Definitely an interesting man, but Jessica wasn’t sure she believed his story. Except that she had seen the dog herself. And, if he was looking for that dog, she wanted to help. She went back inside, and, with her son playing with blocks on the floor, she quickly pulled up Google and searched for War Dogs and the War Dog program. What she read made her heart squeeze tight. Those poor animals. To think that one might be loose out here, who was expected to go to a family and retire, just broke her heart.
With Danny still playing happily, she walked over to the glass back doors and stared outside. Just then she caught sight of the stranger. What was his name again?
She thought he said Greyson, but she couldn’t remember his last name.
He lifted a hand and waved at her from over the fence. She waved back. At least he was honest when he said that he was going into the back alley.
She watched as he disappeared from sight, going up the alley, and then came back a few minutes later, heading back down the alleyway again.
Now she felt foolish for not trusting him. She picked up Danny, opened the glass doors, and walked to the alleyway gate. She opened it. “Well, you might as well come in and take a look.”
He smiled and stepped inside. She didn’t know why he didn’t feel threatening. Especially at a time when it seemed like so many men out there made her uneasy. Instead, there was almost a comfort to having him around. That made her suspicious, but of herself, not of him.
He wandered around the yard, checking through the brush and nodded to himself.
“What does that mean?”
“Her hair is on the cedars out here,” he said, pulling some forward to show her.
“Oh,” she said, “I didn’t even think to look for signs like that.”
“I’ve been tracking her this whole time,” he said. “Not that it’s easy to see when it’s been so long, but this is recent.”
“I thought I’d caught glimpses of a dog in here,” she said, “so it makes sense to me.”
“Yes, it does.” He wandered around. “And you know a dog like that can jump a fence like this pretty easily, right?”
She stared at him in astonishment. “They can?”
“Six feet from a standstill without a problem,” he said with a smile. “And Kona, in this case, is a hell of a dog. Well-trained and obedient, but she’s gone a bit wild, without all the rules and restrictions she is used to in her world. Before, every waking moment was filled with something for her to do. She knew where to sleep, when to sleep, and how long she could sleep for. But now, all that military structure has been ripped apart in her world, and she’s got to be scared.”
“I can imagine.”
“Listen,” he said, pulling out another Titanium Corp business card, writing his number on the back. “If you see her again, even if you’re not sure it’s her, give me a call.” He hesitated and then said, “I hate to think of you being alone here, so if you think that somebody’s watching you, and you have any confirmation of that, please call the police.”
She half expected him to say she should call him, so it was a bit of a letdown when he said to call the police.
“There isn’t a whole lot the police can do,” she said with a shrug. “Unless he comes in and attacks me, what will they do?”
“At least they can start a file and warn everybody else that he’s out here. Sometimes it’s all a predator needs to avoid coming after you again because they don’t want added trouble.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “If it’s related to my ex—which makes no sense to me—but, if that’s the case, the amount of potential trouble won’t make any difference.”
“Understood,” he said. “If you feel like you can’t call the police, then at least call me, okay?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. You look almost as dangerous as the man I saw.”
He stopped, looked at her in surprise, and said, “Maybe. For the other guy, but I’ve never hurt a woman in my life, and I sure don’t intend to start now.”
She smiled, and, for whatever vague reason she may have had, she believed him. “Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate it.”
He nodded. “I’ll head back down and around. See if I can figure out where the dog has been staying.”
“Well, as soon as it’s dark, the dog will probably be back here for the neighbor’s garbage,” she said. “What he calls garbage and recycling are his pizza boxes still half full of pizza. He doesn’t throw the pizza in the garbage or the box into the recycling. He just throws it all in together in the trash.”
“So the dog may be hanging around here because it’s an easy food source,” he said. “That’s good to know. So, if you see me,” he said with a direct look, “know that I’m out here searching for Kona. So don’t get freaked out.”
She smiled and nodded, then waited until he went out the back alley. She shut the gate firmly behind him and walked back into the house. There was something comforting about his offer, his voice, his explanations, but, at the same time, she knew both her mother and her sister would say Jessica should be running in the opposite direction. They would think that anybody who said to expect to see him out back in the dark but to trust him was just bad news.
