Chapter 4 - The Price of a Dog
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She picked Posie up at three o'clock from the specialized after-school program. Everything looked perfectly normal at first. Brutus stood rigidly beside the chair, his massive head level with Posie's hand, his thick tail moving in a slow, rhythmic thump against the brick wall when he saw Brier approaching.
It was a picture of peace, until Posie spoke.
"Mama. There was a man standing by the school fence today."
Brier kept walking, forcing her breathing to remain perfectly even.
"He looked at Brutus for a really long time," Posie continued, her sightless eyes facing forward. "Longer than people usually look."
Her hand on the wheelchair handlebar didn't tighten the way it had around the frying pan at the diner. It went rigid in an entirely different way—the way a hunted woman holds herself perfectly steady so her child won't see her shake.
"What did he look like, sweetie?" Brier asked, her voice dangerously thin.
Posie thought about it for a moment, her small brow furrowing.
"He was smiling," Posie said. She put her left hand back on Brutus's broad head, where it belonged. "But he didn't look at Brutus the way people look when they like dogs. He looked the way people look at things in store windows."
Six years old, and already so profoundly perceptive of the darkness in the world.
Brier pulled the heavy dog closer to the chair. She took the long route home—past the busy laundromat, past the crowded schoolyard, adding three extra blocks of public visibility—and pushed the wheelchair faster than she needed to. The thing she had buried seven years ago was sitting on her chest like a heavy, wet wool coat.
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Her daughter had just described a man putting a price tag on a living creature.
Silas ran a massive underground exotic animal and dog-fighting ring. Brutus was a rare, staggering mix of Caucasian Shepherd and Mastiff, weighing nearly a hundred and fifty pounds. In Silas's twisted, bloody world, a dog that size, with that kind of protective loyalty, was worth its weight in pure gold. He hadn't just come to torment his runaway ex. He had come to steal the only thing protecting her daughter.
