by Joanna Bell
"It's not a threat!" She protested, and I saw that her cheeks were pink. "It's not a threat, Jack! Damnit! I'm trying to help you!"
"By threatening me," I replied flatly. "I'm half-tempted to say something conciliatory here, Blaze. 'Oh, it's fine, you're just doing your job!' – or something like that. But I'm not going to, because why should I try and make you feel better about something you clearly don't feel any guilt over?"
She opened the door and then sat there for a few seconds without getting out, as if thinking about what to say. Then she climbed out, leaning back into the truck to get the last word in.
"I do feel guilty, you asshole."
When she went to slam the door for emphasis I reached across and stopped it with one arm, yelling after her as she stalked into the hotel. "No you don't! Stop lying to yourself, Blaze. I haven't seen one real sign of a conscience in you since we met!"
That triggered something in her, because she suddenly stopped dead and then whirled around, marching back to the truck and pulling my door open so hard she almost fell over when it swung out towards her.
"Just what is it exactly that you want from me?" She demanded. "Do you want me to lose my job for you – someone I barely know? Because that's what's going to happen if I try to do anything to help you out here, you know. It's not like one investigator randomly decides a case is closed and everyone else just goes along with it! I spent six years in school for this job! I worked my fucking ass off every day and held down two shitty jobs for years to get this job. And now you're asking me to do something that will get me fired for you! As if I owe you! And yes, you did save my life – I want you to know that –" she broke off and gulped down a shaky breath – one that almost sounded like a sob – before continuing. "I want you to know that I've never been good with things like this, with telling people how I feel. But if you think I'm ungrateful or that I don't understand what you did for me, you're wrong!"
Blaze put her hands over her face and dug her fingers into her cheeks, struggling to get control of herself. "Don't ask me to give up my career for you, Jack. We're strangers to each other. It's not an appropriate thing to ask for. And I think you know it."
"I'm not asking you to risk your job," I said when she was finished. "That's – Blaze, that is not something I would ever do. To anyone."
"Well then what are you asking me?" She asked plaintively, slightly out of breath with – what? Anger? I couldn't tell.
"I don't know. Not that."
"OK. Fine. Great. Well, thanks for saving me from the flood, Jack. And thanks for the sleepover and the breakfast and the laundry and the hair-brushing. Your grandma sounds like she was an awesome woman. I'd wish you luck, but I know you'd just throw it back in my face."
I focused my eyes straight ahead, on the storefronts across the street from the motel, and pulled the door closed again without saying anything in response. What was there to say? We were obviously never going to agree on the issue, and it didn't matter anyway. It was just one of those things, one of those random incidents in life where you find yourself thrown briefly into a dramatic situation with a stranger and then, just as quickly, it's in the past and you only think of it sporadically. Remember that time you had to rescue the IRS investigator from Parson's Creek? That was funny, wasn't it?
I was trying to cheer myself up with that last thought, anticipating a time when whatever it was that had happened between Blaze Wilson and myself would be nothing more than an amusing memory. Instead, it just underlined the fact that I didn't actually have anyone to say something like that to. I only knew for sure where one of my four siblings was. Connor was in Oregon, living in a small town near the coast with the wife and two daughters I'd never met. The rest? No idea. Emily, who I had been as close to as it's possible for a brother and sister to be, was probably somewhere in California. The last real girlfriend I had left in 2015, when it finally sank in that I was never going to leave Sweetgrass Ranch and her two choices in life were to stay with me or go and – well, do literally anything else.
My mom was dead, buried in the dark Midwestern earth of Illinois with her parents, who never did accept the fact that their little girl had run off with a handsome but deeply troubled 18 year old named Jack McMurtry Jr., son of Blackjack and Dottie.
My dad? Nobody knew where the hell he was and to be honest I didn't care very much. I used to care, when I was younger, but it slowly became apparent that my dad just wasn't the staying-in-one-place type, even with a wife and kids. About the only thing I felt when I thought about my dad was a fervent wish not to be like him.
