And faster than she could think, everything happened, changed, in a burst of sound and images. A buzzing loud as a swarm of drought-ravaged hornets in her ears, the yellow-eyed dog twisting in midleap, stopping and then hunching low to the ground, his stub tail between his legs. A drawn-out whine as he slunk off, disappearing as quietly as he’d first appeared, the other animals vanishing behind him.
Sweat streaming down her back, into her eyes, her heart pounding so hard she thought she’d throw up, Josie had an impression of a lean form dressed in jeans and a faded, dark shirt, had an impression, too, in that charged moment of dark, haunted eyes.
Clearing her vision, she blinked, and the tall shape vanished as silently as the animals.
From far away came the beginning chatter of a blue jay, and then, the melody hastily cut off, the woods were quiet once more in the heat, a silent, waiting presence in front of her.
Josie pressed a hand between her breasts. Her chest hurt. She’d been holding her breath and hadn’t known it. Gulping, she inhaled. The air was so hot and heavy with dust that she could feel it coating her lungs, her throat, as she took rasping breaths. The muscles of her legs quivered and shook, straining as if she’d run ten miles.
But remembering those moments when she’d kneeled and seen the dogs coming toward her, been their prey, Josie forced herself to stand upright, anger bubbling sludgy-thick in her throat and stomach as she surveyed the hushed woods in front of her. Secrets there in the thick pines, the undergrowth.
Danger.
Secrets.
Grit clung to her damp hands, and she wiped them down the sides of her shorts. Mixed with her perspiration, dirt smeared the frayed denim.
“Damn!” Shaken and frightened, Josie glared toward the pines. She’d had enough of secrets and unanswered questions to last her the rest of her life.
Stuffing her trembling hands into her pockets, she considered the situation. Man and dogs had all disappeared in the same direction.
“Ryder Hayes,” she murmured, misgivings underscoring her words. Her neighbor. If neighbor was the right term for someone she’d never met. Their two houses were the only ones on either side of the woods, and they were miles from town. No one ever casually strolled near her place.
Josie rubbed her eyes. The man must be Hayes. His property lay to the west of the woods and north of Angel Bay, the town. The dogs had to be his. No one else’s. She scuffed her toes in the dirt as she sorted through her confused memories of the past few months.
Seven or eight months ago, she didn’t know exactly when, he’d returned to the old house that backed onto the Angel River where it flowed into the Gulf of Mexico. She hadn’t seen him.
Until now. She was dead certain that intense, solitary figure was Ryder Hayes, those terrifying dogs his. Keeping her gaze on the woods, she backed up. She wouldn’t let him get away with letting his pets—pets! she thought, outraged—roam uncollared and uncontrolled.
God