Felicity's dogs were
going nuts, or rather, more nuts than usual, when we pulled into the driveway
an hour later. (For those joining the confession late in the game, Felicity
lived in my three-car garage, which had been turned into an apartment, and had
a bunch of dogs. We're talking rescued strays. Big, drooly, smelly mutts.
Felicity was a dog person, part of her semi-pseudo-superhero talent, along with
uncontrollable EM bursts.) Between the usual letdown after a performance high
and the knots of hunger in my stomach from the smell of that heavenly pizza, I
wasn't in the sweetest mood. The big fence around my property kept the dogs
relatively contained, but it didn't keep them quiet. When they were noisy, it
meant someone had tried to break into my property.
Too bad security was
often noisy. No lights were coming on in the houses around us, up and down the
street. Translation: those dogs had been yammering and throwing themselves at
the fence long enough for everyone to go back to whatever they had been doing
before the alarm went off. Which meant, oh joy, the cops would show up any time
now.
"Save a slice
for Gordon," I warned Pete.
He slid out of the
back seat and headed for the ramp to the kitchen door, holding the pizza boxes
with all the care such treasure deserved. It was more important to get the food
inside and keep it hot in this weather, than it was to get me and my wheelchair
inside, after all.
The dog clamor meant
Felicity hadn't come home yet. Big surprise. As soon as Harry swung my
wheelchair out of the back of the Jeep and unfolded it, they shut up. For all
their noise and smell, those dogs were smart. They knew I was the boss. It was
my house, and they knew who was the alpha when Felicity wasn't there. Too bad
my brothers hadn't learned that lesson yet.
I got to the top of
the ramp and paused to use the towel hanging by the door to wipe the ice-melt
grit off my wheels before going inside. The big black-and-white truck belonging
to Neighborlee PD pulled up before I could go in. The dogs yapped once, then
slunk around the side of the house to their kennels. They understood what
police were for.
"Hey, Lanie." Gordon unfolded himself from
the cab. There was a reason why the PD kept the truck they'd confiscated from
some idiots who thought they'd set up a meth lab on the outskirts of
Neighborlee. Gordon didn't fit into regular issue vehicles. In fact, he made
this heavy-duty machine look a little delicate when he stood beside it. And
over it. One of these days, I knew I had to ask him who made his uniforms. Had
to be special order.
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