And maybe it was, but something just seemed seriously solid about him. She didn’t know anything about him, and, of course, knowing his first name but having forgotten the second didn’t help her either. She stared down at the phone number and placed it on the kitchen counter when she walked in. Hopefully she’d never have any reason to call it. But, if she did, she suspected she’d call him before she called the cops. What the hell did that say about her?
Greyson staked out the alleyway for the next several evenings. He parked the vehicle at the end of the alley and watched quietly, then slept for a few hours and got up and walked around. A couple times he used whistles he was sure the dog would recognize from the military. He’d worked around military dogs enough to understand a lot of basic commands and the whistles. But the dog had to get past whatever was going on in her head these last three weeks or so to recognize and to trust it. And that was tough too.
Still, he wanted the dog to be calm and relaxed. Not terrified. The first night he saw nothing. The second night he thought he saw a shadow at the far end of the alley from where he was parked before it took off. On the third night, when he thought he saw the shadow, he let out a whistle. The animal hesitated, and he whistled again and gave Kona a command to come. The dog approached him, slowly and still hesitant. He crouched and said, “Hello, Kona. You’ve had a rough time of it, haven’t you, girl?”
The dog’s head lowered in distrust, but her tail gave a tiny wag. Greyson held out a hand and said, “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s been a pretty rough go, hasn’t it?” There was a sharp bang as a neighbor’s door slammed behind him, and Kona twirled and took off again. But Greyson had made some headway. Not a whole lot but a little bit. And he now knew that this was a regular route for the dog.
He came back earlier the next evening, hoping for a little more daylight.
He walked up to the back of the house of the woman with the little boy. He’d looked her up and found that her name was Jessica and that Danny was her son. The neighbors had been talking pretty freely about her. And although Badger had found no police report on the fender bender, he’d gotten everything Greyson needed from the DMV off her license plate.
Her neighbor had come out a couple times with garbage, and, once Greyson had explained that he was trying to catch the dog that was getting into his garbage, the guy was friendly as hell.
“Yeah, she’s lonely too,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “I keep trying to be friendly, but she’s not taking the hint.”
“I imagine she’s more interested in looking after her son right now,” Greyson said, as if disinterested.
“I just mean that she’s hot and single,” he said. “Single moms like that are much better off.”
“Much better off than what?”
“With somebody around to show them a fun time,” he said. “Anything else and they want a commitment. But I’m totally okay to just visit in the evenings,” he said with a dirty laugh.
Greyson found himself beyond offended and angry at this loser’s attitude, but now he wondered if she realized that, as a single mom, a lot of the male population saw her as an easy mark. How sad if they did. Any mom like that deserved respect, not to be trashed or looked at as a cheap lay.
When the neighbor went inside, Greyson just shook his head, more determined than ever to make sure he caught the dog. But, if the dog took a little bit of this guy’s garbage and dumped it everywhere, Greyson wouldn’t be terribly upset. He was sick at the thought of guys like that preying on a single woman like Jessica.
He’d left his vehicle parked down at the other end of the block, just walking gently up and down the alleyway. He would whistle for the dog every once in a while. As he was coming back, and the darkness had settled, when he had crossed Jessica’s backyard again, Greyson heard a rustling in the trees.
Immediately he stepped up and looked over the gate, expecting to find the dog. Instead he watched a man skulking up the trees. He studied the stranger, dressed all in black with a balaclava over his head. Definitely not good news. Especially in the hot and humid evenings of Hawaii.
He reached over the gate and unlatched it, gently pushing it open. Just as he did so, Jessica opened the back door and stepped out. She was singing a lullaby to her son, walking the patio, completely unaware of the stranger sliding up to the side of the house. From where Greyson stood, he could see just the outline of the man against the patio.
He quickly clicked the gate closed and slid up the side of the fence. He didn’t want to scare away the intruder; Greyson wanted to capture him. Otherwise this would never end. If she had a stalker, the only way to stop it was to nab him.
As he watched, she paced along, quietly singing and walking her son in her arms. Obviously Danny didn’t want to go to sleep tonight. As she went closer to where the intruder was, Greyson’s heart bounced into his throat. He wanted to race around to the front and grab the guy, but that wouldn’t work. Her intruder could have taken Jessica and Danny hostage by then.
