*
“OKAY, LISTEN UP,” Rusty said, as he and Curtis rounded his house toward the crate he’d erected in the backyard the day before. He could hear the dog going crazy in it. He stopped walking, and the kid, who was already an inch taller than him, looked down and over at him.
Given the anxious look on Curtis’s face, he didn’t know the first thing about dogs. But that could be good, Rusty reasoned, because then maybe he had no preconceived notion that all dogs were sweet and loveable.
“Draco’s not your average dog,” he explained, though he’d already sketched Curtis a history of Draco’s life—the extreme temperatures and hard work he’d endured and how many lives he’d saved. The kid already knew the dog was a hero. “You need to stand back a while and just watch me interact with him. Don’t approach him until I introduce you. He’s got some anxiety issues, which will go away eventually. But right now, he’s still wired, you understand?”
Curtis nodded. Rusty thought he saw him swallow.
This was not the time to mention that the dog might bite if he wasn’t careful. Christ, if the kid was any more fearful, Draco would smell his fear and run roughshod over him.
“We’re going to walk around this corner, and you hang back about twenty feet while I let him out of the crate.”
“Okay.”
For all of his promising size, Curtis was obviously a cautious kid—not the type-A, my-nuts-are-bigger-than-my-brain type of young man that tried out for the Navy SEALs. But Rusty’d had his fill of young, intractable knuckleheads anyway. “Let’s do this,” he said.
Curtis trailed him to the corner of the house then stopped dead. Rusty couldn’t blame him. Draco literally bounced off the walls of his crate. To say that he was going ballistic was an understatement. Rusty had left him penned a little too long. He’d have brought him along in the car, except that he’d seen Draco eat through the headrest of a Humvee once.
He called over his shoulder, raising his voice to be heard over the din, “He’ll calm down in a minute.”
Approaching the metal crate that shook with the force of Draco’s lunges, he reached into the mailbox he’d mounted high on one side and withdrew a tennis ball. Standing over the dog, he summoned his dominant energy while holding the ball behind his back. “Draco, zit,” he ordered, in the same commanding tone Nichols had used, and the dog snapped into a sitting position while quivering from his snout to the tip of his tail.
“You want this?” Rusty showed him the ball.
The dog quaked with the force of his prey drive, nostrils expanding and retracting with every breath. His once-liquid brown eyes still looked glassy and wild. Rusty heaved an inward sigh. He had his work cut out with this dog. Getting Maya’s son involved might have been a huge mistake.
Feeling for the key in his pocket, he calmly unlocked the crate. He eased it out of the hole, pressing his weight against the door in case the dog lunged and pushed it open. “Draco, blijf,” he ordered, gesturing for the dog to stay as he swung the door slowly open.
Draco didn’t move a centimeter. His chest expanded and contracted like fireplace bellows.
Rusty backed slowly from the open door. “Blijf,” he repeated. The dog watched, every muscle tensing like a coil about to spring free as he hurled the ball across the yard, nearly to the tree line.
He waited several seconds before speaking the word that sent the dog streaking out of the crate at the speed of light. “Apport.” Fetch.
Glancing back at Curtis, he found the kid’s mouth hanging open. A glimmer of interest had replaced the wary look in his brown eyes.
For the next ten minutes, Rusty threw the ball while Draco retrieved it—again, again, and again, without any sign of the dog growing tired. At last, Rusty took the ball away, dropping it back into the mailbox and patting his thigh.
“Hier,” he said, signaling for the dog to flank him as he crossed back to where Curtis stood.
The kid visibly stiffened at their approach. The dog divided a gaze between the two humans, gauging Rusty’s response to Curtis to determine whether he was friend or foe.
“Look at me,” Rusty said, wresting Curtis’s gaze upward. “Don’t stare at the dog. Dogs communicate with body language, and staring means you want to fight.”
Curtis glued wide eyes onto Rusty.
“You can look at him, just don’t stare at him,” Rusty amended. “Hold your hand out, palm side down, relaxing your fingers. Let him sniff you.”
