“Get out of here, dog!” she screamed.
Grant held open the door as she pushed at it with the chair until the brown dog stepped outside, its hackles raised and its teeth bared. When it realized it was no longer cornered in the office and had found its way back outside, the dog looked around wildly and took off in the direction of the mountains.
“What happened? How’d the fight start?” She turned on Zoey.
Zoey shook her head. “I think Daisy was trying to defend me, but I don’t know. The dog just showed up and there was a snarl and...” She trailed off.
Daisy laid her head down on the ground and whimpered, and Elle ran over, sliding on her knees on the tile floor as she neared the animal. “Are you okay, baby? Mama is here,” she said, careful to reach down and touch the dog gently in case she was still scared.
Daisy looked up at her with a sad, pained expression. “Let me look you over, honey. I promise I won’t hurt you. I just need to check that everything is okay.”
She looked back over her shoulder at Grant as she touched Daisy’s shoulder. “You need to go find the other dog. Make sure it’s okay. And it’ll have to be tested for rabies.”
He nodded, but he didn’t look nearly as worried or upset as she did, and the thought irritated her. “And hurry about it. If that dog is hurt and heading to the mountains, we may never find it again if you don’t move fast. I don’t want to have any other lives on my hands.” She spat the words, feeling the hurt in them but not allowing it to register.
Though she wasn’t looking, she could feel the unspoken conversation that was happening between Zoey and Grant right over her head, and it pissed her off even more. She had every right to be angry—at the situation, at her choices and at the fact she had once again fallen short.
She was so goddamned tired of not being enough and of doing something for herself for once and instantly having to pay the price in a pound of her best friend’s flesh.
She leaned into Daisy and put her forehead against the dog. “I’m so sorry, honey. I’ve got you, Daisy. I shouldn’t have left you outside. I’m so, so sorry.”
The dog leaned in and gave her a sweet lick to the side of the face, like she was accepting the apology, even though Elle was nowhere near deserving of the dog’s mercy.
That, this bond between her and Daisy, was what true love was. Pain and misery, injury and assault, and then forgiveness and love beyond all that agony. It was seeing a being at its worst and in its most vulnerable state and yet staying by their side.
It was endless faithfulness. No matter what.
No man, not even Grant, could offer her the same love as Daisy.
She had been a fool to be so selfish. Never again.
There was a growing pool of blood around Daisy’s neck and chest. It stained the white tile floor, and Elle tried not to panic. Ever so gently, she ran her hands down the dog’s body over the lumps and welts caused by the dog’s bites and then around her thoracic area until her fingers felt the warm, wet tear just below her throat and at the front edge of her right shoulder.
“Baby...” she cooed, tears welling in her eyes and forcing her to blink them back. “Zoey, grab me some towels.”
Zoey ran past her and headed toward the bathroom, coming out with a stack of hand towels and a roll of pink vet wrap. “Will this work?” she asked, handing it all over to her.
“Just press that towel right here, keep your pressure.” Elle stood up and ran toward the back room where they kept all of their tactical gear in case they needed to bug out.
She pulled open her locker, exposing her black tactical bag, and pulled out a QuikClot kit she kept in it all the time in case of emergencies. She didn’t know if the clotting agents would work on her dog, but she couldn’t think of a reason they wouldn’t. And, at the very least, it would slow the bleeding enough that she could hopefully get Daisy to the vet’s office.
Elle made her way out to the main office and ripped open the kit. Zoey moved back, and she pressed the pad to the dog’s exposed muscle. Daisy whimpered, trying to lick at the wound and pull off the gauze, but Elle kept her from getting to the pad. “Hold the pad there for a second,” she said, motioning for Zoey to take over.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said to Daisy, repeating it over and over while she made sure the dressing stayed on the wound by wrapping it in the pink vet wrap.
From the look of the wound, it wasn’t too bad as long as they got the bleeding stopped. After that, she would just need stitches and time to heal. Hopefully.
Elle pulled a shirt off the hook by the door and slipped it over the dog’s head and covered up the wound and the dressing. “That’s my good dog, Daisy. Mama has got you.”
She stood up and, lifting with her knees, picked the rottweiler up. She held her against her chest as she looked over at Zoey. “Grab the door, will you?”
Zoey rushed by, holding open the office door and then jogging ahead of Elle to open up the back door of one of the ranch trucks. She put down a blanket and then helped lift Daisy inside. The dog’s eyes were still wide, but now it appeared as if it was more the pain and most of the adrenaline had started to wear off.
Zoey ran back to the office and quickly locked up; when she came back, she was carrying the truck’s keys.
Daisy let out a long, breathy moan and laid her head down on the blanket and gave Elle one more look before closing her eyes. The look made Elle’s stomach pitch. Daisy was going to be all right. She had made her pup a promise, a promise she intended on keeping no matter what.
Clicking the back door shut gently, she made her way around to the passenger’s side of the truck and moved to get inside. She looked toward the mountain, and as she did, she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. Walking out of the woods, carrying the brown dog, was Grant. He’d wrapped the dog in a blanket, but it was looking up at him like he was some kind of hero.
