Several days later Jessica had that same horrible feeling again. She was doing dishes in the kitchen, while her son was still eating his breakfast. She looked outside and thought she saw an animal darting between the trees that bordered her property. But after staring at the area for a long while, she saw nothing. Upset and frustrated, she knew if she could at least get a proper look at it, she’d know if it was the same animal.
As she took yet another look outside, she swore to God she saw a face in the trees. Her heart slammed against her chest, and she froze, then sucked her breath back down her throat. For a moment there, she thought it was George. She closed her eyes and collapsed against the counter, wishing to God she’d never had that fender bender or been threatened by George’s thug.
George hadn’t done anything directly to her or her son. He hadn’t called, hadn’t emailed. He had his lawyer do his dirty work, with the initial filing for separation and divorce, and the most recent notice that George wanted Danny. So what was she supposed to do with this now?
Behind her, Danny called out, “Mommy?”
She bolstered up a bright smile, then turned and squatted beside him. “I’m fine, sweetie. Mommy is just tired.”
He beamed. “Mommy needs nap.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” she said, chuckling. “We’re going shopping instead.”
“Yay!”
She knew he didn’t understand the word, but that was okay. He would soon enough. It was all good.
She quickly cleaned off his little tray, washed his hands and face, let him down out of the high chair, and finished cleaning up the kitchen. She hated the fact that every time she came close to a window, she glanced outside to look—only to see nothing there. Her heart calmed down a little bit, but it was just not enough. She couldn’t resist the opportunity to get away for a while. So she quickly dressed him in his sneakers, grabbed his stroller, and, with her purse and keys in hand, she locked up the house and went out the front door. She could drive, but right now she wanted the exercise that would be gained if they just went for a walk. She only needed to pick up a couple things, so it didn’t really matter.
As she headed down the road and around the corner, a vehicle came ripping up behind her. Instinctively she jumped off to the side, pulling Danny’s stroller with her. Only the truck took a left turn away from her. She stood here, her hand against her chest, taking long and slow breaths. She didn’t know what the hell was going on, but she was a wreck. She had to get a grip before somebody decided she was an unfit mother.
And, of course, that went right back to George. Maybe he was doing this on purpose, just to make her seem neurotic and paranoid. She wouldn’t put it past him. He was one of those people who liked to gaslight others into thinking what they thought they saw—and what he said and did—wasn’t actually what happened. Many a time he’d done that to her, until she finally figured out that he was doing it as a joke.
But it was a mean joke, and one she didn’t appreciate. He got pissy whenever she accused him of it thereafter. She hadn’t seen any of his callous behavior before they were married, and she wondered why he had even married her. She had sincerely thought that she had loved him at the time but had never really been sure if he loved her. Maybe it was just a stage of life, and he’d figured he was supposed to be married. She didn’t know. For all she knew it was a ten-dollar bet with a buddy.
At that, her bitterness took an even deeper dive. She desperately needed to shrug off the attitude, and, as she walked down the sidewalk, she deliberately looked around to find things that made her happy, something to smile about. She pointed out a butterfly on a large hedge on the left, making Danny laugh with joy. And then a songbird trilled in the tree as they went underneath. She smiled at that.
Plenty of good things were in this life, so many wonderful things, like her son, but now her life was overshadowed by that fear that comes with having something so precious. Fear that you could lose it. She hadn’t experienced that until the fender bender.
She’d been completely oblivious to George, who existed out in the middle of nowhere. She didn’t know why he would even want a child now. Not when he’d made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t ready to be a father. But he had changed his mind recently apparently, and that just scared the crap out of her.
As she headed toward the shopping mall, her phone rang. She pulled it from her purse, only to realize that it was yet another Unknown Caller. No one was ever there, just noise in the background. Finally she decided to test it. “George, stop that,” she said. “It’s getting tiresome.” She heard a harsh gasp on the other end that, unfortunately, did sound like George.
She quickly hung up the phone and shoved it in her pocket, then stared down at her shaking hands. If it was George, what the hell would she do? And why hadn’t she already done something about it?
“What will you do now?” his grandmother asked Greyson the next morning. “How are you supposed to find a dog that may or may not have run away—or may or may not have been kidnapped?”
He chuckled. “Well, I’ll go back to the place where the dog went missing from and see if I can track her,” he said.
Both his grandparents just stared at him. “That was weeks ago,” they said.
He nodded. “It was, and I know the weather has been varied since then, but I’ll do my best.”
The two looked at each other and then back at him. His grandfather shrugged and said, “I’d offer to come with you, but I’d probably be more in the way than anything.”
“You have Leo to look after today,” Greyson said.
At that, his grandfather beamed. “Yep. I’ll go show him the walkways today,” he said. “Maybe I’ll take a mug full of coffee along too.” He looked over at his wife, and she immediately poured him a big silver mug full.
