“I don’t know,” the woman said. “They don’t look like TV people, but—”
Three people pushed past her and entered the room, the lead person flanked by another man and woman. Everyone dressed in black. The men were in suits, and woman in black slacks, blouse and jacket.
“You Gus Yablonsky?” the man in the middle asked.
Gus took another sip of his coffee. “Who wants to know?”
“I’m Daggert,” he said.
“And these two?”
The woman said, “I’m Bailey.” She pointed a thumb at the other man. “This is Crawford.”
“Mr. Daggert, Ms. Bailey, Mr. Crawford — I am pleased to make your acquaintance. I am, as you surmised, Gus Yablonsky.”
“We want to know about the dog.”
Gus tipped his head to one side, sized up his visitors. “Where are the cameras? Aren’t you from the TV station?”
“We’re not from the TV station,” Daggert said. “We want to know your involvement with the dog.”
“Involvement?”
“You enabled its escape.”
“Escape?” Gus shook his head and stood up. “Look, Mr. Daggert, I found the mutt in the cargo hold. He was nearly dead. I got him breathing again and he took off. End of story.”
Daggert’s eyes narrowed. “Why didn’t you hold onto him?”
“I wanted to. But he got away.”
“Did someone take him from you?”
Gus blinked. “Huh?”
“Was it all worked out ahead of time?” Daggert asked. “Did you tell someone you’d be bringing the dog to the station? Was someone waiting for you and the dog to arrive?”
Gus said, again, “Huh?”
“Are you really this stupid, Mr. Yablonsky, or is someone paying you to act dumb?”
“Mister, have you been smoking something funny? Because you’re not making any sense at all.”
Daggert gave a nod to Bailey and Crawford. They closed in on Yablonsky, grabbed him under the arms, dragged him across the room and pinned him against the wall.
Bailey produced a device in her free hand. Not a gun, but something with what looked like pincers on the end. She pressed a button, and a bolt of electricity crackled between the two points. A stun gun.
“Close the door, Crawford,” Daggert said.
“Whoa!” said Gus. “Hang on!”
Daggert approached, his face an inch away from the bus driver’s. “I’m going to ask you again. Who are you working for? If I don’t believe you, Bailey here will turn you into a light bulb. Now, who do you work for?”
“The Simpson Bus Company! I’ve worked here twenty-three years!”
Daggert pursed his lips, nodded at the woman. She released her grip on Yablonsky, hit a button on the weapon, and touched it to the man’s stomach. It made a sound like a bug wandering into a zapper.
“Aggghhhh!” he shouted.
The man slid down the wall and crumpled onto the floor.
“One more time,” Daggert said. “Who do you really work for?”
“I’m telling you the truth! The Simpson Bus Company!”
Daggert looked deeply into the man’s eyes. “You know what? I think I believe you.”
“It’s true! It’s true!”
“Do you know where the dog went?”
“He just ran away! Well, he came back just for a second.”
“He came back? Why?”
“To lick me,” Gus said.
“To lick you?”
“He wanted to thank me.”
Daggert considered that bit of information for a moment. “Interesting,” he said. “Did the dog try to communicate with you in any other way?”
“Communicate?”
Daggert sighed impatiently. “Yes, communicate. Do you not understand me?”
“Like I said, he licked me. Is that communicating?”
“Nothing else?”
Now it was Gus who was becoming exasperated. “Like what?”
Daggert shrugged. “A series of eye blinks or tapping of paws, for example? Did he show you his port so that you could link with him? Did the dog in any way attempt to speak to you?”
Gus, eyes wide with disbelief, said, “Seriously, what have you been smoking?”
Daggert let out a long breath. “He knows nothing,” he said to Bailey and Crawford. To Bailey, he said, “Give it to him one more time, but set it to amnesia.”
Before Bailey zapped him again, she said, “You’re gonna lose an hour, you’ll never know we were even here. You’ll have one hell of a headache, but at least you’ll be alive.”
“Who are you people?” Gus Yablonsky asked. “Who do you work for? Who asks if a dog has communicated with them?”
Bailey smiled before she touched the stun gun to the bus driver’s arm. His eyes rolled up into his head and he slid down to the floor.
Fifteen
When he’d first escaped The Institute, all Chipper had worried about was getting away. But now that he was many miles away, and off that bus — Oh, that wonderful driver! — the dog could assess his next step with more deliberation.
That meant getting his bearings.
He had made it to Canfield, which was good. Not only was it the only place he wanted to go to, he felt it was the place he had to go. Once he’d fled the bus station, gotten outside the small town of Canfield and into the shelter of a wooded area, Chipper stopped. He needed to rest and give his lungs a chance to recover from being filled with exhaust.
It didn’t matter how much technology the White Coats had built into him, Chipper still needed good old air to survive.
He settled into the leafy, forest floor, resting his head on his paws. Almost immediately, he spotted a squirrel running down one tree, across the ground, and up another.
Chipper could not be bothered to give chase. That’s how tired he was.
But the squirrel sighting reminded Chipper that it had been a long time since he’d had anything to eat. Or drink. A squirrel might make a tasty snack, but he wasn’t sure he had the strength or the speed to catch one.
Chipper’s long jaw widened in a yawn. He eased his body onto its side into a pile of leaves and allowed himself to go to sleep.
And sleep he did. Right through the night.
He woke twice to almost total darkness. Not the kind of pitch-black darkness he’d experienced in the bus luggage compartment, where he couldn’t see anything at all. This darkness was filled with gentle light. The star-filled night sky allowed him to take in his surroundings. He heard crickets, the scurrying of mice, an owl’s hoot.
The sounds did not frighten Chipper. They comforted him. They were more reassuring than the sounds of The Institute. The laboured breathing of his fellow captives. The soft whir of the air conditioning. The tap-tap-tapping of computer keyboards.
It was neither sunlight nor sounds that woke him the next day.
It was the smell of something delicious.
Chipper opened his eyes, consulted his implanted clock. It was 11:09 a.m. He put his snout into the air, tracked the direction from which the smell had come.
East.
With some effort, he stood. He still did not feel right. Wobbly. That exhaust had really done a number on him.
But he was hungry. He put one paw in front of the other and followed the scent. It led him out of the woods to the back yards of a string of houses in a subdivision outside Canfield. Chipper saw swing sets and sandboxes and gardens. One yard, with a pool, was fenced off. The folks in the house next to it had a small plastic one, about four feet wide, that held barely a foot of water. Only a low hedge separated their garden from the woods.
A great place to get a drink.
But that yard offered something even better.
A barbecue. The lid was open, and Chipper could see something on the grill, sizzling.