“You hungry?” she asked. Silly question, Yoda was always hungry. And frisky. He was the only animal in her charge now that wasn’t wounded somehow.
Unless loneliness counted as a wound.
“Meredith will be back soon,” Janie promised.
Yoda was proof that Meredith had a soft side. BAA’s head keeper truly got along better with animals than people. She’d championed the wolf dog, and had trained him to act as an ambassador for both BAA and his species. But unfortunately, because he was part dog and part wolf, he belonged nowhere.
Kind of like Janie.
BAA was her sister’s world, and while Janie enjoyed working there, it wasn’t her calling.
Janie wanted to travel the animal world and paint it.
Even more, she wanted to know that she could do it, alone, without Katie. Katie saw animals as something to take care of; Janie saw them as beautiful, powerful and—if mankind would leave them and their habitats alone—able to thrive on their own, with simple rules for survival.
She’d yet to exist in a world that had simple rules.
She’d yet to exist in a world where she even got to help make the rules.
It was her turn.
After filling Yoda’s dish, she quickly took care of the other animals in her charge. As they were injured, she wasn’t allowed to touch, only to report. She checked the bandage on a barn owl, no seepage. Two sheep stood in a pen, both with stitches from finding the only spot in their usual pen that had a sharp edge. Janie figured they’d go home to the flock today. There was also a family of wild turkey that had been left at BAA’s front entrance.
The turkeys were underweight and covered with some sort of tarlike residue that Fred, BAA’s veterinarian, hadn’t been able to completely remove. They also were all running temperatures, and Fred suspected they might be carrying a disease other animals could catch. Consequently, he’d moved them here instead of using his clinic.
When the animals were all cared for, Janie set off for BAA.
The March weather was gorgeous—her favorite thing about Scorpion Ridge, Arizona, was the temperate climate. Instead of taking her car, she decided to walk the block and a half to BAA.
But a mere three minutes into the jaunt, a car slowed and offered her a ride. This happened just about every time she walked to work. People noticed her uniform, guessed where she worked and offered her a ride. Never before had the act scared her. She was tough, after all. She’d survived Aunt Betsy for a whole year by herself. But today, when the blue Buick slowed, for a moment she’d been poised to run, her left heel in the air, her toes dug into the earth, her body tensed for takeoff.
“No, thanks,” she said, backing away from the car. The tone of Janie’s voice probably scared the woman more than the woman had scared Janie.
This was why Sheriff Rafael Salazar wanted to guard her, shadow her, keep in contact with her—she was a flight risk.
She broke into a run, striving to get to BAA quickly. Ten minutes later, happy to be surrounded by people who knew her, Janie was in the employees’ lounge and gearing up to start her day.
Today she was filling in for the college student who usually helped in the gift shop on Fridays. Luckily, working in the gift shop was her second favorite job. In the last year, she’d single-handedly turned it into a shop to behold.