Desert Rescue (K-9 Search and Rescue)

by Lisa Phillips

  That was it? All her problems solved with a simple message?

  Jennie wandered to the hall and grabbed the duffel she’d packed. Her and Nate. Just the two of them. Patrick didn’t even care enough to mention the fact she’d made a nice home for her son. He knew the kind of father she’d grown up with. After he’d died, she’d put her heart and soul into this house, redecorating what she had money to do bit by bit. Coloring her walls with leftover paint that the hardware-store owner passed on to her. Yard sales and secondhand-store furniture.

  She’d finished it with pillow covers she’d sewn herself. The plants were all in pots she’d made. Experiments and castoffs she couldn’t sell. Nate said those were his favorites.

  Jennie glanced around the living and dining room. Patrick stood in the center, staring at her. After the shower, she’d put on her favorite shirt, and he hadn’t even reacted. He’d loved her when she’d been young and beautiful. Now she was just Nate’s mother. A woman he used to know.

  “I hated this house when I was growing up.”

  “I know.” Why was he looking at her like that?

  She couldn’t decipher his expression and there was no point trying. This man was a stranger. “I changed every single thing about it. Even knocked down the wall that used to divide the living room and kitchen, making it open plan.”

  “You want to talk about renovation right now?”

  “No. I want you to know that I made something I’m proud of. A life for our son that has nothing to do with anything associated with my father. Not since he died.”

  “Okay.”

  “My brother might’ve thought what Dad did was cool, but I did not. And I don’t want it anywhere near Nate.”

  Patrick nodded. “I know you wouldn’t put him in danger.”

  But she had. “I thought I was doing the right thing, calling the sheriff. When he did nothing, it was logical to go up the chain. Call the Feds.”

  Patrick nodded again. It was like he had no opinion at all. Was this what he did with criminals? Maybe he thought she was lying and this was an interrogation. Please, Lord. She didn’t want him trying to throw her in jail. Or worse, taking Nate from her.

  Dread settled over her. Was that why he was still here?

  Patrick glanced at the framed picture over the living room mantel. “Do you have a camera?”

  “Yes.” She’d taken that picture. Finally, something about her and her life here that he might actually appreciate.

  “Get it. We can take pictures of those trucks on your land, get evidence of who they are and show it to the sheriff.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Quickly, please. We need to catch them in the act.” He was looking at her with a soft expression she didn’t understand. “You’re beyond exhausted, and I’d like to get you back to Nate before I also run out of steam. Otherwise we’ll both need sleep right when Nate needs to see one of our faces.”

  She wanted to make a quip about a son and that special bond they had with their mother. But even “beyond exhausted,” she knew that wouldn’t be fair to Patrick.

  Jennie got her camera. And because she needed help where she would actually get something in return, she also grabbed her Bible. That was the place she should be looking for reassurance and answers. For peace and hope for the future.

  Not in Patrick, who’d left once. He’d proved she couldn’t trust him. God, he can’t let Nate down. I couldn’t bear to watch Nate go through that. It was the last thing her son needed.

  Jennie could withstand a whole lot of hurt. But she knew what it felt like to lose a beloved parent.

  It was why she’d done everything she could to make this house a home her mother would have loved. All through the process, she’d told Nate stories of his grandmother, who’d passed away when Jennie was in middle school. Then he’d asked about his father. Why hold back from him? She’d had good memories. Now Nate could make good ones of his own.

  She just had to keep herself from getting hurt in the process. As much as she could, at least. That meant holding back any feelings she might have for Patrick. Refusing to give in, even the slightest, to anything that had the potential to grow into what it had once been.

  Love she’d never forgotten.

  That she could never allow to be again.

  * * *

  Patrick needed to get out of this house. Bright colors, small touches that brought the whole place to life. Including the photo over the mantel, his favorite view in all of New Mexico. The mountains surrounding their town, where they’d hiked together so many times.

  Compared to his apartment in Albuquerque, this house was a home. Somewhere he’d actually want to return to at the end of the day. Instead of the barren rooms where he “lived” that were nothing more than a place to leave his stuff.

  Something snagged his attention on a pot on the floor in the corner. He picked it up and rotated it in his hands. The clay was misshapen, but sturdy. It had been painted royal blue with a dusting of yellow over the top half.

  “Nate made me keep that one.”

  “You made it?”

  She nodded, her eyes puffy and her face still damp from her tears. He had to look at the pot again, because she was so beautiful it actually hurt to look at her. “It’s beautiful.”

  “I don’t know about that. But he wouldn’t let me start over. He insisted we fire it, and he painted it himself. Gave it to me for Mother’s Day.” She sniffed. “He said he learned at church that God takes broken things and makes them beautiful.”

  Tears blurred Patrick’s vision. His mom had said something similar to him once. She still believed it, but he’d never been able to grasp that truth for himself. Life always held him back from believing.

  “We should go.” He set the pot down and cleared his throat. “Tuck.”

  The dog trotted in from the kitchen.

  “I’m ready.” Jennie waved the camera at him.