Curtis darted a fearful look at the dog. “He’s not going to bite me, is he?”
Rusty longed to say, “Of course not,” but then Draco might just make a liar out of him. “Just follow my directions and you’ll be fine,” he said, crossing his fingers mentally as Draco snuffled the boy’s hand.
So far so good. “You can pet his head now.”
The dog submitted to Curtis’s tentative petting, but he didn’t lean into the boy’s hand the way he did to Rusty.
This wasn’t going to be a case of love-at-first sight. Heaving an inward sigh, Rusty resolved to keep an eye on this pair all morning. His to-do list would simply have to wait, regardless of the fact that his guests were due in two days.
Curtis and Draco had forty-eight hours in which to bond.
“He likes you,” Rusty lied. Draco’s scorpion-curl tail indicated otherwise.
“I like his coloring,” the kid admitted.
“He’s darker than most Malinois. They tend to have more caramel with just a dark mask.
“Probably how he got his name,” said the kid. “Draco’s like Dracula.”
“That’s right.” The comment proved the kid was a thinker. “Come on inside,” he added. “You get to feed him breakfast.”
Chapter Five
‡
A WARM WELCOMING feeling enveloped Curtis as he followed the SEAL into the house’s rear entry. “Wow,” he exclaimed as he looked around the enormous kitchen.
“You like it?” the retired SEAL asked. He’d told Curtis to call him Rusty but Mr. Kuzinsky sounded more respectful. He wasn’t going to get to know him well enough to call him Rusty, anyway.
“It’s cool,” Curtis said, embarrassed by his initial outburst.
The dog crossed straight to a set of bowls near the fireplace and lapped at his water.
Mr. Kuzinsky indicated the wooden bin next to the second bowl. “I keep his food in here. There’s a scooper inside. Go ahead and put a scoop in his bowl, but first tell the dog to sit.”
“Zit,” Curtis said, mimicking the dog’s master.
Draco ignored him.
“Say his name first and pair the command with this gesture.” Mr. Kuzinsky swept up a closed fist in what looked like an upper punch.
Curtis copied him. “Draco, zit.”
The dog stopped drinking and looked up at him. Thoughts seemed to shift behind his keen gaze as he slowly sank onto his haunches.
“Braaf,” Mr. Kuzinsky praised him. “That means good. Now go ahead and put a scoop into his bowl.”
Curtis felt the dog’s hot breath flow across his forearm as he bent over and scooped out the required amount of food. Please don’t bite me, he thought dumping it into the bowl and straightening quickly.
Without waiting for a release, the dog lunged for the bowl and started scarfing up his breakfast.
Mr. Kuzinsky clicked his tongue in disapproval.
Listening to Draco pulverize the kibble between his powerful jaws, Curtis’s stomach knotted when the man said, “Now take the bowl away from him.”
“But he’s not done.”
“I know. But we need to teach him that good things come from you.”
Regarding the dog’s dark head buried in his bowl, Curtis swallowed. “I don’t think I should.”
“Try it.”
The softly spoken suggestion left no option to defy.
With an indrawn breath, Curtis sank into a cautious crouch and reached slowly for the bowl, intending to ease it away. A menacing growl rumbled in the do
g’s chest and he snatched his hand back.
To his surprise, the former SEAL grabbed the back of his T-shirt at the same time and hauled him to his feet. “Maybe next time,” he said, moving surreptitiously between him and the dog.
And that’s when it dawned on Curtis that the animal was dangerous, and this man knew it. What the hell had his mother gotten him into? Did she want him out of the house so bad that she didn’t even care about his safety?
“You hungry?” Mr. Kuzinsky asked, acting like nothing had happened. “Want anything to drink?”
Curtis shook his head. Dismay put a knot in his throat so that he couldn’t speak.
“Let’s take the dog for a walk. I’ll show you around, and Draco can get used to you.”
Curtis remained silent and the man raised his eyebrows at him. “Okay?” he prompted.
