A Feral Darkness Part 10

If he had, he didn't mention it. He looked disappointed, as though he'd hoped to catch them with their toes over some sort of invisible line. "That don't change the facts. This is private property."

Brenna snorted. "Of course it is. It's all private property around here. Maybe your buddy would do well to keep that in mind."

He frowned at her. "That's supposed to make sense?"

"It'll make sense to Rob, if you tell him. Or don't. I don't care." Brenna gathered up the leash and stalked back down the road, Druid at her heels and grabbing wary looks over his shoulder.

"I wouldn't," Masera said to the man. "Doubt he'd like you making a scene like this." In a few quick strides he'd caught up with hera"or nearly caught up with her, because she wasn't having any of it and poor Druid's short little legs flew to keep her pace.

She wanted to ask him what that was supposed to have meant, but she didn't. She didn't say anything at all, not until they'd gone through the fence, across the pasture and back up the hill, and were heading for the barn gate. Even then, she didn't look at him when she said, "Send me a bill."

"Call it a favor," he said.

"No." Favors like that always cost her, somehow. One way or another, she'd pay. She'd owe him.

She still didn't look at him, but she heard the shrug in his voice when he said, "I didn't think so. See you around, Brenna. Stay inside at night."

Brenna shuddered, and slammed the porch door closed behind her.

Chapter 10.

URUZ.

a.s.sertion

Brenna spent the rest of Friday doing what her hand would allow of her, and was glad enough to learn it included target practice. She made mental effigies out of the targets and put Masera in there along with Roger.

She aimed for the spot a.s.signed to tender portions of their anatomies.

She called her mother and told her Sunny was gone, her mother told her brother, her brother called her. Somehow he made it sound like he thought she'd be better off in town so she wouldn't have to deal with such things, instead of that he was sorry for her loss. She cried, and she called Emily, and Emily insisted that she come over for a picnic in the Brecken family room, where they all discovered that Druid, in the presence of little girls exclaiming, "Can I give him a potato chip, pleasepleaseplease" was quite capable of sitting up on his haunches. Unlike a dog with longer limbs, his short front legs didn't fold neatly at his chest, but stuck out to make him look like a child reaching to be picked up.

Upon returning home she went straight to bed, and refused to think about the strange jumble of events that her life had suddenly become.

When she woke up on Sat.u.r.day, it was with the already formed intent to return to the Parker homesteada"and first thing, while she was at her best and everyone else was barely waking up. After all, Rob Parker owed her a look around after making himself so at home on her own property. And if that wasn't enough, Masera's intense curiosity about the place was.

After all, he'd also been curious about her.

Which meant the more she knew about him, the better.

So she ate, still stiff-handed and with only a twinge of guilt over not going in to work. Just because she could dress herself didn't mean she had any business waving sharp-edged instruments around people's pets. Or had the strength to act quickly and decisively if something else decided to bite her. She stuck her head outside, discovered the day was overcasta"standard operating procedure just south of the lakea"but had a warmth to it that inspired her to put nothing but the vest over her deep green, long-sleeved waffle s.h.i.+rt as she went out the door.

Druid, she left behind.

The birds weren't as enthusiastic in proclaiming their newly established seasonal territories as they'd been when she woke, but it was early enough that the vireos and robins were still going at it; as she walked the tree line dividing the pastures she heard a scarlet tanager at work. In the woods across the road a thrush serenaded her oh-so-casual stroll along the shoulder, which was about when she thought, out of the blue, Basque. Something so obvious that it made her realize just how upset she'd been two nights before, or she wouldn't have missed it then. Basque, and the elusive accent. Masera had been brought up speaking the language, at least at first, she'd bet. And he apparently had friends who still spoke it more naturally than Englisha"the person he'd spoken to two evenings before.

Which meant he had family living with him, or that he lived with family. People she might be able to talk to, if they spoke English at all.

It was a line of reasoning that stopped her short, to see how quickly she'd come to such certain conclusions. She laughed out loud, startling the birds to silence. Since when had she developed deductive powers of any note? Since when, Brenna Lynn.

He spoke the Basque language. So did someone else currently in his residence. That's all she knew, all she really knew.

