K-9 Recovery

by Danica Winters

  She needed to shut up. All he needed to know were facts that would help them locate Lily and Catherine. Everything else was frivolous.

  The window where she had last seen Lily was open, and the cold winter air crept through the little girl’s bedroom. It sent a chill down Elle’s back, but she wasn’t sure if it was because of the cold or the fear of what the window being open could have meant.

  By the window, on the corner of the ledge, was a Barbie doll, her hair half-shorn and the other colored pink with Magic Marker. If Catherine had seen such a doll, it would have been pitched in the garbage and replaced with a new doll, hair intact.

  “Lily was sitting there,” she said, pointing at the ledge. “She waved at me when I left, then I came to see you.”

  “After Catherine gave you the tip?” Grant asked.

  She gave him the side-eye.

  “I’m just making sure that I’m tracking all of this correctly.”

  “Yes, after Catherine slipped me the money. I still have it.” She reached down toward her pocket, but he waved her off. “Why do I get the feeling you are struggling to trust me?”

  “I don’t rush into anything, especially trusting people I just met—even in law enforcement. Don’t be offended. It’s not a reflection on you.”

  Was that this guy’s way of telling her he was all kinds of screwed up? He’d hardly be the first LEO she’d met with a chip on his shoulder and a need for therapy. In fact, it was so normal, that she was forced to wonder if it was a chicken-or-the-egg kind of conundrum. On the other hand, perhaps the same could be said of her.

  Beside the bed she spotted the wing-tip shoes, the ones with the black around the tops, that Lily had been wearing when she’d left. They were askew, pitched exactly where the little girl must have taken them off. No other shoes were missing, making her wonder what Lily was wearing. She couldn’t have been out of the house. Not in this weather, not without shoes.

  Then again, that was assuming she had been taken out willingly. If that little girl was out there in the cold, whoever had her would have hell to pay. If someone had her.

  * * *

  GRANT’S HANDSET CRACKLED to life. “Officer 466, we have blood. Requesting backup.” He recognized Deputy Terrill’s voice.

  Pressing the button on his handset, he leaned into the mic. “Ten-four, location?”

  “Four sixty-six, we’ve located it just outside the property line to the south,” Deputy Terrill said.

  Grant glanced over at Elle, whose eyes were wide and filled with fear. Blood was never a positive sign, but at least they had something to help them find the missing Clarks. Yet, he couldn’t help but wonder if including Elle on this one was going to be too much for the woman. “Elle, if you don’t want to come with me, you don’t have to. You are welcome to stick around here with one of the other officers and help them look around the house and see if you can pull more evidence.”

  Elle shook her head violently. “There’s no way I’m not going to be involved on this. But let me get Daisy ready. She knows Lily’s scent.” She patted the dog’s head.

  He smiled. She was right. This dog was probably their best bet in tracking down the woman and child. “Go for it. I’ll meet you around back.” Her jaw was set, and where there had once been fear in her eyes, the look was now replaced with rage. He could understand it. “Again, Elle, if you change your mind about going along, all you have to do is let me know—we can get another handler in here. Sometimes when we’re too close to a case, it can take a lot out of us.”

  “It’s far harder on me knowing that Lily and Catherine are out there somewhere, possibly hurt, and I’m doing nothing about it. There’s not a chance in hell I’m going to change my mind.”

  * * *

  ELLE AND HER dog walked out of the bedroom, but she looked back one more time as if she hoped that she would spot the little girl hiding somewhere in a corner or behind a drape, when they both knew all too well what the likely outcome was in a case like this.

  He waited a few minutes, looking for anything out of place—a hair band, blood spatter, even an empty glass. But the only thing that seemed slightly out of place was the little girl’s shoes. Clearly Lily had been in a hurry when she’d removed them. Just from the way they were strewn on the floor, he could almost tell the child’s personality—it was the only part of the room that really spoke of the little girl and not her mother.

  Elle had made a point of telling him that the family was definitely the kind who would keep everything in line. Which made him wonder exactly how the Clarks had found themselves in this kind of predicament. Then again, sometimes when people held on too tight, it was because they were the ones who had the most to fear if they lost control. He knew a little bit about that—he always felt as if he was one hairbreadth away from disaster, both in his personal life and his professional one.

  As he made his way out of Lily’s bedroom, he walked past the master bedroom. From inside, he could hear a few officers talking about the senator in colorful language. As their sergeant, he should have stuck his head into the room and reminded the team that it was more than possible that one of them had their cameras rolling and everything they were saying was likely being recorded, but he didn’t bother. They had already been warned they were always being monitored. At this point, if they wanted to talk smack about the senator, he wasn’t going to be the one who put his ass on the line to stop them.

  Then again, crap always rolled downhill, and if he didn’t speak up, this could well end up with him standing at attention in the chief’s office and taking a tongue-lashing for not keeping his team in line during a high-priority call.

  He opened the door without announcing his presence. The three officers standing near the end of the bed glanced up at him with guilty looks, and the deputy on the left put his hand up in a slight wave. “How’s it going, Sarge? You find anything?”

