Ian paced back and forth in the hallway in the Anchorage police station with a puzzled but loyal Aurora one step behind him, until an older officer finally called him and told him he could see his father.
“We’re keeping him overnight,” the officer said professionally but not unkindly. “Hopefully he’ll be able to be seen by a judge before Christmas and he’ll set bail.”
Ian hoped so. The police station had such bad cell service he hadn’t been able to check his texts or call around for a lawyer. But how would they find money for bail? Let alone even afford an attorney? He thanked the officer who escorted him into an interview room, where he found his father sitting at a table in handcuffs, looking ten years older than earlier that evening.
“Hey, Dad,” Ian said softly. He sat down in the chair opposite his father, wishing he could give him a hug. “How are you doing?”
“I can’t complain,” his dad responded. “Everyone’s just doing their job. I just wish I knew how my blood ended up at a crime scene. I did donate blood at the high school hockey blood drive a few weeks ago. Maybe someone stole that blood and placed it there.”
Tala had said that the Golden Bandit had smelled like blood.
“We’ll look into it,” Ian assured him. “If anyone can figure that out, it’s Tala.” A sad sigh moved through him as he remembered how he’d left things with her. Aurora laid her head on Ian’s knee and he gently stroked her soft fur. “I just wish I’d been partnered with a search and rescue dog or one who specialized in pursuit, and we’d been able to stop him from getting away.”
“You’d better stop that kind of talk,” his dad said, “before you owe her an apology.”
“Tala?” Ian asked. How did his dad know about that?
“No, son.” His dad managed a half-hearted chuckle. “I mean your loyal partner here, Aurora. You prayed so long and hard to be partnered with a cadaver dog. And when that happened you barely stopped to thank God before rushing into wondering whether you would’ve been better off with a different type of dog. Aurora’s amazing and she obviously loves being your K-9 partner. Stop letting your low self-esteem get in the way of that and trust you’re paired with her for a reason.”
Ian sat back with a grimace. He’d come here to comfort his dad, and here he was getting a fatherly lecture!
“Grandma always said that McCaffrey men have foolish hearts,” Ian said.
“Yeah, she did,” his dad concurred. “Because your grandfather was a very loving man who was a complete fool when it came to finances. You’re not him and I’d like to think we’ve both learned from his mistakes. You have a wonderful career and an amazing woman by your side in Tala.”
Ian swallowed hard.
“I’ve made some serious mistakes with Tala,” he admitted.
“We all do,” the older man said. “The only thing that matters is if you’ve apologized and there’s a way to make things right.”
He was about to tell his dad that he and Tala weren’t really a couple, when the memory of the way it had felt to hold her in his arms filled his mind. Who was he kidding? Ian had romantic feelings for her and more. He always had. He’d just been too worried about messing it up to do anything about it. Ian and his dad made small talk for a while before an officer knocked on the door and let Ian know it was time to go. As he and Aurora said goodbye to his dad and headed down the hall there was no doubt in his mind where he was going next. He had to find Tala and apologize.
Lord, please forgive me for complaining about Aurora as much as I do and for doubting the desires and drives You’ve placed on my heart. Help me trust my own heart and the person You’ve called me to be.
He reached the front door and bent down to give Aurora a scratch. She licked his fingers and he knew all was forgiven. His phone pinged as missed text messages rushed in. He glanced at them and felt his face pale. What was Charlie doing at Tala’s lab after hours? He tried Tala’s phone and it went to voice mail. His heart stuttering in his chest, Ian drove as fast as he dared to the lab and found the parking lot empty except for the security guard’s truck and a nondescript van. Even before he’d pulled to a stop, he heard Aurora bark sharply. His partner was sitting at attention on the passenger seat.
“Aurora, what’s wrong?”
She barked again, urgently and in a higher pitch this time. Her ears perked and her nose strained toward the van, warning and alerting him that something was wrong. He opened his door and had barely stepped out when she leaped through the door after him. Her paws danced in the snow impatiently as he clipped on her leash.
“Okay, I hear you,” he said. “Show me.”
She pulled him across the parking lot toward the van. Was there a corpse inside the vehicle? The engine roared and its headlights flashed. Then the vehicle screeched out of the parking lot. Ian glanced at the building. There was no security guard sitting at the front desk. Aurora howled in the direction of the departing van. He’d never seen her more insistent.
“Yeah, I got it,” he told his partner. “We won’t let the van get away.”
