“Calm down, sweetheart!” Jane shouted, her ridiculous words falling on small deaf ears.

Petal lunged at the door again and again, snapping, fangs bared, ready to tear to pieces whatever—or whoever—was outside.

Jane stood back, shaken by the dog’s ferocity. She looked out the window above the washing machine, seeing nothing in the arc of lighted lawn. Taking her gun with her, she went into the kitchen, cut the light, and went to the window above the sink. She opened the window and strained to listen, hearing only the barking of the two dogs in the laundry room at first. Then came an eerie accompaniment in the distance: Coyotes yipping wildly down in the arroyo behind her property, celebrating the death of some unfortunate creature.

She hated that sound. It was not the semiromantic howl of the wild people most often associated with the animals. It was a frenzied, hysterical cacophony of voices that preceded prey being ripped apart and devoured by the pack. It made the hair stand up on the back of her neck and ran goose bumps down her arms.

The dogs went wild to hear it, but Jane never allowed them outside at night off leash. Violet would have made a nice appetizer for a coyote. Even Petal wouldn’t have been a match for a pack of them. Bold and criminally clever, coyotes routinely lured dogs away from safety with one member of the pack dancing and bowing, inviting the dog to play, only to draw the dog into an ambush by the rest of its cohorts.

Breathing a sigh of some relief, she closed and locked the window and went back to bed, not to sleep, but to sit and fret and pretend to read. Violet joined her eventually, jumping on the bed to spin around like a tiny whirling dervish before settling in her spot to sleep. Petal remained at the back door, her barking gradually subsiding to a piteous whining.

Jane debated breaking down and calling Cal, deciding against it. The dogs were calming down. The coyote victory party had died down. Her doors and windows were locked. She had her gun. What did she need with a man?

Reassurance and strong arms around her.

Her relationship with Dixon had teetered off and on between friendship and something more for a long time, never entirely tipping one way or the other. Her choice. She chose not to push it over the edge tonight . . . again.

At some point exhaustion won the battle, and Jane fell asleep only to be tormented by dark dreams of captivity and torture at the hands of a madman. When the alarm went off, she was relieved to be dragged up out of that hell.