Beneath Winter Sand

by Vickie McKeehan

  But then she heard a pitiful whine, saw the thing open one eye and move one of its legs. There among the melted snow, lying in the sand, was the ugliest dog she’d ever seen. The mutt had tried to burrow under the leaves to die but probably ran out of energy.

  The poor thing had the wiry coat of an Airedale but the body of a Jack Russell, complete with a dirty cream-colored coat mixed with patches of brown. But where the terrier was less defined, the mutt influence took over, mostly around the snout. There was no denying the filthy, matted fur, or the saddest, biggest pair of chocolate brown eyes she’d ever seen.

  Hannah kneeled to the ground next to it. “You poor little half-starved thing. Are you hurt? Of course, you’re hurt. I see blood on your hip. Let’s get a better look at you. Ah, a female. Well, girl, you barely have the strength to hold your head up, don’t you? What you need is food, water. Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right back.”

  She got to her feet and dashed back to the house where she grabbed a bottle of water and a bag of crackers, stuffed both into the sides of her jacket pockets. She reached in the cabinet, took down one of the bowls.

  She raced back outside and brought out the water, poured it into the bowl and held it out so the dog could lap it up. Next, she opened the sleeve of crackers, mashing several up in the palm of her hand. She held out the crumbs and watched the mutt lick her hand clean.

  “What are you doing?” Caleb asked from behind her.

  Hannah jumped at the question and the dog yelped.

  “Don’t scare me like that,” Hannah cautioned. “Say something before you sneak up on a person.”

  Caleb took in the animal’s poor condition and looked back at Hannah. “I’ll ask again. What are you doing? And what is that?”

  “What does it look like? It’s a puppy, a poor little starved-to-death thing left out here to die. See how skinny she is. She’s so thin you can see her ribs. Poor baby. Her coat’s filled with burrs and tangles, and she’s barely got enough strength left to roll over.”

  But just as Hannah got that last part out, the dog defied her and rolled to a belly position before crawling to get closer to Hannah.

  As a reward, Hannah ran her fingers through the dog’s mane. “You’re such a frail thing. I bet you’re still hungry. Huh, girl? We should take it slow with the food though. How long’s it been since you’ve had anything decent to eat anyway?”

  “Hannah, that dog needs a vet.”

  “I know that. That’s why we can’t leave her out here to fend for herself. She’s miles from anyone, Tahoe included.”

  “You want to take that flea-ridden thing back with us?”

  Insulted, Hannah’s back went up. “I’m not leaving her in the middle of nowhere to starve, Caleb Jennings. I bet Cord will be able to patch her up like new. I’m keeping her. I’m calling her Molly. You’re a good girl, aren’t you, Molly? Just unlucky enough in life to get dumped out here in the boonies with no one around to take care of you.”

  It was that last statement that smacked Caleb between the eyes. Hard. He bent down in the dirt to examine the dog more closely. “She’s crawling because she can’t stand up. There’s something wrong with all four of her paws. And see the blood on her hind leg. That wound’s from a BB gun. It’s probably still lodged in there.”

  Hannah’s mouth dropped open. “Someone shot her? What kind of asshole does that? We need to get her up to the house, pour some antiseptic on that leg and see what other injuries she has. Peroxide will have to do until we can get her back home and let Cord treat it properly. She needs a bath, too.”

  “We’ll use the shed out back to scrub the dirt off. It has an old metal tub that’ll work just fine. Plus, it has hot and cold running water.”

  But Hannah was thinking beyond that. “We’ll need dog food and a brush, maybe a pair of clippers to get the tangles out of her coat.”

  Caleb lugged Molly into the shed. The pup didn’t weigh more than twenty pounds. He set her down on top of a table and got the tub down from where it hung on the wall.

  Molly didn’t seem to mind the water. It soothed her paws and the wound left by the BB gun. They also discovered Molly suffered from a cut on her shoulder near the back of her neck.

  “That looks like it came from a knife,” Hannah noted with disdain. “What’s wrong with people that they would do something like that to a defenseless animal.”

