*Ariel could see by Chance Rafferty’s expression that he was stunned. But that was all she took time to notice before she focused completely on the dog. She kept talking, not even sure what she was saying, just keeping that same tone and inflection he seemed to be responding to. And the dog leaned in, swiping her cheek with his tongue again. He tried to put his remaining front paw up as if to touch her, an instinct he apparently hadn’t gotten over. She looked into the animal’s eyes, told herself she was anthropomorphizing to see both anxiety and hope there.
Worst I’ve had come through here.
His words rang in her mind. And pain wracked her for a moment, as she thought of how that had happened. But after two years of practice, when she had something else she simply had to focus on, she’d learned to set it aside for the moment. She did so now.
“Thank you, sweet boy. I’m sure no one’s called you that in a while, have they? Now, if the man in charge okays it—” she kept the same tone and didn’t look at that man “—I’d really like to pet you. Would that be all right? I’m willing to risk it if you are.”
She paused, waiting. Heard a sound as if the man beside them, the man towering over them, was clearing his throat. Then, almost gruffly, he said, “Slowly. Hold out a hand first.”
“Of course.” She said it again, but not upset; he was just being careful. It was clear this mattered to him, a great deal. The dogs mattered to him, or he wouldn’t be doing this. And the officer she’d talked to who had given her the information on Atlas—Tri, she reminded herself—had clearly been admiring.
He takes on the ones we can’t deal with any longer. The ones who hit The List.
He’d said the last two words as if they were capitalized, and she knew what list he meant. The lost causes, scheduled for that final injection. She supposed it was more merciful than a bullet in the head. Maybe.
Rafferty’s a good guy. He’s not getting rich doing what he does, because he takes nothing for himself. The dogs are all that matter.
She wondered fleetingly if They Also Serve would even exist if it wasn’t here on his family’s ranch. If he’d be able to do it financially. But again she pushed that aside.
Slowly, very slowly, she lifted her left hand; if the dog was going to bite, better her non-dominant hand. Tri leaned in, his nose working hard again as he sniffed her. She held still and held her breath. And then, with another of those low whines, the dog shifted his nose to underneath her hand and nudged upward, clearly wanting the touch. She made herself go slowly, lightly, barely stroking the soft, short fur. When he tilted his head slightly, opening his mouth, her breath jammed up in her throat. She sensed rather than saw the man beside them tense.
But Tri only licked her wrist.
She increased the pressure of her fingers, rubbing now, gently but firmly. The dog sighed and leaned in even more.
Ariel risked a glance upward. Saw the gruff man staring down at them, lips parted just slightly, blinking just a bit rapidly.
“Mr. Rafferty?”
“Chance,” he corrected, and she felt oddly as if she’d just been given an award. And noticed that his voice was different, less gruff now. “Eight months,” he said, almost under his breath.
“What?” she said, still stroking the clearly willing dog’s head.
“I’ve had him nearly eight months, and this is the first time I’ve…had hope for him.”
That was not the voice of a harsh, uncaring man. She remembered what his brother had said—that he only cared about the dogs. She supposed that was what had won her the right to his first name, that Atl—Tri was responding to her. Had the dog really been so bad? He must have been, or she wouldn’t have been warned to be so careful.
The first time I’ve had hope for him.
But at least the dog was here, and alive, when he very nearly hadn’t been.
“Thank you for saving him,” she said softly, moving her hand to try a scratch behind the dog’s ears. The dog leaned in even further, and when it apparently became too much for his tripod base, he plopped down with his head on her knee. She began to stroke him as she would a normal dog, and he gave a little wiggle of pleasure.
“I may have rescued him from a needle,” Chance said, his voice noticeably thick, “but I think it’s you who has the power to save him.”
*
He was still in shock. He didn’t understand why what had happened, happened, but he would take it. Gladly. Even if it meant he was sitting here in his house with a beautiful redhead with sky-blue eyes, drinking the coffee he was now glad he’d put on after he’d gotten Cody’s message.
Cody, who had bailed with barely a goodbye.
