by Dale Mayer
“Are you sure?” She didn’t know what to say about the dog.
“Don’t even ask that,” he said. “I need to at least come and make sure, to see just what’s going on.”
And, with that, he hung up, leaving her sitting midway inside, where she could see both the rear glass door and the front door. There was still the garage door, and, dammit, she was terrified enough that she immediately raced toward the garage and locked that door too. Then she sat inside the house, a bit calmer, at least not hyperventilating like she’d been on the verge of a few minutes ago.
Why had he been looking up at her bedroom, and what difference did the lattice make? Unless he was looking to climb it? At that thought, her throat choked because it was all too possible. The last thing she wanted was to contemplate somebody breaking into the house. But her mind wouldn’t let it go.
Why would anyone care? And then her mind went back to the gang scenario earlier today, where the five kids had been after her. She sent the detective a text, asking if all the teens were still locked up. He sent back a negative. Three young men were released, and the one was in the hospital.
She sat here for a long moment, thinking about that. Because, if they were free, and they were still in the same ugly mind-set as before, there was a good chance that tonight they were looking to attack her again. It’s a good thing Jeremy wasn’t here; she didn’t want him involved in any way. This could get beyond ugly, and she didn’t have a clue what to do about it. She sent him a message to just make sure he was okay. Then she texted the detective. I had a man in the backyard tonight. Worried now.
But she didn’t expect the cop to do anything. What could he do? It’s not like she had an intruder in her house; she just had somebody in the backyard, and that could have meant anything.
Did you recognize him?
I didn’t get a chance to see his face.
Let me know if you see him again.
She snorted at that, tossed down her phone. “Sure,” she said out loud. “I’ll let you know. And it’ll probably be too damn late.”
And, with that, she got up and paced the house. Surely she could do something to protect yourself. But what?
It’s not like she had any martial arts training, and it was a horrible feeling to realize that she felt completely vulnerable to the world around her right now. She could call her sister, and then her sister would come racing over, and that would put her in danger. Which would not solve anything and she could get hurt herself. Laurie Ann’s mind continued to loop in endless circles, until she heard a truck drive up. She raced to the front window and peered through the side of the curtains to see it was Kurt.
He hopped out, and, with the driver’s door open, he stood facing the inside of the truck. And slowly, as if almost painfully, a shepherd jumped down beside him. Laurie Ann gasped in shock. He got the War Dog on a leash.
She raced to the front door and opened it.
He expected her and held up a hand and said, “Don’t rush, please.”
She stopped and nodded. “Can I come forward?”
The shepherd looked at Laurie Ann curiously, but no aggression was in her eyes.
Kurt nodded. “That you can do,” he said. “Come stand beside me.”
She walked a few steps and called out, “Hello, girl.”
The shepherd’s tail wagged.
“She’s so skinny,” she said to Kurt. “How can anybody mistreat a dog?”
“I don’t know that she was mistreated as much as abandoned by a society that doesn’t take care of its animals or its war heroes. It’s sad. She deserves better.”
“I’ve always loved animals,” she murmured.
“As you know, I have too, but it was never something that worked into my life before.”
“And yet apparently that’s changed,” she said with a laugh.
He bent down in front of the shepherd, gently stroking the side of her head and neck. “And you’ve got to remember how this is all new to Sabine, so she has to decide as to whether each human being can be trusted or not.”
“And you think she’s at the point where she knows most aren’t?” She desperately wanted to crouch down and cuddle the poor dog, but it was too early.
“From the way I’ve seen her today, I would assume so,” he said. “But animals can be very trusting, even after the fact. So, while she has been abused, that doesn’t mean she’ll remain in that same wounded-warrior mentality.”
“I just want to hug her,” she said, as she crouched down beside him and gently reached out a hand.
“Her name is Sabine,” he said gently. He placed a hand on hers and nudged her hand closer to the shepherd, who leaned closer and sniffed fingers and then let her muzzle nudge Laurie Ann’s fingertips. Delighted, Laurie Ann gently stroked the skinny dog. “We need to get her some food,” she said.
“I’ve got a little in the truck, just not enough for very many days.”
“Well, I have leftovers. Or I could order in a delivery,” she said. “Or, if you want to be here with the dog, I can go collect some.”
“We won’t leave you alone for a while,” he said quietly. “At least not until I know what’s going on.”
“On that note,” she said, “good luck with trying to figure it out because it doesn’t make sense.”
“Show me where you saw the guy.” She nodded and led the way around the back through the gate, the shepherd coming with them. Laurie Ann watched as the shepherd approached the back of the house with her ears up and her tail casually moving around. “She seems to be interested in everything around her,” she said.
“I think so. I certainly don’t know very many of the commands she has learned, so I’ve reached out to Badger to look for her previous trainer to see what she understands,” he said. “Generally there’s a set protocol for commands, but everybody has the little special things that they do with their dogs.”
