"You can never tell. Maybe he has a foot fetish."

Devon started for the back of the clinic and stopped. What the hell. She turned and locked the front door herself. "Go out the back door. We don't want any drop-ins delaying you."

"Good idea," Terry said absently as she started to dial the phone.

Devon stopped at the examining room where Hugh Dalks was filling out reports on the way to the back door. "Go home, Hugh. I'm declaring an official holiday."

"What?"

"You heard me." She opened the back door. "It's my first day back, and we're breaking early."

"Are you sure you're feeling okay? That doesn't sound like the workaholic I know and love."

"I'm fine. Get out of here. I want this place cleared in five minutes." She closed the door, and her gaze darted around the back parking lot. Nothing suspicious. God, she was turning paranoid. This was only a precaution, dammit. She unlocked the SUV, and Ned jumped into the back.

"Lie down." Okay, go for broke. She might as well go the whole nine yards. "Play dead, Ned."

Ned rolled over and closed his eyes.

He knows that trick to perfection.

Why had Marrok felt he needed to know that particular trick? She tossed the plush football blanket she kept for transporting sick animals over him. "This is crazy. I hope your friend Marrok isn't leading me down a blind alley." She got into the SUV and backed out of the parking space. "Because I don't like him interfering with my-"

Her driver's side window shattered, and a bullet plowed into the leather of the passenger seat!

What…

A man was running out the back door of the clinic toward her car. "Stop, bitch." He lifted the gun in his hand. "Gotcha."

A hot streaking pain seared the side of her neck.

Shot, she realized incredulously. She'd been shot.

She instinctively pressed the accelerator, but the man had reached her car and was running beside it, pressing the muzzle against the glass.