  “That’s definitely a knife wound. See? It’s too perfect a line to have come from anything else, which means she had contact with an ugly human.”

  “Maybe our vandal?”

  “I’d say that’s a distinct possibility. Which might mean he doesn’t carry an honest to goodness weapon on him.”

  Hannah bored a hole in him with a beady-eyed stare. “If he did, Molly here would likely be dead by now.”

  “A sobering thought. Although, think about it. Molly wasn’t out there when we arrived on Thursday. We would’ve seen her when we hauled out that mountain of trash. I walked past that very spot at least half a dozen times on Thursday alone just to get tools out of the shed.”

  “Then where’s she been hiding all this time?”

  “Not here.”

  After they scrubbed off the filth, they poured peroxide into Molly’s wound.

  “The BBs still in there. You can feel it,” Caleb declared.

  By the time, they carried Molly into the house, they found Cooper cracking eggs into a bowl.

  He turned from the stove. “Well now, who do we have here?”

  “Cooper, meet Molly,” Hannah said. “I found her this morning under the giant sequoia. The possums were pawing at her because she was half dead. She’s my first dog.”

  Caleb pivoted toward Hannah. “You’ve never had a dog before? You didn’t mention that earlier.”

  “No. Things in life didn’t exactly work out in that department I guess.”

  Cooper eyed the tail-wagging mutt. “She looks perky enough now. I’ll make more eggs. Molly looks like she could use a meal.”

  Molly devoured an entire plateful of scrambled eggs all the while staying wrapped around Hannah’s feet.

  “It’s a nice day for a walk,” Cooper announced after breakfast. “Why don’t you guys head outside for a while?”

  Hannah chewed her lip. “I’d love to go on a hike but it hurts for Molly to walk. I don’t want to leave her alone.”

  “How about we take turns? I’ll stay here and look after Molly while you guys go. When you guys come back, I’ll take my turn. I brought my camera with me and I’m itching to take some photographs of the area that I can display in the store and add to my website.”

  Hannah laid a hand on Cooper’s arm. “I sometimes forget you make a living other than selling trains.”

  “I’d pretty much starve to death if all I had going for me was locomotives and box cars. Not that I don’t love trains and memories of Dad, but the storefront also acts as a gallery of sorts.”

  “I know. I have one of the pictures you took of the crops growing near the lighthouse. The way the sun filters through the trees takes my breath away. You captured that one special moment at the right time of day perfectly. I haven’t even had a chance to hang it yet.”

  “I don’t remember you coming in and buying that,” Cooper said before turning his head to stare at his brother. “Ah. That was for Hannah.”

  Caleb smiled and took Hannah’s hand in his. “I’m convinced it was how I got her to go out with me the second time. We’d had coffee together but I had to leave before we were done talking. I wanted to make it up to her. I needed something—not flowers because I thought she’d think I was showing off—but rather something that made an impact. Anyway, I looked for a gift that would reflect the town, but in an out of the ordinary sort of way. I walked in your shop after work one day and saw that hanging on the wall. It was beautiful and breathtaking and exactly what I was looking for. You have an amazing talent, my brother.”

  “I don’t think you’ve ever told me that before. T
hanks. It means a lot. What about the fact that you’re an amazing gardener? You grow these beautiful plants and wait for them to…blossom, sometimes for years, something that would drive me nuts. Me. Zero patience on that score.”

  Cooper cut his eyes over to Hannah. “So, did the photo intrigue you enough that it won you over for that second date?”

  Hannah felt her cheeks flush. “I’m here, aren’t I? The truth is he sent Beckham to my house to deliver the package.”

  “I paid him five bucks to make sure he handed it to you personally.”

  “And he did. I unwrapped the thing immediately, and it blew me away. I sent Beckham back with a ‘thank you’ note.”

  “I got it. And pretty much knew from that moment I wanted the chance to ask you out because I knew you’d say yes.”

  “You guys get out of here,” Cooper reiterated. “I’ll do the breakfast dishes and keep an eye on Molly.”