It was almost certainly the prospect of losing the place that prompted my eyes to sting with emotion as I drove back to Sweetgrass Ranch, knowing I wasn't going to see any vehicles parked in the driveway, that I wasn't going to walk into the kitchen to a loud, chaotic conversation over whose turn it was to muck out the stalls, that there wasn't going to be a home-cooked meal served to me by my doting grandmother, who always had time to listen to anything I had to say.
Where had it all gone? Where had all those people gone – the activity, the life? Sweetgrass Ranch was like a house in one of those ghost-towns my older brother Bill used to be so obsessed with. Truth is, I'd started to think I hated the place. Started to resent that it had somehow fallen on me to look after and care for the land and the house that saw so much turmoil, the highest joys and lowest miseries of a whole family, stretching back generations.
Only the sudden prospect of losing it showed me how wrong I was about that. What might have slowly become nothing more than a burden – if Blackjack had paid his taxes and Blaze Wilson had never showed up on that hot summer day – now felt like sacred ground. I parked the truck at the front gate, because I've always liked walking up the driveway and seeing the big old house on the top of the hill. Home.
"Goddamnit," I muttered, as my chest tightened with emotion. "Goddamnit, Blackjack. Why couldn't you have said something when there was still time to fix it?"
Chapter Six
Blaze
I stood in the motel parking lot and watched Jack pull away. It didn't feel like the conversation was over, but, as the truck turned left onto the main road and headed back in the direction of Sweetgrass Ranch, it appeared that it was. I stayed where I was for a couple of minutes, half-expecting him to come back. He didn't. Why would he? This wasn't some boyfriend-girlfriend fight, after all.
Back in my room, I used the heavy old landline phone to call the D.C. office and tell them everything that had happened with the flood and Jack and staying the night at Sweetgrass Ranch after the doctor wouldn't let me leave the hospital alone (I made extra sure to emphasize that part). In the end, I didn't even have to request that they assign another pair of agents to the case, because my supervisor's first response to hearing my story was to recommend just that.
"Good," I said, forcing a brightness I did not feel into my voice. "I'll take the next flight back to D.C."
"Are you sure?" Melissa asked. "It sounds like you got pretty banged up, Wilson. It might be a good idea to take a day or two –"
"I'm fine," I reassured her. "Just a little sore. I'm not sure I'll be able to get a flight out tonight – if not, I'll see you in a couple of days. If I luck out, I'll see you tomorrow."
"You're a warrior."
"Thanks, boss."
Melissa Caldwell was my supervisor. She was more than my supervisor, actually, although I don't think she knew that. She was my hero, a woman who managed to be completely in charge of her life and her career without ever having to scream or yell or act out. Being called a 'warrior' by her was one of the biggest compliments of my life and I glowed for a good three hours afterwards. She wasn't soft, though, which is why I knew I had to be back at work as soon as I could, despite her telling me I could take a day or two off. I could, that was true. But I didn't want to be that person, the one who needed time to nurse a few bruises and scratches. And I wanted Melissa to see that I wasn't that person.
I got a flight
out of Billings at 6:30 in the morning the next day. After barely sleeping that night – I think the bruising was truly beginning to set in after the relatively pain-free night at Sweetgrass Ranch – I took a couple of ibuprofen and tried to sleep on the plane. It didn't work. I kept repositioning myself, twisting my body this way and that, trying to doze off. Nothing. By the time the flight landed I wasn't just sleep-deprived I was pissed off. I practically stomped out to my car, slamming the door so hard after getting inside that I surprised myself a little, and not in a good way.
It wasn't like me to be that way – so affected by things. So... ugh, emotional. I bit my lip and closed my eyes for a few seconds, willing myself to calm down before starting the drive back to my condo.
Driving helped a little, giving my spinning mind something to focus on, finally. When I was about ten minutes from home, just after pulling off the freeway, I spotted some movement in the dry grass verge to my left and turned my head to look. And then I pulled over.