“I still can’t believe that she ended up in this situation.”
“Well, unfortunately it’s what happened,” he said, “so let’s just try to make her next years the best they can be.”
“Are you keeping her?” At his nod, they walked around the backyard, and Laurie Ann noted that he’d let the shepherd have a good six foot lead. “Do you think it’s safe for her to be here?”
“Safe for her, or safe for you?” he asked with the note of humor.
She smiled. “For both, I guess,” she said. “She seems very well-behaved.”
“She’s very well trained. She’s just had a rough couple months,” he said. He studied the shepherd as they walked around the right side of the property in the opposite direction of where her intruder had been.
“She seems very alert.”
“She is but not too bothered. She’s trying to sort out the smells in the area and just what she’s looking at and looking for. She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know you. She doesn’t know this area,” he said. “But she’s still working to sort it all out in her head.”
“Did you have any trouble getting a collar and leash on her?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “By the time I stood up where she was cuddling with me, she followed me to the truck on her own. As soon as I put a collar and the leash on her, she jumped up beside me in the truck.”
“So she really wanted to come with you.”
“I think she was damn grateful to have a decent human in her life,” he said with a quiet smile down at the dog. As they got around to the far left side, immediately the dog growled in the back of her throat, and her ears went back ever-so-slightly, and her lip curled.
“Okay, that’s not a good sign,” she said, taking a step back.
“Well, it’s a good sign,” he said, “if you think about it. This is where your intruder was, wasn’t he?”
She looked around and then nodded. “Yes. How does Sabine know that?”
“Her training. But whether it’s because she recognizes him as her recent enemy or as somebody who was here for no goo
d, that’s hard to say.”
“And how would she know that?”
“Well, if it was her own enemy,” he said, “it would be one of the people who probably have been giving her a hard time and possibly tried to hurt her. However, if it was somebody trying to hide here on your property, Sabine’s been trained to sniff out the enemy hiding in various scenarios. So that’s just part of her training.”
“Wow,” she said, “they really use dogs for that?”
“Yes, they really do. The problem came when the enemy shot the dogs, which told our men where the enemy was, but often the dogs would hide to avoid getting shot.”
“But often the War Dogs were shot?”
“There are always casualties in war, whether canine or human. Of course canine deaths were preferred over human.”
She knew that logically, but it still bothered her.
“It bothers all of us,” he said quietly, reading her mind. “No animal lover wants to see them suffer.”
“Especially now. She’s been through enough.”
“She has, indeed. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing—to keep her safe now.”
The dog sniffed out the area thoroughly. As she watched, Laurie Ann asked, “Can you track with her? Can she track the intruder?”
“Maybe.” He sat down beside Sabine on the grass and let her just sniff the whole area. Then she whined and ran around the house, heading toward the front gate.
“Does this go where I think it does?” Kurt asked.
“Back to the road that leads to the front of the property,” she said.
He nodded, opened it up, and let the dog through. Immediately she bounced through, pulling at the leash. He came along behind Sabine, with Laurie Ann following up in the rear. She closed the gate behind her and watched as Kurt and the dog raced to the edge of the road. There Sabine stopped. She milled around in the same place, whined, and then sat down and barked.
Laurie Ann walked over to him. “What does that mean?”
“It means that your stranger most likely got into a vehicle and left that way.”
“Well, the good news is,” she said, “he’s likely left. The bad news is, we don’t know why he was here in the first place.”
“And who brought him here, if he didn’t come alone?”
“None of that appeals in any way,” she said.
He nodded. “Let’s go back into the backyard,” he said.
She led the way because she was nearest. She opened the gate and held it for them to pass. As soon as they got into the backyard, he turned and headed toward the wall of the house, where the stranger had been staring up at.
“Interesting,” Kurt said.
“And again that doesn’t sound very positive,” she said, staring up at the same place he was focused on and seeing nothing. “What is it you’re seeing?”
“Well, if it was me,” he said, “I’d be analyzing how to get into your house, and that trellis offers a way.”
“And that’s what I was afraid you would say,” she said flatly.
“We don’t know for sure that that’s what he was up to, you know?” he said.
“No, but what else would it be?”
“Unfortunately I don’t see another answer that’s quite as good,” he said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad thing. He knew he was seen, and he’s taken off.”
“But, if he was coming back anyway, he would now know what he needed to get inside,” she said.
And he nodded. “Exactly. Do you sleep up there?”
“I do. Right now Jeremy is over at his friend’s for the night,” she said, “which is a good thing. But now I don’t want him to come back and to be in danger at all.”
“That, of course, begs another question. Was it you they were after? The house they were after? Or Jeremy?” He stepped back several feet and looked up. “The lattice itself won’t hold him though,” he said, “but it’d be pretty easy to jump up onto that deck up there.”
She stared up at the distance and shook her head in disbelief. “Did you say, pretty easy?”
He nodded. “Absolutely.”
