Page 24 of Love for a Lifetime

Jennifer rested her hand on the gun at her hip as she radioed, “Signs of forced entry. Show us approaching the residence.”

Dawson scanned the yard and the woods nearby. Nothing moved–no sign of anyone other than the hole in the door. He stepped up the cinder block steps and knocked on the doorframe. “Blackwater PD.”

Jennifer’s attention swung from one side to the other, constantly on alert.

Dawson tried again. “Blackwater PD!”

Muffled shouts came from the back of the house. “You called them?” a man shouted.

A woman snapped back, “I had to!”

There were a few curses thrown both ways before Dawson knocked again, louder this time. “Blackwater PD!”

“I’m coming!” the woman yelled in the same tone she’d used with the man. She stomped through the house and flung the door wide. “It sure took you long enough,” she snapped up at Dawson.

The woman was sickly thin with skin that sagged and wrinkled over her bones. Her teeth were half rotten, and her mouse-brown hair was matted on one side. She could have been anywhere from forty to seventy years old.

This call was about to go bad in a hurry. Dawson could feel it in his bones.

Another officer associated himself with the call through the radios.

“We got a call about a domestic disturbance,” Jennifer said.

The woman scratched her head and laughed. “Oh sure, if that’s what you wanna call it. That man in there has hit me for the last time!”

“What is your name, miss?” Dawson asked as he pulled his notepad and pencil out of his chest pocket.

The woman frowned up at him. “I don’t think you need my name, do you? He’s the one you’re here for.”

She’d just finished the last word when a deep bark echoed through the house.

Dawson’s blood ran cold, and his chest tightened. It wasn’t the bark of a lapdog. No, that was a full-grown set of chompers pounding through the house.

“10-91V” Jennifer radioed to dispatch.

A tan dog with short hair standing about waist high bounded around the corner behind the woman, sliding over a rug and the slick floor. Jennifer was beside Dawson, and he swept his arm out, pushing her behind him.

The woman yelled and stepped out of the way, opening the door wider as the dog launched at Dawson. He managed to side-step the first attack, but the dog circled back and lunged again, too fast for Dawson to avoid a second time.

The hot, stinging pain wrapped around his leg. You’d think he’d develop an immunity to things like this after repeated exposure, but the familiar ripping in his skin was just as powerful the twenty-fourth time as it had been the first.

7

OLIVIA

Olivia rounded another corner in the old chicken house that had been converted into a flea market. Her arms were overloaded with doilies, glassware, and vases she could use as centerpieces for the wedding.

Lyric stopped a few paces ahead of Olivia and gasped. She pointed to a shelf covered in small, glass figurines. “Look at that!”

Olivia hurried over and immediately spotted the broach. “Oh, you have to get it.”

Stepping over the tarnished silver tea set that was displayed on a low table, Lyric reached for the broach and turned it over. “It’s twenty-five dollars.”

“I don’t care if it’s fifty. We’re getting this broach. It’ll look amazing with your bouquet,” Olivia said as she adjusted the items in her arms.

Betty stepped up beside Olivia and took a few things from the pile she carried. “What did you find?”

“This beautiful broach,” Lyric said, holding it out to Betty, her future mother-in-law.

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