Had she been jolted out of her sleep by a similar noise a minute ago?
Oh, jeez. Of course. Ben must have driven past and seen the lights on in the clinic. It wouldn't be the first time he'd come around on a late-night drive-by to check in on her. She really didn't feel like getting a lecture on her crazy hours or her stubborn streak of independence.
The noise came again, another clumsy bump, followed by an abrupt clatter of metal as something got knocked off a shelf.
Which meant someone was in the back storage room.
Tess rose from her desk and took a few tentative steps toward her office door, ears tuned to any disturbance at all. In the kennels off the reception area, the handful of post-op cats and dogs were restless. Some of them were whining; others were issuing low warning growls.
"Hello?" Tess called into the empty space. "Is someone here? Ben, is that you? Nora?"
Nobody answered. And now the noises she'd heard before had gone still as well.
Great. She'd just announced her presence to an intruder. Brilliant, Culver. Absolutely frigging brilliant.
She tried to console herself with some fast logic. Maybe it was just a homeless person looking for shelter who'd found his or her way into the clinic from the back alley. Not an intruder. Nothing dangerous at all.
Yeah? So why were the hairs on the back of her neck tingling with dread?
Tess shoved her hands into the pockets of her lab coat, feeling suddenly very vulnerable. She felt her ballpoint pen knock against her fingers. Something else was in there as well.
Oh, that's right. The tranq syringe, full of enough anesthetic to knock a four-hundred-pound animal out cold.
"Is someone back there?" she asked, trying to keep her voice firm and steady. She paused at the reception station and reached for the phone. The damn thing wasn't cordless--she'd gotten it cheap on closeout--and the receiver barely reached to her ear from over the counter. Tess went around the big U-shaped desk, glancing nervously over her shoulder as she started punching 911 on the keypad. "You' d better get out of here right now, because I'm calling the cops."
"No... please... don't be afraid... "
The deep voice was so quiet, it shouldn't have reached her ears, but it did. She heard it as surely as if the words had been whispered right up next to her head. Inside her head, strange as that seemed.
There was a dry croak and a violent, racking cough, definitely coming from the storage room. And whomever the voice belonged to sounded like he was in a world of hurt. Life and death kind of hurt.
"Damn it."
Tess held her breath and hung up the phone before her call connected. She walked slowly toward the back of the clinic, uncertain what she was going to find and really wishing she didn't have to look at all.
"Hello? What are you doing in here? Are you hurt?"
She spoke to the intruder as she pushed open the door and stepped inside. She heard labored breathing, smelled smoke and the briny stench of the river. She smelled blood too. Lots of it.
Tess flicked the light on.
Harsh fluorescent tubes buzzed to life overhead, illuminating the incredible bulk of a drenched, badly injured man slumped on the floor near one of the supply shelves. He was dressed all in black, like some kind of goth nightmare--black leather jacket, tee-shirt, fatigues, and lace-up combat boots. Even his hair was black, the wet strands plastered to his head, shielding his downturned face from view. An ugly smudge of blood and river water traveled from the back door, partially opened onto the alley, to where the man lay in Tess's storeroom. He had evidently dragged himself inside, maybe unable to walk. If she hadn't been so accustomed to seeing the grisly aftermath of car accidents, beatings, and other bodily trauma in her animal patients, the sight of this man's injuries might have turned Tess's stomach inside out.
Instead, her mind switched from alarm and the instinctual fight-or-flight mode she'd been feeling out in the reception area to that of the physician she was trained to be. Clinical, calm, and concerned.
"What happened to you?"
The man grunted, gave a vague shake of his dark head like he wasn't going to tell her anything about it. Perhaps he couldn't.
"You're covered in burns and wounds. My God, there must be hundreds of them. Were you in some kind of accident?" She glanced down to where one of his hands was resting on his abdomen. Blood was seeping through his fingers from a fresh, deep puncture. "Your gut is bleeding--and your leg too. Jesus, have you been shot?"
"Need... blood."
He was probably right about that. The floor beneath him was slick, and dark from what he'd lost just since his arrival at the clinic. He'd likely lost a good deal more before he got there. Nearly every patch of his exposed skin bore multiple lacerations--his face and neck, his hands, everywhere Tess looked, she saw bleeding cuts and contusions. His cheeks and mouth were pale white, ghostly.
"You need an ambulance," she told him, not wanting to upset him, but, damn, the guy was in bad shape. "Just relax now. I'm going to go call 911 for you."
"No!" He lurched from his slump on the floor, thrusting his hand out to her in alarm. "No hospitals! Can't... can't go there... They won't... can't help me."