“What difference does it make?” Becca’s dad snapped.
Owen had forgotten for a minute that the man was there.
“Jeremy didn’t try to kill Becca,” Carstairs continued. “Why would he?”
“Why would anyone?” Owen wondered.
“Exactly,” Carstairs agreed.
“No, really. Why? You think it was random?” Owen’s gaze went from Carstairs, to Becca, to Deb.
“Random is a lot more rare than people think,” Deb said.
“Cat,” Jeremy blurted. Reggie starting wailing.
“Lass das sein,” Owen ordered.
Reggie stopped. The doctor stared at his arm so hard Owen wondered if he were trying to make the scratches disappear by wishing for it.
“What cat?” Becca asked.
Reggie let out a short yip, as if he just couldn’t help it. Owen wondered how he even knew the word.
MWDs were taught to chase only what they were told to and nothing else. It wouldn’t do to give a dog the command to search, then have him distracted by a rabbit or squirrel or any other furry creature and pursue it, allowing an insurgent to go merrily in another direction and AK-47 someone down the line.
“A cat scratched me here a few days ago.” Jeremy tapped his forearm.
Owen frowned. The guy had tapped the wrong arm.
Chapter 13
Owen looked like he wanted to knock Jeremy over the head with his club, and drag me off by my hair. Jeremy continued to act like he’d already been hit with a club. I wondered just how much oxygen Owen had deprived him of while strangling him—twice. I didn’t think it was as much as I’d lost beneath the pillow, but what did I know?
Jeremy was being loopy, and as he never had before, I had to think it was a result of today’s events. I was lucky he hadn’t jumped in his car and raced back to Madison without investigating the crime scene. Though it wasn’t my crime scene, or even my house.
I started to stand up, teetered, reached out, and Owen caught my elbow, hauled me upright. I braced my other hand on his thigh. He caught his breath. I yanked it back. I had touched a little higher than was proper. Not that I hadn’t touched even higher before.
Deb’s shoulder mike squawked gibberish. She waited until it stopped then spoke into it. “Say again?”
“No one in the woods, Chief.”
“No one?” Owen repeated. “On a walking trail, in the middle of the day, right after the Falling Leaves Festival?”
Deb cast him a glare, but she transmitted his question. “No one at all?”
“No one that fit the description. Six feet, one sixty.”
Owen let his gaze wander over Jeremy’s slim, six-foot-one frame, then lifted his eyebrows. I ignored him. Jeremy would have no reason to strangle me.
But, as Owen had pointed out, who did? People might go gonzo over losing a pet or a valuable farm animal. Though strangling your veterinarian while wearing a ski mask was well past gonzo.
Except I hadn’t lost a patient since I got here. Damn good luck, or superior diagnostics, maybe both, but I wasn’t complaining. Nevertheless, it meant that no one had decided to feather-pillow me to death because I’d screwed up surgery on Fido.
“Meet Doc Becca at Owen McAllister’s place, will you?” Deb continued. “She’s bringing a forensic specialist out. But you make sure nothing gets effed up, okay?”
“Nothing effed up. Roger that, Chief.”
“I know what I’m doing,” Jeremy muttered.
“Who said I was talking about you?”
“Am I going to be able to sleep in my bed tonight?” I asked. Would I even be able to close my eyes and drift off after what had happened the last time I tried it?
“You should stay with your parents,” Deb said. “At least until we figure this out.”
Which was going to be a major PITA for work, but lying in my apartment staring at the ceiling, jumping at every shadow, wouldn’t help either.
“I need clothes.” My feet were also bare. “Probably shoes.”
Deb let out a growl of annoyance. “Come on.”
She escorted me upstairs, stood in the living room tapping her foot while I changed into jeans and a long-sleeved shirt in the bathroom, then shoved my feet into my oldest, grungiest tennis shoes before preceding her downstairs. No one appeared to have moved since we’d left.
“We can go in my truck,” Owen began. Reggie woofed; the gaze he turned on Jeremy was very cat with the canary—or cat that could almost taste the canary.
Splode.
What did that mean?
“I’ll follow in my car.”
Jeremy’s eyes resembled those of a canary that had just caught a glimpse