That's another thing I never do. I never get insomnia and I never pull over for stray animals. But that day, I did pull over. I briefly caught my own eye in the rear-view mirror and looked away as soon as I did so, unwilling to think about what I was doing. Then I opened the door and leaned out. There on the concrete curb sat a tiny, trembling, filthy puppy. When I put the car in park and got out, I think it tried to run away but it was too weak, its skinny little legs just collapsed underneath it.
I'm not an animal person. I never had pets as a child – my mom thought they were dirty and expensive and I agreed. At best, I tolerated the moody cats and over-enthusiastic dogs of friends, but I knew it wasn't for me. Not that I was going to keep that puppy – if it even lived, which it didn't look like it was going to. But I couldn't just leave it there, on the side of the road. It was too small, too sick. A car honked at me on its way past and I scooped the puppy up before getting back into my own car.
I looked down at the sad little creature and it weakly turned its head up to me.
"Hi puppy," I whispered. "You don't look too good."
I remember reading once that dogs have been evolutionarily successful because of their uncanny ability to appeal to us – as well as work for us. When the puppy in my lap gave my hand a tentative lick while looking up into my eyes, my heart just about exploded. If the situation had been anything other than an emergency, I would have noticed these uncharacteristic reactions I was having. But it was an emergency, so I put the pup on the passenger seat and kept driving, looking for a veterinarian. Soon enough, I saw a sign outside a strip-mall and pulled in, worried the dog was going to die before I got it inside.
"Oh no!" The receptionist exclaimed, getting up out of her seat and running over to me when she saw me walk in with the pathetic bundle in my arms. "What happened?"
"I just found it," I squeaked, shocked to hear genuine fear in my own voice. "On the side of the road – just now – I, uh, I came straight here."
"Here," she said, rolling up her sleeves. "Let me take her back to the vet right now. Can you wait here?"
I didn't want to wait. I wanted to go with the receptionist and the puppy. But she was already walking away from me so I slumped down into one of the chairs in the waiting area and wondered what the hell I was doing. And, unusually, what I thought about while I waited wasn't work. I wasn't stressing about not having a phone and not being able to call Melissa or Pender. No, I was stressing about the puppy. It was taking a long time. Why couldn't someone just come out and tell me what was happening?
Almost thirty minutes later, someone did. An older man with a serious look on his face. Oh no. I stood up, my stomach sinking, and steeled myself for bad news.
"Well, that's one sick little pup you brought us," he said. "We're rehydrating her and running tests for mange and parasites. I assume you're relinquishing her to us?"
I gulped. "Relinquishing her? Do you mean you will find her a home?"
The man looked at his watch, distracted. "No, we don't do that. We'd make her comfortable and surrender her to animal services, and they would be in charge of what happened from there. To be honest with you, they would probably euthanize. No one wants to adopt a puppy that looks like that."
A lump formed immediately in my throat at the word 'euthanize.' And at the same time the lump appeared, I appeared to lose all rationality. "No," I said quickly. "I'm not relinquishing her. I – I'll take her home with me. I'll take her."
"Suit yourself," the vet replied, "but please understand this means you're responsible for all the bills she's going to incur."
"Yes," I agreed, without even thinking about it. "Yes, of course. I'll give you my credit card right now."
"Good!" The vet brightened noticeably. "Cheryl here will take your details and explain everything to you, alright?"
I nodded, even though I had about a thousand questions for the vet, and handed my credit card to Cheryl the receptionist.
Five hours later, after lying to my boss at work for the very first time – I told her I had a flat tire and it wasn't going to be fixed in time for me to make it in that day – and after spending an afternoon at the vet's office, I was informed that I could not take the puppy home with me. She needed to be kept in overnight. She might need to be kept in for a few nights.
"Is this – are you OK with this?" The receptionist asked, clearly wondering if I was still as enthused to take responsibility for a homeless puppy now that it appeared it was going to cost me thousands of dollars.
