“It won’t hurt,” he said, and pulled the trigger.

Kuhl heard the dogs start to bark moments before Anton radioed him from the house.

“Phone lines are down,” Anton confirmed. “Everything’s cleaned out in here.” A pause. “The robin has a cellular.”

Pulled to a halt in front of the rescue center, Kuhl listened to him over the van’s radio and then had Ciras contact the two men posing as utility workers back on the road. They had strung a chain across the foot of the drive to bar access. The signs hung from its temporary posts—one facing the eastbound lane, one facing west—advised visitors approaching the center that it was closed for the day due to emergency electrical repairs. Anyone who attempted to disregard the warnings and somehow tried to enter the drive would be verbally redirected by the men or, if required, stopped by more extreme means.

Kuhl stared out at the rescue center for perhaps thirty seconds, rain beading his windshield, drumming on the roof of the van with increasing rapidity. The silver Honda Passport belonging to Julia Gordian was the only other vehicle in the dirt parking lot. Inside the center’s front door were two signs, one of particular interest to him.

Customized in the shape of a greyhound, the sign on the upper portion of its glass pane read:

WELCOME TO THE IN THE MONEY STORE

A smaller changeable message board below it read:

BACK IN 15 MINUTES

It was the latter that held Kuhl’s eye.

He regarded it silently as the penned dogs downhill continued their raucous barking. He had expected his target to be inside the shop. The operation, then, would have been a fast and uncomplicated piece of work—his team entering as utility men, catching her off guard. Instead, they had found her sign on the door. And yet she must be on the premises even now. If not in some backroom of the shop, then certainly on the grounds. Her vehicle was here. She had not been seen leaving the drive on foot. And he doubted some unknown exit from the property existed . . . where could it lead? There was little but woodland for miles in every direction.

Kuhl listened to the husky, agitated barking of the greyhounds. He must assume the Gordian daughter had also heard it and could not wait for her to become alarmed.

Very well, Kuhl thought. Very well.

He shifted in his seat so he could see Ciras as well as the pair of men behind him.

“Prepare yourselves,” he said. “We take her now.”

Julia had been giving the rescues some exercise out back when the first droplets of rain sent the squeamish dogs into a mass retreat from the yard . . . all except Viv, who’d continued to play the role of devoted sidekick, sticking to her like glue even as the rest of the greys piled up against the cinder-block structure that held their kennels.