She takes a step closer. “Huh?”

“They didn’t find the dog. The dog came home.”

“Came home? Looking like that?”

“Yeah. Scratching at the door wanting to be let in. I guess he—uhh, she—died about a half hour later on Jenny’s bed.”

“Holy crap,” Atlanta says. “The dog came home.”

“Yeah.”

Maybe it’s time to revise her assessment of dogs. Because that sounds pretty incredible.

Chomp-Chomp straddles the four-wheeler’s saddle, waits expectantly. Atlanta goes to get on behind him, and he reaches back to pull her hands around his middle. “You need to hold on when—”

Alarm bells. Klaxons. Hands hot like they’re touching a casserole dish without oven mitts. She staggers backward off the thing, bowlegged and nearly falling over. Every inch of her body feels like it’s covered with spider legs doing a creepy little waltz across her skin.

That smell again: expended gunpowder. A ringing in her ears.

“You go ahead,” she croaks. Voice dry.

“But you’re not feeling—”

“I’m fine. I’m fine. Go on, now. Go. Don’t want to lose my breakfast on the back of your neck.” Not that she ate breakfast. And not that she’s going to now. Chomp-Chomp hesitates, doesn’t want to go, but she yells at him and that makes him drive off—slow like a sad donkey, head hung low, Eeyore in a death-metal T-shirt.

Atlanta has never been a big fan of dogs. You walk into the house of someone who owns a dog, you know it. You can smell it, and you can see it. Chewed corner of the coffee table. Musky, musty animal odor. Ratty toys on the floor. A half-eaten rawhide, gummy with saliva and stuck fur. And dogs are all drooly. Jumpy. Needy.

Atlanta doesn’t like needy people, so she damn sure doesn’t care for needy animals. Dogs are like that little kid in the grocery store who won’t stop tugging on his mother’s ovaries: Mom Mom Mom Mom Mommy Mommy Mom.

Not that she likes cats much better. Because, seriously, hell with cats, those dismissive emperors of the living room. You don’t own a cat so much as you petition them for your time.

Plus, cat smell? Makes dog odor smell like fresh-baked blueberry muffins. Cat stink crawls deep. On a hot, windy day, the cross-breeze coming from the Cat Lady’s house next door smells like a doom-wind, a rankling ammoniac smell heralding the end of days.

Animals. Ugh.

If Atlanta were allowed a pet, she’d choose a lizard. Maybe a snake, too. Or a tarantula.

Small. Not cute. Doesn’t give a shit and doesn’t need much.

And doesn’t piss on your stuff.

But just the same, not liking dogs doesn’t mean she feels good about what happened to Jenny’s little lady. You just don’t do that to an animal, whether you like animals or not.