Well, no. She also knew that she'd reached the lane, and that suddenly she wished she'd had some excuse to bring the rifle along. Tucked under her arm, casual . . . a nice visual statement of confidence.

Stupid. Like she would ever even point a rifle at someone else. Even an empty one. She knew she wouldn't, couldn't; she could well recall the one time she'd done so accidentally, and the horror that had engulfed her as she jerked the empty weapon down to bear at the ground. She wasn't even sure she could bring herself to shoot a marauding feral dog, not even one that was headed her way with toothy intent.

Which left her staring down the driveway, the birds going about their business and an unusually bold Red Squirrel stopping to take a good look at her. She sighed, jammed her hands into her vest pockets, and hunted for the resolve she'd had not so long ago. And found it without too much difficulty . . . of all the unknowns whirling around her, this didn't have to stay one of them.

She took a deep breath and started up the lane.

It must have been a good quarter mile before the barn came into view; no wonder it had taken Mr. c.o.c.ky some time to reach them after Druid first sounded off. The lane curved, first one way, then the other, and dumped her from close woods into the old barnyard without much warning. To her left, the barn stood long and lowa"an old dairy barn, she thought, its long row of windows long broken-out and a cavernous working barn stuck on one end for hay and machinery. Before her, the old house foundation peeked above the weedsa"some crumbling stone here, half a chimney there, and one strange series of steps that led to nowherea"old porch steps, she thought.

Beneath her feet and circling through what had once been small, square barn paddocksa"she could still see the remains of the board fencing and curling loops of cattle-wirea"the tire tracks were deep and fresh. There wasn't any place to live, and there wasn't any evident activity or construction, but Rob and his friends were finding plenty of reason to spend time here.

Slowly, Brenna walked around the barn, trying to puzzle it out. Of what had Mr. c.o.c.ky been so protective? What could they have been doing here, other than some equivalent of smoking cigarettes out behind the barn? She skirted rusty old equipmenta"not worth anything by the time the elder Parkers had died, no doubt, although if Rob bothered to clean it up, he might well snare some antiquers with ita"and an old claw-footed bathtub that she instantly coveted for a watering trough. Stacks of weathered old stove-split wood and greyed slat wood, an old tractor tire . . . nothing here that she couldn't find at just about any barn of this vintage.

Until she walked out back, and ran into a diminutive horse walker. No, too small to be a horse walker. Part of an old playset? She puzzled at it, nibbling at a rough spot at her cuticle. Winter was tough on a groomer's hands, though the splits at the ends of her fingers would heal faster if she'd leave them alone. Nibble, nibble, but the strange contraption didn't give up any secrets. Excepta"was that blood on the ground? Dried blood, worn and kicked up but enough of it left to show. And . . . what was that smell? She caught another whiff of it, but no more; she couldn't track it down. So she left the contraption and walked around to the working end of the barn, where there was a people-sized door with gla.s.sed windows.

She peered through a panea"or tried to. Dirt grimed them inside and out. So she knocked lightlya"not expecting anyone but taking all the right steps just in casea"and tried the doork.n.o.b. It didn't turn, but the door swung in anywaya"closed, it was, and even locked, but not latched. From the way it moved on the hinges, Brenna doubted it could latch.

Dim and oppressive, the tiny office was crammed with junk old and new. Old desk, old file cabinet, old chaira"each bearing the same layers of grime as the windows. Stacks of ancient, yellowed newspapers in the corner, a block of wood holding up one of the desk legs. In the layers of dirt on the board floor, recently applied footsteps carved a trail from the outer door to an inner door, and from each door to the desk.

On the desk, though, there were new layers. Magazines, but hidden under a folded newspaper, so all she could see was their spines and one t.i.tle. Sporting Dog Journal . . . the same one Masera had been reading? A glance would tell her so much . . . but she wasn't about to disturb the contents of the desk. Not yet, anyway.

On a set of low metal shelves beneath the room's one high window, sloppy jumbles of supplies caught her eye. It didn't look so much different from her own dog room shelves, actuallya"some basic medical supplies, some syringes, a tangle of leashes, harnesses, and thick, wide, double-ply leather collars. Some big plastic jars of bulk supplements, one of which she'd used for Sunny when the starving hound had first staggered into Brenna's life.

