Free Rottweiler Rescue by Ellen O'Connell

pain killer it took, I was keeping my late morning appointment with the new client. Canceling would invite him to shop around for tech help.
    That decision was easy. What to do about last night’s attack was not, and I was still worrying at the problem when I realized the water was cool and my fingers and toes were starting to look like pink prunes.
    Clean and dry, I pulled on a baggy T-shirt and cutoffs that ended mid-thigh and didn’t rub on my sore knees. The deep cut under my chin didn’t show unless I lifted my head, but the raw red line that ran across half my throat and behind my right ear before disappearing into my hair was a different matter.
    I decided makeup could wait until I was dressing for the client appointment. Searching through my closet, I found a knit blouse with a high neck that would cover most of the wound and decided to dress for my meeting like a Katherine Hepburn wannabe. The damage to my hands was all to the heel of the palm, so I should be able to hide the wounds. Maybe.
    Limping around the kitchen starting coffee, I continued thinking over the events of the night before with increasing dismay. For weeks, Jack Sheffield’s murderer had quite rightly ignored me as no threat to him. What had changed his mind? I didn’t like the answer I came up with.
    When the doorbell rang, I followed the dogs to the front door and peered out with unusual caution. The man on my doorstep wasn’t tall, masked, or dressed in black. His arrival resolved at least one of my early morning dilemmas and was more of a relief than I wanted to admit. After making all three dogs sit behind me, I opened the door.
    “Good morning, Lieutenant,” I said.
    “Morning, Ms. Brennan. I hear you had an interesting time last night.” Lieutenant Forrester’s perceptive gaze swept over me, taking in the evidence of my interesting time.
    I crossed my arms and leaned against the doorjamb.
    “Is my name on some kind of a list?” I asked suspiciously.
    “No, but I try to keep an eye on what’s happening in the county, and there was your name staring up at me, spelled right and all, on a report out of Parker. And surprise, surprise, dogs were involved. Are you going to tell me what happened, or can’t you resist the pleasure of slamming the door in my face?”
    “Oh, come on in,” I said, moving back out of the doorway. “I’ve been debating whether or not to call you.”
    Without thinking, I led him back to the kitchen, poured us both mugs of coffee, and sat down across from him as if he were a friend on a social call. “I didn’t tell the Parker cops it was the same man because I didn’t want to be there all night. I hurt and I wanted to come home.”
    “I figured it was something like that, and of course the paramedics wouldn’t have let you take the dogs in the ambulance.”
    “Exactly.” I studied his face for any trace of condescension but didn’t find any.
    “So it was him.”
    “It had to be. He grabbed me from behind when I walked into shadows and had me around the neck right until he shoved me away so hard I fell, but he was the right height, I think, and dressed all in black the same way. It had to be him.”
    “Ski mask again?”
    “I think so. The way he had hold of me I couldn’t see his face anyway, but there was something, something that gave me the impression of a mask again. He couldn’t risk being seen. He meant to kill me.”
    “So why didn’t he?”
    “I’ve been sitting here thinking about it, and I think he meant to drag me to his van, kill me there, and maybe dump my body somewhere it wouldn’t be found for a while. He didn’t count on the dogs, and when they came at him he panicked and threw me at them. He took a wild swipe at my throat, but I was already falling, so he missed. Sort of.”
    I lifted my head and showed him the deep cut under my chin and gave him a good look at the shallower line running from there into my hair.
    Forrester whistled. “He couldn’t have come much