by Dale Mayer
Her neighbor had come out a couple times with garbage, and, once Greyson had explained that he was trying to catch the dog that was getting into his garbage, the guy was friendly as hell.
“Yeah, she’s lonely too,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “I keep trying to be friendly, but she’s not taking the hint.”
“I imagine she’s more interested in looking after her son right now,” Greyson said, as if disinterested.
“I just mean that she’s hot and single,” he said. “Single moms like that are much better off.”
“Much better off than what?”
“With somebody around to show them a fun time,” he said. “Anything else and they want a commitment. But I’m totally okay to just visit in the evenings,” he said with a dirty laugh.
Greyson found himself beyond offended and angry at this loser’s attitude, but now he wondered if she realized that, as a single mom, a lot of the male population saw her as an easy mark. How sad if they did. Any mom like that deserved respect, not to be trashed or looked at as a cheap lay.
When the neighbor went inside, Greyson just shook his head, more determined than ever to make sure he caught the dog. But, if the dog took a little bit of this guy’s garbage and dumped it everywhere, Greyson wouldn’t be terribly upset. He was sick at the thought of guys like that preying on a single woman like Jessica.
He’d left his vehicle parked down at the other end of the block, just walking gently up and down the alleyway. He would whistle for the dog every once in a while. As he was coming back, and the darkness had settled, when he had crossed Jessica’s backyard again, Greyson heard a rustling in the trees.
Immediately he stepped up and looked over the gate, expecting to find the dog. Instead he watched a man skulking up the trees. He studied the stranger, dressed all in black with a balaclava over his head. Definitely not good news. Especially in the hot and humid evenings of Hawaii.
He reached over the gate and unlatched it, gently pushing it open. Just as he did so, Jessica opened the back door and stepped out. She was singing a lullaby to her son, walking the patio, completely unaware of the stranger sliding up to the side of the house. From where Greyson stood, he could see just the outline of the man against the patio.
He quickly clicked the gate closed and slid up the side of the fence. He didn’t want to scare away the intruder; Greyson wanted to capture him. Otherwise this would never end. If she had a stalker, the only way to stop it was to nab him.
As he watched, she paced along, quietly singing and walking her son in her arms. Obviously Danny didn’t want to go to sleep tonight. As she went closer to where the intruder was, Greyson’s heart bounced into his throat. He wanted to race around to the front and grab the guy, but that wouldn’t work. Her intruder could have taken Jessica and Danny hostage by then.
As she strolled back over to Greyson’s side again, he gave a small wave, but she didn’t see him. As she turned and headed back toward the other side of the veranda, the stranger came around the corner and grabbed her. She screamed, but what happened next was the complete opposite of what Greyson thought would happen.
As the stranger reached for her, a black streak came ripping through the trees at the far end and leaped onto the veranda, going right for him as he grabbed Jessica and Danny. Greyson heard the dog growling and then the man screaming when Kona latched on to the man’s wrist, using her military training she had learned.
Greyson arrived next on the veranda, grabbing Danny and Jessica. She was frozen from the first attack and stunned by the actions of the dog and now Greyson’s presence. She stared up at him, shocked.
“It’s okay,” he murmured. “Let me handle this.” Danny started to cry just then. Greyson motioned to her. “Take him up to bed,” he said. “Let me deal with the dog and the intruder.”
“Who is he?”
He shook his head, his gaze on the dog and the stranger. “Go,” he ordered. “I’ll figure it out.”
When he heard the glass door close behind him, he walked up as the stranger desperately tried to kick Kona to get away.
Greyson walked over and gave the guy a hard clip to the jaw. The man collapsed on the ground. Then Greyson stepped over the intruder and crouched closer to the dog, saying, “Kona, release.” His tone was hard and left absolutely no leeway for the dog to argue. But the dog growled and glared at him. “You’re right,” Greyson said. “He was attacking that woman and the baby. And I know what you were trying to do. That’s why you’ve been hanging around the neighborhood, isn’t it, girl?”
Kona’s ears lifted and tweaked at the sound of his voice. But she didn’t let go of the intruder.
He said, “Look,” and he lifted the man’s head by the hair, letting it drop with a heavy thud to the veranda floor. “He’s down and out—it’s okay. Kona, release.” She relaxed ever-so-slightly. Instead of growling at Greyson, she just looked puzzled. “Let him go,” he ordered.
This time she released her grip on the man’s arm. Greyson quickly rolled the stranger over, pinned his hands behind his back, kicked off the man’s shoes and grabbed both socks, tied them together, which he then wrapped around the intruder’s wrists, holding the intruder in place. When he looked at the dog, Kona was lying down, whining. He reached out a hand for her to sniff, then gently scratched the top of her head and down around her ears. “That’s a good girl,” he said. “That’s a very good girl.”
Her tail started to wag like crazy.
He looked up at the glass doors to see Jessica standing there, her hand over her mouth. He motioned at her to come outside.
She opened the door slowly. “Is it safe?”