He ran back to his vehicle, calling the situation in to law enforcement as he went. Aurora jumped in and they peeled out onto the road. The van’s taillights flickered ahead of him. Spurred on by Aurora’s urgent barks, he chased after it, praying for the safety of whoever might be in danger inside. He pursued it deeper and deeper into the woods, watching as the taillights disappeared and reappeared through the trees ahead of him. Until finally he hit a fork in the road. Snow-covered roads spread off in either side, with any tire tracks wiped away by the wind and snow. For a long and agonizing moment, he stared into the darkness. He couldn’t see the headlights anywhere. Then he groaned in frustration. He’d lost it.
Aurora barked.
“I don’t know where he’s gone!” Ian argued back.
His partner barked again. Seemed she wasn’t taking no for an answer. He knew cadaver dogs could smell a long distance, but could she track the van? It was worth a shot. He rolled both windows down.
“Which way?” he asked Aurora. “Show me!”
She practically leaped over him, her feet landing on his lap as she stuck her head out of his widow and barked.
“Got it.” He nudged her back into the passenger seat and kept driving. Moments later he saw the van parked off the road half-hidden in the trees. Ian and Aurora ran for it. The van’s front seat was empty. He yanked the back door open. There was nothing but an empty blanket inside, but Aurora’s reaction left him no doubt that she’d detected the scent of death on it. There’d been a corpse in this van.
Ian whispered a prayer and then radioed in his location and what he’d found. His phone buzzed with a text from Sean, telling him that officers had already convened on both the lab and Tala’s home. She was nowhere to be found.
His legs faltered and he sank to his knees in the snow.
Lord, please help me find Tala. I need to know she’s safe.
Then he heard a distant scream pierce the air. He looked down at Aurora.
“I need your help,” he said. “Your senses are better than mine. Help me find Tala!”
He tightened his hand around Aurora’s leash, and they ran toward the sound, side by side. He could feel Aurora urging him on, guiding him with little tugs on the leash, just as he guided her. Then the trees parted, and he saw Tala fighting for her life as Charlie yanked her at gunpoint toward an abandoned mine.
“Ian!” she called. “Charlie’s the Golden Bandit!”
“Let her go!” Ian shouted. “Now!”
Aurora barked, and Ian knew somehow she was telling him to let her go. He dropped the leash. The German shepherd snarled, her teeth flashing as she sprang toward Charlie. Charlie let go of Tala and fired at the dog. Tala spun hard, raised her fist and punched Charlie in the jaw, sending him sprawling, just as Aurora landed on top of him, pinning him with her paws.
“You’re under arrest!” Ian snarled. He stood over his former hockey coach and kicked the gun from his hands. “For kidnapping, murder and theft.”
He wasn’t about to use a cutesy nickname for the man’s crimes and hoped the moniker Golden Bandit would disappear from history. Ian signaled to Aurora to step back. She did so, and he grabbed Charlie’s hands and cuffed them.
Then Ian left him there, stood up and reached for Tala. He pulled her into his arms.
“He kidnapped me from the lab,” she said breathlessly. “His daughter’s mining business was a fraud. Either one of them, or both of them, was melting down jewelry and pretending they were raw nuggets.”
“He was also involved in a blood drive my dad donated to,” Ian told her. “I’m guessing that’s how he faked the crime scene.”
“Then he might’ve staged that robbery at your house to frame him,” she said.
Sirens sounded in the distance and lights flashed through the trees. Backup was coming. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer into his arms.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here earlier,” he rasped, “and for everything I said.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I can’t believe Aurora was able to track me.”
Just then Aurora whined urgently. He looked down at his partner. Her ears were still perked, her feet danced in the snow and her nose strained toward the abandoned mine.
“I’m not sure she was only tracking you,” he said, easing Tala out of his arms. Officers ran toward them in the snow. He informed them that Charlie was under arrest and borrowed a flashlight from an Anchorage officer. Then he allowed Aurora to guide him to the mine, with Tala by his side. They climbed down a snowy slope, reached the mine and walked through the labyrinth of tunnels following Aurora’s lead.
She reached an empty space and barked at the floor, the sound echoing around them on all sides. He knelt down, pulled loose rocks away, then shone his light down toward the hole and felt a prayer of thanksgiving pass his lips.
It looked like they’d found the bodies of the missing pawn workers.
The morning sky was a dark purple with just slivers of gold and pink on the horizon when Tala came down the stairs to her living room and searched for her cell phone to call a taxi to take her to work.
