Page 2

CHAPTER 2

A BOLT OF ADRENALINE hit my chest, freezing all thought. For a second there was nothing but the gun and my kid sister in the line of fire, the purest manifestation of all my worst nightmares. It didn’t matter who the guy was. What mattered was his finger on the trigger, the ability of that single digit to destroy my entire world.

“Phones,” he said. “Slowly.”

We extracted our phones from our pockets and handed them to him. I glanced around, sweat already beading on my brow. The curious couple was gone. The gunman tossed our phones into the palms.

“Move,” he said, gesturing toward the apartment building with the gun.

We walked. I gave Baby a Don’t do anything stupid glare. She shook her head, disgusted.

“Listen,” I said, glancing back at our captor. I clocked the tired expression on his stubbled face. “We don’t even know where you want us to go.”

“Third floor,” the guy said. “It’s the apartment you’ve been out here watching. The one you were just shouting at.”

“We weren’t — ”

“Don’t play dumb with me, all right? I don’t get a lot of sleep in my line of work. My patience is at an all-time low.”

The man grabbed a handful of my shirt and shoved me onward. We started up dimly lit stairs, and my stomach sank. There were good signs about the situation, but not many. The guy hadn’t patted either of us down, which meant he was probably unaccustomed to, maybe unprepared for, actual violence. The gun he carried was big and chunky and awkward in his hand. It looked unused, something meant only to scare us. But my fluttering confidence took a nosedive when we reached the third floor. There was another, much shorter man at the door to the apartment. He also had a gun and looked tired but he seemed meaner than his partner. I heard dogs barking inside. One had the wet, hysterical, savage bark of a big animal losing its mind.

Baby and I were shoved into the apartment. It was dark, lit only by colored LED lights in dozens of reptile and fish tanks lining one wall. I saw lizards and spiders and snakes in there, huge coiled pythons sagging over branches, and hairy tarantulas scaling rocks. Beneath the aggravated, panic-driven barking of the dogs was a different rumble of noise — parrots squawking in another room, fish-tank pumps humming and bubbling, cats whining.

A dozen dogs of different breeds rushed over and swirled around us, some snuffling and pawing at our legs, others standing back and yapping, muzzles up in challenge.

Among them, I spotted our girl: L’Shondra, a sleek and googly-eyed Italian greyhound who stood trembling at the back of the pack.

The dog that was on the border of insanity was a hellish hound who looked like it could have swallowed L’Shondra whole. The dog was chained to a U-bolt mounted to the wall; its scarred, boxy black head was held low, and its clipped ears shone pink in the weird light. All the other dogs stayed well outside the range of its chain.

The dog’s yellow eyes were fixed on Baby. I felt her cold hand slip into mine. Not for the first time since I’d met my sister less than a year ago, I was overcome by the intense, soul-squeezing maternal instinct to protect her, and I knew someone was about to get hurt.

I just didn’t realize how bad.