GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN.
NOBODY WANTS TO SEE AN INNOCENT GIRL CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE.
The letters were inked so hard the paper was dented, and I could smell the sharp edge of the marker, fresh and chemical. There was no signature. The creases in the paper suggested someone with big hands, the kind that didn’t mind breaking fingers.
I stared at the words until they ghosted on my retinas. Sergeant whined behind me, pacing from one end of therun to the other, and I realized she was picking up on the charge in the air, the way animals always do when something’s about to go bad.
The logical thing would have been to lock the doors, set the note aside, and forget it ever existed. Instead, I pulled out my phone and dialed Dean, thumb punching the number before I could talk myself out of it.
He picked up on the third ring, but he didn’t speak right away. I heard the background first, a hum of angry voices, the rattle of a bottle on wood, the bone-dry echo of a meeting room that was never meant for peace.
“Em?” he finally said, voice low.
“Are you safe?” My words tumbled out, high and thin. I heard my own desperation and hated it.
A pause, then, “What happened?” No pleasantries, no jokes. Just the immediate snap-to of a man who’d been trained to expect trouble every time his phone rang.
I could hear the tension in the way he said it—the way his vowels clipped short, his consonants landed with more certainty than they usually did when we were alone.
I swallowed, realizing my mouth had gone dry as shredded cotton. “I got a note at the shelter. Under a kennel door. No name, butit’s—”
“Read it to me,” he said, interrupting. I could picture him, eyes already scanning the exits, pen in hand, minute book pushed aside. His focus would be total, surgical.
I unfolded the note with both hands, trying to keep the paper steady. “It says, ‘YOU’RE IN OVER YOUR HEAD. GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN. NOBODY WANTS TO SEE AN INNOCENT GIRL CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE.’ That’s it. Nothing else.”
I heard the collective roar of voices dim in the background as Dean must have stood and walked away from the table, shutting the door on the chaos inside. Now it was just the sound of his boots on linoleum and the distant, ever-present rumble of the club. “Any idea who left it?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, tried to conjure an image. “Could have been anyone. We had volunteers in and out all day. The handwriting is—it looks like someone tried to disguise it. But the phrasing is familiar.”
A new pause. This one longer. “Don’t move,” he said, and his voice had gone so soft and cold I shivered. “I’m coming to you. Don’t talk to anyone. Lock the doors and turn on every light you can.”
I heard the scrape of his chair, the clatter of a bottle knocked over, the sudden spike of male voices as he re-entered the main room. Then a muffled exchange, hisvoice not raised but edged with such authority that even through the phone, it cut through.
“Stay on the line,” he said, back in my ear.
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see it. My knees hurt from kneeling on the tile, but I stayed there, Sergeant nosing at my wrist. I fished a treat from my pocket and gave it to her with a trembling hand. She took it, then sat, tail sweeping slow arcs on the floor.
On the other end, I heard Dean moving—door, hallway, the metallic jangle of keys. The voices from the meeting room bled through, blurred now with concern or curiosity.
“Are you alone?” he asked, and I could tell he was already outside, the wind cutting in sharp and clear.
“Just me and the dogs. I’m in the back. The front doors are locked.”
“Good. Leave them that way. Do you see anyone outside?”
I crept to the edge of the kennel, peered through the dirty wire mesh to the window. The parking lot was empty except for my car and a battered work truck, probably left by one of the maintenance guys. Streetlights threw sickly halos over the gravel.
“No. Nothing weird. But it feels wrong, Dean. Like someone’s watching.”
He grunted. Not at me, but at the situation itself. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Don’t hang up.”
The next sound was the guttural churn of his Harley’s ignition. I listened as it built to a roar, then faded into the white noise of evening traffic.
I let the phone drop to speaker, placed it on the desk, and moved to the front, checking locks again and again. I flicked on every light, bathing the shelter in the kind of glare that made shadows impossible to hide in. The walls looked sickly, and the floor reflected every flaw.
Sergeant trailed behind, hackles barely up. She never barked, but she stood between me and every open space, as if she could soak up the danger by osmosis.
I watched through the glass as a single headlight carved the dark, splitting the night in half. Dean pulled up, cut the engine, and scanned the lot before even dismounting. He peeled off his cut, tossed it into the saddlebag, and stalked to the door with a look that would have sent lesser men running.
