By the time she arrived, the dog had inched out from its hiding spot and lain down on the ground beside Vic, head resting on its forepaws. It was a large dog—no mere puppy, from the size of it. Some sort of Labrador mix, Vic would guess. It had short hair mottled into dirty clumps, and the bloody ear flopped over one chocolate eye. Every so often, it would snort with an almost human-like sigh as it gave Vic the most pitiful of looks. He didn’t know what to do—was it injured? Hungry? Hurt? It had downed the rest of his lunch, and as much as he wanted to buy another sausage or three for it to eat, he didn’t want to leave it alone.
Or the boys, for that matter. Bobby’s angry mutterings were muffled by the strip of metal across his mouth, and his friends had given up yelling for help until t
