All Shots

could call me, I could call him back. Damn it all! Why had I left my big dogs in the van?
    “You have the wrong person,” I said. “You have me confused with someone else.” The tactic had worked with Adam. It was worth trying again this time.
    “Holly Winter,” he said. His voice was unfamiliar. I was still facing the kitchen door, and he was still in back of me. I hadn’t had so much as a glimpse of him.
    “This happens all the time,” I said. “There’s another Holly Winter in Cambridge. People get us confused.” My voice was steady. Truly, it was.
    “You have malamutes. You do rescue. You write for Dog’s Life . Now, open that door.”
    The phone had stopped ringing. The caller had hung up without waiting to hear the recorded message. The silence made me feel entirely cut off.
    I said, “I prefer not to.”
    “We can do this nice. Or not. Now open the door and give me my stuff.” A sharp, pointed object pressed into my back. “Including my bitch,” he said. The dog person’s word, bitch. That’s when I began to suspect who he was.
    I opened the door and flipped on the light. In his wire crate, Sammy rose to his feet and shook himself all over. I felt overwhelmed with love for him and overwhelmed with regret that it was puppy-brained Sammy in that crate instead of Rowdy. If Rowdy had been there? He’d immediately have sensed the threat and taken action, and the crate wouldn’t have stopped him. In comparison with our expensive Central Metal crates, this wire one was flimsy. I’d bought it as a travel crate because I’d hated lugging the heavy ones. We used it in the kitchen because it was easy to fold and put away, and also because Sammy liked it. If Rowdy had wanted to get out of it, he’d have destroyed it in seconds.
    The man slammed the door shut. “Beautiful puppy,” he said. Puppy. Only a real dog person would’ve realized how young Sammy was. “Great bone. Nice Kotzebue head.”
    Correct. Three strains—Kotzebue, M’Loot, and Irwin-Hinman—contributed to today’s Alaskan malamutes. The Kotzebue dogs were the original malamutes bred by Milton and Eva B. (“Short”) Seeley at the Chinook Kennels in Wonalancet, New Hampshire. Short Seeley had strong opinions about malamute head type. Among other things, she bred for small ears and a soft expression that comes, in part, from dark, almond-shaped eyes set at just the right angle. Sammy had Rowdy’s beautiful Kotzebue head. When this man looked at Sammy, he knew what he was seeing.
    Graham Grant.
    I turned and finally got a look at him. Yes, somewhere, sometime I had seen him, presumably at the National Speciality where Phyllis Hamilton had said I’d met him. On that occasion, he must’ve looked better than he did now. How he looked now was like all hell after a bad accident. Elise had told me that Graham Grant was thirty-five or forty, as he appeared to be. He was maybe five-ten, with a wide build and massive shoulders, but his grubby brown-plaid flannel shirt and stained jeans hung loose, and his face was gaunt. The shagginess of his straight brown hair suggested the need for a barber rather than the pursuit of trendiness, and around his hazel eyes was a raccoon mask that was fading from black to green and brown. He needed a bath, a shave, a haircut, a change of clothes, and a month of three squares a day. More important, he needed to get rid of the hunting knife he held in his right hand.
    “Thank you,” I said. “I’m biased, of course. But all he needs to finish is one major.”
    “My stuff.”
    “I have no idea what you mean. If I did, I’d give it to you. Search the house if you want. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    “Including my blue bitch.”
    “I don’t know what to tell you except what I’ve already said. You’re welcome to look. If you don’t believe me, look for yourself.”
    I expected him to put the knife to my throat or maybe to slap or punch me. What he did was far worse. He deftly undid the latch to Sammy’s crate, waited for Sammy to emerge, wrapped his left hand around Sammy’s collar, and put the knife to Sammy’s throat. “My stuff,” Grant said coolly. “Now.”
     

CHAPTER 30
     
    I could think of nothing except the Smith & Wesson sitting uselessly in the drawer of my nightstand in our bedroom on the second floor of the house. The distance between the kitchen and that nightstand seemed like a thousand miles. At the same time, I could almost feel the weight of the