FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER he and the Newfie mutt were at the Sterling Animal Hospital in the vet’s brightly colored kitchen rich with the smell of freshly brewed Speeder & Earl’s Adirondack Blend coffee. Patience poured him a cup while she told him what had happened.
“Elvis showed up at my back door. Dirty and dehydrated and completely stressed out.”
Susie Bear sniffed her canine friend all over, deliberately and devotedly, from tail to nose. Finally she licked his dark snout, apparently convinced that he was all right. Then she banked up next to him, placing her large noggin along the curve of his curlicue tail.
Troy drank his coffee with one hand and petted the shepherd’s fine head with the other. “He seems okay.”
“He’s fine now. Watered and fed and somewhat rested.”
“You took off his cone?”
“No, I didn’t. He didn’t have it on. No sign of it anywhere, either.”
“And his injury?”
“I changed the bandage and dressed the wound. Pretty clean despite the rest of him, which was a mess.”
“Ticks?”
“A scourge. That hard-core flea-and-tick collar and the vaccine and meds help. I put him on antibiotics for anaplasmosis just in case.”
“Where’s Mercy?”
“She’s not answering her cell or her landline. I drove over there and she’s not at home. The Jeep’s not there, either. No sign of forced entry. That’s when I called you.” Patience’s voice was steady but her hand shook slightly as she sipped her coffee.
At the sound of Mercy’s name, Elvis sat up and whined. Susie Bear followed suit in a show of canine solidarity.
“She likes him,” said Patience, with a smile. “And why shouldn’t she? He’s a handsome devil.”
Troy hoped that she was talking about the dogs. At least he told himself that he hoped she was talking about the dogs.
“She was going after the intruder.”
He shook his head. “I left her at the professor’s house. She was on her way home.”
“Was she?”
“My fault.” Troy felt stupid, and worse, incompetent. “She asked me if we wanted to join them for a creemee.”
“And you declined.”
“Patrols.”
“Uh-huh.” Patience looked at him. The same look her granddaughter had given him when she told him he didn’t know anything about women. “Elvis knows where she is.”
“I’ll get Thrasher to put a trace on her cell.” Troy texted his boss, then stood up. Susie Bear scrambled to her feet. “Don’t worry. We’ll find her.”
“What about Elvis?”
Troy looked down at the dog, resting quietly. “He should probably stay here.”
“But you’ll need him. Mercy will need him.”
“If you’re sure … I don’t want to be responsible for anything happening to her dog.”
“I don’t, either. But I’m not sure you could stop him. He came here to me for a reason.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Mercy sent him here. Otherwise he would never have left her.”
As if to prove her right, the shepherd leapt to his feet. He danced around Troy, barking and nudging his hands with his nose. “Okay, okay.”
With both dogs ready to roll, he snapped on the tracking leads Patience provided. Elvis pulled at the leash and bounded for the back door.
“That’s where I found him. He came from there,” she said, pointing at the forest that edged her property down the hill past the outbuildings.
Thrasher called him back with the results of the trace on Mercy’s phone. “Signal ends at the northwest end of the national forest. I’ll text you the coordinates.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I’m afraid you’re on your own,” said Thrasher. “Everyone’s either in the field or down in Bennington.”
“Understood.”
“Probably a wild goose chase.” Thrasher paused.
“She’d never leave the dog.” As soon as he said it, he realized that it was not just an argument, it was the truth. Patience said the dog would never leave her, but it was just as true that she would never leave the dog. He was going to find her, one way or another.
“If you need backup, it may take a while.” The captain sounded worried.
“What else is new?”
“Be careful.”
“I’ll be fine. These are my woods.”
* * *
TIME TO GO. Elvis balked when they headed for the front door, but the vet helped steer him out to Troy’s truck. The shepherd still didn’t seem convinced. Troy opened the door to the backseat of the cab, and Susie Bear leaped in. But Elvis did not follow.
Patience smiled. “Smart. This way they won’t fight over the front seat. Which is mine.”
“You need to stay here.”
“I’m coming along.” She helped persuade the Belgian shepherd into the back with Susie Bear. He was not happy about it.
“Stay,” ordered Patience, and the dog settled down.
She opened the passenger door, but Troy reached out to block her way.
