Chapter 3 - The Basement on 4th Street
The vet clinic on Fourth Street was closed, the iron security gate pulled down over the plate glass and padlocked with a chain the thickness of a thumb.
Vane didn't knock. He reached into his pocket, pulled out an industrial bolt cutter that looked like it had been stolen from a railway yard, and snapped the lock with two effortless compressions of his forearms. The gate groaned and rolled upward into its metal housing.
"Hold the door," Vane told Molly.
She held it while he carried Barnaby inside, his leather jacket dark with the dog’s blood across the left shoulder. The clinic smelled of Lysol, wet fur, and old paper. Vane kicked open the door to the back examination room and dropped a heavy rubber mat over the linoleum before letting the mastiff down.
"Lights," Vane ordered.
Molly flicked the toggle by the door. Fluorescent tubes flickered twice before buzzing into a harsh, white glare that made the room look like an operating theater in a military prison.
"You got a phone?" Vane asked, ripping open a drawer with his bare hand and tossing aside rolls of gauze and syringes until he found a pair of heavy shears.
"In my apron," Molly said, her knees finally giving out. She slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor by the sink, her chest heaving. "My apron is back at Blackwoods."
Vane paused. He looked at her—really looked at her—for the first time since the dining room. She was nineteen, maybe twenty, with dark circles under her eyes that looked like thumbprints of soot and a jawline too sharp for the rest of her small, narrow face.
"What's your name?"
"Molly."
"Molly what?"
"Lane."
He cut through the mastiff’s fur with three quick, dry snips, exposing the black, swollen skin around the ribs where Libby’s heel had landed. The bone wasn't protruding, but the flesh beneath was dark—purple-black and soft like overripe fruit.
"He's got internal bleeding," Molly said, crawling closer on her hands and knees. "My uncle had a hound that got kicked by a mule. It looked like that."
"He's old," Vane muttered, working the shears around a knot of matted burrs. "Ten, maybe eleven. Dogs like that don't bounce back from a steel-toed shoe."
"Why did they take him?" Molly asked. Her voice didn't shake anymore. The adrenaline had burned through the fear, leaving behind that strange, cold clarity she usually reserved for double-shifting through Saturday night rushes.
Vane didn't answer for a long time. He reached for a bottle of saline on the metal shelf and poured it directly over the wound. Barnaby twitched, a low, bubbling growl rising in his throat, but Vane laid a heavy, square palm flat between the dog’s ears until the growl died down into a wet sigh.
"Burroughs wants the waterfront redevelopment," Vane said, his voice level. "The city council is voting on the easements next Tuesday. My family owns the warehouses on Piers 8 through 14. We said no."
"So they stole your dog?" Molly stared at him. "That doesn't make sense. That's... that's mob movie stuff."
Vane stopped working. He looked up, and for a second, the gray eyes weren't dull; they were razor-sharp, glinting like broken glass in the glare of the fluorescent tube.
"People like Burroughs think the world is made of contracts," Vane said. "They think if you have enough lawyers, you can buy the dirt under a man’s house and he’ll just move. They don't understand that some things aren't for sale." He reached out and touched the dog’s gray muzzle. "Barnaby was here before the warehouses were built. He was here when my father died on Pier 9. They thought taking him would make me trade the deeds for a basket of old bones."
"And instead they gave him to Libby Kemp for her engagement party?" Molly asked, her stomach turning.
"Libby doesn't know anything about the warehouses," Vane said, his mouth twisting into something that wasn't a smile. "She thinks she’s marrying a prince. Burroughs just needed a place to hide the dog where nobody would look—somewhere high-end, somewhere public, where people are too polite to look under the tables."
"She broke his rib," Molly whispered.
"She did," Vane agreed.
He stood up, walked to the small refrigerator in the corner of the room, and pulled out a bottle of lukewarm water. He didn't offer it to Molly; he poured half of it into a stainless steel bowl for the dog and drank the rest in three long, hard swallows, his throat working beneath the thick skin of his neck.
"You can't go back to Blackwoods," Vane said, wiping his mouth with the back of his thumb.
"Miller will fire me."
"Miller is currently trying to explain to his insurance company why his front door looks like it was hit by a truck." Vane tossed the empty bottle into the trash. "You have rent?"
"Paid through Tuesday."
"Pack your bags."
May you like
Molly looked down at her skirt. The black polyester was ruined, stained with the mastiff’s blood and her own sweat from dragging him across three rooms of imported parquet. "And go where?"
"My house," Vane said. "On the ridge. Barnaby needs a ramp for the back porch, and you know how to lift without breaking his ribs."
