Smart, clever Rabbit. It won’t feel like an interrogation if it feels like a natural part of the conversation. I’m not sure if that was her intent, but either way, it works. I’m filled with a rush of pride for my daughter. She really is the best.

Aggie sniffles, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “Stella is the most beautiful beagle.”

“She’s not a beagle,” Dottie corrects.

“Doodle. Sorry. She’s a doodle.”

Dottie shoots a look over at Aggie. “She’s not a doodle, either. What is going on in your brain, woman? She’s a greyhound. Did you see those long legs of hers?”

“It doesn’t really matter what kind of dog she is,” I chime in before they break into a full-blown argument. “How did you get her? Pet dogs are pretty rare in the After.”

I don’t like to think about why dogs are so much rarer than before. I like to think that it’s because people want to keep their food supplies for themselves and not for pets…not that they’ve been eaten by people or by dragons.

“The first year of the After, I was pretty depressed,” Aggie says. “The house I’d owned for forty years got destroyed. Lost contact with my children because they were living up in New England. My husband Harold and I had to move to a fort and it was just the tiniest, ugliest apartment. I didn’t want to get out of bed most days. Harold had a pawn shop before things got bad, and he had some solar-powered battery packs and a few old laptops he’d brought with us for bargaining. One day I woke up, and there was this cute little puppy licking my face. He’d traded all our gear away for baby Stella, just because he knew I was sad and it would cheer me up.” Her face wreaths in a smile at the memory.

“That’s so sweet of him,” Rabbit says, wiping off her fingers and then taking the kitten from Dottie. She sets it on the ground and then hunts down another, checking its face.

Aggie nods. “He was a good man. Died not long after that, too. Couldn’t get any more of his heart meds, you know. Stella helped me get through it.”

“And me,” Dottie retorts.

“And Dottie was helpful too,” Aggie adds, reaching over and touching her friend’s arm.

Dottie looks mollified. She takes the next kitten from Rabbit and glances over at me. “When things got lean at the fort, no one liked that Aggie and I shared our food with Stella. I guess she looked like a big rump roast to them. That’s when we decided to leave. We bribed Curtis to take us south. Heard Fort Dallas was decent. Curtis was nice enough, too. Said he’d been there plenty of times and knew the way like the back of his hand. He’d charge us by the week for his guidance.”

Aggie snorts. “Fucking prick.”

“I should have known better when he said by the week,” Dottie agrees solemnly.

OceanofPDF.com

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER 36

DAKOTA

Why am I not surprised that the nomad was a prick running a scam? I should have guessed.

“Curtis took us in circles,” Aggie says. “Running our tab up just for fun’cause he didn’t have anything better to do. And we were stuck, so we had to go along with him because we didn’t know the way. We guessed what he was up to when we passed the same billboard for three days straight.”

It’s not the worst thing I’ve heard unscrupulous people doing. The horror stories about most nomads would curl your hair. The After has brought out the worst in humanity, and people take advantage of others all the time. “What were you going to pay him with? Did you still have electronics?”

“Nope. We were going to give him one of Stella’s puppies. It was one reason why we left the fort.” Aggie’s small face grows angry behind her huge glasses. “Since I wouldn’t get rid of my dog at their urging, they stole her from me for two days when someone else came through with a male dog. Now she’s pregnant. I know they want to breed her to sell the puppies, and I didn’t want that life for her. So we snuck out a few nights later with Curtis as our guide.”

“May he rot in hell,” Dottie says grimly. The kitten in her hands squirms and she rubs its ears. “He was the worst.”

Aggie nods. “By the time he got us to the outskirts of the Dallas area, he told us it was our fault it had taken so long for him to get us here. That because we were old he had to take different routes than his regular ones. And instead of just one puppy, he wanted all of them and Stella, too.”

Ugh. “He does sound like the worst.”

Aggie’s mouth quivers, and Dottie picks up the story. “He told us we could ‘earn’ Stella back, but we’d have to pay him in kind. When he ran across you guys, he told us to go in and see if you were worth robbing. If you had anything good, we were supposed to put a red handkerchief on the door at night. That would tell him if there was anything worth taking.”

It sends a chill up my spine. “And if there wasn’t?”

“Then we were supposed to herd you towards Fort Oklahoma. They have a bounty on nomads that are brought in.”

Rabbit shoots me a panicked look, scooping the newest kitten out of Dottie’s hands and moving over to my side. “We’re not nomads!”

“They don’t care, honey,” Dottie says, voice gentle. “But we didn’t put the handkerchief out anyhow. We wouldn’t do that to you ladies.”

“Especially not with Big Meat up there on the roof,” Aggie says.

Which is another point that’s been bothering me. “How did he know we’re working with a dragon? Did you send him a message? Murr was gone when we ran across him the other day.”

“He’s got eyes, don’t he?” Aggie waves a hand at the old bookstore we’re currently in front of, comfortable in the parking lot. “Dragons aren’t exactly invisible. It’s pretty obvious when you have a dragon sleeping outside your porch every night or on the roof in the daytime that you’ve made friends with him.” She cracks a huge smile. “Curtis is probably spitting bullets that his big plans have a dragon-sized kink in ’em. He works best on bullying people and robbing them, but you can’t bully someone with a dragon.”

Dottie glances over at her friend. “It doesn’t get Stella back, though. We’re at an impasse.”

Rabbit crouches next to me, stroking the kitten in her arms. “Murr won’t let anything happen to us. He’ll kill the guy. Eat him in two gulps.”

“That doesn’t get us Stella back, either,” Dottie says gently. “He’s been hiding her from us, keeping her chained up somewhere. If he doesn’t have her, he doesn’t have anything.”

Hmm. “Do you know where he’s hiding out?” When both women shrug, I keep thinking. I don’t like problems that don’t have a solution. “So we need to find Curtis and get him to confess where he’s hiding your dog so we can rescue her.”

“He won’t talk about it. I know he won’t. That dog represents a fortune to him.”

I point at the roof. “He hasn’t met our dragon, has he?”

Aggie looks worried. “How do we know Murr isn’t going to eat him? Or my baby Stella?”

Rabbit makes an offended sound in her throat. She holds up the kitten in her arms. “Murr loves animals! That’s why all these cats are here all the time. He would never hurt your dog.”

“But he could eat Curtis,” Dottie points out. “Just because he hasn’t eaten us doesn’t mean anything. It might be that he doesn’t like the taste of ladies.”

“Obviously, I’ll have to have a conversation with him,” I say. I don’t know how I’m going to convey the help we need, but Murr needs to be part of this. He’s integral to our rescue mission.

Aggie clasps her hands under her chin. “So we’re going to make a trap for Curtis? How do we do it? Bait of some kind?”

“I can be bait,” Rabbit volunteers.

My heart leaps into my throat. “What? Absolutely fucking not.”