Like the one now dying in his backseat.

One thing you never displayed in front of men like Tal Nova was weakness. They were like lions, always watching the herd to cull out the sick or vulnerable.

Tal wiped the blood off his oversized hands. "That would've taken all the fun out of it. You got the camera ready?"

Del patted the breast pocket of his denim jacket. "Fiber optics. Transmits to a receiver in the car. Wide angle, so I can get almost a whole room."

"Good. Here's what you do. You go into the clinic with the dog in your arms, screaming how someone ran over your poor puppy. Then you make sure you stay with the doctor the whole time. When she's done, you bring me the video. I'll be waiting right here."

"That's it?"

The taller man leaned forward, his blocky features tightened into a menacing scowl. "That's it. You come right to me. You don't eat, p.i.s.s or make a phone call. You don't pa.s.s Go. You don't do anything before I get that video, understand?"

"Hey, no problem. I'll call you when I'm out."

Del jumped into his stolen car and exited the parking lot.

Driving to the clinic, Del couldn't help but think about what kind of play Tal was working. Something big's going on. I've never seen him like that.

For the first time in all his dealings with Tal Nova, Del wondered if maybe he'd gotten himself into something he was going to regret.

He turned the radio up, trying to ignore the heartbreaking whines from the backseat.

Leah jumped up from her desk at the sound of the man's voice from the waiting room.

"Help me! Is there anyone here? My dog's been hurt."

She ran out of her office and found herself facing a middle-aged man holding a bleeding, crying dog with obvious compound fractures.

"Oh my G.o.d! Come this way. What happened?" she asked as she led the man to the first exam room.

"He got hit by a car. I didn't even know he'd gotten out of the yard. I was in the house and I heard him howling. When I got outside, the car was already driving away."

Leah had the man hold the dog down on the steel table while she looked it over. Besides the jagged bones sticking through the skin, there were several b.l.o.o.d.y cuts on the dog's sides and back.

Worse, her talent revealed the presence of multiple internal injuries, visible to her as glowing spots on the dog's abdomen.

She knew instantly that even with emergency surgery the dog had a fifty-fifty chance, at best.

"Go wait in the other room," she instructed the man. "Your dog needs multiple operations right away, but I can save him."

"No, I have to stay with him," the man insisted.

She shook her head. "I'm sorry, that's impossible. I'll come get you as soon as I'm finished." She pushed him gently but firmly out into the waiting room, and then shut the door. As soon as she was sure he wouldn't try to get back in, she placed both hands on the dog and concentrated on making its injuries disappear.

Immediately her hands grew warm and the dog stopped crying. Leah closed her eyes and braced herself for what was to come next.

The dog cried out, a sharp, surprised bark, and twitched under her hands at the same time as the electric shock ran through her body.

When she opened her eyes again, the dog was healed, its legs straight and whole, new fur already filling in the patches where the skin had been abraded away in the accident.

The dog looked up at her, panting and smiling a doggy grin.

"Hey, boy, feel better now?" she asked, rubbing her hand under its chin. It lifted its head and licked her fingers.

"C'mon, let's take you in the back and wrap you up, and then you can have a nice meal and take a nap."

Leah carried her patient down a back hallway and into the room that served as a combination library and surgical recovery area. The trick was going to be making the dog look like it had undergone an operation.

She gave it a small bowl of canned dog food laced with a strong sedative. Once the dog was suitably groggy, she shaved the back legs and wrapped them in plaster casts. She also shaved a few patches of fur on the body and put iodine on the bare skin, then taped gauze over the areas. After that, she wiped the dried, crusted blood away from the rest of its fur.

Once the dog was sleeping in a recovery cage, she checked her watch. Only forty-five minutes had pa.s.sed since she'd ushered the owner into the waiting room.

Still too soon to pretend I'm done. She thought about going to her office and catching up on paperwork, but there was no way to get from the recovery room to her office without pa.s.sing the waiting area.

Resigned to wasting the next hour or so, she turned on the computer and visited some of her favorite online shoe stores.

And tried to ignore the growing ache in her legs.

