Sometimes they bet on bait-dog fights. How long will the bait dog survive? Will the fighter take the bait? Blood and money. Other times it’s just training—no bets, no audience.

They use tools, gruesome tools. Cat poles. Bait cages. Flirt poles. Animals tied down, strung up. Bigger beasts having a go at smaller critters: possums, poodles, whatever. She sees a picture of a terrier pinned to the ground and torn apart like a chew toy—as if the mastiff who attacked it was trying to dig out the stuffing and the squeaker.

The images, like scissors, cut dark holes in her mind. Dark holes where she finds it hard to shine light.

Nobody feeds the bait dogs.

Nobody cares for ’em.

Most bait dogs die in the pen. Some don’t. Those that don’t, just get used again and again until they’re spent up or dead. They’re dumped after the fact—left in ditches, drowned in ponds, thrown in a hole somewhere.

Those rare few that get found still alive, either die from their wounds or are put to death by shelters who don’t know what to do with them or don’t have the money to devote to their care and rehabilitation.

Bait dogs are just about the lowliest form of creature on earth.

Used and abused and left to die.

Atlanta stifles a sob. Chokes it back. Toughens up.

Back home, she calls Jenny.

She says to Jenny, “I found out who stole your dog.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s more than one.”

“Tell me.”

“I . . . don’t know if they’re the ones that hurt the dog.”

“Please just tell me.”

And so she tells her. She leaves out the details of the chase but gives her the broad strokes: Bodie and Bird Haycock, with their pig girlfriend Tressa Kucharski, stole Sailor and—she has a hard time telling Jenny this, and her voice cracks, but Jenny just says it again, “Tell me”—sold the dog to serve as bait for a dogfighting ring. She doesn’t go into detail. Doesn’t explain what that means for Sailor’s last couple days on earth.

“Oh.”

That’s what Jenny says. Oh. It’s not a dismissive “oh.” It’s a posttraumatic “oh.” The “oh” of someone just told that they’re broke, or their family is dead, or that the bombs will soon begin to fall.

One word because she must not have any others right now. One word because what else can you say?

“I’m sorry,” Atlanta says.

“I want you to get even with them.”

“What?”

“I want you to hurt them. And stop them from doing what they’re doing. That’s what you do, right? You get things done.”