“At least,” Kate said, boiling forward.

Willard Shugak was all of six feet tall, but he dodged around Jim, keeping the trooper between him and Kate. His voice went high enough to wake up bats. “No, Kate, wait, I—”

“You moron,” Kate said, forgetting for the moment that Willard was almost exactly that, “what if Auntie Balasha came home to a cold house, her pipes all froze up?”

She reached for him and Willard backpedaled, stumbling and almost losing his balance, both hands up, palms out, in a placating gesture totally lost on its intended recipient. Jim watched, delaying official law enforcement action, mostly because he was enjoying the show.

“I wasn’t going to take it all, honest I wasn’t.”

“You’re not even out of oil,” Kate said, cutting back around Jim and catching the cuff of Willard’s jacket. “I went out to your place this morning and checked. You were going to sell it, weren’t you, Willard?”

Willard yanked his arm free and darted back around Jim. “I would have paid Auntie back, honest I would!”

“Sure you would, you little weasel. Howie put you up to this because you were behind on the rent?” Kate feinted a move, Willard dodged back out of the way, and the Darth Vader action figure peeping out of his shirt pocket fell out and vanished into the churned-up snow.

Willard let out a cry of dismay. “Anakin!” He lumbered forward, his hands pawing wildly at the snow. Kate took advantage of his distraction and grabbed a handful of Willard’s dirty blond hair to haul him upright.

“Ow! Kate! That hurts! Jim! Help!”

Jim had less than a second to revel in the sight of a man the size of Willard terrified by a woman the size of Kate before Mutt burst out of the undergrowth, mistook the attempted homicide for a game and romped around the three of them, barking madly while trying to catch the first available hem in her teeth.

At this point Jim, tired of feeling like base in a game of kick-the-can, grabbed Kate and Willard by the scruffs of their necks and held them apart as far as his arms would stretch. If he’d been an inch shorter, he wouldn’t have been able to pull it off with near as much aplomb. “All right, you two, knock it off.”

Kate kicked out with her right foot in reply, which would have connected in a meaningful way with Jim’s left knee had he not moved it smartly out of range just in time. It threw him off balance, though, and Kate wriggled free and was on Willard before Jim could recover. She had Willard flat on the ground, her hands at Willard’s throat and a knee in Willard’s balls. Mutt divined that this was not a game after all and added her two cents’ worth with snaps and snarls that came entirely too close to Willard’s left ear for anyone’s comfort. Willard was bawling, eyes squeezed shut, mouth wide open, face wet with a river of tears, shoulders shaking with big sloppy sobs. “I confess, I confess! Jesus, Jim, couldja please just arrest me? Please?”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Kate let him go in disgust and rose to her feet, brushing snow from her pants. “Get up, you big baby. I didn’t hurt you.”

His eyes rolled toward Mutt, whose head was sunk beneath her shoulder blades, her impressive canines bared in a manner that could only be described as distinctly unfriendly. It was a sight made even scarier by the bloodstains and the ptarmigan feathers adhering to her muzzle, remnants of the lunch she had just finished in the next spruce copse over.

Kate made an impatient sound. “Mutt,” she said.

“Graar,” Mutt said to Willard, conveying a wealth of meaning in one syllable, and trotted more or less obediently to Kate’s side, where she received a compensatory scratch behind her ears in lieu of bloodshed, always Mutt’s preference.

Copyright © 2007 by Dana Stabenow. All rights reserved.