“Now?”
“Now.”
After a quick word to my parents, I climbed onto his bike and he drove me to a house I later found out was his childhood home. A tall man named Joel opened the door, his kind eyes lighting up at the sight of me.
“You must be Heather.”
“I am.”
“A pleasure to meet you at last,” he said with a smile. “I look forward to getting to know you better.”
“Same here,” I responded automatically, still confused as to why Justin had brought me here.
“How is he?” Justin asked Joel.
“Pretty much the same.”
I frowned.Who were they talking about?
Justin reached for my hand and laced his fingers in mine. He lifted up our joined hands and pressed the ghost of a kiss to my skin. “Just remember,” he said in a low voice, “when we’re both teetering on the brink of a bottomless pit we can help each other from falling into the abyss.”
Before I could question what he meant by those enigmatic words, he gave my hand a light tug and we followed Joel to a softly lit bedroom.
There, lying on a cushioned dog bed, was Turbo.
A whirlwind of emotions—shock, disbelief, relief, happiness—slammed into me. I dropped to my knees beside thebeagle who looked so tiny in his bed and touched him gently. He opened his beautiful brown eyes and looked at me.
“How?” I choked out, tears pouring down my cheeks. “How did you know who Turbo was?”
Justin knelt next to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Joel leave the room and close the door quietly behind him.
“You mentioned Turbo’s number was six-seven-five,” Justin said.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “Thank you for taking him out of there.”
He nodded, but in his eyes I glimpsed his evident pain that he couldn’t rescue all the beagles, his guilt that he had to leave them behind to die. Pain and guilt he wanted to spare me from experiencing.
Yes, I’d deliberately left my security keycard behind, but the hope that Justin would do something with it was so faint I forgot about the keycard as soon as I arrived home.
I placed my palm against his tightly clenched jaw, tugging him away from the blackness of the abyss.
We were both a mess of emotions as we sat with Turbo. Joel had given him strong pain medication so he was in and out of sleep while we talked to him and stroked him gently. At one point, Justin carried him on his dog bed outside and Turbo revived a little in the cool night air, his first time breathing fresh air, no doubt picking up smells he’d never smelled before.
We stayed with him the whole night. Not once was he alone. We showered him with more love in those hours than he’d ever experienced in his short life. And we were still talking to him and stroking him when he died in our arms just before dawn.
I take another sip of my tea, feeling the stinging pang of sadness I always feel when I think of Turbo. My dad wanders into the house and Justin strolls in my direction with that slow, lazy smile he reserves especially for me.
After weeks of late-night discussions with my family around his future, Justin enrolled at university to study law. It was his decision to fight for animals on a different front, employing his considerable arguing skills to battle for justice in the courtroom.
I’m close to finishing my studies and I can’t wait to finally begin work as a veterinary nurse.
I stare into the murky remains of my tea and lose myself in the memory of the past couple of months. I was the first person SolomiChem suspected when Turbo went missing, but surveillance footage revealed a hooded male figure carrying the beagle out of SolomiChem. Definitely not me.
The theft of Turbo, however, was soon forgotten after the airing of the bungled primate necropsy video, which generated an unprecedented public outcry. The authorities were inundated with thousands of emails and letters demanding the closure of the facility.
SolomiChem lawyered up, but the controversial footage sparked the anonymous leak of a batch of confidential documents revealing serious animal welfare violations. I can’t shake off the niggling suspicion that Glen was somehow behind the leak.
In the face of all the evidence, as well as escalating public protests, the authorities were finally forced to revoke SolomiChem’s license to experiment on animals. After surrendering hundreds of animals to welfare charities, SolomiChem announced they were shutting their doors.