  “We won’t interfere. I don’t need you in danger, so you won’t be anywhere near the line of fire, but I can’t leave without taking a look to see if your instincts were right. Then we’ll get over to the sheriff’s office.”

  She nodded. “I trust you.”

  The words settled like lead might in his stomach. He rubbed his abdomen as they stepped out front and she locked the door. “This is a spare key. I have no idea where my purse or my phone are. And my wallet is in my purse, as well.”

  “You think they were stolen the night you were taken?” He pulled out his phone. “I can have Eric come and change the locks.”

  A shiver rolled through her. “Why take my purse and phone? Do you think they’re going to, like...steal my identity?” Fear was stark on her face.

  “We’ll find out.” He wasn’t supposed to make any assurances to the victim. Not when it was a promise he might not be able to keep. But her saying, straight-out, that she trusted him? Patrick wanted to promise a whole lot.

  He loaded up Tucker and then sat in the driver’s seat with the engine running while he studied the map on his phone.

  In the span of a few hours, everything had changed. He wanted to tell her he’d be there for her. Whatever she or Nate needed. Like requesting a transfer and getting a position in this more northern part of New Mexico. A place he’d promised himself he’d never come back to. And now he wanted to live here, as close as possible to Nate. Permanently.

  As close as Jennie would let him be.

  Patrick cracked the rear windows so Tucker could smell the breeze while he drove. He headed for the main road and then took a dirt track that cut across her land and threaded toward the back of her sixty-some acres. “Anything out here I should be wary of?”

  She fiddled with the strap on the camera case in her lap. “Just a dozen or so cows. Nate doesn’t really enjoy the part where they’re taken away. I haven’t explained to him about
hamburger yet. He likes to name them, especially the babies.” She said, “I thought about sheep, but this is the way wrong climate for them. Doesn’t your cousin live in Scotland?”

  Patrick nodded. “Yeah. Neil isn’t a sheep farmer, though. He’s a cop like me, and a K-9 handler with the Edinburgh police. They use Airedales, as well, which is why I got the idea for Tucker. No one believed me that training a terrier would be worth the work it was going to take, but he’s more than proved himself over the past six years.”

  And not just because he had gotten Nate back, to Jennie and him.

  “You never left your home. You just made it your own.” He didn’t know why he’d said that, but it was out now. There was no taking the words back.

  “I love my home. And that’s not even about it becoming mine at a time when I had nothing. I couldn’t afford to move. Not on what I was making back then, going to art school. Trying to raise Nate.” She fell quiet for a second. “Still, I’ll always think of my mother more than my father when I walk out here. The house is mine and Nate’s now. It doesn’t remind me of him at all.”

  The dirt road disappeared beneath the headlights.

  Jennie put her hand on his arm. “Slow down a little.”

  He eased off the gas. “What is it?”

  “A wash.”

  The SUV dipped down and they traversed what he realized would be a river—if it actually rained here. There was no snow, so no runoff. On rare occasions when the weather was wet, this would be a running stream. Right now it was only a dip in the road.

  He hit the gas and they climbed up on the far side, bumping over a couple of ruts. If he hit one too fast, it could bend or crack the axle. Should that happen, they would be in serious trouble.

  “I’m not sure how close we’ll get,” he told her. “I’d rather go in with the lights off, but we might run into a hazard and either get stuck or flip over. And if we leave the headlights on, they’ll see us.”

  He slowed to a stop and studied the terrain. The headlights on the far edge of her land were still a ways off.

  “This dirt track goes all the way back there, where they are.” Her voice trembled. “But I don’t think I want to meet them.”

  “That’s probably a wise choice.”

  He eased the SUV to a stop and then put it in Reverse. Back to the wash, where they went down onto the dry riverbed and up the far side.

  As they crested the incline on the other side, he saw lights to his left. “Someone else is out here.”

  The lights shifted and one pair split off into two pairs. Four beams. But not spaced the way headlights were.

  Those were dirt bikes.

  He heard the roar of engines cut over the sound of his own and the noise brought with it a tremor of foreboding. “We need to get out of here.”

  He’d barely finished speaking when automatic gunfire echoed across the night sky, a rapid crack, crack of bullets headed right for them.

  A stream of shots slammed into the back quarter panel. Patrick gripped the steering wheel and slammed on the gas.

  EIGHT

  Jennie twisted in her chair to see where the bullet cracked the window. “Tucker!”

  “He okay?” Patrick’s voice was strained. “Tucker?”

  The dog whined, turning around in the back. Nervous. He barked at the roar of engines.

  “It’s okay, buddy.” Jennie hadn’t been around dogs all that much. Tucker put his nose to the wire separating the rear of the vehicle from the back seat. Too far for her to reach. “It’s okay.” She didn’t know what else to say.

  “How many are there?”

  Jennie surveyed the scene behind them. “Four, maybe. I can’t see that well.” It was pitch-black. The headlights on the dirt bikes dipped and moved so fast she could barely keep track of them. It reminded her of strobe lighting.