  To make Molly more comfortable while she was gone, Hannah decided the dog needed a bed. Before she left she decided to find something she could use for one. Surely the shed, with all its junk, could provide a box or a basket.

  She started for the back door and before she could step outside, she heard Molly whine and belly crawl an inch or two toward her. “I’ll be right back. You stay put. There’s no need to miss me.”

  But as she made her way to that ramshackle outbuilding, Hannah realized she felt warm inside. The dog liked her enough to miss her. She’d never had that before.

  Digging through the jumble of stuff, she found an old wicker laundry basket that would work perfectly. She went back inside to the laundry room and retrieved one of the clean blankets she still had piled on top of the dryer. She folded it over several times until it fit in the bottom and would make a nice, thick soft spot to sleep.

  Hannah picked Molly up and set her down on the bed. “There. How’s that feel?”

  “Not bad,” Caleb said from the doorway. “You have your own little crib, Molly.”

  The dog promptly tried to get out.

  “Maybe she has to go potty. I’ll take her out before we go.”

  Caleb followed them outside. “You’re reluctant to go on the hike without Molly, right? I have an idea.” He headed off in the direction of the shed. A few minutes later he came back pulling a rusted-out wagon with faded red wooden rails around the bed. He’d thrown in a strip of old carpeting to make it snug and cozy.

  “Oh, my God, this’ll work. What a great idea.” Hannah plucked Molly off the ground and into the wagon to get the dog’s reaction. “Let’s tell Cooper we’re taking her with us and hit the trail.”

  It didn’t take long pulling the wagon behind her to realize the ground was way too bumpy for a sick dog.

  “We should keep to the pavement, stick to the blacktop,” Caleb suggested. “Once we get out to the road, we can hug the shoulder. It’ll still be a pretty walk among the pine trees.”

  “I’m just happy to be outside.”

  They walked for almost a mile without saying anything to each other until Caleb got curious.

  “Is everything okay? I’ve never seen you this quiet for this long.” Thinking she was worried about the dog, he added, “I’m sure Molly will be fine.”

  “It isn’t that. I’ve every reason to think Cord or Keegan will be able to fix her up.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I don’t think Micah ended up at Bradford House, Caleb. I don’t think that’s him in the ground.”

  “When did you come to that conclusion?”

  “Don’t laugh. But I’ve always had this ‘connection’ to him, even though the only image I have is that of a little baby. At least I think that’s what it is, some kind of link because we’re siblings. Don’t you have that with yours?”

  “I guess. To some extent.”

  “I think I’d know if Micah was dead. He’s alive, Caleb. I’m sure of it. I feel it in my heart. He’s somewhere living his life like most twenty year olds do, doing normal things. I just hope that his life is in Pelican Pointe and this whole thing hasn’t been for nothing.”

  “It hasn’t been for nothing. We found each other, didn’t we?”

  She ran a hand along his cheek. “I didn’t mean it like that. You’ve been the one bright spot for me in all this.”

  “Same here. I can’t think of another woman who would put up with coming here in the sticks to put herself at risk. Not to mention leaving her jobs to make the trip.”

  “I needed this. To get away for a few days. And look, I found Molly.”

  “Not to mention a fortune in Krugerrands.”

  Hannah laughed. “There is that. It still mystifies me how that amount of gold got here at the cabin. I thought you said she bitched about your father not making enough money. If she had access to that kind of wealth, why did she bicker about the money factor?”

  “Eleanor had to make a fuss about something. Her unhappiness with my Dad wasn’t due to anything he did. She just didn’t like her life. If there was no immediate chaos, she’d make sure and create it. Don’t you understand that? Why else would she disappear that night not knowing whether Cooper could get us back to shore safely? Turns out, he couldn’t. If it hadn’t been for a fisherman coming along when he did we’d likely have drifted farther out to sea. And I wouldn’t be standing here now.”

  “That’s a scary thought.”

  “For sane people, it is. Not so much for Eleanor.”

