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“Don’t worry now. Help’s on the way,” I told the big man. My flashlight was lying on the ground beside me, and by its oddly skewed light I could see his huge muscles and bare hairy chest. He looked cold, of course, and I wondered where his clothes were. I would have been glad to have his shirt to wad up over the wound, which was steadily leaking blood. My hands were covered in it.

“Told me to finish out my last day by watching over you,” Dawson said. He was shuddering all over. He tried to smile. “I said, ‘Piece of cake.’” And then he didn’t say anything else, but lost consciousness.

Andy’s heavy black shoes came to stand in my field of vision. I thought Dawson was going to die. I didn’t even know his first name. I had no idea how we were going to explain a naked guy to the police. Wait . . . was that up to me? Surely Andy was the one who’d have the hard explaining to do?

As if he’d been reading my mind—for a change—Andy said, “You know this guy, right?”

“Slightly.”

“Well, you’re going to have to say you know him better than that, to explain his lack of clothes.”

I gulped. “Okay,” I said, after a brief, grim pause.

“You two were back here looking for his dog. You,” Andy said to Dean. “I don’t know who you are, but you stay a dog, you hear me?” Andy stepped away nervously. “And I came back here because I’d followed the woman—she was acting suspiciously.”

I nodded, listening to the air rattle in Dawson’s throat. If I could only give him blood to heal him, like a vampire. If I only knew a medical procedure . . . But I could already hear the police cars and the ambulances coming closer. Nothing in Bon Temps was very far from anything else, and on this side of town, the south side, the Grainger hospital would be closest.

“I heard her confess,” I said. “I heard her say she shot the others.”

“Tell me something, Sookie,” Andy said in a rush. “Before they get here. There’s nothing weird about Halleigh, right?”

I stared up at him, amazed he could think of such a thing at this moment. “Nothing aside from the stupid way she spells her name.” Then I reminded myself who’d shot the bitch lying on the ground five feet away. “No, not a thing,” I said. “Halleigh is just plain old normal.”

“Thank God,” he said. “Thank God.”

And then Alcee Beck dashed down the alley and stopped in his tracks, trying to make sense of the scene before him. Right behind him was Kevin Pryor, and Kevin’s partner Kenya crept along hugging the wall with her gun out. The ambulance teams were hanging back until they were sure the scene was secure. I was up against the wall getting searched before I knew what was happening. Kenya kept saying, “Sorry, Sookie” and “I have to do this,” until I told her, “Just get it done. Where’s my dog?”

“He run off,” she said. “I guess the lights spooked him. He’s a bloodhound, huh? He’ll come home.” When she’d done her usual thorough job, Kenya said, “Sookie? How come this guy is naked?”

This was just the beginning. My story was extremely thin. I read disbelief written large on almost every face. It wasn’t the temperature for outdoor loving, and I was completely dressed. But Andy backed me up every step of the way, and there was no one to say it hadn’t happened the way I told it.

About two hours later, they let me get back in my car to return to the duplex. The first thing I did when I got inside was phone the hospital to find out how Dawson was. Somehow, Calvin got ahold of the phone. “He’s alive,” he said tersely.

“God bless you for sending him after me,” I said. My voice was as limp as a curtain on a still summer day. “I’d be dead if it wasn’t for him.”

“I hear the cop shot her.”

“Yes, he did.”

“I hear a lot of other stuff.”

“It was complicated.”

“I’ll see you this week.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Go get some sleep.”

“Thanks again, Calvin.”

My debt to the werepanther was piling up at a rate that scared me. I knew I’d have to work it off later. I was tired and aching. I was filthy inside from Sweetie’s sad story, and filthy outside from being on my knees in the alley, helping the bloody Were. I dropped my