Yes, he would take it, because as she sat barely two feet away on the leather couch that had once graced the den of the main house, Tri was sitting at—make that on—her feet, his head resting in her lap. She continued stroking him, in fact had never stopped. And the dog who had never willingly accepted anyone’s touch but his, was clearly loving it.
Watching them he felt an odd sort of tingle. The same sort of feeling her voice had given him, only this time it wasn’t just down his spine—it was more. And spreading.
Relief. That was it. It was just relief, at the sight of Tri, at the hope that maybe, just maybe, he might be rehabilitated after all.
On some other level his mind was racing. Not just about what had happened now—although the only possibility that had come to him didn’t seem overly feasible—but what might happen from here on.
What if she was the only one he’d respond to? She’d said she was here for him, but that didn’t necessarily mean she wanted to take on this possibly life-long responsibility of always watching for any sign the dog might be regressing. Maybe she didn’t understand that that’s what it would be. Maybe that wasn’t why she was here at all. Maybe she’d only come here to meet the dog who had been her late husband’s strong right hand, the K-9 partner she’d never met.
And that brought him back to the biggest impossibility of the day, maybe of these last eight months. He stared at Tri. Why? Why had the beyond-wary, skittish, restless, and anti-social animal reacted this way? As if he’d known her?
“Why, do you suppose? Any theories?” His gaze shot up to her face as she voiced the same question he’d been thinking. When he didn’t speak for a moment, she went on. “I know it sounds crazy, but…it’s almost like he knows, isn’t it? That I’m…connected to Dean?”
“Maybe…” He had to swallow to go on. “Maybe he does. He’s not a scent dog, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have the capacity far beyond human to pick them up, catalog and remember them.”
Her eyes widened slightly. “But how could he know my scent?”
And there they were, at his crazy thought. “The…last time I saw them, Dean had just come back from a short leave. He left Tri at the base.” It was difficult to go on. He was afraid this was going to hurt her, bring on some horrible wave of sadness. “He said if he had the chance to see you, even if it was only for a day, he couldn’t pass it up, since it would be the last time for a while.”
Her next words explained her shocked expression. “I…you…you served with him?”
He frowned. “For a while. They didn’t tell you that?”
“I…no. The man I spoke to at the base didn’t mention it. Not his fault,” she added, almost hastily. “I didn’t ask, because it didn’t occur to me.” He liked that she was so quick to absolve whoever she’d talked to. “I should have realized, when…you called me Red.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, then floundered, not sure exactly what he was apologizing for. Because she didn’t know the worst of it, that not only had he known Dean, but he’d been the one who knew the foray he’d been about to leave on was little more than a suicide mission. But he hadn’t been able to convince the brass. All his talk had been useless, and so Dean was dead.
He tired to focus on the here and now. Wondered if he should even go on, given what he’d been about to say would probably sound crazy to her. Finally he just came out with it.
“I saw him after he came back. We were…ragging on him. Like always. He just grinned at us, knowing…” He stopped again.
“Go on,” she said. “Knowing what?”
“That he was the luckiest one of us.”
He had no name for the expression that crossed her face then. Sorrow, yes, to the point of pain, but something else, too. Something he guessed was born of the knowledge that Dean Larson had indeed felt that way.
“Anyway,” he went on hastily, “at one point he joked he wasn’t ever going to take a shower again.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Because,” he said, now without looking at her because he simply couldn’t, “he didn’t ever want to…lose the scent of you.”
A long, silent moment passed. He’d done it now. But when he finally broke and looked, he didn’t see that look of pain again, but rather thoughtfulness and dawning understanding.
“That’s how Tri knew me?”
“It’s the only thing I can think of that makes sense. Unless he somehow just…knew.”
“It does make sense,” she agreed. “More than you know.”
She said that with a tiny smile, one that looked familiar somehow. It took him a moment to place it; it was the same sort of smile his mother got when she talked about his father, and how much she missed the little things.
“You see, I…had this thing I did,” she went on slowly. “Whenever he had to leave, I…put a bit of his favorite of my perfumes on his collar. And told him to remember how very much I loved him, told him to remember us, whenever he noticed it.”
Chance simply stared at her then. And knew with absolute certainty that they had been right, back then.
Dean Larson really had been the luckiest of them all.