“Yes,” he said. “I don’t know who your intruder is,” he said, “but Kona was trying to save you and the baby.”
She looked at him and at the dog and said, “Seriously?”
“Yes. I think that’s why she’s been hanging around here,” he said. “If you think about it, she’s been guarding you, just watching. This is quite likely the man who hit your car that day.”
He pulled out his cell phone, and, turning on the flashlight, Greyson rolled over the stranger and pulled the balaclava off his face. She gasped. “Oh, my God, it’s him.”
“I think Kona knew that this guy has been hanging around your place,” he said. “She’s a hero, and she worked hard to save you tonight.”
Before he could react or could warn her that it might not be safe, she bent down into a crouch, threw her arms around Kona, and buried her face into the dog’s rough.
Greyson could hear her whispers.
“Thank you so much, Kona. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Kona’s tail went crazy, and she rolled over, still in Jessica’s arms.
Laughing, he said, “Kona, you don’t look all that fierce now.” He reached over and scratched her gently on the neck and chest. He gave her a good belly rub too. “I think those crazy hard days are over now, girl.”
“Absolutely they are,” Jessica said. “I don’t have any dog food though, but I’m sure I’ve got something in the house.”
“What you need to do,” he said, “is go call the cops.”
“What about Kona?” she asked. “We don’t want the dog to be picked up.”
“Do you have any rope?” he asked. “I’ll make a lead and put it on her.”
“I might have something in the garage,” she said.
“First the cops,” he said firmly. “Then go to the garage and see if we’ve got something I can use to restrain her.”
“Do you think she’s still dangerous?”
“No, but, if she’s the model of a well-behaved dog on a rope,” he said, “the police won’t have any argument with me keeping her.”
Chapter 6
Jessica didn’t even know what to say. She stared out in the darkness around the house and then back down at the intruder. “I guess he’s not saying anything, is he?” she whispered. She didn’t even know why the hell she was whispering, but it just seemed
like anything above a whisper would disturb the peace. And that made no sense. She gave a half maniacal shout of laughter. “Dear God,” she said, “here I’m worried about being quiet, when I need to have the cops come and haul this asshole away.”
“You go do that,” Greyson said quietly.
As she watched, he pulled out the guy’s wallet.
She frowned. “What are you doing?”
“Once the cops get here, they won’t tell us anything,” he said. “I want to know who this guy is.” He flipped the wallet open to the driver’s license, pulled it out, as well as several credit cards, and took photos.
“Why the credit cards?” She hated that tone of suspicion in her voice, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why he needed photos of them.
“Because look. They’re all in different names,” he said quietly.
At that, she gasped and bent closer. Sure enough they were. “Did he steal them?”
“Possibly,” he said, “or he’s using fake IDs.” He flipped through the wallet and found some cash, as in several hundred dollars, which was way more money than she’d seen in a long time. Making sure nothing was of interest, he shoved the wallet back in the guy’s pocket, then Greyson proceeded to check the rest of him over. In a front pocket, he found the guy’s cell phone.
With that, she watched an almost feral smile come across his face. She crouched beside him. “You’ll need a passcode.”
He nodded. “It would be needed in most cases.” But he double tapped the screen, and, sure enough, up came the icons.
She gasped again. “Seriously?”
He nodded, looked at her, and said, “Did you call the cops?”
She hesitated, not wanting to leave him alone with the phone and miss something. “I’ll call in a minute,” she said.
He chuckled. “You make a great sidekick.”
“Not exactly what I was going for in life,” she said drily.
He nodded and smiled. “You could do much better.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said. “So far you and the dog have teamed up to save my son’s life and mine. And speaking of which”—she spied the dog as she laid on the grass beside them—“I never got the rope.” She quickly went to the garage and picked up a bundle she remembered being there, although it was more of a braided cord. While here, she placed a quick call to 9-1-1, then returned to the scenario outside. “This is all I have,” she said quietly and set the rope next to him.
He looked up from taking photographs of the guy’s phone screen. Then he connected the two phones with a cord.
She frowned and asked, “What are you doing?”
“Transferring contact information,” he said, just above a whisper, as he reached out for the braided cord and quickly created a loop at one end. Walking over to the dog, he sat down, and, with the loop up over his shoulder, he reached out and gently scratched the dog on the back of the neck. In a smooth move that she’d never seen before, he lowered the loop down his arm and very quickly around the dog’s neck. With Kona now on a rough leash, she seemed to understand and behaved more like a War Dog, Jessica presumed.
When Greyson stood and commanded the dog to come, the dog walked toward them. When he told her to heel, she went around his back and sat on his right side. Greyson reached down and gave several rewarding scratches and reinforcement to Kona.
Jessica shook her head. “I’m really glad you got her,” she said. In the distance she heard sirens, and she groaned. “Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you. I also called the cops.”
He nodded. Walking back to where the phones were, he gave a small sound of satisfaction and quickly disconnected them, putting the guy’s phone back in his pocket, then sat down on the veranda step beside the stalker as Greyson sent those contacts to Badger to cull through.
