by Dale Mayer
“Hell yes, I will,” she said. “This guy’ll shoot the two of you. Then I’ll beat the shit out of the dog,” she said, “and maybe, maybe then, when I’m tired, I’ll let him shoot it.”
Addie looked at the gunman. “So do you take orders from mentally ill women, like her?”
The gunman shook his head. “Hell no,” he said, “that’s the last thing I’ll do. Besides, I don’t shoot dogs, and obviously this dog’s got more smarts than you have.” He sneered, looking right at Addie’s sister.
Bernie bounded to her feet again, raced over, and smacked him hard across the face. Instantly the gunman pushed her back, resuming some of his feistiness, but he’d lost his momentum amid all the psycho drama going on here. Tucker was already on Rural; Tucker had a hand against his throat, pinning him, as he grabbed the gunman’s wrist, slammed it against the wall behind him, so that the gun couldn’t shoot anyone. Hearing the growling behind him, Tucker turned to see the dog, sitting on her butt, glaring and growling at Bernie, the sister.
She looked at the dog, sneered, and kicked her.
“Don’t do that,” he warned her. “That dog answers to me now, not you.”
“I don’t give a shit,” she said, rising to join the fray. “Give me that goddamn gun.” And she tried to wrestle it away from Tucker. What was going on was ludicrous; he wanted to punch the hell out of her and knock her out as it was. Addie grabbed her sister, pulling her out of the scenario, and forced her into the chair.
“Now stay there, damn it,” Addie said. “You can’t even see the seriousness of this situation.”
“Well, I see what I want to see,” she said, “and I see a gun that would take care of the job right now. There isn’t even a law,” she said, “that would charge me for this. The dog has already attacked me. Now it’s glaring and growling at me,” she said. “So I could get away with it, and it would not be a big deal.”
Tucker, now holding the gun, pushed Rural into another chair.
The gunman stared at Tucker and then at Addie. “She’s really not all there, is she?”
“She hates the dog, and she hates people, and, if she ever got good enough to start killing people, we’d have a serial killer on our hands like you wouldn’t believe,” Tucker muttered. “I’ve seen the type too many times in the military.”
The gunman swore. “I don’t want anything to do with her,” he said. “She’s damn scary.”
“And, if you were smart,” Tucker said, “you would fess up to the cops, tell them exactly what your role was in all this and that you were just trying to protect yourself,” he said. “What you’re doing now will just get you locked up in jail with the key thrown away.”
“I can’t do jail time,” he said.
“You can and will do jail time,” he said, “and you’ll still have your life at the end of the day.”
“Says you,” he said. “You have no idea what it’s like for guys like me in jail.”
“Well, I’m just a little sorry about that, but you should have thought about that before you killed your partner. Anything else was forgivable, but murder? Not so much.”
At that, the gunman started to react. “It can’t be. I can’t go to jail,” he cried out, reaching for the gun. And he wrestled with the strength only a full-on panic could bring.
Tucker was forced to use a hard uppercut to clip his chin, knocking him out. He removed the gun from his hand, immediately emptied the chamber, and put the gun into his back pocket. Then he shoved the bullets into the other pocket and pulled out his phone and quickly called the detective.
Addie looked a little more shell-shocked, but she stood firm, keeping her sister in her seat.
“Yeah, you need to come, and you need to come now,” he said. “I’ve got your escaped prisoner. At this point, either he’ll try to escape to avoid arrest by taking that bullet that he was hoping for earlier or he’ll try shooting his way out of arrest. I have disarmed him at the moment, but things are still volatile.”
He pocketed his phone, quickly searched the unconscious gunman to make sure no more weapons were on him, then looked at Addie. “Got anything to tie him up with?”
She raced into the kitchen and came back with zap straps.
He quickly pulled several together and strapped the gunman’s hands and feet together. “The detective will be here soon,” he said. He turned to look at Bernie, the sister. “Now what do we do with her?”
“I don’t know,” Addie said. “What does anybody do with her?”
“There’s nothing you can do,” Bernie said. “I’ll still get that damn dog killed.”
“No,” he said. “You’re not.”
She smiled. “Oh, yes,” she said. “When you’re not expecting it, I’ll make sure it’s dead.”
He stared at her, wondering how he could possibly even think of leaving this woman alive. “It’s too bad the gunman didn’t shoot you,” he said. He could feel Addie staring at him. He looked at her and said, “Sorry, but it’s how I feel.”
“No,” Addie said, “I get it. I felt that way a lot in my life, but she’s still somebody I have to deal with.”
“Sure but not this way,” he said. “She’s a threat, keeping a target on our backs.”
“Too damn bad,” Bernie said. “Because that’s what I am, and I’m never going away. I’m like this virus that’ll sit here and infect you.”
“Well, you’d like to do that to people,” he said, “but I’m sure we can charge you with something. After all, you did lie and waste police resources and try to cheat the system, all out of misguided hatred for an animal that did nothing to you.” Then he gave her a lethal grin. “I vote for institutionalizing you. You’ll have orderlies all around you, kinda like maids but different.”
