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flow of traffic, away from Valerie’s neighborhood. He resisted the urge to tramp the accelerator into the floorboards. He couldn’t risk being stopped for speeding.
    “What the hell?” he asked shakily.
    The dog replied with a soft whine.
    “What’s she done, why’re they after her?”
    Water trickled down his brow into his eyes. He was soaked. He shook his head, and a spray of cold water flew from his hair, spattering the dashboard, the upholstery, and the dog.
    Rocky flinched.
    Spencer turned up the heater.
    He drove five blocks and made two changes of direction before he began to feel safe.
    “Who is she? What the hell has she done?”
    Rocky had adopted his master’s change of mood. He no longer huddled in the corner. Having resumed his vigilant posture in the center of his seat, he was wary but not fearful. He divided his attention between the storm-drenched city ahead and Spencer, favoring the former with guarded anticipation and the latter with a cocked-head expression of puzzlement.
    “Jesus, what was I doing there anyway?” Spencer wondered aloud.
    Though bathed in hot air from the dashboard vents, he continued to shiver. Part of his chill had nothing to do with being rain-soaked, and no quantity of heat could dispel it.
    “Didn’t belong there, shouldn’t have gone. Do you have a clue what I was doing in that place, pal? Hmmmm? Because I sure as hell don’t. That was stupid.”
    He reduced speed to negotiate a flooded intersection, where an armada of trash was adrift on the dirty water.
    His face felt hot. He glanced at Rocky.
    He had just lied to the dog.
    Long ago he had sworn never to lie to himself. He kept that oath only somewhat more faithfully than the average drunkard kept his New Year’s Eve resolution never to allow demon rum to touch his lips again. In fact, he probably indulged in less self-delusion and self-deception than most people did, but he could not claim, with a straight face, that he invariably told himself the truth. Or even that he invariably wanted to hear it. What it came down to was that he tried always to be truthful with himself, but he often accepted a half-truth and a wink instead of the real thing—and he could live comfortably with whatever omission the wink implied.
    But he never lied to the dog.
    Never.
    Theirs was the only entirely honest relationship that Spencer had ever known; therefore, it was special to him. No. More than merely special. Sacred.
    Rocky, with his hugely expressive eyes and guileless heart, with his body language and his soul-revealing tail, was incapable of deceit. If he’d been able to talk, he would have been perfectly ingenuous because he was a perfect innocent. Lying to the dog was worse than lying to a small child. Hell, he wouldn’t have felt as bad if he had lied to God, because God unquestionably expected less of him than did poor Rocky.
    Never lie to the dog.
    “Okay,” he said, braking for a red traffic light, “so I know why I went to her house. I know what I was looking for.”
    Rocky regarded him with interest.
    “You want me to say it, huh?”
    The dog waited.
    “That’s important to you, is it—for me to say it?”
    The dog chuffed, licked his chops, cocked his head.
    “All right. I went to her house because—”
    The dog stared.
    “—because she’s a very nice-looking woman.”
    The rain drummed. The windshield wipers thumped.
    “Okay, she’s pretty but she’s not gorgeous. It isn’t her looks. There’s just…something about her. She’s special.”
    The idling engine rumbled.
    Spencer sighed and said, “Okay, I’ll be straight this time. Right to the heart of it, huh? No more dancing around the edges. I went to her house because—”
    Rocky stared.
    “—because I wanted to find a life.”
    The dog looked away from him, toward the street ahead, evidently satisfied with that final explanation.
    Spencer thought about what he had revealed to himself by being honest with Rocky. I wanted to find a life.
    He