Dogs. It added up to dogs, but Brenna hadn't seen a single one. Hadn't even heard one. And as she puzzled over it, as she got up the nerve to nudge the magazines with a finger so she could see the covers, a man came barreling through the door with no more idea of Brenna's presence than she'd had of his approach. She s.n.a.t.c.hed her finger back as he recoiled in surprise, and before he could say the words piling up in his moutha"angry words, even mean onesa"she smiled and gave him Brenna the Naif. The one that went with her features.

"Oh, good," she said, gus.h.i.+ng with apparent relief at having found someone there. "I'm looking for Rob, have you seen him? He was over at my place the other day, visiting, you know, and I thought it would be neighborlya""

"He's not here," the man said abruptly. This wasn't Mr. c.o.c.ky; this man wore anger like a second skin, letting it surface in a handful of tattoos and the heavy studs of a doubly pierced brow. Mr. Mean. Young, muscles showing under his tight T-s.h.i.+rt and the open black sh.e.l.l jacket over top it. And big. Big enough he didn't have to be c.o.c.ky to get his point across. "Stupid of you to come nosing around where you don't belong."

Oh, Lordy, that was more than a threat. But Brenna the Naif didn't know enough to respond to threats, and Brenna the Naif she stayed. Masera, she'd meet head-on. This man . . . this man she played, and for all she was worth. "Oh," she said, faltering, "I'm sorry. It's just that Rob was so friendly when we talked, I thoughta""

From within the barn, far within the barn, a dog barked; several others took up the cry. Profound, ringing chop barks, quickly silenced. That answered one questiona"whatever the breed, it was big.

Mr. Mean frowned at her, a frown that went deep; his quickly sparked anger seemed to be fading to annoyance, but Brenna wasn't sure. He said, "You have any idea what the h.e.l.l time it is, lady? Not visiting hours, that's for sure."

She shrugged, but it felt weak even to her. "I'm always up at this hour. I figured, if he's here, he's herea"and if not, no harm done. Just a little bit of a longer walk than usual, you know? Besides, I was wondering if Rob might want to sell that bathtuba""

"s.h.i.+t," he said, with feeling, and she couldn't interpret that at all. "Look, Rob doesn't want any visitors, you got that?" His voice rose with each word, until he was shouting at her, closing the distance between them as she backed up, backed until the edge of the open door jammed into her back and stopped her short. "He doesn't want to talk nice to the neighbors and he sure as h.e.l.l doesn't want 'em poking around his private things at some f.u.c.king hour of the morning when normal people don't even have their pants on!"

Her eyes widened; she couldn't help it. It didn't mattera"even Brenna the Naif would know this was trouble. h.e.l.l, the Naif was already running screaming down the lane, leaving just plain Brenna to deal with this all on her own. "I really didn't meana"" she started, but stumbled and tried again right on top of it, "I thought he saida"I thought he meanta"I mean, people around here, if they say they'd like to talk again sometimea""

He looked at her with those annoyed but thoughtful eyes, and shook his head. "s.h.i.+t," he said again. "I don't want to have to deal with you." He looked her up and down, a.s.sessing her anew, scowling hard. "You got the idea now? The part where you were G.o.ddam wrong to have come around here?"

Brenna nodded, quick and emphatic. "Going," she said, hearing the babble even in that one word. "I'm just going now. And staying away." She waved her hands out at waist level, just as emphatic as her nodding. "Definitely staying away." She inched around the edge of the door, feeling her braid catch in the latch that prodded her hip, fumbling behind herself to free it.

"And you know what else?" Mr. Mean said, coming up close before she could break away, close enough that she froze with her hands awkwardly behind herself, pulling her head back as far as she could as he bent to stare directly into her eyes, putting his hand on the edge of the door above her head. He'd had a drink already, she could tell, but it wasn't enough to make up for his unbrushed morning mouth.

Brenna shook her head, hardly daring to do so.

"If we hear a lot of stray talk about the Parker place, we're going to know where it started. And that," he said, so close now that his nose almost touched hers, "that wouldn't be good for you at all. You got that?"

Brenna whispered, "Yes."

It was a squeaky whisper, barely there at all, but it seemed to satisfy him. He jerked the door open wider and gestured sharply at freedom. "Get lost."