“You’re lying,” she said, but her voice trembled.
Just then the cops arrived, the sirens so loud it drowned out all voices. The detective walked inside, took one look, and shook his head. “I’m glad he’s caught.”
The gunman, at this point, was lying on the ground with his eyes open. As the cops stood him up, they had to unclip his hands and feet, and one of the cops came over with handcuffs. Immediately Rural started to fight them. Before they knew it, he suddenly had a gun in his hand. He pointed it at the cop that he’d taken it from. “Now back up slowly.”
The cops slowly backed up. Rural looked over at the others. “I’ll leave now,” he said. “Don’t follow.”
“That’s not possible,” the detective said. “You’ve already killed somebody,” he said. “We can’t let you go free.”
“Too damn bad,” he said. He looked over at the sister and sneered. “You should be locking her in jail. She’s a true psycho,” he said, “but that’s probably not happening either. Bitches like her always seem to get away with anything.”
And then suddenly he opened fire on Bernie. And he turned the gun just as fast on himself, even before the cops opened fire.
In the shocked silence, Addie smelled the gunpowder.
Chapter 14
Addie raced to her sister’s side. But it was too late. A bullet hole was in the center of the woman’s head. Addie crouched in front of her sister’s body, overwhelmed with pain, shock, grief, all trying to work up through her shoulders. No matter what her sister had been like, she was still her sister. As Addie sat here, the tears rolling down her cheeks, a dog’s muzzle slipped up under her arm. She reached down and grabbed Bernie into a great big hug. “Well, you’re safe now, sweetheart. At least you’re safe.”
The dog licked her face gently several times, and she felt some of her grief easing back slightly. This was just such an awful scenario that she had no words for it. She felt … relief. Should she feel that way? Now? Her first voluntary emotion? She had a nagging sense of regret, for what her sister could have been, given different circumstances. Maybe if the family had spoken up earlier, gotten her professional help in terms of long-term hospitalization, they might have avoided this ending? Yet Addie knew,
with her nursing background, that treating a patient with multiple mental illnesses made it so much more difficult. The drugs had side effects, didn’t work well when combined, masked the symptoms instead of curing them, dulled the patient, even led to suicide when weaning the patient off the drugs. It was a medical conundrum.
She slowly stood, looked at Tucker. He stared at her in worry; she offered a weepy smile. He opened his arms, and she raced into them. She burrowed tight against his chest. “I know she was mean, and she was a bitch,” she whispered, “but she didn’t deserve this.”
“I know, sweetheart. I’m sorry,” he said. It took a moment to explain to the detective everything that had gone on.
He stared. “What a hell of a mess,” he said.
Addie turned to look at the gunman and the bloody mess around him—Rural was definitely dead too—and Addie immediately turned and buried her face against Tucker’s chest. She’d seen enough gunshot wounds in the ER to recognize the devastation. Death spoke a universal language and equalized all people. “Why did it take two more deaths to end this?” she asked nobody in particular. “I can’t live here anymore.”
“No,” Tucker said, “we’ll find temporary quarters elsewhere.”
“But we gave up the hotel.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “We’ll find a new place.”
She nodded slowly turned to look at the detective. “I don’t know what you would have done with my sister.”
“Why?” He looked from her sister’s body back to Addie again.
“Because she fabricated the whole thing about the dog biting her to get the dog killed.” It took a bit to explain, but she managed to tell him about all the abuse her sister had piled on the poor dog.
He looked at her in shock, shaking his head as he peered at the dead woman, and then turned back to Addie again. Then he said, “I know it’s not the right thing to say, but I’m really not unhappy that another bad person is gone right now.”
“I know,” Addie said. “She had so much potential, but she used it for everything evil,” she said. “Still this will be really tough on my parents.”
At that, Tucker held her close and said, “They’re coming home today, right?”
“Today or tomorrow. I don’t know which,” she said. “We’ll have to contact them to let them know.”
“And I’ll be there to help you with that,” he said firmly.
She smiled and said, “You want to pick that location for a new place for us to live, because I no longer want to be here.”
He leaned down, kissed her gently, and said, “I can do that.”
She whispered, “Soon?”
“Soon,” he said. “I’m staying with you until this is over with,” he said. “Not to worry.”
She smiled, looked over at the detective. “I know you need statements, and you probably have a mess of questions, so I have to stay here a bit longer. I understand that,” she said. “But I just want to go upstairs and lie down for a bit.”
“You do that,” he said. “We’ll touch base later.”
“Good,” she said, and she, with the dog at her side, walked upstairs and stretched out on her bed. She was so confused. A part of her had hated her sister, despised her. But, when the chips were down, she was still her sister, and her sister was gone, and Addie didn’t know if she should feel relief or absolute agony. And it just didn’t make any sense. The tears, once started, poured until the well finally emptied. She was dry-eyed but still shaking. In the meantime, she had a whole new future to look after. One that she cared about. One that she wanted to look after and to watch it grow. She looked down to see the dog at her side, worrying. She smiled, patted the bed, and Bernie immediately jumped up beside her, laid down, and Addie hugged Bernie close.
