I’d combed my hair and put on a little lip gloss, which had probably already disappeared, but I didn’t check the mirror. It was too late for major repairs. I got out and started toward the door.
A woman rounded the corner to intercept me. At first she smiled, but her expression darkened as she examined me. I thought she might be the blonde I’d seen on my last jog-by. She was attractive in an outdoorsy kind of way, sandy hair, freckles that blended into a tan, a wedding ring on the hand she lifted to brush a long strand of hair out of her eyes.
“Can I help you?”
I thought it was already clear she didn’t want to. “I’m looking for Teo. Is he here?”
“Maybe I can help.”
I drew myself to my full height, although it was futile since she was almost a head taller, as well as muscular and fit. “I need to see him.”
The front door opened, and we both turned our heads. Teo stepped out. His hair was longer than I remembered, no longer buzzed but starting to curl. He was still slender and broad-shouldered. A khaki-colored T-shirt emblazoned with Confidence K-9’s logo hung over dark shorts, and he looked both older and younger than the man in my memory. Younger than the K9 officer who had, while seriously injured himself, killed a man to protect me. Older than the one who’d shared my bed so often and well.
I’d thought of a million possible greetings, none of which covered all the bases. But as my gaze flicked over him, assessing the changes, I stopped at the leg that had been shot out from under him by John Quayle. The leg I remembered was gone, and in its place was a prosthesis starting below his knee.
My head began to whirl and tears welled in my eyes.
By then the blonde had disappeared inside, as if she realized whatever was about to play out would happen with or without her. Teo watched my expression. When my eyes finally met his, he cocked his head. “Nobody told you?”
I shook my head. “Not exactly the kind of thing we talk about at cocktail parties.”
“Since when do you go to cocktail parties?”
I blinked back the tears. “I could use a cocktail now. How about you?”
“I was averaging five or six a day until I decided to give up my leg.”
“Did your buddies get you drunk every night to help you get through...everything?”
“Unfortunately, I preferred to drink alone. I wasn’t very good company. But you already know that.”
My fears about the way this reunion would go morphed into something far more terrible. I said the only thing I knew to be true. “This is my fault.”
“No. John Quayle’s fault.”
“You came to my rescue, and if I’d listened to you in the first place you wouldn’t have needed to. As it turns out...” I swallowed and looked away. “You were right.”
From the moment he’d arranged our interview, John Quayle had probably planned to follow me from Starbucks, maybe just to find where I lived so he could strike later. But a better opportunity had emerged almost immediately. He had stayed well behind me on the road, so that even though I was careful, I couldn’t be careful enough. Aided by the storm he’d been able to pull closer, and when I’d stalled at the rising water on the road ahead, he’d seen his chance.
Now I told Teo the same thing I’d told him in the days after Quayle had nearly killed us both. It bore repeating. “After our interview I realized he was angry. He couldn’t hide it. I told myself if I had served time for a crime I didn’t commit, I would be angry, too. But I was careful leaving. I worked on my interview notes first, then more or less sprinted to my car. On the drive I checked behind me a few times. Then I got this crazy idea to take the rural route home. I thought I’d get there faster. I’d been away long enough to forget how badly it can flood.”
“It still does.”
I waited, but he didn’t say more. “He must have felt like such a winner. He had me and probably intended to take me somewhere and dump me. Most likely the dead me. He probably knew that once it was clear I was missing, you’d look for me. He could take vengeance on both of us, the cop and his girlfriend, the Free Press reporter.”
I returned my gaze to his. “And the dog who tracked him to the tree stand.”
Quayle had nearly succeeded. After I’d left Teo the message that I was sitting at the light at Flamingo and 7th, he had figured out which way I was heading. Even knowing I would be furious, he decided to trail me, just in case. Of course he saved my life. He arrived just as Quayle was wrestling me into his backseat at gunpoint, my hands bound by zip ties.
“Bismarck made it,” he said. “I made it. You made it.”
I looked down at his leg. “Why did you...?”
He gave the slightest shrug. “I was stupid to hang on to it as long as I did. One day I found myself wondering how I could end my life and make it look like an accident, and I realized the doctors were right. My leg was never going to stop hurting. I was growing too reliant on painkillers, and when I realized how dependent I was, I stopped taking them. But the pain was almost unbearable.”
“Oh, Teo—”
He shook his head, as if to say not to pity him. “My leg was never going to be the way it used to be, no matter how many surgeries I endured, and I was never going to work with a K9 unit again. I finally realized I would never be good as new. So I decided just to be new, instead. A brand-new me.”
“I really didn’t know.”
“Yeah, I can tell. I guess you moved on and stopped asking about me.” He smiled a little, but it was tight and controlled. “Right?”
I thought about lying, but I couldn’t. “No, I was asking, but I guess I didn’t ask the right people.”
“I don’t advertise.”
“I may have missed even more. You’re married?”
“What makes you think so?”
I let my gaze travel to his left hand, which was unadorned. “The woman who greeted me seems pretty proprietary.”
“Janice probably recognized you from old news stories. She’s one of our trainers. She’s married to our kennel manager.”