“Yes, sir,” Curtis said through a tight throat.
“Rusty,” the man reminded him.
Curtis nodded, but his tongue refused to form the name.
*
CUED BY THE GPS on her phone, Maya turned at the nondescript mailbox onto a long pebbled driveway off Muddy Creek Road. A stand of centuries-old oak trees blocked the view of the house coming up on her left, though she could make out a shiny tin roof, suggesting a structure of impressive proportions. As she passed the trees, the house came abruptly into view.
Holy smokes. While the word quaint hovered at the periphery of her mind, the house was just too large for that description. Architectural details like whitewashed clapboard siding and a covered veranda dated its original construction to the turn of the twentieth century. But given the HVAC unit half-hidden behind a hedge of young boxwoods, it had clearly been renovated and updated.
The oak trees in the front yard cast shade over the front veranda while the hot June sun glanced off the tin roof at the back. Acres of land stretched in every direction to include a pinewood forest and marshlands which, according to her GPS concealed a creek that went clear out to the sound. What a spread!
Recognizing Rusty’s car, she slowed to a stop alongside it while hunting for any sign of Curtis and the dog he was supposed to be caring for.
Her heart pattered at the expectation of spending a few minutes with Rusty Kuzinsky. As she closed the car door behind her, a strident bark shattered the still, warm silence. Following the sound to the rear of the house, she halted abruptly at the sight of the dog trotting in her direction, unrestrained in any way. As their eyes met, he planted his feet and bristled, tail arching over his back like a stinger. She hardly dared to breathe.
“Draco.” Curtis stood some distance behind him holding a tennis ball. “Apport,” he called, and the dog glanced back just as Curtis hurled the ball in the opposite direction.
Draco wheeled away, streaking after it, and Maya released the breath she was holding.
In the same instant, Rusty stepped out of his back door and her heart continued thumping for a completely different reason.
“He makes a good watch dog,” she commented, subtly drying her sweaty palms on her white skirt.
“Yes, he does.” He spared a glance for the dog, that had caught up to his prize at the edge of the trees and was headed back toward them. “You found the place okay?”
“GPS,” she said. “I thought you’d at least have a sign up by the mailbox. Bronco said you named this place Never Forget?”
“Yes, but anonymity is safer.” His dark eyes drifted over her as he came nearer—too quickly to construe as flirtatious, but there was no mistaking the appreciative gleam in his dark irises.
“Right. You wouldn’t want to draw attention to yourselves.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the dog deliver the ball to Curtis. “So, how’d it go?” she asked, forcing herself to watch her son’s exchange with the dog when every cell in her body was fixated on Rusty.
“Not bad,” he replied, with just enough reservation to raise a red flag.
She looked sharply over at him. “Why? What happened?”
“Watch,” he invited, nodding at the boy and dog.
With a word Maya didn’t recognize, Curtis ordered the dog to drop the ball, but the dog held onto his prize. Dancing around Curtis, he shook his head as if whipping an animal around between his jaws to snap its neck.
Curtis put his hands on his hips and drew himself to his full height.
“That’s it,” Rusty called, letting her know this was something he’d taught her son to do.
“Los,” Curtis repeated in a firm voice.
The dog ignored him for several more seconds, then tossed his head and released the ball at the same time, lobbing it toward him.
“Braaf,” Curtis said, scooping it up. Instead of throwing it again, he marched over to what had to be the dog’s crate and dropped the ball into a container mounted on the side.
Draco pursued him, releasing a rash of angry barks. Curtis visibly cringed as if expecting to be bitten.
Rusty strode in their direction. “Foei!” he shouted at the dog, which stopped his barking and backed off.
With a look of profound relief, Curtis hurried in Maya’s direction. “Are we going home now?”
She hadn’t wanted to leave just yet. In fact, she longed to go inside and see the restorations Bronco had told her about. This farmhouse had been virtually uninhabitable when Rusty purchased it a year ago.
“Curtis has worked hard,” he stated turning back. A crease of what might have been worry furrowed his forehead. “Why don’t you call me later?”
