by Dale Mayer
The two cops stayed slightly behind him. They were better dressed than the others were for something like this, with both of them in good sneakers. Zane himself had his boots on. But he’d already pounded a ton of miles in these boots, and his navy training had kept him on drills for many, many hours. He’d be surprised if there was anything this dog could take Zane through that Katch couldn’t handle. Particularly considering the dog was as injured as he was. But Katch wasn’t letting his injuries slow him down. Eagerly he stepped up, pulling on his leash, faster and faster as they went from one bush to another bush, around another, across the valley, and kept right on going. And Katch wasn’t slowing.
Zane glanced back to see the cops running too. He checked his time, realizing they’d probably gone two miles already. But the dog’s nose was down, and Katch showed no signs of fatigue. Zane could feel his body limber and loosen as he settled into the jog. The ground was rough and uneven, but it wasn’t bothering Katch. In fact, his stride seemed to relax as he followed the scent and keep striding forward as fast as he could.
No fresh blood welled from the dog’s shoulder, and Zane would take that as another good sign. Maybe his injuries caused from earlier in the wee hours of this morning were more minor than Zane had thought. At least he could hope so.
When he turned to look at the cops behind him, one was languishing, and he looked pissed at himself for having to slow down. All of a sudden, the dog stopped and barked. Zane came to a stop, pulled the dog over slightly behind a tree so they could safely search the surroundings. He glanced back, making sure the cops had done the same, but there was no sign of them.
Slowly Zane gazed across the trees up ahead, finding some kind of a hut. He didn’t want to call it a house or a cabin because it was more like a lean-to. If it had been hunting season, he’d have called it a hunting blind.
He crouched down low and scratched Katch’s chest. “Good boy,” he said. “Good boy.” He didn’t know if anybody was at the hut. The dog was desperate to go forward, but he heeded Zane’s orders to stay.
Zane waited for a long moment, studying the structure, but he heard and saw nothing. He glanced back at the cops to see one shifting around, positioned to come up on the right side. The other went to the left side. Still, Zane had no way to know if the blind itself was just a trap.
He got up and stepped out boldly with the dog at his side. They walked forward, the dog eager, pulling on his leash, even as he listened to Zane’s command to heel. Katch still had the scent, but that didn’t mean McAfee was up ahead.
When Zane got to the lean-to, he stepped around to the open side. It was empty. Katch wasn’t interested in the dwelling, he was looking at something else in the distance.
From the lean-to Zane saw what appeared to be someone up ahead in a tall tree, clinging to one of the lower limbs. He studied it, silently pointed it out to one of the cops and then slowly approached. Again Katch pulled at his leash. When they got twenty feet from the man, Katch started to bark. Zane saw the man lying, possibly collapsed, on the lower limb of the tree. One of the cops joined him at the base.
Zane handed off the leash and reached up. He couldn’t quite make it to the branch. He looked around and shrugged. Then he backed up, took a running jump, using the tree as leverage to get up to a branch on a different side. Once there, he pulled himself up and leaned over to see what he was looking at.
“It’s McAfee all right,” he said. “He’s out cold.” He was also dripping a steady amount of blood. Zane frowned and looked at him. “He needs medical attention.”
“He’s dangerous as hell too,” one of the cops said. “Don’t approach him.”
“I’m already here,” Zane said, but he settled back and watched.
He was more concerned about the poor dog because, if this guy was just playing dead, his goal was to take the dog out—possibly jumping down to the ground and snapping the dog’s neck, which, although not easy, could be done. And if he had a knife on him, that was another whole avenue to consider.
Zane hopped back to the ground, landing hard. He twisted and looked up, but the unconscious man hadn’t made a sound. Zane accepted the leash back and walked Katch a little farther away. But he didn’t want to go. He wanted to stay. His teeth bared as he stared up at McAfee.
“That’s him,” Zane said. “I know you found him. Good boy.”
The policemen had already called it in, but it would be difficult to find their location. Zane gave them the GPS location so the SAR team could track it and find the best way to get in.
“I’d feel better if he was secured and on the ground,” Zane said.
“Me too,” the closest cop said. “But we can’t lift him up and get him down from there. He either has to fall from the tree, or search and rescue will have to climb up, tie him up and bring him down.”
Zane studied the scene for a long moment. “It’s not a bad location for him to have gotten to on his own. When you think about it, he picked a pretty decent spot.”
“Yes,” the second cop said. “But makes it hell on us.”
