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