Putting the lid on, she handed it to him. “You go do that,” she said. “I’ll go into town and get some shopping done. Oh, and I’m meeting the girls for lunch today too.”
Rising to leave, his grandfather nodded and said, “Have fun, dear.” As he headed for the door, Leo, who had been under the kitchen table, hopped up and raced to the door with him. Grandpa quickly snapped on a leash, and the two of them went out the door, happy to be together, heading outside.
Greyson sat here with his coffee and watched his grandfather meander down the pathway. “Is it okay that Leo is here?” he asked his grandmother.
“Yes! It’s a really good idea,” she said warmly. “I’ve been trying to get your grandfather to get a dog all these months, but, for some reason, he’s been holding off. Something about Leo caught his attention, and that’s good because it took the decision-making away from him.”
“How is his health?”
“It’ll be much better now that he has Leo to fuss over,” she said with a laugh. She looked over at him. “Do you want some breakfast before you leave?”
He shook his head. “My stomach is still working on that wonderful dinner you made last night,” he declared.
She flushed with pleasure. “You’re still such a flirt.”
“I am not,” he said, laughing.
She smiled at him. “Well, in that case, I’ll go get ready.” And, with that, she disappeared from the kitchen and headed upstairs.
It was strange to be here, yet, at the same time, it felt completely normal, as if time hadn’t passed at all, and he was right back to where he’d been years ago. His father—their son—had died, along with his mother, just as Greyson was entering the navy. It had been tough on them all, but he at least had had his new career to bury himself into. They’d had each other, and that was all, but it was something.
Now the family was just the three of them. Greyson knew that they were hoping he’d get married someday and would have a family, but that wasn’t exactly on the top of his list at the moment.
He got out a notepad and jotted down ideas of where to check for Kona and what to do. The rescue center had surely opened a police file on the missing dog. If not, surely someone reported the car accident, or at least somebody should have, so he would contact the local police department, see just what they had for a file, if a file existed at all. A War Dog like that shouldn’t just disappear. He had a photograph of her in the file that he’d brought with him, and he’d photographed that so he had it on his phone too.
He brought up the photo, so the dog’s face filled the screen, and he set it as his backdrop. When his grandmother came in, she saw the picture on his phone.
“Oh my,” she said, “that’s a handsome-looking animal.”
“That’s Kona, the one I’m looking for,” he said.
“And that’s a very Hawaiian name,” she said. “Did you consider that?”
He looked at her and paused. “You know what? I didn’t,” he said. “I wonder if it was a deliberate misdirection, or maybe her handler was Hawaiian too.”
He quickly brought up his phone and sent Badger a text, asking him about the origin of the K9’s name and if maybe Kona’s previous trainers and handlers had been Hawaiian. It just seemed like an unlikely coincidence that a dog accidently shipped to Hawaii happened to have a Hawaiian name.
Badger replied almost immediately that they would check on it. Greyson liked that about that team. They understood communication and how important it was to have it happen as fast as possible. Nobody on a mission should be delayed too long by waiting on somebody getting information back to them.
As soon as his coffee was gone, his grandmother grabbed her purse. He looked over at her. “Do you want me to drive you somewhere?”
She shook her head and smiled at him. “Nope,” she said. “You go ahead and take the truck. I’m taking my car.”
He frowned. “I’m really struggling with that,” he said. “I’d be more than happy to rent a vehicle.”
“We’d be quite insulted if you did,” she said, putting an end to the discussion.
As she walked out and got into her car, he thought about that, wondering how his grandparents had such a great method of handling everything. He laughed. They used guilt and wielded it like a sword. Still, he got into the truck and pulled out, using his cell phone’s GPS to help him track backward to the rescue center.
As soon as he parked outside and walked in, the woman looked up at him in surprise. He just shrugged and said, “I’ll start tracking the dog from here. I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be around for a little bit.”
She nodded slowly.
“And you didn’t see anything else?” he asked. “You didn’t think of anything?”
She shrugged and said, “No. I don’t know anything about it. Like I said, there was a fender bender going on outside, but, other than that, I don’t really have anything to offer.”
“Do you happen to know who was involved in the fender bender?”
She shrugged. “Nope, I sure don’t.”
“Did you call the police about the dog?”
“I did, particularly because this wasn’t an ordinary stray or a surrender. This was a dog we had been asked to board for safekeeping.” Her tone was wry. “And I do have the name of the detective I spoke with.” Walking over to her desk, she riffled through a bunch of paperwork and handed him a card. “This is who I spoke to.”
Taking a photo of the card, Greyson smiled, returned the card to her, and said, “Thanks. I’ll contact him and see if he’s got a file open.”
She looked like she was relieved at the idea and happy to push it off her plate. “If there’s nothing else, I have a bunch of cages to clean. How’s Leo doing?”