As she strolled back over to Greyson’s side again, he gave a small wave, but she didn’t see him. As she turned and headed back toward the other side of the veranda, the stranger came around the corner and grabbed her. She screamed, but what happened next was the complete opposite of what Greyson thought would happen.
As the stranger reached for her, a black streak came ripping through the trees at the far end and leaped onto the veranda, going right for him as he grabbed Jessica and Danny. Greyson heard the dog growling and then the man screaming when Kona latched on to the man’s wrist, using her military training she had learned.
Greyson arrived next on the veranda, grabbing Danny and Jessica. She was frozen from the first attack and stunned by the actions of the dog and now Greyson’s presence. She stared up at him, shocked.
“It’s okay,” he murmured. “Let me handle this.” Danny started to cry just then. Greyson motioned to her. “Take him up to bed,” he said. “Let me deal with the dog and the intruder.”
“Who is he?”
He shook his head, his gaze on the dog and the stranger. “Go,” he ordered. “I’ll figure it out.”
When he heard the glass door close behind him, he walked up as the stranger desperately tried to kick Kona to get away.
Greyson walked over and gave the guy a hard clip to the jaw. The man collapsed on the ground. Then Greyson stepped over the intruder and crouched closer to the dog, saying, “Kona, release.” His tone was hard and left absolutely no leeway for the dog to argue. But the dog growled and glared at him. “You’re right,” Greyson said. “He was attacking that woman and the baby. And I know what you were trying to do. That’s why you’ve been hanging around the neighborhood, isn’t it, girl?”
Kona’s ears lifted and tweaked at the sound of his voice. But she didn’t let go of the intruder.
He said, “Look,” and he lifted the man’s head by the hair, letting it drop with a heavy thud to the veranda floor. “He’s down and out—it’s okay. Kona, release.” She relaxed ever-so-slightly. Instead of growling at Greyson, she just looked puzzled. “Let him go,” he ordered.
This time she released her grip on the man’s arm. Greyson quickly rolled the stranger over, pinned his hands behind his back, kicked off the man’s shoes and grabbed both socks, tied them together, which he then wrapped around the intruder’s wrists, holding the intruder in place. When he looked at the dog, Kona was lying down, whining. He reached out a hand for her to sniff, then gently scratched the top of her head and down around her ears. “That’s a good girl,” he said. “That’s a very good girl.”
Her tail started to wag like crazy.
He looked up at the glass doors to see Jessica standing there, her hand over her mouth. He motioned at her to come outside.
She opened the door slowly. “Is it safe?”
“Yes,” he said. “I don’t know who your intruder is,” he said, “but Kona was trying to save you and the baby.”
She looked at him and at the dog and said, “Seriously?”
“Yes. I think that’s why she’s been hanging around here,” he said. “If you think about it, she’s been guarding you, just watching. This is quite likely the man who hit your car that day.”
He pulled out his cell phone, and, turning on the flashlight, Greyson rolled over the stranger and pulled the balaclava off his face. She gasped. “Oh, my God, it’s him.”
“I think Kona knew that this guy has been hanging around your place,” he said. “She’s a hero, and she worked hard to save you tonight.”
Before he could react or could warn her that it might not be safe, she bent down into a crouch, threw her arms around Kona, and buried her face into the dog’s rough.
Greyson could hear her whispers.
“Thank you so much, Kona. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Kona’s tail went crazy, and she rolled over, still in Jessica’s arms.
Laughing, he said, “Kona, you don’t look all that fierce now.” He reached over and scratched her gently on the neck and chest. He gave her a good belly rub too. “I think those crazy hard days are over now, girl.”
“Absolutely they are,” Jessica said. “I don’t have any dog food though, but I’m sure I’ve got something in the house.”
“What you need to do,” he said, “is go call the cops.”
“What about Kona?” she asked. “We don’t want the dog to be picked up.”
“Do you have any rope?” he asked. “I’ll make a lead and put it on her.”
“I might have something in the garage,” she said.
“First the cops,” he said firmly. “Then go to the garage and see if we’ve got something I can use to restrain her.”
“Do you think she’s still dangerous?”
“No, but, if she’s the model of a well-behaved dog on a rope,” he said, “the police won’t have any argument with me keeping her.”