Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [347]
Her breathing came in rhythmic gasps, timed to the pounding of her feet and the beat of her heart, which filled her ears. For a few minutes her mind cleared, and she concentrated instead on her body’s basic responses, its natural rhythms, its force. She pushed it to its limit, and when she felt her legs strain, she pushed harder, faster. Then suddenly, she noticed Harvey favoring his front right paw though he didn’t dare slow down, forcing himself to stay alongside her. Maggie came to an abrupt halt, surprising him with a tug of the leash.
“Harvey.” She stopped to catch her breath, and he waited, cocking his head. “What’s wrong with your paw?”
She pointed to it, and he crouched to the ground as if preparing for a scolding. She gently took the big paw in both her hands. Even before she turned it over she felt a prick. Embedded deep between his pads was a clump of sandburs.
“Harvey.” She hadn’t meant for it to sound like a scold, but he cowered closer to the ground.
She scratched behind his ears, letting him know he had done nothing wrong. He hated having these things pulled out, preferring to hide and endure the pain. But Maggie had learned how to be quick and efficient. She grabbed the clump between her fingernails, instead of fingertips, and gave one quick yank. Immediately, he rewarded those same fingers with grateful licks.
“Harvey, you need to let me know about these things as soon as you get them. I thought we agreed that neither of us would play hero anymore.”
He listened while he licked, one ear perched higher than the other.
“So do we have a deal?”
He looked up at her and gave one sharp bark. Then he climbed to his feet, ready to run again, his entire hind end wagging.
“How ’bout we take it easy the rest of the way?” She knew she had pushed it a bit too hard. As she stood and stretched, she could feel a cramp threatening her calf. Yes, they’d walk the rest of the way, despite the wind chilling her sweat-drenched body and making her shiver.
A bulging orange moon peeked from behind a line of pine trees and the ridge that separated Maggie’s new neighborhood from the rest of the world. The houses were set far back off the street with enough property and landscaping between them to make it difficult to see the next-door neighbors. Maggie loved the seclusion and privacy. Though without any streetlights, darkness came quickly. It still freaked her out a bit to run after dark. There were too many Albert Stuckys out there. And even though she knew he was dead—that she’d killed him herself—she still sometimes ran with her Smith & Wesson tucked in her waistband.
Before she got to her long circular driveway, she saw a glimmer of windshield. She recognized the spotless white Mercedes and wanted to turn around. If he hadn’t seen her, she might have done just that. But Greg waved from the portico, leaning against its railing as if he owned the house.
“It’s a little late to be out running, isn’t it?” This was his greeting, which sounded more like a scolding, and she found herself flinching instinctively, just as Harvey had earlier. The gesture represented a microcosm of their relationship, which had been reduced to instinctive survival tactics, and Greg still wondered why she wanted a divorce?
“What do you need, Greg?”
He looked like he had stepped off the pages of GQ. He was dressed in a dark suit, with sharp creases she could see even in the moon’s dim light, not a wrinkle in sight. His golden hair was moussed and styled, not a strand out of place. Yes, her soon-to-be ex-husband was certainly handsome, no question about that. She knew he must be on his way home from dinner with friends or business associates. Maybe he had a date, and immediately she wondered how she would feel about that. Relieved, was her quick and easy answer.
“I don’t need anything.” He sounded hurt, and she saw him shift to his defensive stance, another survival tactic in his own arsenal. “I just thought I should check up on you.”
As they got closer, Harvey started growling, his signal