Once her attacker came to, lying between Greyson and Kona, he knew he was caught. When he heard the sirens, he panicked. “I’ll give you money to let me go,” he hissed, then he stayed silent.
“I’m sure you would,” she snapped, “but you’ve been stalking me and my son, making our lives miserable for a long time now.”
He shrugged. “The money was good.”
“Yeah? Who’s paying you? That’s what I want to know,” she said.
He gave her a half a smile. And, from the position he was in, facedown on the wooden veranda, it was a pretty strong caricature of a real smile.
When the cops pulled up out front, she headed to the front door. Before long, two policemen were out on the rear veranda with them. They looked at the scenario. One pushed his hat back and said, “Well, well, well. We’ve had rumors of somebody skulking around this area.”
“Well, now the rumors are a whole lot more than that,” Greyson said. “We caught him trying to attack Jessica on her veranda here, while holding her son.” Greyson motioned to Kona, who sat at his feet. “Kona here stopped him.”
“We have to get statements from you two,” he said, “but first I’ll get this guy into the car.” He helped him to his feet, then led him around the side of the house.
The second cop brought out his notepad and started asking questions as he jotted down notes.
There wasn’t a whole lot they could say, and she noticed that Greyson kept his words very simple. He didn’t say anything about the dog being here on its own, so she followed his lead, saying that she had felt like she was being watched several times. She had talked to her mother and her sister about it but hadn’t called the police because she didn’t know what to tell them.
“Well, this is the best-case scenario,” the cop said. “You’ve caught your stalker. So we’ll take him down to the station and charge him. I will need you to come in and sign statements tomorrow though.”
“Not a problem,” she said. “I can come in the morning, if that’s okay.”
“That sounds good,” he said, and he headed around the house to the front yard.
She turned to look at Greyson, relief washing through her. “That went better than I expected.”
“Sometimes,” he said with a gentle smile, “when you keep your words to a minimum, things go smoother.” He frowned, then cocked his head to the side.
“Now what?” She couldn’t hear anything. She watched as Greyson and Kona walked to the side of the house, listening intently. Finally he looked at her and said, “They haven’t driven away,” he said. He and the dog walked farther. Greyson added, “I’ll go out front.”
Jessica went inside, closed the glass doors, and locked them. Then darted to look out the front window. Sure enough, the cop car was still sitting in her front yard. As she stepped out the front door, Greyson and Kona came around the side, and she watched Kona’s coat immediately bristle, as a growl came from the back of her throat. Jessica came around the front porch to see one cop lying unconscious on the driveway and, on the other side, where Greyson was, lay the other cop. But the guy from her backyard was nowhere to be found.
She stared at Greyson in horror, as he knelt beside the first, then the second cop, checking both men’s condition.
Grim faced, he pulled out his phone and made calls. Kona wouldn’t calm down at all. The ridge on the back of her neck was up, and she paced back and forth, as far as the rope would let her.
“It’s almost like she knows where he’s gone,” she said.
“She could very well be a tracking dog,” he said. “I haven’t looked into her skills that much, but I won’t leave you alone with two unconscious cops and a stalker on the loose.”
“I think he’s well past a stalker now,” she said. “He’s assaulted and knocked out two cops and escaped. That should get him a much higher priority on the attention list.”
“Hopefully,” he said, nodding. “But we have to wait here for the next round of cops to come and the ambulance.”
She winced at that. “Meanwhile he’s getting away,” she said bitterly. “Which means he can come back to the house at any time.”
He hesitated but nodded.
“Let’s hope the cops decide to post a guard for you.”
“It’s a small department,” she said, “and I know that they’re running into budget trouble. They’ve requested two more officers, but I don’t think they got them.”
He winced at that. “Right. So it looks like Kona and I will be on guard duty then.”
She stared at him in shock. “You’d do that?”
“Well, this guy will come back, just like you said, and that’s not something I can leave you to deal with in good conscience. Better if I could start tracking him now though.”
Just then they heard sirens. This time two cop cars came with the ambulance. Everybody immediately raced toward them, and, within minutes, both unconscious cops were examined, loaded up, and taken away in the ambulance.
Two very angry cops glared at the two of them. Greyson reached out, grabbed her hand, and tugged her closer, then whispered, “Let me explain.” He proceeded to give the police a very clear, albeit slightly skinny version of what had happened. When he said the second man headed out to the front to the driveway, and they didn’t hear the sound of the vehicle, he went out to check and found both cops like this. She nodded in agreement.
“So, you have no idea which direction the assailant went?”
She shook her head. “No, we don’t. The dog was pretty upset, but I don’t know that she was prepared to say which direction the guy went or not.”
He looked down at the dog and said, “Has it got any skill with tracking?”
“I’m more than willing to try it out,” Greyson said. “But I have no idea.”
“Forget it,” said one of the other cops. “We need to track him on foot, and I’ve already called in a K9 unit.”
“Good.”
The other men dispersed to canvass the neighborhood.
She frowned, looked at Greyson. “They left the cop car here too.”