Taking the hint, he nodded, then smiled. “Leo is now a well loved member of the family. Thank you for your time. And again, if you hear of or think of anything—” Then he walked outside.
He walked over to the far side and took a look at where the dog could have gone. There was definitely a green space here, and, if she had wanted to get over the fence, she easily could have. And, since he’d already seen tufts of hair over the top that would match Kona’s coat, he was pretty damn sure the dog had jumped free.
Most people didn’t realize what kind of training these War Dogs went through and just how agile and physically fit and strong they were. In this case, the dog did have damaged ribs, but apparently she had healed. However, they were retiring her after four years anyway. So, if she had made it up and over that fence on her own, she was probably doing just fine now. But this wasn’t the kind of animal they wanted to have running around loose.
He walked to the outside of the pens, where he’d seen the hair, and, from there, he stopped and studied the area. Obviously there were no tracks. No footprints left to be seen at this point. But what he did surmise was that the dog had headed toward the road. The trees were dense and thick, but, short of the dog having a reason to run and hide, she would normally head toward a more open space. Now, if there had been an accident at the time, what would she do? A loud bang or crash could have been the reason the dog bolted from the pen.
He quickly sent Badger a message, asking if the dog was struggling with noise aversion. Because that could explain why she had bolted. If that were the case, she would have gone in the opposite direction. With that, he turned 180 degrees, studied the area, and started walking. He didn’t see anything initially, but then, as he curved back around to the road, he saw a bit of hair snagged on the bark of a tree trunk. He took a photo of it, sure that it was likely from the same dog. He kept following the trail. It took a bit more time to track down the next bit of hair, but it was back at the road. He pondered that, as he crouched where the dog hair had caught on a few leaves and branches. It looked like the dog may have stood here for a few moments because a fair bit of fur was here, as if Kona had paced.
Greyson pictured a scene where Kona paced back and forth, maybe whined, disturbed by something. If there had been an accident, it might have been enough to have set Kona off too. Moving quietly and low to the ground, Greyson came to a point where the fender bender most likely occurred, as he did see a bit of plastic off to the side that looked like it came from a headlight cover to a small car. He assumed that the dog had seen this accident, but then what? Greyson turned and looked toward where the car would have been, looked back toward the shelter, and instinctively turned to the right.
“Yeah, you’re not going back into the cage. You don’t want anything to do with the vehicles, but you stayed here for a reason. Why?” That fascinated him. “Was there something about the people you didn’t like? Was there some sort of a confrontation that bothered you?”
He moved down the road on the sidewalk, looking for any other signs that the dog had gone this way. Very quickly he found another twig with hair on it and another. By the time he had gone several miles, he realized the dog had headed off in this direction and was still going. He didn’t know where the dog was destined for, but they were now quite a ways from the shelter.
This didn’t appear to him like anybody had stolen the dog. It seemed to him like the dog was on her own mission. He kept following along the sidewalk, and, when he lost track of the hair again, he stopped, then backtracked to where it was and searched the area again, finally coming up to a spot where it looked like the dog had laid down in the grass.
He found just a bit of her undercoat dusting the surface by a shrub. He sat down beside it, where the dog would have been, and looked. A house was across the road, set back on a bigger driveway. As he watched, a truck backed down the driveway and took off on the road. A good size dent was on its bumper. Probably lots of vehicles sported those. Didn’t necessarily mean it was involved in the fender bender on the day Kona disappeared. He looked down at the spot where the dog had been.
“Something about this bothered you, didn’t it, girl?”
He realized he was giving human traits to the animal, but it felt right. So, if that is the case, where are you?
With the truck gone, he freely walked up the driveway, looking for a ready excuse in case somebody questioned his presence. He did a search of the front yard and didn’t see any sign of the dog hair. Then he headed around the back, where he found trees and brush behind a yard. It had been tended at one time but was currently a bit overrun. So either the person here didn’t really care about gardening or was renting.
He checked through the edge of the gardens and, sure enough, found tufts of hair caught in little bits and pieces. So you came here? He quickly wrote down the address and sent it to Badger. He would prefer to have a contact in town, and that thought reminded him that he hadn’t contacted the cops yet.
Hearing a noise, he slipped into the trees and crossed over to the neighbor’s yard. He watched as that same truck came bombing up the driveway again. It parked, and a big male walked out. He wore jeans, work boots, and T-shirt. He stormed into the house, obviously upset about something.
Standing in the shelter of the trees, Greyson quickly took a picture of the truck and the license plate, including the damage to the front, sending it to Badger to trace. Then he slipped back to where he’d come from. So where did you go from here, Kona? He stood with his hands on his hips and turned around slowly because he had no doubt that the dog had been here for a while, but then she either hadn’t stayed or had gone and come back.
For whatever reason, this house was of interest. And, if it was of interest to the dog, it was sure as hell of interest to Greyson. With one last look, he headed up the hill, wondering where else the dog had gone, determined to find out.