“You need to stay here,” he repeated. “In case she calls or comes home.”
The vet glared at him, but he knew she would stay behind, because he was right, whether she liked it or not. The dogs yowled.
No one was happy with him.
“Find my girl.” It was an order, not a request.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“She can take care of herself—but something’s happened. She needs help or she wouldn’t have sent Elvis.” She slammed the door shut, then walked around to the driver’s side and handed him a pack. “Extra water, food, and first aid. For them.” She wrapped a big piece of carrot cake in a cloth napkin and handed it to him. “For you.”
Elvis barked his displeasure as Troy pulled out of the animal hospital parking lot and onto Main Street.
Susie Bear nudged Elvis with her nose, as if to say, Chill, he knows what he’s doing.
Not that he was very sure he did. Thrasher was right. He had no idea where Mercy Carr was or what she was doing. Only that she’d disappeared and left her dog on his own in the woods.
But he drove on anyway. Seven miles up Route 7, Troy pulled into a dirt road, the first of many unpaved roads that led to the coordinates that the captain had given him. They were deep in the forest that made up three-quarters of the state of Vermont. Forest rich in flora and fauna and secrets, both natural and man-made. He wondered what hidden dangers Mercy might have encountered in these dark woods—bear or bobcat or worse. This was not new territory for her; she knew the perils of the wild as well as the pitfalls of the battlefield. She knew what beasts were capable of, human and otherwise.
He found himself hoping that she was armed. As a retired MP she could carry in the state of Vermont, provided she’d followed regulation to the letter. Which he’d bet she did. She seemed like a by-the-book cop—in a good way. Which meant until she wasn’t. Just like him.
As he approached the coordinates, Troy slowed down. He stopped the vehicle just long enough to make sure the twenty-foot tracking leads on both dogs were secure. He didn’t want either one of them running off in the dark and leaving him behind. He trusted Susie Bear to obey his commands, but Elvis didn’t seem to answer consistently to anyone. From what he’d seen, the shepherd did what Mercy told him to do when he felt like it and ignored her the rest of the time. Troy suspected the only person Elvis had ever obeyed without question was his sergeant. The man Mercy loved. Obviously a brave man, good with dogs, but then he had gone and gotten himself killed. And now two fine soldiers—Mercy and Elvis—still mourned him.
Troy parked the truck at the precise point indicated by the coordinates, on an old, deeply rutted logging road. He knew this part of the wilderness; he’d tracked some squatters who were night hunting and deer baiting in this general vicinity last autumn. It was possible that Mercy could have run afoul of them, never the kind of guys you’d want to run into anywhere, much less here. But any number of undesirables could be lying in wait around here.
He slipped his headlamp, red light shining, around his head. He slid on his pack, armed and ready, the dog leads tight in one hand, his flashlight in the other. He let Elvis and Susie Bear out, and they bounded down the road, Elvis in front, straining at the leash. Troy jogged to keep up, careful not to trip in the ruts.
A mile down the trail they came upon Mercy’s Jeep, partially hidden behind some trees in a clearing that flanked the rough road. Its tires were all flat, thanks to long cuts obviously made by a knife. Troy held up the flashlight and peered inside the locked vehicle; everything seemed normal apart from the absence of its operator and the slashed tires.
The Malinois ignored the Jeep and danced at the end of the leash, pressing onward and nearly toppling him.
“Stay,” he ordered, and to his surprise the athletic dog stayed. But he whined and whimpered his impatience to get on with the chase.
Satisfied that there was nothing more the disabled vehicle could tell them, Troy examined the area around it and saw where Mercy and Elvis had tracked someone, sticking close to the tree line. Her Jeep’s tread marks stopped where it was parked, but another set—belonging to an SUV or sport truck by the looks of them—continued down the potholed road deeper into the forest, north toward Peru Peak.
“Go on,” he told the dogs. “Search.”
Elvis leapt for the tracks she had left behind, and Troy and Susie Bear charged after him. He thought about Mercy, out here all alone but for the beasts of the woods and the dark of the night and whoever slashed her tires.
He had a bad feeling. He picked up his pace. Elvis felt his increase in speed and ran faster, faster, faster. Susie Bear lumbered along, the steady metronome between the wired shepherd and his own anxious self.
Troy hoped they weren’t too late.