Just then the man above groaned. He shifted restlessly.
“Hey,” one of the cops called out. “Do you need medical attention?”
The man just groaned again. But, as he shifted, more blood oozed and ran down his arm.
Zane realized the gunman was more hurt than suspected. “Looks like one of those scalpel slices might have done a damn good job on him.”
The man opened his eyes and looked around, but there was a glazed look to them. He shifted and lost his balance. He came down hard with a thump, then didn’t move.
The two cops went to his side. One checked for weapons, and the other checked his condition.
Zane stood to the side with Katch on his leash. The dog relaxed with him, as if having McAfee in the tree had bothered him, but now, with McAfee accessible on the ground, he was less of a danger. “You just wanted to bite him yourself, didn’t you?” he asked Katch gently.
The dog didn’t respond with a sound or a movement, just stared, never taking his gaze off the man.
Zane walked around and said, “What the hell was his problem anyway?”
“No idea,” the cop said. “But, at this rate, he’ll bleed to death.”
“Dammit,” Zane said. “I’d like answers. Although a part of me would be totally okay with that.”
The cops nodded. “Considering he’s gone after cops as well, we understand that. But it’s not what we’re here for.”
Zane checked his pockets. “I don’t have any medical supplies on me.” He glanced at them. “We could haul him down to the vet clinic again, but we’ll be at least thirty minutes getting him back there. In the meantime, I suggest cutting up his shirt and making bandages out of that.” He dipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out his pocketknife, opened it up and handed it over.
The cops quickly cut the man’s shirt into strips and used one as packing and another one to tie on his arm where Holly had managed to slice what appeared to be a slight nick to an artery. It wasn’t arterial bleeding, but it was pouring out badly enough. With that one tied off, they worked on his throat, where she’d also cut him.
One officer looked back around. “We just got a dispatch saying it’ll be at least forty-five minutes.”
“I’m not sure he’ll make it,” Zane said.
“Neither are we,” one of the officers said. “What’s the chance of contacting the other officers down at the vet clinic?” They discussed it between each other. “Meeting them halfway? We can’t get a helicopter in these dense woods. Maybe at the road?”
“It’s possible.” They looked at Zane and sighed. “He’s got to be 250 pounds. Between us, we won’t get very far.”
“If you take the dog,” Zane said, “I can probably carry him half the distance. But somebody has to meet us as soon as we get to the road.” He stopped, turned around and looked. “Considering where we are”—he pulled out his phone, brought up the GPS on his map—“i
t’s probably faster if we hit the road on this side. It’ll be rough traveling, but it’s a shorter distance, and they can meet us at that road instead.”
“True.” They muddled over the map for a while and then said, “Come on. Let’s go. No point sitting here. He’s just bleeding out faster.”
On that note, Zane reached down, grabbed McAfee’s arm, and, with their help, positioned him over his shoulder. He rose slowly. “Watch out for Katch,” he said to the man now holding his leash. “He won’t like this guy being on my shoulder.”
And, sure enough, Katch was already growling.
“I’ll go first,” one cop said. “I’ll see if I can break trail and find the easiest way forward.”
Zane followed with the other cop bringing up the rear.
Chapter 12
“Why hasn’t he called?” she asked.
A cop sat beside her now. He’d been sent back to keep an eye on the clinic, in case the gunman escaped and circled around again.
“Because he’s busy,” the cop said firmly.
She groaned. She had Chico cuddled up in her lap, and the dog appeared to be, for the first time all night, content. His eyes were closed, and he lay with his head on her breast. “This poor little guy’s had a terrible night,” she muttered, gently stroking him.
“He looks happy now,” the cop said.
She nodded and smiled. “Isn’t that the truth?”
“So … this Zane guy. How does he fit into all this?”
She explained about him coming to check on the welfare of the War Dog and finding out it had been abused and beaten and now was being hunted down.
“And he never did find out why this guy hates the dog?”
“No,” she said. “We could only figure that the dog had failed to save someone close to him.”
“What do you mean?”
She sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m tired, so I’m not explaining it very well.”
She tried again, and this time he nodded. “The trouble is, it happens too often like that. We have therapy dogs and sniffer dogs and working dogs and search-and-rescue dogs, but they can’t be held responsible for something because they didn’t get the job done or other circumstances may have interrupted them. The fact that the dog has PTSD is also sad, but it’s what happens to our men too. My brother’s like that.”
