Page 6 of Captive

“That’s a confident diagnosis from a man without a veterinary license.”

Her eyes meet mine. Anger in them, and under the anger, something hotter that disappears before I can decide whether I imagined it.

I didn’t imagine it.

* * *

The line camp is a low concrete building beside an open treatment shed. A kitchen, a radio room, one bedroom with a bathroom off it. Old mechanical dead bolts that answer to the keys on my ring. The bedroom lock takes a brass key older than I am.

14C reaches the shade on her own feet. Only after Sofia settles her does she let me walk her to the building.

Hector took her key ring from the truck console for dispatch. He hands it to me now, and he doesn’t look happy about it.

“My keys,” Sofia says.

“Your truck stays where the county can see the bullet hole.”

“My clinic key is on that ring. My house key. You don’t have any right to them.”

I close my hand around them. Truck, clinic, house, two small cabinet keys, a blue plastic tag stamped RIOS MOBILE LARGE ANIMAL. A whole life on one split ring. It weighs almost nothing.

“County’s eight minutes out,” Hector says.

“Meet them. Give them the driver and the scene. Don’t shorten her statement, and don’t tell them she agreed to leave.”

Sofia studies me. “You understand the truth well enough to protect it for other people.”

“Yes.”

“You just don’t intend to let it stop you.”

“Not yet.”

I take her inside.

She checks the building while pretending to watch me. The second exterior door. The narrow bathroom window. The phone in the radio room. She counts steps between them without moving her lips. I know because I count exits the same way. She looks at the hinges before she looks at the locks.

I put water on the counter, food, the camp first-aid kit, clean towels, the spare work clothes we keep for emergency crews. None of it buys anything. None of it requires thanks.

“The bedroom locks from the outside,” I say. “Bathroom’s inside. The window opens six inches, and the screen doesn’t come off.”

She turns slowly from the sample case. “Give me my phone and my keys.”

“No.”

“Let me talk to the officers at the gate.”

“Not until Garrett verifies who sent that shipment.”

“Garrett McCall doesn’t outrank the state, the county, my license, or me.”

“No.”

“Then unlock the exterior door.”

“I won’t.”

The room changes, because I’ve taken the last ambiguity out of it. She can see the food, the water, the bathroom, her intact evidence. She can see the steel door behind me and the keys at my belt.