back toward the crowd, still disturbed by that woman. But she was gone.
“Billy said you were searching for a guy in a ski mask. What did he do?”
“None of your—” I began, but Deb answered. “Tried to smother her with a pillow.”
Reggie woofed, low and concerned. Owen smoothed his palm over the dog’s head. But Reggie wasn’t having it.
Scared.
He spun counterclockwise.
Angry.
He spun clockwise. Was the dog talking about himself or Owen?
“Since when do people get attacked in their own homes in Three Harbors?” Owen’s face was serene, his voice completely reasonable. I wasn’t buying it.
“You need to calm down,” I said.
His gaze flicked to me. “Who says I’m not calm?”
“Who says I was talking to you?” I lifted my chin to indicate Reggie. The dog was still spinning—right, left, right.
Ross was still scraping my fingernails. It didn’t hurt, but I certainly hoped I never had to do this again. I remembered the pillow smashing my nose, my mouth.
For more reasons than one.
“Sitz,” Owen ordered.
Reggie sat, but he cast Owen a concerned glance, which Owen ignored. He was too busy glaring at me.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Not a scratch on me.” Although my nose felt a little bruised.
“The scratches were all on him,” Deb said. “Hence the nail scrapings.”
Owen grabbed Jeremy’s hand and yanked on his shirt. Unfortunately the shirt was buttoned at the cuff and stuck tight about an inch above his wrist.
“Hey!” Jeremy tried to pull away.
Owen yanked the shirt so hard the button flew through the air. Reggie started barking at it.
Owen stared at Jeremy’s arm for a second, then he grabbed him by the throat and smacked him into the wall again.
* * *
Becca shouted something. Owen thought it might be his name, or maybe the doctor’s. Everyone, especially Dale Carstairs, seemed to think Reitman was Three Harbors’s answer to a prayer.
However, that wasn’t why he put his hand around Jeremy’s throat and squeezed—again. The reason for that were the scratches on the guy’s arm.
Someone tried to grab Owen, probably Dale. He doubted Deb was that dumb. Reggie snarled, and the hands clutching at him disappeared.
“Let him go, Owen. Now.”
That was Deb.
Owen released the guy for the second time that day, and for the second time Dr. Reitman slid to the ground like a rag doll.
“What is wrong with you?” Becca shoved past Owen and touched Jeremy’s face.
“Look at his arm.”
She glanced up, frowned, then lifted the shirtsleeve that had fallen back down in the upheaval.
Three scratches marred the man’s skin.
Owen waited for Becca to straighten, to back away, to show them to Deb, who would then cuff the guy as Becca threw herself into Owen’s arms and thanked him for seeing the truth when no one else had.
Instead her head fell forward; she shook it then stood. “Those scratches are healed over.”
How had he missed that? His only excuse was that he’d been so furious at the thought of anyone hurting Becca that he’d gone a little overboard. A world without Becca in it was not one Owen could bear.
In dog handler school they’d learned why dogs were so good at explosives detection. Not only were their noses about a thousand times more sensitive than a human’s, but the size of the portion of their brain used for analyzing those scents was between twenty and forty percent larger. Which might explain why a human would smell beef stew and a dog would smell onions, potatoes, carrots, beef, flour, salt, and so on. This was how MWDs could ferret out bombs. While one explosive might be made out of different materials than another, they all needed a reason to go boom—and that scent set off the dogs. Owen had seen IEDs buried in dirt, covered with garbage, wrapped in Lord knows what, but still Reggie had found them.
What this meant to Owen was that even though Reggie’s indication of insurgent was suspect, there was something off about Dr. “Right Man.”
Certainly Carstairs’s adoration of the man, so soon after he had told Owen—again—to leave Becca alone, had made Owen want the guy to be bad so much he’d been blinded to anything else.
He still thought it was pretty damn odd that they were searching for an intruder of the same size, wearing a ski mask, which had been found right next to a fellow who had scratches—albeit old ones—right where Becca had put some.
“Maybe he’s a fast healer.” Owen wasn’t willing to let it go.
“Freaky fast,” Deb said. “Like supernaturally woo-woo fast, even.”