Del McCormick waited ten minutes until he was sure the lady vet wasn't coming back out. Then he slipped out the front door and made his way around the building, checking each window to see if he could get a glimpse of what she was up to.

That she was hiding something was a given. There was no other reason for Tal to want her videotaped. The question was, what could a veterinarian be doing that was so important?

He was just about to move on to the next window when he saw movement in the room. Dr. DeGarmo came in, the mutt cradled in her arms. She set it down on the floor, which seemed odd until the dog followed her across the room.

"Holy s.h.i.t," he whispered as he pulled the fiber-optic camera from his pocket and aimed it through the gla.s.s.

He watched in growing amazement as she gave the dog something to make it sleep, and then proceeded to shave and bandage it. When she was done, she placed it in a cage and sat down at her computer.

Del hurried back to the waiting area and sat down, unsure of when DeGarmo would come get him. He held a magazine in his lap like he was reading, but his mind was trying to make sense of what he'd seen.

That dog was dying when I brought it here, he thought. I'm no vet, but even I could see that. Now there's not a d.a.m.n thing wrong with it.

She healed it.

It seemed impossible, but he had the evidence in his pocket. Then another thought came to him.

Tal suspected this. That's why he arranged this whole thing. A vision of Tal Nova finding a stray or adopting the dog from a shelter someplace and then running it over with his car-or worse, beating it with a pipe or bat-ran through his head. He'd set up the doctor with a patient that couldn't be saved the normal way, forced her to use whatever powers she had to cure it.

But how? If only the examining room had had a window, he could've seen the whole thing. As it was, he had to hope he'd gotten enough to earn his money.

Footsteps on tile alerted him to DeGarmo's return before she came through the doorway.

"Is he all right?" Del asked, putting as much concern as he could into his voice.

"Yes," she said with a happy smile. "It was touch and go for a while, but your dog's going to be just fine. Come with me and you can see him now."

She waited until he'd put his magazine down, and then led him down a hallway to the same room he'd seen her in earlier. Her movements were stiff, as if she'd been sitting too long in the same position. The dog was still asleep in its cage, its bandaged legs sticking out as it lay on its side.

"He's really okay?"

"Yes."

He could see how it would be easy for her to make pet owners feel at ease. She had a genuine smile full of warmth and compa.s.sion. Nothing like the cool, clinical expressions so many doctors used on their patients.

"I was so afraid. I thought... Well, when I saw his legs, I didn't think he'd ever walk again." It was no lie; Del hadn't expected the d.a.m.n thing to make it out of the clinic alive. "We just got him a few weeks ago, but the whole family loves him."

"There were some broken bones, but animals heal better than people do," DeGarmo explained. "Luckily there were no internal injuries, so I didn't have to do surgery. Everything else was just bruises and cuts."

Something about the way she said "internal injuries" made him look at her. She was staring at the sleeping dog, and her face had gone very serious and sad.

She's lying! That dog did have internal injuries. She cured them as well.

"How long before the bandages come off?" he asked.

"What? Oh, I'd say three to four weeks. I'll want you to bring him back in two weeks, so I can take another x-ray and see how the bones are healing."

"Can he walk like that?"

She smiled again, but this time he could tell it was at some private joke, rather than for his sake. "He'll have some trouble at first, but don't worry about it. Let him decide how much weight to put on his legs, and don't let him run or climb stairs."

Del wondered what she'd do if he just leaned over and rapped on the casts, exposing her secret. The idea was tempting, if only to force her to explain everything to him. But it would undoubtedly p.i.s.s Tal off. If he'd wanted the full secret, he'd have told Del to get it.

"Can I take him home tonight?"

"Sure. As soon as he wakes up. But in the meantime, can you come out front with me? I need you to fill out some paperwork. And then there's the bill..." Her voice trailed off as if she expected him to object to paying.

"Don't worry," he said. "I've got money."

Thirty minutes later he was back in his car, the still-drowsy dog resting in the pa.s.senger seat and the video playing on his tablet. Everything was there, just like he'd seen it.

