Read Online When Summer Comes by Brenda Novak - Free Book Online Page A

comment on that. He had the right to call his dog anything he wanted. Besides, the size of these men made her nervous. So did their attitudes.
    She gripped her gun tighter, in case she had to raise it. She doubted a pellet would do much against the armor of all that beefcake—especially because she’d be lucky to squeeze the trigger once before the man who didn’t get shot took the gun away—but she figured it was better than nothing. “Then you need to tell that to the authorities. You have no reason to be standing on my doorstep.”
    “According to Godfrey Blume, we do. You’re the one who’s saying otherwise. Seems your word is gold in this town.”
    She couldn’t help reacting to his sarcasm. “Because they know I wouldn’t lie.”
    “That’s why we’re here. It’s you we have to convince. You need to stop what you started, or I’m going to lose my dogs.”
    “I’m sorry, but I can’t change what they did. No one wins in these situations, least of all the animals. But I saw the results of what happened. You can’t tell me they didn’t attack.”
    “It isn’t what you think!” Denny argued. “It’s not like they went after that drifter without reason. He tried to sleep in our garage. That’s trespassing. And my dogs just did what any guard dog would.”
    Levi had to find somewhere to sleep at night. Given his situation and the late hour, their story might’ve been plausible. Except the police found his bike on the side of the road, halfway in the ditch, right where Levi said he’d dropped it. And when she’d been at the Gruper rental earlier, she’d seen no blood in the garage—only on the driveway leading to the back porch, suggesting the incident had occurred off-site, and then the dogs had trotted home.
    “That’s not true,” she said.
    The way she’d challenged his explanation didn’t sit well with Denny, who came off as the more aggressive of the two. “How the hell would you know?” His face, with its wide nose, jutted forward. “You weren’t there.”
    These men didn’t act at all concerned that their dogs had mangled someone. All they cared about was the possibility of their own loss.
    “I was at your place this morning,” she said. “I saw the bloody paw prints, Mr. Seamans. They weren’t in the garage.”
    Denny’s eyes narrowed to a razor-sharp point. “You went on to my property?”
    “I knocked first. You didn’t answer.”
    “That doesn’t give you permission to snoop around!”
    Rifle growled when Denny raised his voice, but Denny seemed too angry to care. Maybe he trusted her to hold the dog off. “Because of you, they’re going to put down two innocent pit bulls!”
    “Because of me? ” Callie echoed. “You mean because you allowed your dogs to injure someone!”
    “I didn’t even know it was happening!”
    “They’re still your responsibility. A child couldn’t have survived that attack. You didn’t see the number of stitches it took to repair what your ‘innocent’ Sauron and Spike did!”
    “The stupid bastard they bit shouldn’t have trespassed on the property!”
    Callie feared Levi would hear them. She didn’t want him to come out, didn’t want this to get out of hand, so she lowered her voice. “He didn’t trespass.”
    “You don’t know that!” Powell shouted, despite her attempt to get him to speak quietly. “You don’t know anything! You’re just some small-town bitch who’s sticking her nose in something that’s got nothing to do with her.”
    The barn door slid open with a resounding bang. At that point, Callie knew Levi would be joining them. It was too late to hope he’d stay out of it.
    “Time for you to go,” he announced to the Gruper renters.
    Because he wasn’t within reach of Denny’s headlights or the dim circle thrown by her porch light, Callie could only make out his shape, but it was enough to tell her he was striding purposely toward them.
    Denny and Powell swung around. “Who the hell are you?”