Dire Threads Read Online Free PDF Page A

porch, and now a thick and ugly aqua blob marred the porch’s gray floorboards I wondered where they’d thrown the can. Not in the river, I hoped. I planned to repaint the entire cottage after the renovations. First, I would have to find a way of overturning Mike’s zoning decision.
    Far away, up the river, dogs barked.
    Sally and Tally were no longer snuffling in the underbrush.
    Worse, the gate separating my yard from the trail was wide open.
    I panicked. “Tally-Ho! Sally-Forth!” Did they know their names yet? Calling, whistling, and rattling treats in my pocket, I sprinted upriver, the direction the barking had come from. I’d been warned that if the two littermates ever got away, they’d feel secure with each other and might not realize they were lost until too late and they could no longer find their way home to me. That probably explained how they became strays in the first place, something I never wanted to happen to them again. They had looked at me with their matching amber eyes, trusting me completely, and I had given those two darlings my heart.
    And then someone opened my gate and let them escape.
    It had to be Mike or one of his buddies from the ATV club. Mike had driven away early in the afternoon, but he wouldn’t have needed to go far to sneak back to the trail behind my place. He was the one who supposedly knew my property so well that he could tell when ice pushed my cottage an inch onto public land.
    He could be miles away by now. So could my two innocent little dogs. “I’ll kill him,” I repeated, startling a pair of hikers. “Someone opened my gate and let my dogs out,” I explained.
    The hikers hadn’t seen my dogs, but a flock of birders had. This time, my accusation was more specific. “Mike Krawbach helped my dogs escape from my yard.”
    “Are your dogs wearing tags?” a woman asked.
    “Yes, and my address is on their collars, so if you find them . . .”
    “The poor dears.” She wiped at her eyes. “If we see them, we’ll bring them back.” Elderberry Bay had its share of sympathetic citizens.
    But what if the dogs lost their collars? Or some horrible person like Mike Krawbach took them home and didn’t pamper them?
    It was too dark to see. Telling myself that Sally and Tally could have returned home, and also telling myself not to think about the treacherous ice patches in the river, I jogged back. I’d left my gate open so the dogs could come in. I called them, but all I heard was my shop phone ringing. I ran up the hill and answered the extension in my apartment. Nobody. No messages, either.
    Where were Sally-Forth and Tally-Ho? Staring out into the darkness toward the river, I kicked myself over and over.
    I should have padlocked my gates. I didn’t dare leave to buy locks right now, though. The dogs might return, find they couldn’t come inside, and blithely run off.
    Upstairs in my shop, the doorbell rang.

3
    I CHARGED UP THE STAIRS AT A BREAKNECK pace. Sally and Tally pressed their noses against the glass of my front door. Breathless with relief, I threw the door open. They galloped inside, towing a man behind them. Without a glance at the man, I knelt and buried my face in cool fur, first Sally’s, then Tally’s. The wriggly pups whimpered and kissed me until my cheeks were wet from more than their kisses.
    I forgot the man until the door latched, closing him and the dogs inside my shop with me. “I take it these two scamps belong to you,” he said.
    I rose from my emotional greeting with my pups and blushed. Not because the man’s warm brown eyes radiated kindness and concern, but because I’d neglected to thank him for bringing the inquisitive pooches home. He knelt to cuddle the dogs. Luckily, he didn’t seem to mind being slobbered over.
    A red pickup truck with white lettering on the door was parked underneath a streetlight outside. I stammered my thanks, adding, “I hope they didn’t track too much mud into your truck.”
    “They were good. It