She ran toward his truck and flung open the doors as he approached, carrying the other pup. Though she was upset about what had happened, it was terrible to ever see an animal in distress. “Is she okay?” Elle asked, motioning toward the dog as Grant moved to set her in the back.
“She is banged up, needs a few stitches. How’s Daisy?” He ran his hand down the dog’s head and scratched her gently behind the ears. The dog was panting but otherwise seemed to have fared better.
“Same, but seems to be hurting.” She looked back over at Zoey. “We are heading to the vet’s office. Follow us over.” She started to jog back to the ranch truck but stopped and looked back at Grant. Her heart pulled her back to him, but if forced to choose, she couldn’t leave Daisy alone. Not again.
“Grant?” she called, and he looked in her direction. “Thank you. I appreciate you finding the dog. You’re a good man.” She gave him a sweet, delicate smile and a tip of the head.
It had been a long time since she’d been around a man who wasn’t on the Shadow team who could actually be trusted. It hurt her deeply to turn away from him and go to the ranch truck, to her waiting boss and her dog, but she knew she had to focus on the sure things in her life, and they included Daisy, Zoey and the STEALTH team. When she allowed herself to get distracted, she let them all down.
Chapter Fifteen
With the dogs back in surgery at the after-hours emergency vet clinic, Grant was left standing in the waiting room with Zoey and Elle. He had a sinking feeling that Elle felt this was partially his fault, that if they had been focusing on the things they had been hired to focus on, that none of this would have happened to her dog. He couldn’t blame her.
Though he didn’t own an animal, he understood the bond that came with owning one. He and his dog Duke had been inseparable until Grant had gone off to college. Duke crossed the rainbow bridge when he was away, and when he’d come home, it had never again felt the same. A part of him had gone over that bridge with his best friend.
If Elle was feeling even a small percentage of that same kind of pain, it was crazy to him that she was even allowing him to stand in the same room with her. The lady at the desk disappeared into the back, and Zoey finally turned to them. “This is probably going to take a while.”
Elle nodded, and as he looked at her, he noticed how tired she looked. It wasn’t just the kind of tired that was in the eyes. Instead, it appeared as though it was all the way down in her bones. He wanted to hold her and comfort her, but here in front of her boss seemed like one hell of a piss-poor place. She needed to keep it together in front of her boss, at least as much as she could, given the circumstances, and if he pulled her into his embrace, he had a feeling he would have to take her back to bed and hold her until her tears ran dry.
“I know you don’t want to leave Daisy,” Zoey said, looking down at her hands and then flipping her purple hair back and out of her face. “Did you ever get my text?”
Elle nodded.
“Did you manage to pull something?” Grant asked, hoping for the best.
Zoey pushed her hands over her chest and looked around as though making sure that they were alone and couldn’t be overheard. “I had a phone call. It wasn’t great.”
His heart rate spiked. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Zoey looked over at Elle and then at him. “Senator Clark called me not long after you left my office.” She cleared her throat like trying to remove the discomfort that was reverberating between them. “He made it clear that he will be pursuing a lawsuit against our group for negligence in the death of his wife and disappearance of his daughter. He is going to try and ruin us.”
Holy shit.
Elle opened her mouth then closed it several times, and a single tear slowly escaped her eye and trembled down her cheek. “I...I’m so sorry.” Elle sounded choked, like Zoey’s statement was gripping her throat and threatening to kill the last parts of her soul that had, up until now, remained unscathed.
This was all his doing. Clark hadn’t been gunning for Elle until they had pulled him off the woman admirer outside the airport. He should have known better than to publicly embarrass the senator, especially in front of a woman he might have been trying to get into his bed. The man was a narcissist, and while Grant was sure that he was hurting after his wife’s death and the loss of his daughter, for a man like the senator, the worst kind of pain was always going to be the pain to his ego. He was nothing if he wasn’t being pedestaled and revered—especially by the opposite sex.
“He is just looking for someone to blame,” Grant said.
Elle looked at him, and there were more tears in her eyes. He could tell there were a million things she wanted to say, but in her current broken state he would take this on for her. If this was the only way he could show how much he cared about her, how much he secretly loved her, he was going to protect her. He was her man, even if only in his heart and only until the end of this case. She needed him, though she would never say it aloud.
“I know you’re right,” Zoey said, careful to avert her gaze from Elle in what he assumed was an attempt to allow Elle a moment to collect herself and keep her dignity intact.
He always hated losing his edge in front of a superior officer. That kind of thing had the power to kill a career, or at least throw a major hurdle in front of advancement. Maybe it was different for women, he didn’t know, but he didn’t think it would be good for her, either.
He stepped in front of Elle, shielding her with his body even though he was sure that Zoey cared for her. There was a bond between the two women, he could see it in the way they treated one another. No doubt, it was a saving grace in their line of work. It probably even provided them with some additional level of protection, to have a fellow woman at her side, but that didn’t mean that weakness would be perceived as anything other than just that. And in teams like theirs, weaknesses could bring harm.
