I couldn’t have moved if I'd been poked with an electric cattle prod. My brain was seized with terror. I saw that foot and everything else faded into blackness.
Jack was not similarly afflicted. He let out one eerie, high pitched, strangled cry, his whole body thrashed into a wag, and he disappeared behind the hay bales where the body lay.
The shoe moved, rolling over from toe down to toe up. A groan. Major rustling of hay. Jack uttered a long howling moan.
“Help, I’m being attacked by a tongue,” came Bob’s voice.
Kay flew across the rough boards of the floor. I discovered I could breathe again, and even move. I hurried after her.
Bob looked up from his cocoon of hay bales and grinned. The navy sweater was gone; otherwise he wore last night’s clothes. His face, ears, and neck were being thoroughly scrubbed by Jack’s long pink tongue. I leaned over and grabbed Jack’s collar and pulled him backwards, then held on as he bucked and wiggled to get back to Bob.
Kay reached down and offered her hand to Bob, who took it and pulled himself upright.
“Ladies,” he said by way of greeting, nodding and brushing off wisps of hay. He looked very tired and rumpled and altogether wonderful. I let go of Jack’s collar and threw my arms around him. Immediately his long arms wrapped around me, and we clung to each other, my face buried against his flannel shirt.
We were blasted apart by Jack.
“Whoa, Jack,” Bob said. “Easy, boy.” He knelt and began to scratch Jack down the spine.
I opened my mouth to say something—I have no idea what—but Kay was faster. “Bob,” she exclaimed, “where the hell have you been? How did you get here? How long have you been here? What is going on? Lou has been worried sick about you!”
He looked up at me over the wiggling dog. “This is the damnedest mess,” he said, “and I don’t want to get you involved in it. You saw me get carted off from the store last night?”
I nodded. “In a gray Mercedes like the one sitting out on the road a few yards from your driveway.”
“What?” Bob stood up. Jack sat down on his foot.
“Yeah, we saw it just now,” Kay said, conveniently forgetting that she hadn’t seen it at all until I pointed it out. “That’s why we came through the woods, we’re sneaking up on your house to get Lou’s car back.”
He crossed to the door and peered out. “Your car, Louisa?” he said. He gave me a quick look over his shoulder before resuming his inspection of the woods.
“I went to your house early this morning to see if you were there, and while I was inside I looked out and a man was searching my car. Jack was scared so we took off through the woods and made our way to Kay’s store. Now we’re coming to get my car back.”
Bob turned back to look at us. “I need to find out what’s going on at my house.” His voice was crisp with command. “Kay, you take Louisa and Jack back to your car and I’ll—“
“No way, buster,” she broke in. “We’re not leaving you to disappear again. Louisa and I are coming with you.”
“You can’t—” He stopped. The identical stony expressions on our faces said clearly that we would not be left behind. “Okay, okay, we’ll all go,” he said, throwing his hands in the air. Then he grinned at us. “Come on, we’d better hurry.”