Brenna got.

Were she wise, she would have simply stayed at home after that. What had she learned, after all? That Parker's buddies were just as rough as Sam had suggested. That they were up to something. That they had big dogs. Probably guarding a huge cache of drugs or enslaved Asian women or . . . whatever. Nothing she was ready to suggest to anyone elsea"friend or local cop or even 911. Not until she got the chill of Mr. Mean's warning from her system.

Were she wise, she'd stay right there at home. Nursing her hand and her spirit, considering more fully the repairs necessary to the barn in order to house a horse or two. Taking care of business.

But she looked at her life, and the strange factors suddenly intruding into her days, and made the decision to be not-wise. In fact, sitting at the kitchen table, worrying the edges of Masera's business card, thinking of him eating there, thinking of the muzzy look on his face first thing in the morning, Brenna decided she'd had enough of forces acting on her life. Time for her to be a force herself, to act instead of react. Right now, these things were business.

Masera knew where she lived. Turnabout, she thought, was extremely fair play.

She figured it wouldn't be far, not with an address in the same small rural area, and it wasn't. A small ranch house on the other side of the compact town of Parma Hill itself, it sat back from the road a generous distance, without much in the way of trees to create privacy. A few bushes around the hanging signa"she would have mistaken it for a realty sign if she weren't lookinga"identifying the place as belonging to Gil Masera, dog trainer extraordinaire. White siding, deep teal shutters, a few more bushes to pa.s.s as landscaping around the house. It didn't look like the sort of place he'd live in, didn't reflect anything of him.

As if you know him so well.

There were trees in back, and a fenced-in yard. Nothing that looked like rows of kennels or outbuildings, although her view was almost completely obscured by the house itself and the one strategically placed evergreen at the back corner of the house. She wouldn't get a better look in the back without sneaking around, and she'd had enough of that for one day.

This time, she would walk right up to the front door. Pound on it, if necessary.

She had the feeling it wouldn't be. He'd called someone, fully expected whoever it was to be here. And since there was a vehicle in the drivewaya"a sporty little miniature Jeep kind of vehicle, not Masera's SUV at alla"Brenna pretty much expected that whoever-it-was was there right now.

So she pulled in the long driveway and marched up the walk and reached out to stab the doorbella"and stopped, following a wicked little impulse to make sure her hair ran under her vest and stuffing the end into her jeans at the small of her back. The most identifiable thing about her, hidden. Then she rang the doorbell.

She heard footsteps within the house almost right away, but no barking. No young pit bulls gamboling around in this house. Maybe there were kennels out back after all.

The door opened, and she knew right away she was looking at Masera's brother through the storm door between them. His younger brother. Not as tall as Masera, he had the same features in different proportions. Masera had a sharply defined nose, vaguely hawklike, with distinct planes at the high bridgea"side, top, side. This man had that . . . and more of it. And his jaw, although it followed the same straight line, didn't have the same amount of chin to balance it. But his eyes were a familiar deep, clear blue, and his lips, though thinner than his brother's, had the same built-in wry quirk at the corners of his mouth. "Egun on," he said, and then, "Help you?" as though it had been an entire sentence.

"I hope so," Brenna said. "I saw Mr. Masera at the pet store, and I wanted to talk to him about private work with my dog. He's big, and lately he's been growling . . . I'm getting worried. But I haven't been able to get an answer on the phone number on his card." She waved it briefly and repocketed it with a shrug. "I was in the area, so I decided to stop by instead."

The man made a face, the exaggerated face of someone communicating in a second language he doesn't quite know. "Forgot the battery. Again. Very busy most days, Iban is." Ee-BAHN, he said, and for a moment Brenna didn't realize he was referring to Masera at all; she just gave him a puzzled stare. And then as she realized he referred to Masera, that this was another name for Masera and it fit so much better than Gil to her ear, it was the man who gave a laugh at himself and, still grinning, said, "Gil, I mean. Iban is his first name, but here in the States he uses the Gil name, his second name. Easier, he says."

"In the States?" Brenna said, and then, although she already suspected, added, "As opposed to . . . ?"

"Euskal Herria," the man said. "You know, the Basque?"

