Rottweiler Rescue
Available for purchase or borrow at Amazon (paperback and ebook).
Story Summary:
When Dianne Brennan volunteered as a foster home for Rottweiler Rescue, she knew the job wouldn't be easy, but she didn't expect it to be murderously hard! Yet murder is what Dianne finds herself dealing with when she takes a dog to meet an adopter, finds the adopter dead and sees the killer leaving the scene.
Can Dianne keep herself and her dogs safe long enough to track down the killer? Can Dianne and her Rottweilers collar the killer?
Excerpt:
Moving slowly and without enthusiasm, I got out, opened the back door, and snapped a leash on Robot’s collar.
“Come on. Let’s go see your new home,” I said.
He kept his head turned away from me and didn’t move until I tightened the leash slightly, then he jumped from the car. Crossing the street, he lagged several feet behind me like a teenager embarrassed to be with a parent.
Opening the gate to Jack Sheffield’s backyard finally lifted my mood. The six-foot cedar privacy fence would keep a dog safe, and the lush green lawn shimmering in morning sunlight would hold cool air throughout the day in the tree-shaded areas. A mower roared nearby, filling the air with the sweet scent of new mown grass.
Maybe Susan McKinnough, head of Front Range Rottweiler Rescue, was right. Susan was the one who had dubbed the dog now following me “the Robot” because of his unnatural behavior. She wanted a special kind of home for a dog that had been so abused he had withdrawn from the world, and she considered Jack Sheffield special.
I closed the gate, followed the walk around the side of the house then along the edge of a low redwood deck toward the center steps. The sound of a sliding glass door meant Jack had been looking for me, eager to meet his new dog.
I glanced up and started to greet him. “Hi, I’m Dianne Brennan, I . . . .”
The figure that came out of deep shade near the house into the bright light at the edge of the deck was swathed in black from the ski mask on his head to his ankles. White running shoes stood out under the black apparition. He stopped at the deck’s edge, staring at me as intently as I stared at him.
As I stood and gaped, my mind struggled to accept the obvious—this wasn’t Jack Sheffield, and something was terribly, dangerously wrong.
Jack was shorter and slighter of build. And he didn’t have colorless eyes so cold they made my stomach curl. Because I was staring into those eyes, as mesmerized as any hapless mouse by a snake, I saw the change in them when he decided what to do about me.
The glint of sun on metal broke the spell. I tore my gaze from his eyes and saw the knife, saw him raise the gloved hand holding it toward me.
Before he moved, before I could turn to run, Robot walked forward. He looked up at the figure in black with the same calm indifference he had shown to sights through the car window.
No sound came from him, his hackles were not raised, his posture had none of the stiff-legged signs of canine aggression. He just stood there, a hundred and twenty pounds of unwanted rescue Rottweiler between me and a man with a knife who had just decided to kill me.
