She pulled the trigger and the lock was gone, the gate nearly blown off its hinges. The explosion reverberated through the junkyard, the forest, but Jess wasn’t waiting around to bask in the afterglow. She kicked the gate open and stepped through. Hustled, fast, between the stacks of wrecked cars until she came to the clearing where Bryce Whitmer stood with the cleaver in his hand, a dumbfounded look on his face.

“Drop the weapon, Bryce,” Jess told him, aiming the shotgun at him square and closing the distance. “You drop that blade now.”

Whitmer’s expression changed when he recognized her. A slow, mean smile took the place of stunned stupid.

“Now, what the hell do you think you’re doing, Jess?” he asked. “Are you planning to shoot me tonight?”

She responded by raising the barrel and firing over his head, relishing the way he flinched at the shot.

“Drop the fucking weapon, Bryce,” she said. “I won’t tell you again.”

Behind Bryce she could see fully into the kennel now, and the sight broke her heart. Lucy cowered at the back of the enclosure, tail between her legs, trembling, terrified. She was skinny, too, that rhinestone collar fairly drooping off her neck. It looked like Whitmer had neglected her half the time and beaten her the rest. Jess lowered the barrel of the shotgun until it was pointed at Whitmer’s midsection again, wanted to pull the trigger right then and there, and to hell with the consequences.

“This ain’t going to end well for you, Jess,” Whitmer said, bending down to lay the cleaver on the dirt. “You’re better off just walking away right now, forgetting you ever came here.”

She motioned with the barrel toward Lucy’s kennel. “Open the kennel for me,” she said. “I’m taking my dog home.”

But Whitmer didn’t move. He was smiling again. “Can’t say I didn’t warn you.” He turned his head and whistled, loud, over his shoulder. “C’mon out, boys!”

The dogs came running. Careened out from behind a stack of cars near the house and raced across the empty dirt to where Whitmer and Jess were standing. They were big dogs, probably eighty pounds apiece, and they were fast for their size, muscular, and they looked damn mean.

They weren’t stopping, either; slavering, barking, lips curled back and teeth bared, and when they saw Jess, they veered off from Whitmer and came galloping toward her instead.

She turned and fired again, quickly, aiming over their heads. The dogs stopped running at the shot, but they didn’t bug off.

Shit.

Whitmer was laughing. “What are you going to do, Jess?” he said. “Kill both my dogs to save yours? Something about that just doesn’t sound right.”