All that guessing she'd done . . . not so far off the mark after all. Masera was Basque, his brother lived here, and he barely spoke English. She smiled. "I don't know much, I'm afraid. Though I never would have guessed that Mr. Masera's first language wasn't English." Not quite true.

The brother shrugged. "Him and I, we are different. Older brother, younger brother, you know? I am Eztebe. Steven, you would say in Ingelesez, but I prefer Eztebe. And I'll answer you what I can."

She didn't even try to repeat his name. His was a slippery accent, never coming down hard on any of the syllables, just skimming over them like touch and go. "About my dog," she said. "I was wondering if Mr. Masera could take him, maybe evaluate him here. Do you have kennel facilities?"

"Small," he said, holding up three fingers. "Full, right now. Gil knows if there will be room soon; I do not."

"Do you suppose I could see them?"

He gave a rueful shake of his head. "Best for Iban to show you. I know too little. When I visit, I feed them, I try not to like them too much. I have his list of cla.s.sesa"maybe you want that, so you can find him at the store? What, Pets! is the name, I think? Like calling a garden store Tree!, you think?"

She did, she decided, like Masera's brother Eztebe quite a bit more than Masera himself. "I've always thought so," she agreed. "If I want an exclamation point after a word, I put it there myself. They've got lots of good supplies there, but if I want my dog groomed, I'll do that myself, too." An opening, big and juicy.

He took it. More or less. "Iban saysa"" and then he stopped, as if realizing sudden discretion. "He says they are very busy, and to think about this when choosing where to go. Some people want a quieter place for their dogs, yes?"

Well, whatever he'd been about to say, what he'd actually said wasn't anything but the truth.

"He says go to the woman Brenna if you go there," Eztebe added. "He says she cares."

Well, huh. "Thanks," she said, realizing she'd taken this about as far as she could. "I guess I'd like one of those cla.s.s lists." More to avoid Masera than to find him.

Eztebe nodded, and left the door open while he fumbled in some papers on a small secretary not far from the door. She had the chance to look through the neat house and right out the back window of the small kitchena"yellow, wasn't everybody's kitchen yellow?a"to the greening backyard. She'd only managed to sort out the edges of some kennel runs from the visual jumble when Eztebe filled the doorway again. "I'm kind of surprised," she told him. "I thought a trainer would have his own dogs running around the place."

"He lost the old one not long before," Eztebe said, and then corrected himself. "Not long ago. No new one yet. Maybe one of the little Welsh herding dogs, he told me."

Well, double-huh. More truth from Masera. But what about those pit bulls? She was willing to bet that two of those three kennel runs were occupied by the pits, and not by customer dogs. He'd as much as admitted he had them.

Eztebe rustled the papers he held out, looking for her attention.

"Sorry," she said. "Just thinking about my dog. Worried, you know?"

"Talk to Iban," Eztebe said, and then gave her a sudden grin. "But don't tell him I told you that name, okay?" He held the papers out again, and this time she took them. He said, "Cla.s.s list, price list. You can't find him at the store, use that phone number. Tonight, I put it in the charger myself."

She smiled at him and thanked him and folded the papers up to stuff in her back pocket on the way to her truck. So much for that.

She wasn't sure she'd learned much, at least not much of true relevance. Masera's houseguest was his brother, and his brother didn't know much about much when it came to the dogs. Didn't seem to consider the pit bulls to be Masera's even though Brenna was just as sure they were there behind the house; didn't seem to be so tight-lipped he wouldn't have said if he did consider the dogs to be Masera's. After all, he'd told her Masera's secret first name, and more or less told her that their family was Basque, but that they'd had very different upbringings. And that Masera was very busy, but she'd known that. Though she winced at the recollection of her glimpse of his private fee list; she'd had no idea he charged $75 an hour when she'd called him, or when she'd insisted that he bill her. Maybe he wouldn't.

Eztebe hadn't said, My idiot brother is obsessed with a woman who lives on a hill, he gets beat up on a regular basis, he knows something about Rob Parker that you don't know, and here's what he's hiding from you. For he was hiding something, of that she was sure.

All the same, as she started the truck and backed it down the drive, she found herself smiling. As little as it was, she probably knew just about as much of Masera's life as he knew of hers. It was a start. And with any luck, this was as far as it would go.

Any of it.