Zoe went to the door, afraid to pet Uhura when she was so wired.
“What’s going on, girlfriend?” she said softly. “Shhh. It’s okay, it’s okay.”
She reached out to stroke the dog with her palm, but Uhura snapped at her—something she’d never done, not to anyone, ever—and began hurling herself at the door. She thumped against it three times, loud as a monster knocking.
“Do you have to pee or what?” Zoe said.
She opened the door. Uhura bolted, and Zoe followed her out, her entire nervous system grateful that the barking had ceased.
It was pretty dark, and there was no moon, but there must have been light coming from somewhere because the lake was shining. The blizzard had passed quickly. All that remained was a light snowfall. Zoe shivered and noticed again how badly her body ached. The only thing holding her bones together was pain.
She looked around for Uhura, and began worrying about how she was going to get Jonah home in the morning.
Then she saw a truck barreling down the driveway toward the house, its tires kicking up snow.
It was an ugly, banged-up old pickup. Technically, it was black but it’d been patched in so many places that it looked like it had a skin disease. Zoe couldn’t see the driver. All she could make out was an arm holding a cigarette out the window. For a second, she watched, in the semidarkness, as the red dot of the cigarette floated closer and closer. It was hypnotizing.
When she snapped out of it, she saw that Uhura was flying up the driveway toward the truck—directly toward it, unwavering, like she could block it with her body. Zoe didn’t even have a chance to scream.
Either the driver didn’t see the dog in his headlights, or didn’t care. About a hundred feet from the house, there was a terrible thud. Uhura’s body was thrown into a snowbank.
The snow kept falling as if nothing had happened.
And the driver kept coming. He pulled up to the house. Got out. Left the engine running. Slid a new cigarette into his gross, chapped little mouth and, without even glancing back to see what had happened to Uhura, turned to Zoe.
He looked like hate. He was middle-aged with a graying buzz cut and acne scars. His clothes—pleated black pants, a white shirt with blue stripes—were clearly bought to impress people once upon a time but they couldn’t have gotten him far, because they were so dirty now that a washing machine would have spit them back out.
Zoe raced down the steps and knelt over Uhura in the snow. The dog was shaken, but alive.
The man didn’t say a word. He certainly didn’t apologize. He just stood there, his eyes sliding over Zoe’s body and leaving slime trails like snails. Men had looked at her like this ever since she was 12. When she first talked to her mother about it, her mom had said, “Zoe, sit down for a second. It’s time I taught you the meaning of the phrase ‘horrible lowlife perv.’” Zoe had always loved her for that.
This particular lowlife was grinning, which made her veins twitch.
“You hit my dog,” she said. “Are you insane?”
He laughed, then his eyes got hard.
“That ain’t your dog,” he said. “Just ’cause a couple old folks get themselves dead don’t mean you can come along and snatch up their dogs.” He flicked his cigarette on the driveway, where it fizzled out in the snow. “And whereabouts is the other one—the chickenshit one?”
He knew Spock and Uhura.
“Who are you?” Zoe said.
“Who am I? I’m somebody who hates standing in the friggin’ cold. Also, I’m somebody who hates questions. Now where’s the other damn dog?”
“That’s a question,” said Zoe.
The man barked out a laugh.
“Well, look who’s got a mouth on her! Tell you what, girlie, you can call me Stan, how about that? As in, Stan the Man. I’ll call you … Zoe. How’s that grab you?”
And he knew her.
“Not so goddamn smart-alecky now, are you?” he said.
Uhura struggled to her feet. She shook the snow off her fur and started to growl again. Stan walked toward the dog with a look that Zoe didn’t like. Uhura growled louder, like a rocket about to take off. Zoe stepped between them. She had no plan whatsoever.
“Well, she knows you,” she said. “And she hates you.”
“Yeah, well, this bitch here and I got some history, don’t we,” he said. “And I’m more of a cat person.”
He stopped a couple of feet from Zoe, close enough that she could smell the cigarette smoke leaking out of his mouth, as well as the sour breath beneath it. Up close, his acne scars were so deep it looked like he’d been hit with buckshot.
“You gonna move out of my way?” he said. “I came here lookin’ for money, but apparently I gotta kick a little doggy ass first.”
Zoe was scared and had no idea what to do. He must have seen that, because he didn’t wait for an answer.
He sprang at her.