Locking the Deadbolts

Can steel security shutters stop a high-caliber round, or do they just buy five minutes of noise?

That was the only question that mattered when three hundred pounds of galvanized slats slammed into the sill.

I hauled on the iron chain hoist beside the reception bay until the links bit into my palms. The corrugated curtain groaned down its track and seated into the floor channel with a heavy, reverberating boom.

I shoved the hardened deadbolt home.

That was the front glass covered. Two exterior doors down. Zero illusions left about how the night was going to go.

I walked behind the reception counter and picked up the black landline handset.

I pressed it to my ear.

Nothing. Not even a hum. Just dead, frozen wire.

"Line is down," I said.

Merritt was already at the inner hallway door, dragging a fifty-pound crate of IV saline bags against the baseboard.

She didn't stop. "Or a pine branch crushed the feeder cable out on County Nine."

"You always this optimistic?"

"I translate wiretaps for federal task forces, Dr. Aldridge. Optimism gets people buried in ditches."

She hauled a second crate into position. Her knuckles were raw red, scrubbed raw by the blizzard.

Her shoulders had a fine, steady tremor running through them.

She was trying to pretend she was warm. She was doing a terrible job of it.

I opened the tall steel supply locker by the utility sink, grabbed a clean navy fleece jacket, and tossed it at her chest.

She caught it against her collarbone. Her chin came up, defensive. "What's this?"

"You're shaking so hard you'll drop the saline," I said. "And I don't have enough glass cleaner to mop up five gallons of sterile water."

She stared at the fleece. For two seconds, she looked ready to throw it back in my face.

Then she pulled it on.

She zipped it to her throat. The sleeves swallowed her wrists.

"Practical," she said.

"Always."

She looked small in my jacket. Smaller than she had any right to look, considering she'd just walked two miles through an arctic whiteout with an encrypted receiver strapped to her ribs.

I adjusted my grip on the shotgun.

"We need the rear sally port reinforced," I said. "The storm latch is solid, but the frame is fifty years old."

"Show me," she said.

I led her down the central spine of the clinic.

The building was dark now, lit only by the low amber diodes of the emergency backup strip along the baseboards. It smelled like bleach, wet fur, and the metallic tang of old copper radiators.

Every joint in my back was tight. I'd spent three hours elbow-deep in a dog's abdominal cavity, and now I was fortifying an animal hospital against armed men.

My father built this place in seventy-four to treat colicky horses. He never planned for a tactical siege.

At the rear airlock, I dropped the secondary steel drop-bar across the steel frame. It clattered into the brackets with a reassuring thud.

Merritt stood watching, her arms crossed over the fleece.

"They'll try this door first," she said quietly. "My tracks lead straight to it."

"Let them try," I said. "The hinges are anchored into poured concrete. They'd need a winch or two sticks of dynamite."

"They have trucks," she said. "And they definitely have dynamite."

I looked down at her. "You really know how to keep morale high."

"I know how Cyrus Hess works." She leaned her shoulder against the cinderblock wall. Her voice was flat, stripped of color. "He doesn't leave loose ends. If his crew lost cargo on Black Ridge, they'll burn every barn in this valley until they find it."

The mention of the cargo made my stomach tighten.

"Your brother," I said. "He was running the drop?"

Her jaw set. A hard line formed between her eyebrows.

"Garrison was driving the lead truck," she said. "Or coordinating the transfer point. He sounded panicked on the frequency. That usually means he stole something he shouldn't have."

"He always was an idiot," I muttered.

"He's my brother, Vaughn."

"That doesn't make him smart."

She looked away. A muscle in her throat jumped.

She didn't defend him. That told me more than an hour of arguing ever could.

"Come on," I said, stepping past her. "I need to check my patient."

We walked back toward Kennel Bay One.

The Anatolian shepherd was resting in the large recovery run at the end of the aisle. The cage door was welded stainless steel, four feet high.

The dog was conscious. His massive head rested on the green waterproof pad. When my boots scraped the floor, his dark eyes rolled toward me, but his tail stayed still.

He was breathing at eighteen breaths a minute. Shallow, but steady.

I unlatched the run and knelt on the cold floor beside him.

"Hey, Bear," I murmured.

I rested my palm against his ribs. His heart rate was eighty-five. The vascular ties on the mesenteric branch were holding.

Merritt stepped up to the bars, peering in. "He made it through?"

"He's tough," I said. "Tougher than most people I went to vet school with."

"Who owns him?"

"Nobody in this valley," I said. "He dragged himself into the equipment shed at eleven tonight with six feet of rusted high-tensile wire wrapped around his flank. I had to use bolt cutters just to get him onto the table."

Merritt went very still.

"What time?" she asked.

"Eleven. Just before the storm turned nasty."

"That was thirty minutes after the drop failed on the ridge," she whispered.

I stopped checking the dog's gum color.

I looked up at her. "What are you saying?"

"The intercept said the drop vehicle rolled into a ravine because the dog went wild in the cab," she said. Her eyes locked onto the shepherd. "He must have broken through the shattered glass, torn through the high-tensile perimeter fence at the timberline, and scrambled downhill toward your shelter."

My chest went cold.

I turned back to the dog.

I reached around his thick, matted neck. Beneath the heavy fur, my fingers brushed against a wide, stiff collar.

I hadn't removed it during surgery. I'd been too busy stopping him from bleeding out on the table to worry about leatherwork.

Now, my thumb ran along the underside.

It wasn't leather. It was double-layered nylon webbing, reinforced with industrial rivets.

And it was heavy. Far too heavy for a simple ID band.

"Merritt," I said. "Hand me the utility shears from that tray."

She reached through the bars, picked up the heavy stainless shears, and handed them down.

Our fingers brushed.

Her skin was cold, but her grip was rock-steady.

I slipped the blunt tip of the shears beneath the heavy outer stitch of the collar. The thick nylon fought the blades, but I leaned my weight into it.

Snip. Snip. Rip.

The seam split open.

Inside the hollowed core of the webbing was a flat, vacuum-sealed package wrapped in silver foil.

I sliced the foil open.

A heavy, matte-black titanium drive slipped into my palm. Attached to its corner was a micro-transmitter, its tiny amber LED pulsing once every four seconds.

A tracking beacon.

I stared at the black drive in my hand.

The dog let out a low, sleepy sigh, resting his chin on my knee.

"They didn't just track your boot prints here," I said quietly.

Merritt reached out, her fingertips hovering just above the flashing amber diode. "The payload was already inside."

We weren't just two people caught in a blizzard anymore. We were holding the one thing Cyrus Hess was willing to kill for.

I grabbed the heavy lead X-ray apron from the recovery cart and folded it tight around the drive, smothering the signal in solid rubber.

"Now," I said, looking up at her in the amber gloom, "we have leverage."