  The deputy next to him had a slight redness to his cheeks. They all knew they had been caught.

  “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how important this case could be for our department. I recommend you guys get your asses in gear and do everything in our power to find these missing females and all while not running our mouths.” He pointed at the camera that he had attached to his vest.

  All nodded, reminding him of three little monkeys—no see, no hear, no speak. He didn’t care if they had to tap the message on the floor to one another, just so long as they fully understood that it was truly all their asses on the line here.

  If they didn’t get the Clarks back into their custody quick, fast and in a hurry, the media would blow this all up and they would be the ones taking the most flak. No doubt, as team leader, he would be made out to be a Barney Fife—some bumbling cop from a bygone era who didn’t always know his ass from his elbow.

  Yeah, he couldn’t run the risk of those girls being gone for any more time than absolutely necessary.

  Without so much as a backhanded wave, he rushed out of the bedroom and downstairs, nearly jogging as he made it outside.

  A group of team members was standing outside the white vinyl fence, the kind that looked beautiful but was brittle and prone to shattering in the cold. The snow was deeper in the back of the house, and it crunched under his feet as he was careful to walk in areas not taped off. Perpetrators’ footprints could be on the ground.

  Deputy Terrill looked over at him and gave him a tip of the head in acknowledgment as he said something to the other two officers he was standing with.

  Daisy popped out from around the side of the house, her nose already to the ground as she wove back and forth, working over the scene. Her black tail stood at attention as she moved toward him and Elle came into view.

  He stood watching the dog move right and left, huffing as she took in the cold winter air and picked apart the medley of odors that must have been peppering it. He’d always heard a dog’s sense
of smell was at least a thousand times keener than a human’s, which meant Daisy could probably pick up everything that had happened in the house today...all the people who had walked through its doors and even the cars they had driven in. Hell, she probably could make out the scent of the discarded fast-food wrappers and chewed gum that were in the garbage bags inside the people’s cars.

  Having that kind of ability to make out scents was an incredible superpower, but what made it even more incredible was that these dogs and their handlers had also managed to create a system of communication through training that enabled them to understand what the other was looking for and when it was found. He had seen the K-9 units work before. He’d even been asked to take a bite during training—and he would only do that once. He had tremendous respect for the human-animal bonds that allowed these teams to do their jobs effectively.

  Elle finally looked up from Daisy as the dog slowed. He met her gaze, and there was an intensity in her eyes that made it clear she was just as on-task as the dog. Yet, as he looked at her, he couldn’t manage the same level of professionalism—all he could think about was the brunette hair that had fallen free of her messy bun and was cascading down her neck. She had a slender neck that curved delicately into the arch of her shoulder. The notch at the base of her throat was exposed, and sitting at its center was a diamond on a gold chain.

  The place where her necklace rested looked soft, kissably soft. If he kissed her there, was she the kind of woman who would tip her head back and moan, or was she the type to pull in a breath and tighten in anticipation? If he had to guess, she held her breath. She didn’t seem like the kind of woman who would melt easily under a man’s touch.

  The thought of another man touching her made the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

  He turned away from them, forcing himself to work. This wasn’t the time. Actually, it was never going to be a good time to think about her the way he was thinking about her and all the things he would like to do to her body.

  “Sergeant Anders, over here,” Terrill said, motioning toward something on the ground.

  He made his way over to Terrill as Daisy worked a weaving path across the backyard. He didn’t know what scent Elle had put her on, but from the way the dog moved, he couldn’t help but wonder if it was some small, skittish mammal—the scent path moved like a rabbit.

  Careful to keep in the trail the officers had already created in the snow, he slipped between the rails of the fence and came to a stop beside Terrill. “What’s going on? You found blood?”

  Terrill pointed at the ground a few feet out from where the men stood. There, the snow had been trampled down and there was a mess of small footprints. It looked as though someone had lain in the snow and rolled around, but it was hard to tell the size of the individual—even if it was an adult or a child. Yet, at the edge of the compressed snow was a splatter of blood. The holes the warm blood had created in the snow were dime sized, and if the holes hadn’t been edged in the pinkish-red stain, it would have been almost impossible to see. It definitely wasn’t a quantity of blood that would mean whomever it had belonged to was close to death, but that was the only good news.

  Daisy whined from behind him, and he turned and watched as she slipped under the fence and moved toward them. She pulled on her lead, the muscles in her shoulders pressing out hard as she tried to force Elle to come where she wanted her. Elle stopped, holding Daisy back.

  “Sidet,” Elle commanded in Russian.

  Daisy dropped to her haunches, sitting. There was no moment of hesitation, no pause between command and obedient action.

  When he’d been a kid, they’d had a chocolate Lab. The dog, Duke, would only listen to him when and if it was beneficial to the dog. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how much these two must have worked and trained to get to the perfection of that simple command.

  She was definitely capable of a level of dedication that he envied. He had always thought himself good at his job, but the officers under his command weren’t nearly as well trained.