There was no reason to feel better. My relationship with Teo had ended years ago. Of course logic and emotion don’t always cross paths.
“I don’t know how many ways I can say I’m sorry,” I told him. “I haven’t thought of any new ones since you told me to get out of your life.”
He raised a brow. “It helps that on my last day on the job, I made sure Quayle would never terrorize another woman anywhere.”
The scene was still fresh in my mind, especially after last night’s nightmares. Quayle turning away as Teo’s patrol car approached, my futile kick to his hand, hoping he would drop the gun. Quayle turning angrily back toward me, gun still clutched firmly, a shot flying past my head. The slam of a car door, Bismarck’s frantic barking. Then a streak of canine fury coming right at us. More gunshots, then Bismarck, who was hit twice, falling to the ground as Teo launched himself at Quayle to separate me from my attacker.
Quayle managed to get off one more shot, the one that had, in the end, been responsible for the loss of Teo’s leg. But Teo had already drawn his gun. Cops shoot to kill. Teo had taken the lesson to heart.
When the events of that evening became public knowledge, very few people mourned Quayle. A year later, after an anonymous tip, cadaver dogs searched his mother’s property. The bodies of two women were discovered in a pit behind the house. To my knowledge neither was ever identified.
“Back then, I really didn’t want you to leave,” Teo said quietly. “But I knew you didn’t want to be here.”
I started to protest, but I stopped. Because Teo was at least partly right. Torn between guilt, sorrow and a bone-deep aversion to the kind of anger that had shaken him, I’d floundered badly, so badly that when he’d pushed me away, I had let him.
I said the one thing guaranteed to prove he wasn’t completely rig
ht. “I’ve missed you.”
Something flickered in his eyes. “Four years is a long time to miss somebody.”
“I’d like to take all the blame, but my phone number never changed. You knew how to find me.”
“I wasn’t the man you’d known.”
“Which man was that, Teo? The one who saved my life and nearly lost his own? The man who did what was right instead of what I insisted I wanted?”
“The one who still knew who he was.”
I let out a long breath and my heart seemed to twist in my chest. “We could have shared that. I didn’t know who I was, either. Maybe I still don’t. But I guess sharing feelings isn’t something I’m good at.”
“No kidding.” He softened that with the hint of a smile.
“We’re talking.” It was the most I had hoped for.
“We seem to be.”
The chance to veer away from our volatile past was right in front of me, so I grabbed it. “And while we’re at it, I have something else to talk to you about. Do you have a few minutes?”
“Would you like to see the kennel while you tell me why you’re here?”
He opened the door and ushered me inside, where it was comfortably cool in the entryway. A long corridor led off to the left, and individual runs lined it, some with dogs barking for attention, others with dogs comfortably snoozing.
He stood beside me. “This is our boarding wing. Boarders are evaluated and sorted so we know who they can play with in the yard. Some have to be taken out individually for one-on-one.”
I stared straight ahead. “Isn’t that always the way? The worse they behave, the more attention they get. Same with people.”
“We work with each dog to improve manners. But the dogs we trust the least are inside, near the office.”
I was trying hard to leave space between us, and he noticed as we started down the concrete passageway. “Don’t get too close to the fencing as we walk. Somebody might try a friendly nip.”
I walked closer to him, trying not to pay attention to whether he winced with pain or had problems navigating corners. I tried not to pay attention, but of course, I did. And as we walked I relaxed a little. He seemed as comfortable with his prosthesis as I was with my well-broken-in running shoes.
Since I’d had little experience with dogs, I couldn’t name breeds, but a couple we passed looked fierce enough that I hoped the chain link fencing surrounding them was as strong as it looked.
“I won’t walk you down the other aisles. It’s more of the same, but those dogs are here specifically for training.” Teo opened a door at the end that was fastened with a chain, and we crossed through to another walkway, this time looking over a large open area. I noted a playhouse complete with tower, a wading pool, a corner shaded by canopy. Instead of grass, the ground was covered by artificial turf.
I was already impressed. Confidence K-9s was spick-and-span, and well organized. There were charts along the walls with names of dogs and instructions, with boxes to initial when a job was finished. The individual care was obvious.
I was surprised by one thing. “Artificial turf? Grass won’t grow here?”
“It’s easier to clean. We wash it down three times a day. Some dogs prefer the real thing, though, so we have another area with mulch.”
“I wouldn’t mind being a dog here.” We stood together watching the four dogs that were now in the yard romping. One, a collie of some kind, leaped against the fencing to look us over. A young man of about twenty was outside with them, and he came over and shooed the dog away. Teo introduced him as Jim before he went back to what he’d been doing.
“So what did you want to talk to me about?” Teo asked.
“I need a dog.”
“The Humane Society has plenty. Somebody there can help you make a good choice.”
“That was just my lead-in. I need a special kind of dog. Here’s the thing. I seem to be a bad-guy magnet.” I gave him an abbreviated version of the attack at Wendy’s town house.
“What is it about you, Ryan?”
