“Little white dog. Terrier. No teeth. No claws. Chewed half to death. Died on his owner’s floor.”

“Who cares about a stupid little creampuff piece of shit?”

“I do,” she says, and whips the baton at him again—he barely dodges it.

From the woods comes a sound—a snapping of branches. Louder. Faster. Someone or something is coming.

Atlanta darts her gaze in that direction.

Oh no.

It’s the Cooch, Tressa Kucharski, barreling forward like a stompy moose except this time it’s a stompy moose with a gun in her hand—where’d she get a gun? Where’d she even come from?

Atlanta turns, steps back, almost trips over a loose restraint pole that she didn’t see.

Tressa has the gun up. She’s making a sound that’s half-growl, half-scream.

Everything’s gone suddenly pear-shaped, reality off its leash.

Twenty feet and closing.

Atlanta staggers, stands, runs.

Fifteen feet.

Bodie laughs. Bird just shrinks.

Ten feet.

The gun fires.

It barely makes a sound.

Just a little snap.

Something hits Atlanta in the meat of her lower back—no more pressure than a flicking finger. She bolts forward, feeling with her hands where the bullet hit her—she expects a hole, some blood, something, but all she finds is a little nub that wasn’t there before. She runs into the woods like a panicked animal, the nub coming off in her fingers, and as she crashes against a tree her head starts feeling woozy, everything sliding sideways like the earth is tilting, like it’s all loose furniture on a sinking ship.

She sees that what she’s got in her hands is a small tranquilizer dart.

The forest collapses inward.

Tressa crashes into her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The world goes woozy, like Atlanta is drunk and tired and lost inside of herself. Her body doesn’t respond to the commands her brain gives it. Limbs sit dead, disconnected from the rest of the human machine. She tries to speak. It only comes out slurred gibberish.

Atlanta can hear them, though their voices sound like they’re talking through a long metal pipe—echoing and hollow, close but distant. Tressa outs her as the one who stopped them from stealing the beagle. Bird panics, says they should get their uncle. Bodie says no, they can handle it, and besides, he has an idea. His hands find her face, grips her chin and cheeks hard—it should hurt, but it doesn’t. Like she’s at the dentist, all numbed up.

Bodie whispers in Tressa’s ear. Atlanta sees the two of them smash together like blobs inside a lava lamp. Hears the sloppy sounds of them making out. Bird just mumbles and moans, the sad cry of a kicked puppy.

Tressa and Bodie grab her under her arms. Together they drag her across the concrete.