Page 15 of Just One Look

All the way to Ponsonby Road, her chest heaving like a bellows. A complicated intersection with roads coming in from all angles, and she was swiveling, searching, dreading. There wasn’t much traffic yet, not this early on Sunday morning, but there was enough.

An older couple crossing the street saw the leash in her hand, and the man said, “Looking for a big black dog? It headed off down the road, going like billy-o. Looked like it was trying out for the All Blacks. I tried to catch it, but it wasn’t having any.”

She ignored the incomprehensible parts of that, gasped, “Thanks,” and then she was running again. At least it was downhill now. But she still couldn’t see the dog.

Oh. Wait.

Oh,no.

It was like a flip book, or one of those trails of dominoes. Sandwich-board signs slamming to the ground, one by one, all the way down the sidewalk. Pedestrians scattering. And Webster galloping like a Shetland pony, if Shetland ponies galloped, his huge paws stretching out. All four of them off the ground, then gathering beneath him to shove off for the next stride. She was running as fast as she could, but how fast could you go in your stocking feet? After twenty-four hours in transit? If your exercise consisted of thirty minutes a day on an elliptical machine?

Not fast enough, that was the answer. Notnearlyfast enough. A woman with a baby in a stroller barely got out of the way, sending Elizabeth’s pulse rocketing even higher, and Webster was gathering speed.

He was going to hurt somebody. She had to catch him. But how?

* * *

Luka didn’t lookto see if Marko was with him. He knew he was. Right off his shoulder, exactly where he should be.

He was wearing jandals. Didn’t matter. The thing with the pushchair and the baby had been too close. He got himself in position, and when the dog got there, he met him in a bone-jarring tackle, flinging himself at his chest even as his arms wrapped around him and held on. His feet left the ground and he rolled, and the dog dragged him for a pace or two, but after that? He dragged the dog.

It shouldn’t have been hard, because the dog probably weighed half what he did. And still, it was like taking down a world-class lock with the tryline in his sights. He felt Marko piling on, and together, they got the animal on the ground and kept him there.

Marko said, “Got his collar?”

Luka couldn’t answer. That was because he was gasping, his left arm lit up with stabbing, slicing pain all the way to his neck. The neck itself? It felt like it was broken. He gritted his teeth, though, and got the dog’s collar in his hand. He’d tackled him straight off the curb, and they were wedged between two parked cars, which had helped him stop the dog but hadalsojarred his entire body with the suddenness of the stop and the unforgiving nature of asphalt. He dragged the dog back onto the pavement, and Marko said, “All right?”

“Yeh,” Luka said, but he didn’t let go of that collar. “Sit,” he told the dog, and he sat. And grinned at both of them, while wagging his tail like it had all been a wonderful adventure.

Luka said, “Stupid bugger,” but the words were drowned out by the applause coming from the pedestrians and diners. Some phones held up, too, clicking away, because people would take a photo of anything, even a runaway dog. Meanwhile, Luka was missing a jandal, and bloody hell, but his neck hurt.

He could almost always ignore pain. He was having a hard time ignoring this. Who exacerbated their rugby injury tackling adog?If he lost game time for this, he’d …

He’d be narked as hell, that was what. At least it could’ve been something heroic, like grabbing a runaway pram and saving a baby. Instead, he’d sacrificed a few layers of skin and probably a disc for a grinning, panting, shaggy black dog the size of a half-grown bear, who had now plopped himself down on his arse and was industriously scratching his neck with the self-satisfied air of an animal who’d just finished some refreshing morning exercise and was on his way to making new friends.

A woman was running up to them now, her breathing hard, her hair wild, her feet in socks and nothing else. She said, “Oh, thank God. ThankGod,”and grabbed for the dog’s collar. And then just stood there like she had no idea what to do next.

Ah. An idiot.

She had a red lead in her hand, but she wasn’t doing anything with it. Luka waited a moment, but she just panted some more, exactly like the dog, so he took it from her and fastened it. “There,” he said, handing it back to her. “You got him? All right? You may want to take more care.”

“I …” she said. “Yes. I know. And yes, obviously I’ve got him, oryougot him, but I … I’m not …” She seemed to take him in a little more, and Marko, too, and her face froze.

Brilliant. She knew who they were. It was going to be a celebrity moment.

Hereallydid not need this today.

“You’re injured,” she said, her tone completely different. “Both of you. What’s hurting?”

Marko glanced at him, and Luka gave a shrug back. “Yeh, nah,” he said. “A scrape on the knee, that’s all.”

“Your face,” she said. “That’s a bruise on your forehead. A bad one. We should check you for concussion, because you’re holding your head crookedly.”

Luke could have told her that he’d already had an HIA for that—a head injury assessment—but he didn’t. “Yeh, nah,” he said. “No concussion. Hard head, and the head knock was from earlier. We’re good.”

“You’re scraped, though. And …” She hesitated, looking around. “I don’t think anybody else is injured, but I should go back up and check.”

“And do what about it, exactly?” Luka asked.