I wondered the same thing. “The deputy who showed up to take my statement said a dog would be the best deterrent. We already have a security system. But I’m taking care of my sister’s little girls for a while. And I want to keep them safe.”
“Why? What’s up with your sister?”
Teo had never met Wendy. That was a reminder of how short-lived our relationship had been. Or maybe it was a reminder of how territorial I had felt. I hadn’t wanted to be diminished by Wendy’s splendor.
I phrased my answer carefully. “She’s away helping a friend, and her husband’s on a nuclear sub somewhere out in the ocean. I’m temporarily Aunt Everything.”
“Your parents are okay?”
“Dad just had heart surgery, and Mom’s busy taking care of him. So I came home to help out.”
“Just how long do you need a dog?”
I stumbled over that. “Well, not forever.”
“That covers a lot of territory.”
“I don’t know for sure when Wendy will come home. So I don’t have a good answer. It just depends on circumstances.”
He let that go, although I was afraid he’d filed his curiosity away to pull out again if needed. “I don’t suppose you’re looking for one to take with you when you leave town again?”
“I guess since I work at home a dog’s feasible. I probably have room for a small one. But I need something large and fierce right now, a dog so intimidating even raindrops won’t fall near the town house.”
“And a dog gentle enough to be safe with your nieces.”
I realized how foolish I’d been. “You don’t happen to have a dog I can plug in to guard the house when I need him and unplug when I don’t?”
“You’re describing any well-trained dog, a dog who does the job at hand, no more, no less. We train security dogs, and we train them to obey. The thing is, we don’t rent dogs. It takes time to train an owner to work with a dog. Mutual respect is involved.”
“I fully realize how stupid this sounds. I guess I was feeling desperate.”
“Desperate enough to talk to me instead of jogging by?”
I could feel my cheeks heating, but I didn’t deny it. “It’s a fine road for jogging.”
“I almost came after you last time to tell you it was safe to talk to me again.”
“I wish you had.”
“I liked watching you work up your courage. I wondered if you ever would.”
“It wasn’t easy.”
“Bismarck,” he said, as if that was the next sensible thing to say.
I tilted my head. “How is Biz?”
“Recovery took months. We weren’t sure he would make it, but he did. The department retired him, along with me. He sleeps in my bedroom now.” As a police K9, Bismarck had always lived in a kennel behind Teo’s little bungalow, ready and willing at any moment to go out on patrol with his master.
“I knew he was living with you,” I said. “My sources were at least that good, although not the part about sleeping in your bedroom.”
“Biz knows you, likes you. He may be old now, but he’s plenty feisty. And he’s great with children. Janice and Harry have two. He does sleepovers with their kids. They love him.”
I tried to imagine having Bismarck in my house, living with me, watching over me. “He saved my life.”
“He may well have. But he won’t hold that against you.”
“You’re sure about this? You would trust me?”
“I might. He’s in the next building. Let’s go see him. If he goes for your throat, it’s probably not a good idea.”
I put my hand on his arm. Just a light touch, and quick. “You really thought about coming after me when I jogged by? To talk this through so we could be friends again?”
“I wasn’t
sure a conversation was a good idea.”
“And now?”
He shook his head. “I’m still not sure. But it appears we can be civil.”
“With all our baggage, you’re still willing to help me?”
“It’s possible I’m so weighted down by all that baggage I can’t see over the top of it.”
“No, I think it’s better than that. Maybe we’ve lightened it enough that we can finally move on.”
His expression grew serious. “On one condition. If I ever tell you to be careful, and you decide I’m wrong, Bismarck’s gone for good. I won’t put my dog in danger again, even if you think leaping in with both feet is a great plan for yourself and those little girls.”
I heard his ultimatum and knew he was right. “That will work if you’re willing to talk through the alternatives first.”
“Biz will still remember you. He won’t hold the past against you.” He started down another hallway and I followed.
Bismarck’s owner still remembered me, just the way I remembered him. Would he ever not hold the past against me? I told myself we’d come further today than I’d ever imagined. I would just be grateful.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I took myself out to lunch after my visit to Confidence K-9s, sitting at Seabank Seafood overlooking the water and replaying my reintroduction to Bismarck.
Dogs are so much more straightforward than people. He had been asleep in the office when Teo’s kennel tour took me there, but when I walked in, he lumbered to his feet to check me out. Then his tail began to wag. And wag. And wag. I’d dispensed with holding out my hand, got down on my knees and held out my arms. He leaped into them, nearly knocking me flat. I was thoroughly licked.
“I guess he remembers you,” Teo said. Janice, the blond trainer, walked by and saw me on the floor giggling with Bismarck. Her expression said “dogs are so forgiving,” but she couldn’t resist a little smile. Who can resist a happy dog?
As for Teo? I was still sorting through my feelings. He seemed at home on his new leg, no longer in pain, no longer fighting a futile battle to pretend he was exactly the same, but I wondered how long it would take me to feel at home with the change. Not because I found the prosthesis distasteful, but because I felt responsible. Teo had moved on, or at least a long way. But for me? This felt like the final assault.
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