Fixed Read Online Free Page B

come in through the narrow windows set high in the clinic walls, the glass carefully cut and removed, and bodies lowered on ropes into the space while others busied themselves outside, in the parking lot, black-clad shapes blending into the shadows when he passed by.
    Eventually, when nothing more was heard, and no one came to investigate, most of the heads went back down onto paws, cats recurling themselves. Most, not all. Along the rows of kennels, noses were pressed up against the mesh, nostrils flaring, ears alert. Older cats and streetwise newcomers rested in alert pose, the tips of their tails barely twitching, waiting. Listening.
    At 5 a.m., the first sound of human voices returned, the clatter and clank of wheels and doors, a man’s familiar low voice calling out greetings to the first animals on his route.
    Only then did the sentinels relax.

2
    W e’ll talk about it tomorrow,’ you said,” Teddy muttered to himself, slapping the rim of the steering wheel in frustration. “Brilliant. Because now it’s tomorrow, genius.”
    It was tomorrow, noon already, and he still hadn’t made a decision. And Ginny would be here soon, expecting an answer.
    He got out of his car and checked the parking lot out of habit: an old beater Ford he didn’t recognize, but otherwise empty, and the trash bins had been emptied last night, the lids left open. All was as it should be.
    There was an entrance into the back of the bar off the parking lot, but Teddy instead went around the building and leaned against the front wall, waiting for Ginny to walk down the street, her stride probably hampered by Georgie’s slower pace and constant need to stick her doggy nose into something.
    He didn’t know why he was even dithering; he knew how this was going to go down. There would be that look on her face, the one that said she knew something he didn’tand was going to tell him about it. And, in the telling, change his mind. Which he hadn’t made up yet.
    â€œNo, Ginny.” He tried saying it out loud. “Absolutely, no.”
    Even the air, damp and cool, seemed skeptical.
    â€œShit.”
    He looked down the short, tree-lined block one more time, but it remained empty of anything other than a few midday shoppers and one jogger in professional-grade orange running gear, clearly not Ginny. He checked his watch: five after noon. She was running late, and he was, technically, on the clock.
    Mary’s front door was an old wooden beast, painted a bright red, and currently wedged open by a straightback wooden chair stuck between door and frame. Teddy stared at it, then sighed. After the bar had been robbed, and then would-be killers had gotten in a few months back, he’d suggested to Seth that maybe they should keep the door closed when the bar wasn’t actually open for business. Obviously, that suggestion hadn’t made a dent in the old man’s habits.
    â€œSeth!”
    There was a clatter in the tiny kitchen, in response. Teddy shook his head, amused. Seth’s bad moods were by now a source of comfort rather than concern.
    Normally he’d have come in early and immediately gone behind the bar to check that everything was in shape before his shift started, obsessively prepping everything so that he was ready the moment the clock ticked over, no matter if it was a lazy afternoon shift or a hot-from-the-start Saturdaynight. Today he ignored the bar entirely, pulled one of the small tables out from the wall and dropped himself into one of the chairs, stretching his legs out in front of him and contemplating the tips of his boots.
    Teddy wasn’t sure when meeting for lunch had turned into a semiregular thing, but Tuesday through Thursday, the three days during the week he took afternoon shift, Ginny would come downtown and grab lunch with him before Mary’s opened for business. Sometimes she brought Georgie; sometimes Seth or Stacy would join them if they were on