"Yes," I told her. "And please call me if anything changes. When do you open tomorrow? Can I come and visit her?"
In retrospect, I know what anybody would say to my sudden sympathy for lost puppies. They would say I needed a distraction. Not just any distraction, either, but the kind of distraction that might allow a person who has suddenly started to worry if they're heartless or not to reassure themselves that they are not. I reject this theory, even though it does seem to make sense. I don't know why that puppy grabbed my heart that day, but I wasn't faking anything – not even to myself. When I got home that evening and called my best friend Jessica, I spent over an hour talking about the puppy – and breathlessly repeating everything the vet had said to me about her treatment.
"Did something happen?" Jess asked, after I'd almost talked her ear off. "In Montana, I mean? Did something happen? Because you – Blaze, you sound kind of funny."
"Funny?" I asked. "Like ha-ha funny?"
"Nooo," Jessica said slowly. "Like, weird-funny. Since when do you care about dogs, Blaze? My mom still talks about how unimpressed you were with Loki."
Loki was Jessica's parent's Weimaraner – and he might as well have been their own flesh and blood for how obsessed they were with him. After dinner at their house about a year previously they had both expressed genuine surprise that I seemed to be less susceptible to the dog's manic charm than they were.
I laughed. "But Loki is totally happy and spoiled! This little girl was just collapsed on the side of the damn off-ramp, Jess. She was too weak to run away. It was so sad."
There was a confused silence. "Huh," she finally said. "OK, Blaze. If you say so. But are you sure nothing happened out in Montana? Weren't you supposed to get back tomorrow?"
"Uhhh... Yeah. I was. Something did happen, actually. Remind me that I'm a city girl if you ever catch me talking about hiking or camping, will you?"
Jess laughed. "Oh my God, Blaze. What the hell happened? Did a bear try to eat you?"
"No. But I did almost drown in a flash flood. Until the guy I'm investigating – well, was investigating – rescued me and took me back to his totally idyllic farmhouse and brushed my hair and told me stories about his grandma. That happened."
I could almost see the skeptical look on Jess's face. "What?" She asked. "You – Blaze, are you joking? You almost drowned? In a – a flood? And then the guy who rescued you brushed your hair – what?!"
"Nope," I replied. "Not joking. I went for a hike in the foothills and there was a thu
nderstorm. I took shelter in a dry creek because it was the only place that had any trees. I didn't even think about a flash flood until it was literally on top of me and then it just swept me away. You should see me right now, I look like I've been a fight with, like, five of those MMA guys – my whole body is black and blue."
I lay down on my sofa, because on the landline I couldn't pace and talk at the same time, which is my usual habit. Jess was quiet, trying to figure out if I was embellishing or not.
"Really?" She asked. "You almost drowned for real?"
"Yeah. I actually think I was already unconscious when Jack – that's the guy I was out there investigating – pulled me out. I kept trying to breath and getting water instead of air. It was really scary."
"Of course it was scary! Holy crap, Blaze! I mean, are you OK? Did you go to the hospital? What happened?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. Banged up, like I said, but fine. And yeah, I got a ride in an ambulance. The doctor wanted to keep me overnight but Jack let me stay at his place and the doctor seemed fine with –"
"Wait," Jess cut in. "Wait. Blaze. Did you just say you stayed the night at this guy's house? Jack? The one you're investigating?"
"Was investigating," I corrected my friend. "Was. Don't worry, I told my boss everything and we decided it was best if someone else take over from –"
"But why did you stay the night at his house?" Jessica asked, not willing to let the topic go. "Don't they have hotels out there? Isn't that kind of... weird?"
"Well," I started, before hearing Jess suck her breath in suddenly. "What? What is it?"
"Answer me one question, Blaze."
"OK."
"Is he hot? This Jack guy?"
I groaned. "Oh my God, Jessica. Is that all you –"
