Lily’s smile was sunshine through the clouds as she read between the lines and grabbed my biceps. “Okay, then.”
“Ms. Costello, I’d be remiss if I didn’t advise you, Mr. Shaw, and whoever else might’ve been helping you to let the authorities handle this. My cousin—Deputy Angela Lee—is certainly qualified.”
And there was who to contact. “Of course, officer. We understand completely and thank you for the update.”
“My pleasure. Be careful, you two.”
It took only one glance at Lily to realize we weren’t going to get much sleep tonight. As much as I wanted to wait until it was Hayes sneaking around on private property with me—particularly in a state where people would shoot you for trespassing without blinking an eye—I wasn’t going to convince Lily to wait.
The way she’d set her shoulders, she was already gearing up for an argument. “Shaw, don’t you even—”
“Okay.”
She lit from within. Plopped down on one of her kitchen chairs and pulled food out of the bag. “Fucking finally.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Fighters
Lily
Finding the dirt road off the main road was the hardest part. It was well hidden. But a good way in, the overgrowth gave way to fenced pasture down each side and the dirt turned into pavement.
We were lucky to have a nearly full moon. Brody killed his headlights.
Trees cropped up sporadically, then got thicker the further we went. The structure, if you could call it that, was an older metal building hemmed in on three sides by brush and trees, with a pasture on the fourth. It resembled something you’d see in a bad horror movie and yell at the dumbasses on the screen not to go inside. And guess what we were about to do.
Twenty-five yards from the front, a padlocked gate blocked the road and Brody pulled to a stop.
We moved quickly and quietly, climbing the gate.
But something was wrong. My heart dropped before we ever made it inside.
“There’s no barking, Brody. No noise.”
He took my hand. “Yeah, I noticed.”
The two garage-style doors on the front had rusted handles. He gave one a try, then the other, but neither would budge.
“There may be another door,” I said, and we traipsed through the pasture hoping to find another way in. The uniform windows we found, one of which was partially broken, were covered in dirt. They bracketed a back door. “There. Look.”
His eyes followed my finger to the jagged shards.
“In for a penny,” he said, and walked to the edge of the trees, came back with a branch, and broke a good part of the window out.
We were in the middle of the property and at two a.m. there was nobody around to hear, but I shushed him anyway. Pulling off his shirt, he threw it over the broken glass and made the precarious climb through the window.
I stood there trying to watch every which way for any indication we’d drawn attention, but all I heard was a couple of cattle mooing in the distance.
A light inside came on and I wanted to scream at the man. I settled for a whisper-yell. “Brody, turn the light off!” Then the door popped open and there he stood, pulling his T-shirt on, which now had a few holes. His face was a mask of anger. “The dogs are gone, but they were here.”
The smell hit me. A mixture of piss and shit, vomit and illness. It took everything I had not to retch when I stepped inside. “No. No, no, no. Please, no. Goddamn it.”
They’d been busy.
Empty shelves big enough to hold medium-sized and smaller kennels lined the perimeter of the building. The space underneath the shelving was big enough for large and extra-large. Walking to one shelf, I found where a puddle had soaked into the wood, recently. Dabbing my finger in it, I held it to my nose and the tears fell. “It’s urine.”
“Yeah.” I turned to find Brody squatted on the ground underneath the shelving. “There’s poop on the wall over here. Look around to see if you can find fur or food or anything.”
I studied the shelves. At the back, in the crack, black muck stuck to the wall. I pulled over a milk crate and flipped it over, stepping on top. The muck was a mixture of fur and poop and God knew what else.
That’s when I lost it. I stepped off the crate as a quiet sob racked my chest. They’d been here until very recently, probably earlier today.
And we’d missed them. We’d waited too long and missed them. I could have done this. Came out here while Brody was at camp and gotten everything I needed. Last night, while I was safe in his bed, they were here. Waiting. My legs started to wobble, and tears streamed down my face.
“All this...” I turned in a circle, letting my eyes follow the shelving. “So many dogs, Brody. So many...and they’re gone. What if they’ve been dumped like Mack?” I tried to swallow the knot in my throat. “Or worse?” I couldn’t even allow myself to give voice to the meaning that implied.
If I’d just gotten here sooner. If I hadn’t promised to wait.
I’d never felt so beaten, so absolutely desolate in my life. Despair was a monster in my abdomen clawing up my chest cavity, creating wound after wound.
I’d failed them. Again.
I ran to the door and vomited my despair. My rage for the monsters who did this to these poor dogs. My self-loathing for my failure.
There was no air-conditioning or heating in the building. I could just imagine dogs crammed into a metal building in the Texas heat, one on top of the other, and lucky if they were only one to a kennel. Most kennels would have several.
Females bred every time they came into heat for the entirety of their lives, only to have their babies ripped from them way too young.
Dogs that had never touched grass, never smelled freedom, had never known a kind touch. I wasn’t so sure death was the worst fate. At least it would’ve brought them peace.
But the cycle would start again with new dogs, in a new location.
Brody pulled me into his arms. “Shhh. We’re gonna find them, Lily, I promise. They won’t destroy their investment that easily. They likely moved them elsewhere.”
That was probably true, but... “Is that really the better fate, Brody? Look at this place.”
“It is. Because we’re going to find them.” With both hands, he framed my jaw. “And they will know love and safety and care in their lives because we won’t quit on them. We can’t. They need us. They’ll just have to wait a little longer, is all.”
I let myself drift back to watching CC interact with Brody the first time. The first time Mack had asked me to play. The expression on a dog’s face when it found its very own person.