Back in Black (McGinnis Investigations #1) - Rhys Ford Page 0,2

stone terraces and hills that some idiot decided would be great to put down as landscaping for the château. It was an Escher vomit of leaves, rocks, and the occasional naked statue missing an arm or a head but still sporting raging cock-stands or pert breasts. Perhaps both. I wasn’t stopping long enough to admire the art when I could still hear the random movement of a Doberman somewhere behind me.

While I couldn’t see the garage anymore, I was hoping it was behind me. Then I found out one of the dogs wasn’t.

It came at me from the right, a slavering beast with a mouthful of shark teeth and glowing eyes. I love dogs. I have a dog—a small, slightly rotund mop of a dog named Honey who’d come back into my life after she was taken by my boyfriend Rick’s family when he was murdered. Honey was now a spoiled princess who spent her day toddling after Jae while he cooked or lounging in one of several dog beds in our house. Her biggest aggressive act to date had been a particularly virulent gaseous attack following the ingestion of a bag of frozen brussels sprouts she liberated from a shopping bag while we were putting away groceries.

This Doberman was definitely not Honey.

I couldn’t comment on its gas issues, but it sure as hell didn’t resemble the furry lump that slept at the end of our bed every night.

It launched itself from a thin-leafed row of bushes I’d been about to run through and grabbed at my forearm. Up close, the dog looked even more massive than I remembered, but then the brain does funny things when it’s running on pure fear.

Teeth longer than a scorned woman’s memory sank through the arm of my leather jacket, raking over the skin beneath. My heart stopped, picking up an erratic beat on my next panicked breath, but by then physics took over where my panic abandoned any logic and my jacket sleeve tore away, split apart by the dog’s sharp teeth, leaving leather shreds filling its mouth. Enraged, the Doberman shook its head, and I pulled hard, yanking my scraped-up arm out of the remains of my sleeve and leaving the dog to its impotent kill.

I broke back into a hard run, leaving the Doberman to play with its best toy ever and hopefully distracted enough not to notice I’d left it behind.

“Okay, McGinnis.” I started to give myself a pep talk because it didn’t seem like Lamb Chop had any intention of letting me get away without looking like a colander. “Just find a wall. That’ll either lead to the back or the front, but either way, you’ll at least be off the property.”

My arm stung where the dog bit, but it wasn’t like I had a first aid kit in my back pocket. Jae was used to me coming home with all kinds of scrapes and bruises, but a dog bite, even one as shallow as this one, meant I was probably going to face his raised eyebrows and a skeptical snort. He never seemed to believe me when I said I never intended to get into any trouble. It was almost as if he hadn’t known me for several years and picked various bits of glass, metal, and the occasional thorn out of my skin. But I wanted to avoid having someone from the LAPD knock on our front door to tell him I’d been gunned down by a six-foot-tall sheep. There’s only so much humiliation a man can take, and that’s sure as hell not what I want written on my headstone.

“Died having sex with his husband at the age of ninety-five” was more my style. But if I didn’t get my ass moving, Sir Flappy Bits would have my head mounted to his wall above a roaring fireplace and spend his cold wintry evenings regaling his animal-costumed friends of his hunt through the jungle on his own personal Wild Human Safari.

Calming my breathing down, I listened for signs of the other dog and the rat-tat-tat of hooves on the uneven paths. The sounds of the Doberman working its way through my jacket sleeve were faint but distinct. It seemed happy, almost gleeful. So long as it was entertained and not coming after me, I was okay with it. I was less concerned about the other dog and deeply worried about the Desert Eagle.

I didn’t know a lot about gardening, but I knew enough to recognize the bramble