“That’s not what I want to hear. You know that, right?”
He nodded. “Most people don’t think about it. They think, since they’re on the second floor, they’re safe, and it’s not true. What happens is, you become pinned up there because you don’t know how to get out yourself, and jumping down will often cause a broken leg or other injury,” he murmured.
He grabbed the trellis and pulled hard. It stayed put. He frowned. “I really don’t like that. Do you know if he touched it?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I was just sitting out here, having tea, when I heard him in the first place.”
“He never said anything to you?”
“No,” she said, shivering with the remembrance. “I’m glad he didn’t,” she said. “Otherwise I’d be hearing his voice in my nightmares.”
He nodded quietly. “Unfortunately it looks like you’ll be in this mess until it is over with anyway.”
“And how do we get it over with?” she asked.
“Well, we have to find out why he’s here and stop him from coming back, and that means capturing him. Would you recognize him?”
She frowned and thought about it. “I don’t think so,” she said slowly. “I didn’t see his face, but I saw his general build. But I don’t really know.”
“So you didn’t see him clearly, but, given the right light and the right angle, you might find a hint of recognition or something like that?”
“Something like that, yes,” she said, “but it’s not like I could sit down with an artist and tell you what he looked like.”
“Right,” he said with a smile. He stepped back, looking at all the walls of the house, and they kept walking all the way around until they were back at the front door. The whole time he was studying the layout of the house. “You haven’t lived here very long?”
“No,” she said, “it’s been about nine months.”
“Before that?”
“I rented a condo,” she said. “I finally scraped enough to pull together for this place. And it was close to Frank’s home, so Jeremy was, of course, delighted.”
“They’re best friends, huh?”
“Yeah,” she said with a gentle smile.
“And Frank’s a good kid?”
“The best. His dad’s another doctor,” she said. “Not that that makes him above reproach, but I do know him, as I’ve worked with him several times.”
“Sometimes that’s all you can hope for,” he said. “Kids have to grow up making their own choices.”
“And even when they’re growing up, they have to make their own choices,” she said. “My sister still doesn’t believe that.”
“Your sister sees you as somebody who was taken advantage of, that she had to help out in a bad situation, and, if you make your own decisions now, maybe you’ll make ones that don’t include her,” he said gently.
“I was thinking of that earlier today. She’s very unhappy that you’re back in town.”
“Of course she is. She’s expecting me to leave you pregnant again and take off.”
“I don’t think it’s quite that simple,” she said.
“You can’t blame her either.”
“No,” she said, “but it’s also like my family doesn’t see that I’ve grown up, and that’s a little hard to accept.”
He chuckled. “I wonder if we ever grow up to the rest of our family. I think they always see us as children.”
“I hope not,” she said. “I’d like to think that I can see Jeremy growing up.”
“He’s in an interesting stage of life right now,” he said. “Thirteen.” He shook his head. “Man, that takes me way back.”
“And probably not in a good way,” she said.
“It wasn’t all bad,” he said. “It was pretty tough toward the end though.”
“I’m sorry your childhood was much
less than ideal.”
“Everybody’s childhood is much less than ideal,” he said, “but it’s a card you’re dealt. You play the game the best you can. You hope you get a chance to fix things, if you screw up. In my case I did, and I’m forever grateful for that.”
“Good,” she said. “Now what do we do about this guy?”
“I think we should set a trap for him,” he said without hesitation.
She looked at him in shock. “What?”
“Well, think about it,” he said. “We don’t want him to come back, but, if he does, I suggest we make sure that we capture him at the same time.”
“And how will you do that?”
“Well, if it was me breaking in, I would still try this trellis,” he said, “but I would probably use a rope or a hook to throw up and grab the balcony. So we want to trigger that balcony door up there to make sure that, if he does get that far, we can trap him, so he doesn’t get away again.”
“Well, that sounds great,” she said, “as long as you’re sticking around to capture him. I really don’t want to be the one with a caught intruder in the house.”
“Oh, that’s not happening,” he said. “I’m not leaving until we know we’ve got him.”
She felt a bright sense of relief and, at the same time, a shiver of excitement. She avoided the one question that she really wanted to ask, which was, Where was he planning on sleeping? Because, Jesus, they were just rekindling their friendship and were so far away from that level of intimacy. Yet she couldn’t believe that her hormones were ready to drag him into her bed. “Does that mean you are moving in? And what about Sabine here?” she asked, looking down at the dog.
“Sure, certainly will,” he said. “And, yes, Sabine too. She’ll be the biggest and earliest alarm we’ve got.”
“But we don’t know her yet or trust her.”
“Nope, but I trust her instincts, and I trust that she’s already had enough abuse from a lot of assholes,” he said. “She’ll be doing what she can to keep us safe, if only for her own sake.”
“I guess that’s a priority in her world now too, isn’t it? If you’re safe, then she’s safe.”
“Something like that,” he said with a smile.