“We’ll be together from now on, Bernie. It’s okay.” The dog waffled gently and leaned in. “I know you were a warrior once too,” she said, “but your injuries sidelined you. I know you wanted to attack her, and that would have been bad for you,” she said. “It would have given my sister just what she needed to make sure that you didn’t get to live anymore,” she said, “and that I didn’t want to happen.”
She heard footsteps coming upstairs and watched as Tucker walked in with a worried look on his face. She smiled and sat up and said, “Bernie was comforting me.”
He smiled as he looked down at the two ladies. “My two favorite females in the world.”
“Well, outside of your sister,” she said gently.
“Absolutely,” he said.
“And the police?”
“They’ll be here for a while,” he said, “but the bodies are gone, and I thought maybe we should go out for a meal or at least move to another hotel to spend the night.”
“Do you have one in mind?”
He held up his phone and said, “I’ve already called one and booked a room, if you are up for it. We can pack an overnight bag and dog food for Bernie. Maybe another bathing suit because I don’t think ours ever dried from last night.”
She smiled, got up, packed a small bag, looked around at what had once been a beautiful starter home for her for a time, and said, “You know what? Some turning points in your life are when you know that you need to do something different.”
“I know,” he said, holding out his hand. “This time though you won’t be alone.”
She smiled, took a step toward him, and, just as she went to join her hand with his, Bernie jumped up between both of them and put her front paws on their joined hands and woofed.
He laughed. “She’s right. It’s not just the two of us anymore. It’s the three of us.”
“And,” she said, “I’m really good with that.”
And, together, as a family, they walked downstairs and into their future.
Epilogue
Harley Bertram walked into Badger’s office, where he found Geir and Eric as well. Harley slumped into the chair, only to wince and shifted his position.
“How are the injuries these days?” Eric asked.
“Much better than I expected,” Harley said. He rotated his wrist. “Some of the surgeries did better than others.”
“But you’re handling the hammer just fine,” Geir noted.
“And the keyboards are getting easier too,” he said. “So what’s up? Cade said that you were looking for me.” He turned and faced Badger.
“Got any dog experience?” Badger asked.
He shrugged. “Outside of the fact that I love them, no.”
“No K9 experience in the military?”
“Assisting with the War Dogs, yes,” he said, “but I never trained my own. I worked with the training groups,” he said. “Man, they were good animals.”
“Have you heard about the War Dogs that we’ve been trying to locate and help?” Badger asked him.
He frowned and shook his head. “I don’t know how I missed that,” he said, “because, honest to God, it’s hard to miss anything in this place.”
“True enough,” Cade said, walking into the room with a folder. He tossed it on the conference table in front of Badger. “I’m not sure what we’ll do with this one,” he said.
“I don’t know either,” Badger said. “I read it early this morning.”
“Read what?” Harley asked.
“So this is a male War Dog,” Badger explained. “He was adopted and then sold.”
“Isn’t that against the terms of service of the adoption contract?”
“It absolutely is,” he said, “but the adopters didn’t seem to care.”
“And he was sold to do what?” Harley asked.
“As a security dog,” he said.
“Well, that might not be such a bad life.”
“Maybe, except it looks like he’s in a possible grow op,” Cade added.
“Oh no, not drugs,” Harley said. “They treat the animals really rough.”
“Exactly,” Eric said. “So we want to make sure the dog’s being well treated and, if he’s not, to remove
him from the situation.”
“But if they bought and paid for him, they might not take too kindly to that suggestion.”
“He’s the property of the United States government,” Badger stated. “Adoptions are done on the understanding that you are looking after the War Dog but do not get to own one.”
“Right, and if I get any resistance?”
The three men looked at him.
“Ah,” Harley said, “so doesn’t matter what kind of resistance there is, I have a job to do.”
“Exactly,” Badger said. “Unless you got a problem with that.”
“Hell no,” he said. “I’m much better with fewer rules. Whereabouts?”
“Montana,” Cade said. “He’s set up near the Canadian border.”
Harley stilled. “I wouldn’t have thought the drug-running business or the cannabis business was really good up there.”
“Well, that’s why we’ve got a question mark on it,” Badger noted. “I’m not exactly sure what you’ll find there. But he’s supposedly a security dog.”
“And legally sold, as far as the new owners know. That could be a bit tough. Any money to help buy the dog back?”
“Some,” Geir said. “it just depends on what kind of money we’re talking about.”
“Right,” Harley said, as he stood. “And when do I go?”
“The sooner, the better,” Cade stated. “The cops contacted the War Dog department about the dog because another one showed up dead.”
“Another War Dog?” Harley gasped.
“No,” Badge answered. “another dog and they heard about this one, so they were asking whether it was the same one.”
“And the answer, of course, is no.”
Badger continued. “I think they were also warning the War Dog department that the particular dog had been abused.”
“Great,” Harley said under his breath. “Do I get to carry weapons too?”
“What do you want?” Badger asked with interest.
Harley reached out and flexed his hand again and said, “I have a couple of my own.”