said. “You aren’t going to make me take a cab, are you?”
“No. I’m going to make you look for a pig. I’d hate for you to have to write this night off as a complete loss.”
There was a short patch of grass slanting away from the road. Beyond the grass was a birch stand. Pete set off into the birch stand, and Louisa scrambled to keep up. Beyond the birch stand was a brick-and-aluminum colonial on a quarter of an acre of mostly open lawn. The house seemed austere in the moonlight. Rectangles of light spilled onto the ground from downstairs windows.
Pete didn’t care about the colonial. Pete was interested in the weathered rambler next door. Bucky Dunowski lived in the rambler. There was a big Ford pickup in Bucky’s gravel drive, a Harley parked on the front porch, and a Union Jack hung from the sagging porch roof. A dog barked in the vicinity of the rambler.
“That’s it,” Louisa said. “I’m out of here.”
Pete held fast to her. “The dog’s chained, Wimpy.”
“It isn’t that I’m afraid,” Louisa insisted. “It’s just that I don’t see any pigs. We may as well go home.”
Someone shouted into the darkness for the dog to shut up, but the dog continued to bark. The back door to the rambler opened, the dog hurried inside, and the door slammed closed.
Pete pulled Louisa forward. “I thought this was important to you.”
“That was before I decided to move to Montana.”
“Where’s your spirit of adventure? And what about outrage. Someone smashed your car windows. You’ve been fired, and there are clandestine activities afoot in the Senate chambers.”
She dug her heels in halfway across the lawn. “My car is insured.”
“That doesn’t make this pig fiasco any less outrageous.”
“This is outrageous,” she said, flapping her arms. “I feel compelled to point out to you that it is not considered polite behavior to go sneaking around at night, peeking in people’s windows.”
He motioned for her to be quiet while he crept closer to the house. The muted sound of a television carried out to them. Beer cans and take-out cartons littered the ground around a garbage can on the back stoop. Bars of yellow light bordered either side of a shade drawn on a front window.
There were three windows on the driveway side of the house where Pete and Louisa stood. The forward window was shaded and lit. The middle and back windows were dark with shades partially drawn.
Pete and Louisa squinted through the grime on the middle window. Enough ambient light spilled from the front room to make out a card table and folding chairs. A door opened to the back room, which Pete assumed was the kitchen. A wide arch connected the middle room with the front room.
A man slouched in a worn-out easy chair, his face illuminated by the flickering glow from the television. He was about six feet and stocky, dressed in jeans and a dark T-shirt. The arm facing Louisa and Pete was heavily tatooed. His hair was black, cut short. He had a large Band-Aid taped across the bridge of his nose and a bad bruise running the length of his cheek.
“Bet I know how he got that broken nose,” Pete whispered.
“Obviously, you gave better than you got,” Louisa said.
Peter grinned at the pride in her voice. There was hope for her. “I don’t see any pigs.”
“Not the four-legged kind,” she said. She stepped back from the window and accidentally kicked a beer can. It skittered over packed dirt onto the gravel drive. Bucky lunged out of the easy chair, and a big black German shepherd materialized from somewhere in the house and flung himself, snarling and snapping, against the dining room window.
Pete grabbed Louisa’s hand and took off across the neighboring lawn. They were running flat out when they heard two blasts from a shotgun. Rear lights went on in the colonial. The shepherd was baying behind them, and Pete glanced over his shoulder to see the dog closing in. Two more shotgun blasts peppered the ground to their right. They hit the birch stand just as the back door to the colonial was flung open and a rottweiler bounded out. There was a yelp followed by an awful racket that spun Pete around in his tracks.
Louisa held tight to Pete, gasping for breath. “What is it?”
“Looks to me like both houses let their dogs loose at the same time, and they’ve attacked each other.”
Louisa peered out from the patch of trees. Two men