Elle exhaled, and he could feel her move behind him like she was brushing the tear from her face and shaking off the display of emotions. She stepped out and took her place beside him. “So, if you know it is just misplaced anger and this really isn’t my fault—”
Zoey stopped her with a raise of her hand. “Whoa. I didn’t say it wasn’t our fault.”
“You mean my fault,” Elle said.
Zoey looked away. “All I’m saying is that things could have gone differently. There were definitely some aspects of our handling of our security duties that could have been better. Perhaps better communication from both sides of the desk would have stopped this from ever happening. Regardless, we are going to walk away from this incident with a large black eye and an even larger hit to our bankroll.”
“Don’t worry about your bankroll,” Grant said. “I’m sure that we will make things right here. We will get Lily back and find whoever was responsible for Catherine’s death.”
“Even if you do, I don’t know if that is going to stop the senator from gunning for us,” Zoey said. “And as such, I can only do one thing to protect our company. It’s something I don’t want to do, Elle. Especially not here and now, but my hands are tied...at least until and if you guys can get the senator off our ass. Elle, I need you off the team.”
Elle nodded. He expected her to cry, but instead her jaw was set and anger sparked in her eyes. She pushed past Zoey and made her way outside.
“What in the hell, Zoey?” he growled. “You don’t move against your team members when they need you the most. She did her goddamned job, she did exactly what she was told and now you are taking this out on her? You are wrong right now in how you are handling this, and I think you know it. She was already hurting, and you just took her out at the knees.”
Zoey started to say something, but he didn’t want to hear it.
“I have been a part of this investigation from day one, and let me tell you, from everything I can see, she isn’t the one in STEALTH who was the problem.” He looked her up and down and then, without waiting for her to speak, he charged out of the office.
Elle was sitting in his pickup staring out through the passenger-side window and into space. He had no idea how he was going to fix this. Even if he could, he wasn’t sure that the damage to her career would be repairable. While STEALTH would likely recover, it was doubtful that Elle could say the same.
He still just couldn’t believe that Zoey would have moved against one of her own like this, but going against a senator could be deadly if she and her team weren’t careful. It was one of those situations in which it was live by the sword, die by the sword. They had chosen to work with vipers, now they would have to take the teeth.
Unfortunately, the teeth had pierced the neck of the mother of the child she had promised to protect.
As he got in and they hit the road, there was an impenetrable silence between them. He didn’t know if he should tell her he was sorry or unleash a diatribe about how stupid her boss was, so he remained quiet. She and Zoey had been friends, but that probably only made what had just happened that much worse. She had been wounded by someone she trusted.
Her phone pinged, and he looked over and saw a text from Zoey flash over the screen. “What does she want?” he asked.
“I’m sure it’s not to apologize and beg me to come back. And even if it was...” Elle sighed as she clicked the message off without reading it.
Grant touched her knee. “If you don’t like your job, if you want to follow another path in life, you have my support. I will do whatever you need to help you out.”
She chuffed. “I have no idea what to do right now. I don’t have any damned answers. If you didn’t notice, my entire life just came crashing down. The last thing I want or need is some guy who is only going to make things worse.”
Was that what he had become, just some guy?
He wanted to argue with her, to tell her what she had just done to him and to his feeli
ngs. He wanted to tell her how all he wanted to do was be the man she needed and not like the men in her past who must have let her down. He loved her. But she mustn’t have felt the same way.
In that case, he just needed to button his feelings up and cinch them down. He wasn’t a fan of self-inflicted pain, and that’s what he’d be doing to himself if he kept after her when it was clear she was dismissing him.
Though he was more than aware she was likely striking at him out of her own pain, he hadn’t been prepared.
Yet, what did it matter? He had his answer as to her feelings toward him one way or another. At least it was a solid, unwavering rejection. A clear rejection was far better than half-assed feelings and empty promises.
“Stop,” Elle said, touching his hand on her knee as she stared down at her phone. “Pull over.”
“What?” he said, jerking the wheel to the right and pulling the truck to the side of the road. “Are you okay?” he asked, forgetting he was hurt and angry at the mere thought that she needed him.
“I’m okay,” she said, not really paying his question any mind. “Zoey said that she just managed to find another phone that was linked to the Clarks. She sent me the phone number, but said she is going to have her people dig into it, as well. Hoping to get the phone records as soon as she can.”
He smiled; information like that was right in his wheelhouse. Opening up the computer that sat atop the truck’s middle-seat console, he started it up. “What’s the number?”
She rattled it off as he typed it into NexTx, a cellular tracking program used by law enforcement. He laughed wildly as the phone pinged. “You are going to love this,” he said, turning the computer for her to see it.
“What am I looking at?”
“Right now, the phone is located near the Blackfoot River, just down I-90. Twenty minutes ago, it was moving. And five hours before that, it was in Mineral County.”
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