Read Online Dog Days by Donna Ball - Free Book Online Page B

contact information was also on her list, so I called and left another message. While I did so, I took Cameo’s pink rhinestone collar back to the grooming room and started scrubbing out the scuffs and dirt with saddle soap. That was when I noticed something odd.
    A few stitches had been neatly sliced away from the double layer of leather just near the buckle, and I could clearly see the shape of a small round object inside. I finished leaving the message for April Madison and went back to my desk where, after a moment’s rummaging, I found a letter opener with which I used to pry the object out.
    “Whoa, Cameo,” I murmured, setting the small metal button in the center of a sheet of plain paper on my desk. “You must be more valuable than I thought.”
    Although I had only seen them in specialty high-tech catalogues and online, I was pretty sure what this was. It was a GPS locator of the kind commonly used by cops and spies and, more recently—and much less commonly—by owners of championship dogs and cats who had a tendency to wander. The only thing I couldn’t understand is why someone who would go to all the trouble to microchip a dog and put a GPS locator in her collar would be careless enough to lose her in the first place.
    Tourists. I’d never understand them.

 
     
     
    CHAPTER FIVE
     
     
    I live in a big old farmhouse that was built in a time before climate change, when thick green forests and a complete lack of asphalt made air-conditioning unnecessary. Even now, I make do with ceiling fans and open windows in most rooms of the house, but I relented a few years back and put a window air-conditioning unit in my upstairs bedroom, where the temperature can easily climb above eighty degrees in the daytime. The hum and hiss of its motor is soothing white noise to me, and that’s probably why I did not hear the intruder until it was too late.
    In fact, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t have heard anything at all if it hadn’t been for the nightmare. The bomb, the car, Cisco, Melanie and Miles who wouldn’t run no matter how much I screamed at them, no matter how hard I tried to warn them. And then a sudden, explosive sound that propelled me upright in bed with a choked, indrawn scream, my pounding heart shaking my whole body, gasping for breath. Cisco and Cameo were standing at the window that didn’t contain the air-conditioning unit, heads forwards, tails curled, staring out intently. I realized that the sound that had awakened me was the bark of a dog only because, at that moment, Cameo barked again.
    Of course Cameo should have been safely in her crate downstairs with Pepper, Mischief, and Magic—my bedroom really wasn’t big enough for all five dogs—but the way Cisco flopped down in front of my closed door with his nose pointed downstairs, emitting a loud sigh every thirty seconds or so, assured me that the only way I’d get any sleep that night was if Cameo joined us. I brought her upstairs, Cisco forfeited his duck-printed dog bed for her, and we were all sleeping soundly by ten thirty.
    And so we remained until—I squinted my eyes at the digital numbers on the clock—four forty-five. It should have been pitch dark outside, but a glow of light illuminated the two dogs at the window clearly, and above the hum of the air-conditioning I could hear the faint staccato rapid-fire barking of multiple dogs. The kennel. Something had disturbed the dogs in the kennel, and triggered the security lights.
    I came to this conclusion about half a second before Cisco gave a deep determined bark, and Cameo joined in the fray. Both goldens stood with their tails curled high and their feet planted stiffly, barking at something in the yard. I rolled out of bed and rushed to the window just in time to see the shadow of a man running across my yard away from the kennel.
    “Hey!” I shouted.
    I flung open the door and ran down the stairs in my bare feet, followed closely by two barking, galloping golden