I was tangled together with Hooker when I woke up, our legs intertwined, my nose tucked under his chin. He was still asleep, his breathing deep and regular. I looked at my watch. It was almost nine.

“Hey,” I said to Hooker. “Wake up. It’s almost nine and Beans should go out to tinkle.”

Hooker half-opened an eye. “Okay. Just give me a minute.”

“Don’t you dare close your eyes,” I said. “I know you. You’re going to close your eyes and instantly fall asleep again. And Beans should have gone out an hour ago.”

“He’s not complaining,” Hooker said.

I looked around the room. “That’s because he isn’t here.”

“Maybe Felicia came to get him.”

A tiny, horrible tendril of panic curled in my stomach. “Hooker, do you remember Beans coming into the house with us?”

Hooker opened both eyes. “No.”

“Do you remember him being in the SUV with us?”

“No.”

Our eyes locked. “Did you ever take him out of the hauler?” I asked Hooker. “He was sleeping in the lounge. You locked him in when Felicia came to help us.”

“Don’t tell me I left him in the hauler,” Hooker said, hands over his eyes. “I’m still sleeping and this is a nightmare, right? Jesus, pinch me or something.”

I bit into my lower lip. “I’m going to throw up.”

“Shit,” Hooker said, on his feet, hunting down his shoes. “I don’t fucking believe this. We were so careful not to leave prints, and then we leave the dog.”

I had the SUV keys in my hand and my other hand on the doorknob. “Maybe we can get to him before Huevo’s people.”

I drove because Hooker couldn’t afford to lose his license by doing a hundred on the interstate. I took the off-ramp on two wheels and laid four feet of rubber when I jumped on the brakes in the strip-mall lot where we’d parked the Huevo hauler.

The SUV rocked to a stop, and Hooker and I sat in frozen silence. No hauler.

Hooker cut his eyes to me. “You aren’t going to cry, are you?”

I blinked tears away. “No. Are you?”

“I hope not. I’d feel like a real pussy.”

“We need to get Beans back.”

“Yeah, and Beans isn’t our only problem. We just told the Huevo team we stole their hauler and made off with their cars. And we told the guy who killed Oscar Huevo that we found Huevo wrapped up like a Christmas ham.”

“You’re in big trouble,” I said. “They’re going to come looking for you. Good thing I’m not involved.”

“I’m going to tell them it was all your idea.”

I smiled over at Hooker. He might be a jerk when it came to fidelity, but he’d protect me with his last breath. “What do we do now?”

“They might not be too far in front of us. We could cruise north and try to catch them. They might not even know Beans is in the lounge. Maybe we could sneak in and get Beans when they stop for lunch.”

I wheeled the car out of the lot and was turning toward the interstate entrance when Hooker’s cell phone rang.

“Yeah?” Hooker said. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” And he disconnected.

“Who was that?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t give me his name. He said I was a rotten bastard for abandoning my dog. That I didn’t deserve to have a great dog like Beans. And that he was going to kill me.” Hooker slouched in his seat. “I can’t believe I left Beans in the hauler.”

“We were exhausted. We just weren’t thinking.”

“That’s no excuse. This is Beans we’re talking about. Beans is…family. He’s special. And he’s kind of dumb. How’s he going to get by without me?”

“Well, at least the killer likes Beans; that’s a good thing, right?”

“Of course he likes Beans. How could anyone not like Beans? I tell you, this is war. No more Mr. Nice Guy. I’m getting my damn dog back. I’m going to find this Beans snatcher, and I’m going to get medieval on his ass. Oscar Huevo won’t be the only one with bullet holes and tooth marks in him. This piece-of-shit Beans snatcher is going down.”

“You’re sounding a little on the edge here,” I said to Hooker. “We need to get Beans back, but maybe you want to chill. You wouldn’t want to do anything rash, right?”

“When have I ever done anything rash?” Hooker yelled, cords standing out in his neck. “Do I look like I’m going to do something rash?”

“Yeah. Your face is real red, and your eyes are crazy man. How about we think this out over breakfast. And maybe I can find a diner that has a defibrillator just in case you have a heart attack.”

“I’m not hungry,” Hooker said. “I just want my goddamn dog back.”

“Sure. I know that, but we need a plan. And you could think better if your eyes weren’t so popped out of their sockets, right?”

“Are my eyes popped out of their sockets?”

“If they popped out any more, they’d be rolling around on the floor.”

I pulled into the first diner I saw, and I got Hooker settled into a booth. Hooker ordered a ham-and-cheese omelet, bacon, pancakes, home fries, juice, coffee, and a side of biscuits with white gravy. Good thing he was too upset to be hungry, otherwise he might have cleaned out the kitchen and the diner would have had to close.

Hooker’s eyes were narrowed, his mouth was tight, and he angrily tapped his fork on the table.

I firmly removed the fork from Hooker’s hand. “Did the killer guy have an accent? Did he sound Mexican?”

“No. No accent.”

“Did he say when he was going to kill you?”

“He didn’t go into detail.”

“Were there noises in the background? Could you tell where he was?”

“It sounded like he was driving. I could hear Beans panting.”

“Did he give any indication of where he was going?”

“No. Nothing.”

The food arrived, and Hooker forked in some omelet. I drank my coffee and stared into my empty cup. I looked around for the waitress but couldn’t find her.

“Have you always had this waitress problem?” Hooker asked.

“Only when I’m with you.”

Hooker swapped coffee cups with me. The waitress appeared and gave him a refill.

I ate the cereal I’d ordered and drank some more coffee. A tear slid down my cheek and plopped onto the Formica tabletop.

“Oh crap,” Hooker said, reaching over, cradling my face in his hands, using his thumb to swipe the tears from my cheek. “I hate when you cry.”

“I’m worried about Beans. I’m trying not to be crazy, but I feel terrible. I bet he misses us.”

“I’m worried about him, too,” Hooker said. “And now some guy wants to kill me.”

I snuffled the tears back. “Yes, but you deserve to die.”

“Jeez,” Hooker said. “You really know how to hold a grudge.”

“A woman scorned.”

“Darlin’, I didn’t scorn you. I just boinked a salesclerk.”

“There were pictures on the Internet!”

Hooker’s cell phone rang.

“’Lo,” Hooker said. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”

He disconnected, and I gave him raised eyebrows. “Well?”

“That was Ray Huevo…the grieving younger brother of the deceased Oscar. You remember Ray, the brother not eaten by the swamp monster, the brother you saw at the track with Horse and Baldy, the brother who undoubtedly knows the spawn of Satan who has my dog. He wants his cars back.”

“That could be a problem. Does he care if they’re the size of a loaf of bread?”

“Let’s walk through this,” Hooker said. “Someone killed Oscar Huevo, shrink-wrapped him, and stuffed him into a locker in the hauler. We’re assuming it was an inside job, but the truth is, those haulers aren’t locked and anyone could get in and dump a body.”

“Not entirely true. You need a garage pass to get to the hauler area.”

“That narrows it down to a couple thousand.”

“Okay, so a lot of people had access. It’s still not that easy. They had to bring the body in somehow. And we know he was brought in, because there wasn’t any blood in the hauler. Even if they’d scrubbed it down, I think we would have seen some blood or signs of a struggle. Even if they shot him outside the hauler and dragged him in, we’d see blood. And he was naked, with a boner…okay, I guess that could happen in the hauler.”