  Maybe he needed to start giving them treats and praise.

  He smirked, but it disappeared as he noticed the terror in Elle’s eyes as she looked at the droplets of blood in the snow.

  “Can you tell us whose blood that is?” he asked, afraid that he knew the answer before he had even asked the question.

  She chewed on her bottom lip for a quick second. “I had Daisy on Lily’s scent, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that blood belongs to her. If there was someone out here with her, it could be theirs,” she said, but he could hear the feeble hope in her tone.

  Elle stepped around the bloodstain and moved toward the timber. He followed a few feet behind her, letting her and the dog do their work. There were two sets of tracks in the snow, what looked like a man’s and a woman’s. Their footfalls were wide apart, as if they had been running.

  She stopped after about twenty yards and turned to him. “Look.”

  The footsteps in the snow appeared to grow closer, like the man and woman had slowed down and then come to a full stop. Where they had stopped was another set of small footprints—complete with toe marks. At the center of one of the child’s footprints was a pink smudge, as though she had blood on her barefooted step.

  Lily was in far more danger than either of them had assumed.

  Chapter Five

  The wind had kicked up as the sun was touching the tips of the mountains to the west; snow was fluttering down, and with each passing minute it seemed to be coming down faster in plump, wet flakes. If they didn’t work quickly, soon the easy trail would be obscured and they would have to rely solely on Daisy’s nose.

  She tried to quell her disgust as she looked at the marks in the snow where Lily had been dragging her bare feet.

  Who in their right mind would have brought a three-year-old out into the cold and then made her walk barefooted in the snow?

  When she found the kidnapper, she would personally make sure they hiked twice as far without their goddamned shoes—and that was if Lily was okay. If she was hurt, or if her little feet were frostbitten, there would be more than hell to pay.

  Is there something worse than hell? She paused at the thought but followed Daisy as the dog moved ahead.

  All she knew was that anyone who hurt Lily would suffer pain at her hands that would be real and unbearable. It was more than possible that she would be the one who ended up in jail, but if she got justice for Lily, it would be worth it.

  Her jaw ached as she jogged with Daisy, and she realized that she had been gritting her teeth, though for how long, she didn’t know.

  There was another long drag mark in the snow where it appeared as though Lily had literally stopped walking and had been pulled ahead.

  That a girl. At least her friend was putting up a fight.

  Since she had been taking care of Lily, she had been spending time having the kiddo do simple exercises—jumping jacks and push-ups, squats and lunges. At the time, Elle had been using the exercise as something to do to keep Lily busy, but now she was glad she had helped the girl gain strength. Though, never in her wildest dreams had she thought the child would need the stamina and strength they had been working to build for surviving the elements.

  Thankfully, she hadn’t spotted any more blood in the snow. If it was Lily who had been bleeding, she was going to survive...probably.

  If only she had some kind of idea why they were out here, what had made them disappear into the woods. Was the man with them keeping guard, or had he taken them? Were they running or being forced to run?

  Her mind went wild with a million different theories, playing them out from start to finish. Though it was good for her to be prepared and to try to make sense of what had happened, she wasn’t a detective; she was merely a private security contractor, and she couldn’t rush to any conclusions. If she assumed anything, it could adversely affe
ct their tracking and Grant’s team’s investigation. Well, her opinions and assumptions wouldn’t affect them, or at least she didn’t think they would; they seemed like a team that had their roles and expectations dialed in.

  She could make out the sounds of his footfalls crunching in the snow beside her, and she glanced over at him. The red light on Grant’s body camera was on, indicating he was recording everything they were doing. Good.

  If they missed anything, or if something unexpected happened, he would have a record of it. Maybe they could find things after the fact when they were back in their warm offices and reviewing the recordings. Though, if she had her way, there would be no need. She wouldn’t be stopping her search until Lily was safely back in her care and out of harm’s way.

  The mountain grew steeper and, as the sun slipped behind the peaks and cast them in the cold, wintery shade of impending night, the trail they had been following became harder and harder to see. As she wove around a bend in what must have been a game trail under the snow, the footsteps they’d been following disappeared. For a moment, she stopped and waited for Grant to catch up. He was saying something into his handset, and as he stopped beside her, he struggled to catch his breath.

  She would have assumed a sergeant would be in better shape—he must have spent his entire adult life getting to the position he was in within the department. Yet he probably was more of a paper pusher than a boots-on-the-ground kind of guy. It was one of the benefits from moving up in any organization—manual labor grew lighter while mental fortitude became more pivotal.

  “You okay?” he asked, letting out a long breath as though he was forcing his body to fall back in line with his hard-edged spirit.

  She nodded. “The trail just disappeared.”

  He looked down at the ground, seeming to notice it for the first time in at least a mile. “You’re right.” He glanced up at the sky, and a fat snowflake landed on his cheek. As he looked back toward her, she watched as the flake disappeared into nothing more than a droplet of water, which he wiped away with the back of his hand.