“Pick him up again,” Liz said. “Or I’ll get someone else.”
“Right,” I panted. “Just give me a second.”
The door opened.
“Do you realize you left your dog in the car?” Doc said as he walked in, leading Spike. “It may be nighttime, but it’s still in the eighties out there. Do you want the poor thing to -?”
“Put your hands up!” Liz snapped. “Stop that immediately. Get back there!”
The last order was to me. When I realized that Doc’s entry had distracted Liz, I made a wild leap for the reception desk, intending to vault over it and grab something - anything - that could be used as a weapon. I wasn’t quite so tired as I’d been pretending, but I guess I was more tired than I realized. Instead of clearing the top of the reception desk, I landed on it and slid across. My foot caught on the upright pole of George’s stand as I passed. The stand tilted way back and then righted itself with a snap as I fell off the desktop and landed on its base. George, though half-asleep, managed to keep his grip on the perch during the initial tilt, but then lost it when the stand snapped back, propelling him across the room nice a misshapen cannonball.
Straight at Doc, whose hands had shot into the air on Liz’s command. He was still holding Spike’s leash, and Spike, to keep from choking, was standing on his hind feet. And not happy about it, from the sound of his barking.
When Doc saw George flying toward him, he dropped the leash and put his hands in front of him, either to catch George or fend him off; it was hard to tell which.
And when Spike realized he was free, he lunged at the nearest object. Which, bless his evil little heart, was Liz. He buried his teeth in her ankle.
“Get that thing away from me!” Liz shrieked. She was shaking her ankle, but Spike was doing his best pit bull imitation and refused to be shaken off.
I saw this from behind the reception desk, where I was frantically scrabbling to find something I could use as a weapon. But when I saw Liz aiming her gun at Spike, I decided I had to act, weapon or no weapon. Although she was probably as likely to hit her own ankle as Spike, the odds were better that she’d miss both of them and plug poor Doc, who was struggling with a very angry George. So I vaulted back over the reception desk, grabbed Liz’s wrist with my right hand, and began smacking her in the face with my bandaged left hand.
We teetered back and forth a few times until I managed to bang her wrist hard against the edge of the desk. I must have hit a nerve or something; her right hand went limp and the gun fell to the floor. She shrieked and tried to claw at my face with her nails, so I hit her in the stomach, hard. She half staggered and half fell backwards, into the closet.
She landed in the box that held the Affirmation Bears, several dozen of which squeaked various encouraging affirmations as she landed. At least most of them squeaked affirmations. Obviously the box contained a few that the guys had been tinkering with. As I grabbed the gun and pointed it toward Liz, one of the bears produced a prolonged belch, and another squeaked “Hehehehehe… wipeout!” followed by a familiar riff of surf music.
“Don’t move!” I said. “Doc, are you all right?”
“That was wonderful,” he said. “Risking your life to save your beloved dog!”
“Yeah, right,” I said.
I risked a glance to where Doc was half sitting, half lying. George had found a new perch, on Doc’s head. The excitement had obviously made George sick to his stomach again. And from the many small claw and beak wounds on Doc’s face I deduced that George had been fairly insistent about reaching his new perch, and Doc seemed eager not to move any more than he could help.
“Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk!” trilled a bear, alerting me to the possibility that Liz was on the move.
“Stay where you are!” I said. “I have the gun, and I know how to use it, too.”
Which wasn’t a lie. I may not have taken lessons, as Liz had, but I’d already figured out which end to point in her direction. If this species of gun had a safety latch of some sort, logically she’d already have taken it off while guarding me, so presumably if I pulled the trigger, bullets would emerge. Where they’d go was anybody’s guess, of course. Unfortunately the odds were low that any of them would end up where I wanted them - in Liz’s black, treacherous heart. Which was probably just as well; I might feel less bloodthirsty when the last hour or so was further in my past.