High in Trial - By Donna Ball Page 0,32

felt invaded. Perhaps not as invaded as I’d felt last night when the creep called my room, but…

I said suddenly, “He knew my name.”

Miles looked understandably confused. “What?”

I looked at him sharply in the dimness. “The room is in your name. How would anyone know how to reach me?”

“Do you mean besides on your cell phone? They’d just ask the front desk to ring your room. You’re a registered guest. Your room number’s on the computer. We weren’t trying to keep it a secret that we were staying together, were we?”

“Weird,” I murmured. I felt a chill run down my spine that was completely unrelated to the early morning damp. “But how would he know my name?”

“Who? Why do I get the feeling I’m no longer necessary to this conversation?”

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s probably nothing, just some random creep playing games.”

“Okay, now you’ve got my attention.” He looked at me intently in the grayish light, and there was no amusement in his tone now whatsoever. “What’s going on?”

I started to explain about the phone call in the night, but the leash suddenly tightened in my hand, causing me to stagger and spill my coffee. “Cisco!”

Cisco glanced up around at me, then returned to sniffing and pawing at something in the grass. He could’ve uncovered almost anything, from a rotting animal carcass to a nest of fire ants, so I went quickly to investigate, calling as I did, “Leave it!”

Reluctantly, Cisco abandoned his treasure and sat, waiting for me to reach him. I’d like to say he was that prompt with all his commands, but “leave it” was one of those things we’d been working on since he was a puppy. It is essential in search-and-rescue work and has saved more than one dog’s life. I was relieved to see that in this case Cisco’s find didn’t pose any immediate threat but was nothing but a piece of metal half-buried in a shallow mound of loose dirt and dried grass. I couldn’t imagine why Cisco was even interested in it.

I picked it up and found that it was, in fact, an old lead pipe, damp with dew and mud. I looked at it curiously and let it drop again. Cisco took this as tacit permission to resume his pawing and sniffing, and I let him.

Miles said, “You were about to tell me about some random creep?”

“It’s almost six o’clock,” I said, glancing at my watch. “The dining room will be open by the time we get there. I’ll tell you over breakfast.” I tugged lightly on the leash and said, “Cisco, let’s go.”

But Cisco had other ideas. He suddenly looked up from nosing about the ground, swiveled his head toward the tree line on the opposite side of the field, and gave a single sharp bark. He took off at a lope before I could get my thumb on the brake of the leash, and I shouted, “Hey!”

I spilled more coffee as I spun around and managed to bring Cisco to a halt, and then I saw what had gotten him so excited. A dog was galloping across the field toward us, and nothing good could come of that. I quickly passed my coffee cup to Miles and held on to Cisco’s leash with both hands. As he had proven yesterday, a dog running loose was one of those things that simply wasn’t within his power to resist.

No one else from the hotel had yet joined us in the dog-walking field, so I knew the animal had to be a stray. The way it was running at us with such determination made me uneasy, so I dug in my heels and pulled Cisco closer, trying to swing him away from the aggressor and back toward the parking lot. The last thing I needed was a dog fight. But Cisco panted with excitement, straining at the leash in his eagerness to greet the newcomer. The dog barked a greeting and was close enough now that I could see it was a border collie. And not just any border collie.

“Hey!” I exclaimed. “I think that’s Flame!”

I was right. It was Flame, splashed with mud, covered in burrs, and trailing her leash. Her owner was nowhere in sight.

~*~

ELEVEN

Six hours, thirty minutes before the shooting

Miss Meg’s Diner opened at six a.m. for breakfast, and on weekday mornings that was when everybody showed up: construction workers who had to be at the job site by seven, out-of-town workers who had a long commute, doctors and lawyers