Paul smiled faintly at the question. She suspected it was because she’d used the word we, making them a team. His gaze slid to the gas gauge and he said, “Half a tank.”
“Then I suggest you hit a gas station somewhere between Chuck E. Cheese’s and the house, and then hit an ATM in the area too. It won’t tell them which way we might be headed in when we don’t show up at the house.”
“Good thinking,” he murmured and shifted into the right lane to take the next off-ramp.
The next half hour was tense. Jeanne Louise spent the entire drive and then the time at the gas station expecting a dark SUV to pull in front of them and force them to a stop. She waited in the car while Paul rushed to use the ATM next, her eyes constantly searching the surrounding area for any sign of a dark SUV or vehicles belonging to her father and brothers. It was a relief when the passenger door opened and Paul slid back in. At least she was relieved until he said, “I just thought . . . Boomer’s still at the house.”
“They’ll take care of him,” Jeanne Louise said reassuringly. “They’ll take him back to the Enforcer house and look after him until we’re found or this is resolved.
He nodded, but looked worried still, and then glanced to Livy, asleep in the back. “She won’t be happy he isn’t with us. That dog hasn’t been out of her sight for more than a few hours since we got him. The only time they’re apart is when she’s at school. Or it was when she still went to school,” he added wearily.
Jeanne Louise frowned now too. She didn’t know what brought on the headaches with Livy, but getting upset might bring them on harder or more often. If that was the case, she didn’t want the child upset. She was willingly taking on the girl’s pain to spare her, and had every intention to continue to do so, but it wasn’t pleasant and if some of that pain could be spared by getting the dog . . .
Shaking her head, she asked, “What’s behind your house?”
“Other houses from the next street over. Why?” Paul asked curiously.
“We’ll have to get Boomer. We’ll have to park on the road behind yours. You can wait here with Livy while I fetch Boomer.”
He frowned. “That’s kind of risky, isn’t it?”
“They’ll be watching for your car. They won’t bother about the dog in the backyard.” I hope, Jeanne Louise added silently.
Paul hesitated, but then nodded. “Thanks,” he murmured, starting the engine.
Jeanne Louise just nodded, trying to figure out in her mind how best to get the dog. She was trying to remember the setup of the backyard and figure out where it was best to hop the fence. Hopefully the animal was still in the backyard and they hadn’t taken it into the house. And hopefully he’d come to her call. And hopefully no one would happen to spot her. Geez, Jeanne Louise couldn’t believe she was taking this risk. But really, she’d do anything to minimize the pain Livy, and therefore she, suffered. Frankly, she was a big wuss when it came to pain.
“Keep the engine running,” she said quietly, reaching for the door as Paul pulled to the side of the residential street behind his own.
“Maybe I should go,” Paul said, putting his hand on her arm to stop her as she started to get out. “I don’t know the people who live here and they might—”
“I’ll handle the neighbors,” Jeanne Louise assured him calmly, pulling her arm free. Getting out, she repeated, “I’ll just be a minute. Be ready to leave the minute I get back in case I’m spotted and chased by one of the hunters.”
She saw the worry increase on his face, but just closed the door and turned to start up the driveway of the house he’d stopped in front of. A high wooden fence ran around this house, starting at the garage and going around the backyard before coming back around and stopping at the side of the house. It was only six feet tall though compared to Paul’s taller wall and she could see the wall beyond it. She was approaching the gate rather than the house itself, but heard the front door open. Turning, she smiled at the man who stepped out to eye her suspiciously.
“Everything’s fine, go back inside and watch the television,” Jeanne Louise said, slipping into the man’s mind to ensure he followed the order.
He nodded, smiled, then turned and walked back inside. Jeanne Louise didn’t hesitate then, but continued to the fence. She tried the gate, not surprised to find it locked from the inside. Nothing was ever simple, she thought and glanced around to be sure no one was looking except for Paul, then leapt over the fence in one smooth move.
Jeanne Louise grunted as she landed on a concrete sidewalk inside the walled yard. The landing sent a jolt through her, but she ignored it and immediately jogged to the back fence. On the way here she’d debated different approaches. Hopping the fence, grabbing the dog and hopping back again would have been the easiest route. But while it was almost eight o’clock, it was summer, still bright daylight out. There was too much risk of being spotted by one of the hunters inside the house and pursued. There was also the risk of any one of the neighbors happening to see her hopping the fence. A slender woman in business clothes hopping a ten-foot wall as if it were knee high would draw attention. She’d had to come up with an alternate plan.
Grimacing, Jeanne Louise knelt in the rose garden that ran along the back fence and began digging at the muddy earth. Apparently the garden had been watered not long before her arrival; the dirt she was digging was mud. Great, she thought, but continued to dig.
Much to her relief it didn’t take long. While the wooden fence ran up the sides of the yard, they hadn’t bothered with it across the back. Paul’s wall offered all the privacy needed there and its retaining wall was only buried a few feet in the ground. With her increased speed and strength, she had a three-foot-wide and three-foot-deep hole dug pretty fast, even with just her hands to work with.
Once Jeanne Louise had dug what she considered to be far enough down, she lay down in the garden to work her arm inside the hole and started digging under the wall itself, scooping out the dirt quickly and impatiently. She had broken the surface on the other side before it occurred to her that she should have called for Boomer to be sure he was still in the backyard. With the next swipe of her hand, though, she heard an excited yip from the other side of the wall and felt one paw swipe at the back of her hand trying to catch it in passing. Boomer was in the backyard.
Jeanne Louise picked up speed then, afraid that Boomer’s interest might draw the attention of someone in the house. It only took another moment before she’d dug out a space big enough for the animal to climb down through, which he did at once, wiggling eagerly under the wall and waddling up in the garden to leap at her face, tail wagging and tongue swiping at her cheeks.
“Good dog,” Jeanne Louise breathed and stood quickly to hurry back across the yard, her ears straining for any sound from Paul’s yard to warn her that someone had noticed something was amiss. When she hadn’t heard anything by the time she reached the gate again, Jeanne Louise was sure her actions had gone unnoticed. Clasping the wiggling dog to her chest, she hopped the fence as she had on the approach, then jogged to the car and slid in.
Paul pulled away at once, his attention between the road, her, and the fence she’d just hopped, as if he half expected to see someone come running after them.
“I think we’re good,” she said, patting Boomer to try to get him to settle in her lap. The dog was desperately torn between trying to lick her face and trying to crawl into Paul’s lap, but she held onto the cute little creature and just kept stroking him. “I don’t think anyone noticed or followed.”
Paul relaxed a little, his attention now only shifting from the road to her and occasionally the rearview mirror. He then cleared his throat, and asked, “Umm . . . Just how exactly did you get him?”
“I tunneled under your wall. I thought it was safer than hopping it and possibly being seen,” she admitted.