Run to Ground(65)

“I know it,” Theo interrupted, knowing he was being rude again but too distracted to care. On one hand, it was embarrassing and worrying to have his canine partner escape his custody, but a part of him was glad to have the opportunity to leave his sleepless bed and visit Jules. “Thanks.”

He headed for his SUV, ending the call after that half-hearted attempt at civility. As usual for that time of the night, the streets of Monroe were quiet. If any wildness was happening, it was behind closed doors. Glancing at the darkened houses, he wondered what crimes were being committed, what arguments were being held, what desperation was being felt. That’s the problem, Theo thought as he turned onto Jules’s street. How was he supposed to help people when they hid their problems, acting like everything was fine until it all went to shit? Things were fixable up to a point. After that point, all he could do was grieve.

Shaking off his introspection, Theo slowed to a crawl when he saw the start of Jules’s driveway. He scowled. The mailbox listed to the right, just waiting for the gentle breeze that would send it to the ground. The landlord needed to step up and start fixing some of these issues. A crooked mailbox was one thing, but Jules shouldn’t be having to deal with faulty appliances and a leaking roof and the hundred other dangerous situations in the making. At least the porch was no longer a death trap, but Jules and the kids shouldn’t have to wait until Theo had time to fix everything around the place. He resolved to get the landlord’s phone number from Jules so Theo could give the slumlord a…gentle nudge to start some home improvements immediately.

He lurched across a final pothole and came to a stop outside her house. The porch light turned on, and the front door opened, the entrance framing a pajama-clad Jules. At her feet sat Viggy, who was looking as innocent as a runaway dog could look.

Jules stepped onto the porch, followed closely by Viggy. The dog—his dog, the one that ran off and forced him to visit Jules in the middle of the night—stretched out on one side of the entrance. Closing the front door behind them, Jules took a couple of steps to the front of the porch, closer to Theo. The wind whipped her hair around her face and plastered her sleep shorts to her body in a very enticing way. Theo tried not to look obviously eager as he joined her, but he was pretty sure he failed at that. He did take the six porch steps in two strides, after all.

Once he was standing next to her, Theo was at a loss. Even before he’d disappeared into a cloud of rage, talking to women had never been his strong point. Now, faced with Jules in all her sleep-mussed glory, Theo had nothing. His mind was a blank.

“I thought he was a serial killer,” Jules blurted.

He was so grateful to her for breaking the silence that it took a second for her words to make sense. Except, even then, they didn’t make sense. “Who?”

“Viggy.”

“You thought my dog was a serial killer?”

“It was dark!” she protested, starting to laugh. “A strange noise woke me up, and then something moved in the trees, so I went outside, and then Viggy ran toward me and scared the holy spit out of me.”

“The holy spit?” he teased, before the rest of what she’d told him registered, and all humor left him. “Wait. You thought you saw someone, so you went outside to check?”

Jules winced, ducking her head and peeking at him through a silky fall of hair. Theo tried not to focus on how she even made cringing cute. “I know. It was stupid.”

“Yes.”

That made her frown. “It wasn’t that stupid. I mean, it wasn’t really a serial killer. What if I’d called 9-1-1? Cops would’ve arrived, gun blazing, and all for Viggy.”

No one made him smile as much as she did. No one else made him smile at all. He pretended to scratch his nose in order to hide it. “Guns blazing?”

Just like that, her temper was gone, and she was laughing again. “Don’t you mock my colorful vernacular, Officer Bosco!”

“I just don’t think I’ve ever done anything with my gun blazing. What does that even mean?”

“I’m not sure. But it does sound very dramatic.”

“And unsafe.”

“Yes. That too.”

Her laughter faded, leaving them in a weighted silence. “So Viggy is your dog, then? I thought you said he was your partner’s?”

“He was.” A wash of grief ran through him, erasing any traces of laughter. “He was Don Baker’s dog.”

“Was?” she asked tentatively, looking at him in a way that made him feel like he could tell her anything, anything at all, and she’d get it. She’d get him. Jules settled onto the top step, patting the spot next to her.