She didn’t move. Couldn’t. Her muscles had forgotten how. One of the attackers shoved her to the ground. She hit the concrete hard, and pain shot through her reconstructed knee, the shock of it briefly breaking through her sticky thoughts. She needed to react, to give them what they wanted, but she couldn’t make her limbs work. The gun jabbed into her back.
They were going to do it. Shoot her right here on this street to get her anniversary gift from the firm, a TAG Heuer watch she rarely wore, and she couldn’t make herself move.
Click. Boom. Click. Boom.
She closed her eyes, bracing for it, but a different sound came instead.
A vicious snarling ripped through the air, and the press of the gun disappeared. Her attackers shouted at each other, cursing, and Rebecca rolled over in time to see a big, black ball of fur leaping at a tall, thin assailant. The docile dog from earlier was gone. In his place was a wild animal with bared teeth and wolf hunger in its eyes. He knocked the guy with the gun to the ground.
The other took off down the street, his baseball cap falling off behind him, but the one with the gun was flat on his back and blocked from her view, wrestling to get the dog off him and crying out when the animal sank his teeth in
to his arm.
Rebecca tried to push herself to a stand, wanting to help the dog, but pain stung her as glass from the wine bottle cut her elbows.
“Hey!” A deep male voice shouted from a distance. Footsteps pounded against the street.
“Gun!” Rebecca yelled, the word coming out in one big gasp. She needed to warn whoever was coming closer. She couldn’t have another death on her hands.
She crawled forward, but before she could reach the fray, the gunshot went off like a firecracker. The sound echoed in Rebecca’s ears, reverberating down to her bones and hurtling her deep into terrifying memories. But the high-pitched yelp of the dog snapped her back into the moment. Her stomach lurched. “No!”
Her attacker—a thin, white guy in a hoodie—got free and took off in a stumbling run. The dog collapsed, blood already pooling beneath him. Rebecca crawled to his side, frantic.
Whoever had yelled finally reached them. She heard him skid to a halt next to her. “Jesus Christ.”
Rebecca pressed her hand to the dog’s head, and he whimpered. Tears jumped to her eyes, and everything that had been moving in slow motion in her head jolted into full speed and bright colors. “Oh God. No, no, no.”
“Shit.” The man stepped closer, the soles of his black Vans touching the edge of the blood and his breathing labored from his run. “You’re bleeding. We need to get you—”
She shook her head, trying to get words out.
“Ma’am, I think you’ve been shot. I’m going to call for help. Just—”
“No. Not me,” Rebecca said, finally managing to make her mouth work. “The dog.”
“The dog?”
“He’s dying.” She didn’t recognize her voice. She sounded hysterical. She never got hysterical. “Do something!”
“We need to call the police. Those guys—”
She grabbed the leg of his jeans. “No!”
“But—”
“He saved me.” She looked up at that, finding light hazel eyes staring down at her, worry etched into a serious face. “We need to help him. Now.”
The guy crouched down next to them and braced his arms on his thighs, revealing colorful tattoos beneath his rolled-up sleeves. He let out a breath. “Okay. Right. The dog first. My brother’s a vet. I’ll try him. Then I’m calling the cops.”
“Okay.”
He shifted to his knees and tugged off the black button-down shirt he had on over his T-shirt and handed it to her. “If you can find the wound, put some pressure on it.”
“Thank you.” She balled up the shirt and peered back down at the dog, watching his flank flutter with rapid breaths. She couldn’t tell exactly where he was shot, but she pressed it near his backside where the blood seemed to be the thickest.
The man stood, pulled a phone out of his back pocket, and stepped away to make the call.
Rebecca shifted closer to the dog, gently petting his head as tears rolled down her face. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” she said softly. “We’re going to take care of you. Thank you for saving me. If you can just hold on, you can have all of my chicken.”