Page 7 of Protected By Razor

The door opens.

She’s wearing jeans and a jumper the colour of oatmeal, and her hair’s down around her shoulders, and she looks at me with those eyes I’ve been carrying around for ten years, and for a second I forget why I’m here.

I haven’t stood this close to her in I don’t know how long. Not since Kate’s last birthday, maybe, and that was across a crowded kitchen with four other people between us. Now there’s nothing. Just a doorway and about three feet of hallway and her, looking up at me because even in proper shoes she’s still a foot shorter than me.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey.”

Neither of us moves.

Then she steps back and pulls the door wider. “Come in.”

Her apartment is small. Very small. Living room, kitchen down one wall, a door on the left that must be the bedroom, a door on the right that must be the bathroom. It’s clean. It smells like whatever candle she’s got burning on the coffee table. A jumper is folded over the arm of the couch, a pair of trainers lined up neatly by the door.

Everything about it is her. I can feel that immediately. The tidy, the soft, the careful.

She’s watching me take it in. She’s twisting the edge of her sleeve between her fingers.

“Do you want?— tea? Coffee?”

“Water’s fine.”

“Okay. Right. Water.”

She goes to the kitchen. I take off my cut and fold it over the back of a chair. She turns and sees me do it and her throat moves.

She hands me a glass of water. Our fingers don’t touch. She’s being very careful about that. I notice.

“Sit down,” I say.

She sits down on the couch. I take the armchair across from her, because the couch is not an option. I put the water on the coffee table. I lean forward, elbows on my knees, and I look at her.

“Tell me everything,” I say. “Start from the dog.”

She does.

She talks me through it cleanly. She’s also shaking. Her hands are in her lap and her fingers are moving against each other like she can’t keep them still.

I keep my eyes on her face. I take in everything.

“The dog,” I say when she’s done. “The injuries were consistent with what?”

She hesitates. “Fighting. Systematic. Multiple wounds at different stages of healing, all on the same side. Untrained stitching on the fresh one.”

“And this was the first time you’d seen this guy?”

“First time.”

“You get his plate?”

“Partial. Six digits. I wrote it down.”

“I’ll need that.”

“Okay.” She gets up and walks to the kitchen counter, comes back with a folded piece of notepaper. Hands it to me.

I read it. Tucson plate, the last six characters. The clinic address written underneath in the same careful handwriting. The date.