  She turned back to Patrick, his gaze pinned on his side mirror. He seemed to be waiting for—

  Patrick jerked the wheel to the left. The back corner of the SUV clipped one of the bikes. Blasts of gunshots erupted and the headlight flashed as the bike flipped over.

  “You got him.”

  “I know.” Patrick had two hands on the wheel. He seemed to know what he was doing. The confident, capable police officer. But that didn’t remove the danger.

  There were three more. “I can’t believe they’re running around like this on my land.”

  The bikes kept chase.

  Patrick said nothing, driving steady. Checking his mirrors every few seconds. “Herding us.”

  “Off my land.” Hot anger boiled in her stomach. How many times had she called Sheriff Johns and he’d said it was nothing but teenagers?

  That wasn’t what this was.

  These were adults who thought they could do whatever they wanted on her land.

  “I’m not leaving. They’re the ones who don’t belong here.” Three bikes pursued them. “They’re not trying to kidnap me again. They’re up to something here, right? They don’t want me to see what it is.” She folded her arms and huffed out a breath. “I’m not just going to be some helpless victim.”

  Not only had she not been raised that way, Jennie wasn’t raising Nate that way. Her son needed to know how to be both strong and kind. It was rare to find someone who possessed both qualities.

  “I know.” Patrick’s tone was a cross between someone trying to placate a crazy person and someone resigned to a situation they couldn’t control. “But that doesn’t mean this is the time to fight back.”

  Excuse me? “You want me to just sit here?”

  “Honestly? Yes.” He sighed. “I don’t want any of us getting hurt by these guys. Right now, they’re leaving us alone. If we can get out of here without any more gunshots aimed at us, that’s the best scenario. They’re letting us leave. See?”

  Jennie studied the dirt biker out the left back window. The one on her side had a huge semiautomatic gun strapped across his back.

  Stalemate? Was that what this was? She wanted these men—and the ones who had kidnapped her—to pay for the fear now running through her veins. She was flushed, sweating and freezing at the same time. Like her body didn’t know what to do.

  She never wanted Nate to experience this. Not before, when they’d been in that house, and not ever again.

  A whimper left her throat. Patrick reached over and took her hand. He squeezed it, then held it, resting on her knee. “It’s going to be okay. They’re leaving us alone, and we’re almost at the road.”

  True to his word, they bumped up onto the blacktop. Patrick turned toward the center of town.

  “Now we go see the sheriff.”

  Jennie checked behind them. As they drove away, the three bikers sat at the end of the dirt track—no, there were only two now. Had one gone back, concerned for their friend? They were bad guys. They probably cared about nothing. Except money and the power they wielded over people they considered to be weaker.

  “What do they want with my land? There’s nothing special about it, except that it’s just land.”

  Patrick was quiet long enough she wondered if he would say anything. The second he did, she knew she’d rather he hadn’t. “Didn’t you say your father had used the back forty to transport drugs across the state?”

  “And what would that have to do with me now? It’s been years.” She was glad he’d let go of her hand for the bump onto the blacktop. She didn’t want to hold it ever again. Not if he thought for one second that she would bring drugs into her son’s life.

  It was because she’d been determined to keep those things far from Nate that they’d ended up in this situation in the first place. Trying to do the right thing. That’s what had led to the kidnapping.

  She kind of wished she’d been there long enough to meet the boss, as she dearly wanted the chance to spit in his face.

 
Patrick thinks I’m involved.

  He knew how she’d felt about drugs. Selling them, trafficking them. It didn’t matter where someone was in the chain, it was wrong. The people who supplied that stuff preyed on the vulnerable. She didn’t want to be around any of that, and there was no way she’d let it near Nate.

  He should know she would never do that. Right? But the truth was, they didn’t know each other.

  Not anymore.

  * * *

  Patrick mulled over everything on the way to the sheriff’s office while Jennie’s ire bled away next to him. He knew she was scared. He hadn’t expected the anger. She was a force to be reckoned with. A strong woman passionate about keeping her son safe—and she was willing to put her life on the line to do it.

  No matter how far they moved on from the past, Patrick would always be aware of what he’d lost.

  Could he forgive her?

  That would be contingent on her allowing him all the way into their family. He didn’t want to muddy things. Once he’d ensured they were safe, he wanted time to get to know his son.

  Right now what he needed was information. That was why he didn’t delay ushering her inside the sheriff’s office. They could have talked in his vehicle, but why be alone and chance getting sucked further into thinking about her?

  He should be doing his job.

  “Sheriff.” Patrick got his attention and explained what had happened at her house.

  Johns lumbered to a side office and leaned in. “Melanie, be a doll and send Ted over to Ms. Wilson’s ranch. Tell him to be careful.”

  “Copy that, Sheriff.”

  Then he crossed over to a desk and waved them over. “Let’s get you all set up here.” He jiggled the mouse on an ancient-looking computer and then pecked with two fingers to bring up the database.

  “You sit. I need to talk to the sheriff,” Patrick said.

  Jennie glanced at him but didn’t argue.

  As she looked through the mug shots in the county database, Patrick motioned for Johns to join him out of her earshot.