Lori wasn’t there to adopt a soft, cuddly sweetheart like this mix, but against her better judgment she nodded. Brian unlatched the cage and opened the metal door, and the dog stood up and began slowly wagging her tail. Ever so cautiously the pooch edged toward the opening so she could stick her stubby nose out of the cage. The next thing Lori knew, she had the dog squirming in her arms as she hugged the poodle–pit bull mix to her chest, and the dog likewise struggled to lick her face. Lori broke out laughing. It had been an unusually stressful few weeks, and she needed something like this more than she could’ve imagined. She was smitten.
“Love at first sight,” Brian said, a note of jealousy in his voice. He showed a smart-alecky grin. “Or maybe it’s love at first lick.”
The dog was far more toy poodle than pit bull. While she had a pit bull’s square-shaped snout and blocky body, she was a small thing weighing less than twenty pounds with a poodle’s soft downy fur. But she wasn’t what Lori had in mind. The reason she needed a dog was to protect her from him. Except she didn’t know who he was.
A fear she couldn’t quite understand had been worming its way into her consciousness for weeks, and then four days ago she awoke with a profound thought screaming in her brain: he is going to do terrible things to you. She tried to dismiss this as simply a manifestation of her growing anxiety, except the certainty that he existed seemed so real that it left her shaken. It made no sense. She knew that, and for several days she tried to convince herself she’d only had a bad dream, and that was the only reason for the unease gnawing at her. Logically, that was what it had to be, except she couldn’t remember anything about the dream, and the fear that a killer was waiting for her in the shadows became overwhelming. Maybe she was suffering from a nervous breakdown. Maybe the explanation was as simple as that, but when she woke up this morning sobbing in terror that he was soon going to do depraved and horrible things to her, she believed it as much as she ever believed anything. She decided she had two choices: check herself in for psychiatric evaluation or get a dog to protect her. As much as Sally tugged at her heartstrings, the little fluff ball wouldn’t be able to protect her from a gust of wind. So she steeled herself and handed the dog back to Brian.
“I should look at other dogs before making a decision,” she said.
The teenager’s eyes widened with surprise, as he must’ve been sure Lori had found her match, but he placed the dog back in the cage, and as the door latched shut, the poodle–pit bull mix let out a heartbroken whine. This struck Lori like a dagger. She almost relented, but that ever-pervasive thought echoed in her head. He’s out there, and he’ll be coming for you soon.
Brian continued the tour. Most of the dogs up for adoption were pit bulls. There was one Chihuahua and a beagle and pug mix, but just about every other dog seemed to be pit bulls or pit bull mixes. Lori knew they had a reputation for ferocity, but that was probably only if they had been badly mistreated or trained that way, and the ones she saw all looked like loveable sweethearts, just like Sally. None of them would be able to protect her from her boogeyman…if he in fact existed.
When Brian brought her to a cage holding a large, angry-looking beast, Lori knew she’d found her protector. The animal had a thick, squat body, a large head, and a coal-black coat mottled with reddish-brown streaks. The dog gave her a sinister, dead-eyed stare. As she moved closer to the cage, a threatening noise between a snarl and a growl rumbled out of the beast’s throat. If it was meant to scare Lori off, it didn’t work. In fact, it had the opposite effect. The ferocity made her feel safe. She asked Brian if she could meet the dog.
“Really?” he asked, his voice rising an octave.
“He looks to me like he could use a good home.”
Brian consulted the loose-leaf binder, flipping through the pages until he found the one matching the cage number. His eyes scrunched up as he looked from the page to the dog and back to the page. “It says here his name’s Lucy,” he said.
Lori could see that the dog was male, and one that hadn’t been neutered. “That’s an odd name for him.”
“Very odd,” Brian agreed. He read more of the notes associated with the animal. “The veterinarian who examined him thinks he’s part Rottweiler and part Doberman. A hundred and twenty pounds. He’s had all his shots.” The teenager smirked. “If you adopt him, you should change his name to Lucky.”
“Why’s that?”
“He’s only got three days left to be adopted before being put down. Are you sure you want me to take him out of his cage?”
The teenager seemed nervous to put his fingers anywhere near Lucy. Lori smiled sweetly at him and told him she’d do it. She had grown up with two Rhodesian ridgebacks, and large dogs didn’t intimidate her. She also knew the secret to a dog’s heart. Lucy made more snarling, growling noises and bared his fangs as she unlatched the cage and opened it. But the dog stayed where he was and didn’t move until Lori reached into her pocket and took out a bacon-flavored treat. The dog moved quickly then, snatching the treat away, somehow leaving her fingers intact. When Lori offered another treat, this one held in the palm of her hand, the dog was more careful about taking it. He even consented to let her scratch him behind the ear and thump him on the side.
As Lori stood beside the animal, she felt safe for the first time in days. She smiled at him. I’ll save your life and you’ll save mine. The dog cocked his head and gave her a quizzical look in return.
“I found my dog,” she told Brian. “Can I take him home with me?”
Chapter 2
Morris Brick had not been to Luzana’s before, and for good reason. The restaurant on North Cahuenga Boulevard had a reputation for putting a serious dent in its customers’ wallets, but even if that wasn’t the case, there was little chance he would’ve been able to get a table there. Luzana’s had become Los Angeles’s most exclusive hotspot. A place for Hollywood royalty, sports celebrities, and the ultra-rich to be seen and noticed. Morris might’ve become a minor celebrity after years of catching depraved serial killers, but that still wouldn’t have bought him a table reservation at Luzana’s, and so it only mildly surprised him when the maître d’hôtel gave him the snootiest look he had ever seen. He was genuinely surprised, however, after the man peered over his stand to see that the pig-like grunt just heard had come from Parker, Morris’s all-white bull terrier, that he made a shooing gesture with both hands. That was just plain rude!
Morris arched an eyebrow and, keeping his voice amiable, asked, “Am I supposed to guess that means you have no tables available? At twenty past two on a Tuesday?”
If it were possible, the maître d’ would’ve climbed onto a stepladder so he could look even further down his nose at Morris. “Apparently,” he mumbled under his breath.
Morris stood his ground and lazily rubbed his jaw. If he were the vindictive type, he could’ve called in a favor at the mayor’s office and had the place shut down for a kitchen violation—imagined or real, it didn’t matter. After all, six months ago he and his team at Morris Brick Investigations, commonly known as MBI, very likely saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of fellow Angelenos, and at a heavy cost. Charlie Bogle had almost died after being shot in the chest and hadn’t been the same since, even quitting MBI two months ago, and Morris himself had taken shrapnel to the leg from a booby trap, and it was only since last month that he was able to put away his cane. But as tempted as he was to drag the maître d’ out from behind the stand and teach him some manners, he maintained a calm demeanor and told him he was meeting a friend. “Philip Stonehedge. He’s already here,” he said.
The maître d’ opened his eyes wide with incredulity. Stonehedge was high up on Hollywood’s A-list, and not only that, he was dating the gorgeous Brie Evans, who sat near the top of the list. But since there was a remote chance Morris might be telling the truth, he asked for Morris’s