Maya had transferred his number from the business card into her cellphone contacts. “Sure.” It was clear he wanted to discuss Curtis’s first day without her son overhearing. That had to mean something bad had happened. Her hopes for a semi-permanent arrangement floundered.
“Say good-bye to Rusty,” she prompted as Curtis turned away.
“Bye,” he said over his shoulder.
With Curtis out of sight, Rusty approached her quickly, and her pulse quickened. She wished she hadn’t wilted instantly in the heat, her blouse sticking to the light film of sweat that dampened her bra.
“Here’s the money he earned today,” he said, pulling out his wallet and extracting several bills.
She glanced down at the small wad he held out to her. “That’s way too much money.”
“It’ll get him to come back tomorrow.”
She hesitated at the telling statement then took the money. “That bad?” she asked.
Their fingertips touched in the tradeoff, affecting her like a warm brush of lips.
“It’ll get better,” he promised.
“I’ll call tonight,” she replied.
“Good.”
They regarded each other another moment longer before Maya turned away, crossing the lawn on spongy knees. She slipped into her hot van next to a scowling Curtis, started it up, and cranked the A/C.
“I’m not coming here tomorrow,” he insisted as she put the vehicle in reverse.
Disappointment ambushed her. She guarded her response until she finished turning the van around and was starting down the long driveway. “What makes you say that?” she asked.
“That dog is insane. He almost bit me like four times.”
She glanced over at him, somewhat alarmed to hear it but hoping Curtis was exaggerating. “I don’t see any bite marks,” she observed.
“Only because Mr. Kuzinsky called him off every time.”
“He’s watching out for you then.” Relief edged her worry aside. “He’s not going to let you get bitten.”
“Hah. I’m not going back.” Turning his head, he stared mulishly out the passenger’s side window. “I hate that dog.”
Maya handed him the money she held between her palm and the steering wheel. “Here’s your pay,” she said breezily.
Glimpsing his surprise as he took the bills, she hoped there’d be no more talk of not returning.
“You need to save that,” she added as Curtis leaned forward so he could shove the bills
into the back pocket of his shorts. “In two years, you’ll have your driver’s license. What do you think you’re going to drive?”
“Not this ugly thing,” he asserted.
“Correct.” She cast him a sugar-coated smile.
He retreated into silence as they flew up the boulevard headed toward their neighborhood. She could only assume Curtis was weighing the pros and cons of keeping his job.
“By the end of summer, I could save five hundred dollars,” he mused out loud.
Victory. A warm tide spread through her. She would get to see Rusty again. It was a shame he was emptying his pockets just to help her out, however. Maybe there was something she could do for him in exchange?
“All right, I’ll go back,” Curtis conceded suddenly, “on one condition.”
“Oh?” What made him think he held the upper hand?
“You take away my grounding. It isn’t fair that I have to work all day and then I can’t hang out with friends afterward.”
He had a point there. Nor did she particularly want him underfoot at the end of her day.
“How about a compromise?” she countered. “You may hang out with your friends from four to seven, but you’re home after that.”
He made a sound of disgust and rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he said.
“But no hanging out with Santana.”
“Why not?” The face he turned on her was the very picture of affront.
“He’s trouble, that’s why.”
“Oh, come on.”
“You come on. He’s at least sixteen, and he’s extremely rude.”
“He’s in my grade,” Curtis retorted. “Are you racist or something?”
“What?” She pictured Santana’s swarthy skin and realized for the first time that he was of mixed race. “Of course not. Race has nothing to do with it.”
“Sure it doesn’t.”
“Wow. You know what?” She caught herself back from recanting on her decision to let him off of his grounding. Did she really want a rebellious, angry teenager wrecking her peaceful evenings? No. She would try another tactic. “I trust your judgment, Curtis. If Santana tries to influence you in any bad way—if he offers you drugs or makes you watch porn or something—”
Never Forget: A Novella in the Echo Platoon Series Page 4