  “But if she wanted a new life why didn’t she just take off with the gold when she left?”

  “Yeah, I can’t figure that one out either. That must be what makes it a mystery.”

  “We’re a pair, aren’t we?”

  He draped an arm over her shoulder. “But you aren’t part of a dangerous psycho.”

  “Who says? If I can’t prove my father is innocent, it’ll always be out there for people to speculate that he’s a monster. It’ll be hanging over my head for the rest of my life.”

  She stopped walking. “Where is this waterfall you mentioned?”

  He pointed ahead of them. “Due north. We’ve probably walked less than a mile.”

  Hannah made a face. “Really? So, another three and a half miles that way? Ugh.”

  “Why?”

  “I guess maybe Cooper could take a picture of it for me. Let’s head back.”

  When it was Cooper’s turn for a hike, he took his time touring the landscape he’d known as a child. On his way to the waterfall he took pictures of the rolling countryside, the sun as it filtered through towering sequoias, and plenty of colorful birds nesting in the pine trees.

  Never one to take the most direct route, he detoured off the road and took the scenic path he’d been taking since he was a boy.

  After Landon and Shelby had taken in three damaged kids, they’d seen to it that the siblings had plenty of distractions. The cabin became one of those places, a destination that soon offered Cooper a reason to grab the Nikon he’d gotten for his birthday.

  It didn’t take him long coming back here every summer to realize it was nature’s paradise. The mountainous terrain became a favorite subject that brought him full circle to his love of landscape. Here, he could lose himself in the picturesque trails for hours and forget about what he’d helped Eleanor do the night his father had been murdered. The beauty of the area had helped him heal back then just as it often had on his other travels throughout the world.

  Today, the thick forest of mountain pine and cedar sprinkled with sequoia still staggered him each time he experienced their magnificent reaches. He’d made this same hike to the waterfall dozens of times before. But it still took him half an hour in, before he realized someone was dogging him. He could sense he wasn’t alone. A couple of times, he’d picked up the footsteps, the rustling, the sound of someone unfamiliar with the dense underbrush following him from off the trail.

  He wasn’t exactly sure what to do. Should he continue to the waterfall to get the guy out in the open or backtrack on
a parallel course and head back to the cabin?

  He decided to circle back using a trail that was off the beaten path. It was higher in elevation and not as well-traveled, but it would likely be the best way to lose whoever had trailed him this far.

  Cooper picked up his pace and made it to where the terrain became more rugged. He took out a bottle of water from his backpack and drank generously trying to hydrate himself in anticipation for the higher altitude. With any luck, the guy behind him might not be as well-prepared. If his tracker hadn’t brought the right provisions for the tougher trail and higher elevation, the man wouldn’t be able to keep up.

  Once he reached the first rocky slope, he began the ascent toward the peak. He clambered to top of a boulder and realized he was high enough that he could see the footpath behind him. He stood there trying to pick up any movements of other hikers using the same trail. But he saw nothing. He was about to scramble up through the narrow gap when he caught sight of a man doggedly trying to scale the same side of the mountain he’d just climbed.

  He wished he’d brought the binoculars, without them he couldn’t make out anything more than a tall man with a paunch trying to keep up.

  “Struggling mightily, aren’t you?” he murmured to himself with some satisfaction. “Let’s see if you can stay with me through the pass.”

  It took Cooper ninety minutes to get back to the cabin from his jagged route around the mountain.

  When he did, he found Caleb and Hannah sitting on the front porch with Molly.

  “Did you get the picture of the waterfall?” Hannah questioned.

  “Nope. But I did manage to dodge the son of a bitch that likely tore up the cabin.”

  Nineteen

  “Let’s face it, I’m hoping that having the dog will take Hannah’s mind off waiting for the DNA to come back,” Caleb confessed to Cooper after he’d dropped her off at the little bungalow on Monday morning.

  He’d helped her with her luggage and Molly’s basket knowing full well she intended to hurry over to the veterinarian clinic before going anywhere else.