It had been a late night. Charlie and his daughter had both been arrested and five sets of human remains in total had been found hidden in the abandoned mine, including Millie’s ex-husband and the Alaska State Crime Lab’s security guard, who Charlie had killed and quickly dumped in the mine earlier that night while Tala was still analyzing evidence upstairs. A search of Millie’s home had turned up clean, but Charlie’s had apparently turned up reams of stolen jewelry and the equipment he’d used to melt it into nuggets, along with a partially empty bag of Ian’s father’s blood. State troopers, Anchorage officers and crime scene investigators had worked together well into the night to collect evidence and process multiple locations. Eventually an officer had driven her home, long after midnight, and she’d fallen into a deep and dreamless sleep.
While she’d lost sight of Ian in the crowd shortly after Aurora had found the bodies, somehow the brief hug they’d shared when he’d run to her rescue had spoken volumes. God had brought Ian back into her life—stronger and better than she’d ever imagined, tugging on her heartstrings and making her feel things she didn’t know how to put into words.
But what happened now?
Headlights cast a gentle glow on her living room curtains. Moments later she heard an SUV door close and footprints crunching on the snow outside.
She slid the curtains back to see Ian and Aurora sitting side by side on the top step of her porch, just where he used to sit waiting for her when they were younger. She opened the door and they both leaped to their feet.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Hey!” A goofy, almost shy grin crossed his face, reminding her of both the boy she’d cared about so much when they were young and the amazing man she was discovering now. He held up a tray of coffees and a paper bag. “I got breakfast to go and wondered if you wanted a ride to work.”
“Thank you,” she said. “There’s a lot of evidence from yesterday to process and I want to get right on it.”
He chuckled. “I knew you would.”
She thanked God the crime had been closed and prayed for the family and friends of the security guard and those who were processing the news that their loved ones’ bodies had been found. Now it was time to get to work analyzing the evidence to ensure his former coach aka the Golden Bandit would be going to prison for a very long time.
Ian took Aurora and the food to his vehicle and she ducked back into the house to get her bag together and put on her coat and boots. When she opened the door again, Ian was standing alone on the porch and Aurora’s tail was wagging happily at her from the front seat of the car.
“You trust her alone in there with our breakfast?” she asked.
“She’s a state trooper,” he said, “and also knows there’s a sausage in it for her if she’s patient.”
Tala laughed and stepped outside to join Ian on the porch. He took both of her gloved hands in his and looked down at their linked fingers.
“There’s a K-9 unit Christmas party coming up,” he said. “I know you’re used to mostly seeing the team through a screen, but I’d like it if you came with me, as my date. Also, my parents want to invite you to our home for Christmas dinner. They adore you and want to make their next charity drive for the hospice your grandmother passed in.” Then he looked up into her eyes. “I just want you to be part of my life, Tala, this Christmas and always.”
She searched his gaze and felt something deep and beyond words well up in her heart. “I’d like that, very much.”
Was he saying what she hoped he was?
“I’ve presumed you knew how I felt for far too long when I should’ve just come out and said it,” he said gruffly. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had and the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. You impress me every day with your drive and your heart. You’re the only person I’ve ever imagined spending my life with.”
I love you, Ian, and I have for so long. The words filled her heart but something stopped her lips from saying it.
“Turns out there was a reward for finding the ring that Aurora and I dropped off at the mall the other day,” he said. “It wasn’t huge, but it was enough for me to get you something.”
He dropped her hands, reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring box. He opened it. A delicate band of woven yellow and white gold lay inside. Ian knelt on one knee.
“This is my promise to you that one day you’ll be my wife,” he said, “and that no matter the doubts I have about me or how I second-guess myself, I will always love you, be true to you and come home to you. Will you marry me and be mine, Tala? This Christmas and forever?”
A sob choked in her throat. “I love you, too, Ian. I always have.”
Hope filled his gaze. “Is that a yes?”
“Yes!” Tears and laughter mingled on her lips as he gently pulled her glove off and slipped the ring onto her finger. “I’ll marry you and spend the rest of my life with you.”
Then Ian leaped to his feet and pulled her into his chest. “I’ll get you a better engagement ring when I can.”
“This is perfect,” she said. “This is all I need.”
Because it was Ian and they were together, and he’d promised that no matter what, he’d always love her. She kissed his lips, he kissed her back, and she knew the man she’d waited her whole life for would be by her side forever.