This could be worth millions. Now he knew why Tal didn't want him to talk to anyone.

Which brought up the ugly possibility of what would happen after he delivered his information. Exactly how far would Tal go to keep this a secret?

Thank G.o.d for Boy Scouts. Always be prepared, indeed. He opened his leather case and took out a flash drive, inserted it into the USB port on the pad.

While the video copied, he pulled out his cell phone and hit the prearranged contact number. "It's done. I'll be there in ten minutes."

Chapter Eight.

Leah tossed her bloodstained scrubs into the dirty-laundry bin and returned to her office. Another set of files to doctor. The injured mixed breed had been one of the worst cases she'd seen in months.

Good thing he brought it in while I was alone. If Chast.i.ty had been here I might not have been able to Cure it.

She opened the file and Mr. Johnson's paperwork. He hadn't offered much information on the dog, had said he'd just adopted it recently from a shelter and didn't even know how old it was. He'd said the dog's name was Nova. Funny name for a dog. He'd paid in cash too, another oddity. Three hundred fifty dollars. Most people put something like that on their credit card.

Now came the hard part.

Description of injuries or symptoms: After thinking for a moment, she wrote: Multiple contusions from hit-and-run accident. Fractures to left and right fibulas.

There. No mention of compound fractures and no one would be surprised at rapid weight bearing from a broken fibula, the smaller of the two lower-leg bones.

Treatment: Resetting and casting of injuries. Prescription for mild painkillers. Follow up in two weeks.

Patient History: The animal was recently adopted, so the owner had nothing to tell her.

However, there was a way to find out. She'd made sure to jot down the ID tattoo in the dog's left ear. All the shelters in the area made it a habit of tagging their animals in case they ever got lost or stolen. It wasn't as effective as an electronic subdermal tag, but then most shelters couldn't afford the electronic tags.

She looked up the shelter in her list and found it was a place in New Jersey.

"Sure, he was one of ours. Cute little thing," the woman who answered the phone told Leah. "Adopted just today by a man named David Smith. You said it was. .h.i.t by a car? Poor thing. I'm glad to hear he's okay."

Leah hung up the phone and stared at the file.

Adopted today? David Smith? The name on the forms said "Larry Johnson," and the man had specifically said he'd had the dog for a few weeks.

Something wasn't right.

She thought about calling John, but just then sharp pains ran up and down both her legs. At the same time, a sick feeling came alive in her stomach.

d.a.m.n, I waited too long.

She groaned as she struggled out of her chair. The dog's injuries had been severe; she still had a few hours before her life was in danger, but they would be hours filled with agony if she didn't do something about it right now.

Each step down to the bas.e.m.e.nt was an effort and she had to hang on to the railing with both hands. From their cages, four dogs stared at her with ancient, sad eyes as she fumbled with the lights. Doing her best to control the shaking in her hands, she prepared a syringe of sodium pentobarbital and then approached one of the cages.

"Sorry, Trixie, but I don't have a choice. Don't worry, you won't feel a thing."

The elderly c.o.c.ker spaniel lifted its head and thumped its tail weakly as Leah opened the cage door. It made no resistance when she injected the lethal compound into a leg vein. Leah waited for a count of ten, watching as the dog's eyes closed and its breathing grew shallower. Then she placed her hands on it and let the blackness and pain flow out of her. She felt the usual shock of transference, but beneath her hands the dying dog didn't react at all, its nervous system already deadened by the injection.

As the dog took a final breath, the skin on its legs split open and blood poured out from around the broken bones.

Leah fell over on her side, her body suddenly weak from the cessation of pain. She stroked the dead dog's side and let the tears spill out.

d.a.m.n it, d.a.m.n IT! I hate this. Why couldn't there be another way?

It was the same thought she had each time she had to come down here and serve as executioner. It didn't matter that the animals in this room had already been scheduled for euthanasia; the fact that she had to injure them in any way before they died, even if they didn't feel it, was just so G.o.dd.a.m.ned wrong!

One of the other dogs, a Rottweiler dying of congestive heart failure, whimpered softly.