She nodded, then said, “I don’t know how bad Zane’s PTSD issues are or what his other health concerns are, but he is certainly struggling with being a civilian now.”
“What will he do?”
“I have no clue. He’s been working for Titanium Corp, but I don’t know that there’s any work for him here. I was hoping to keep him in town,” she said with a wry smile. “We went out years ago, and then, after my husband died, I was hoping maybe to find him again.”
“Maybe he’ll find something here to do,” he said.
“I hope so,” she said sadly. “I’ve spent my life watching him leave.”
“Did you ever consider how hard it might have been for him to get up and leave you too?” the cop asked her.
She looked at him. “No. I don’t think I ever did,” she said slowly. “When I was younger, all I was concerned about was the fact that he might never come home.”
“That’s also a concern for him.”
“Then why leave?” she cried out. “Why put us through that?”
“Because he felt he needed to,” he said. “And, if we didn’t have men to serve, where would we be?”
“There are other men,” she said, a tone of mutiny and fear in her voice, and then she sighed. “I’m still acting like that teenager. He didn’t argue when I went to vet school and was gone for months at a time, but, in my head, I would be done at one point. Whereas he would never be done.”
“And yet, now he is?”
“Sure,” she said, “but only because he was medically discharged. His heart is still in the navy.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said, “because he probably could have found another job within the navy. A desk job maybe. He was medically discharged, but he seems to be in good health now.”
She thought about that and wondered. “Maybe, but I know it’s taken him a long time to get back on his feet.”
“But,” the cop said, “it’s all about what to do now and what he wants to do now.”
She smiled and nodded. “True.” She sat here for a long moment, thinking about the policeman’s words. “I never really thought about how hard it was for Zane because I figured, if it was hard, he wouldn’t have done it.”
“How hard was it going to vet school?” he asked. “Leaving your family and friends, leaving for months at a time? And how hard was the actual work?”
“It was terrible,” she admitted. “Like seriously ugly. It took me probably into the second or third year before I adjusted to it.”
“But you still did it, didn’t you?”
“Of course, because that’s what I needed to do to live my dream life,” she said. Then there was silence when she sagged in the chair. “Okay, that wasn’t very nice.”
“Maybe, but hopefully it helped you see things from his point of view.”
With that, some of her bitterness toward Zane disappeared. “Okay, now I don’t feel very good about myself. I’m really not a mean person.”
“And then there’s the other thing. Didn’t you say you married his brother?”
“Yes,” she said wearily.
“That might make it very hard for Zane,” the cop said. “I don’t know how I’d feel if my brother married my girlfriend, except to figure I was done and wasn’t going back. To a lot of brothers, that would be like the biggest betrayal. In my case, I know I couldn’t handle it,” he admitted. “It would be something too intimate and almost twisted having a girlfriend that my own brother already slept with.”
“That doesn’t sound like what I want to hear either,” she said.
“Maybe not,” he said, “but, if you don’t talk to Zane about it, you won’t ever understand what he’s struggling with.”
“Maybe.” Now she felt really bad about it all.
“And then maybe he’s fine with it,” the cop said. “Second chances and all that.”
“Well, I hope so,” she said, “because I don’t think I can handle him leaving again.”
“Then he needs to know that,” the cop said, standing up. “He needs to know you’re not going to take that anymore. And you have to consider, what if he says he has to? What will you do about it?”
She winced. “You’re talking about me leaving here, aren’t you?”
“If he can’t stay, are you ready to leave with him? Because you say you can’t stand for him to leave again, so your choices are to watch him leave, get him to stay or you going with him. Which is it going to be?” He turned and walked away.
She stared at him, almost hating him for voicing the words. She had already considered whether she could leave, but she wasn’t giving Zane a choice in the matter either. And that was probably wrong. Not probably, it was definitely wrong. And once again it didn’t make her feel very good. Had she always been so selfish? She didn’t want it to be that way. She wanted to be somebody who could see his side. But she hadn’t been that person lately. She’d been wrapped up in her own pain and grief, maybe looking at him as a solution. And yet, he wasn’t a solution. He was what she’d always wanted. Somehow she had to make that work again.
Just then the other cop stepped back inside. “Just so you know, they’re on the way out of the woods, carrying your attacker. He’s unconscious and bleeding.”
She stared at him. “That’s good, I guess.”
He nodded. “You nicked some decent blood vessels when you attacked him.”
“While he was attacking me, trying to shoot Zane and the dog and me?” she said defensively, with heat behind her words.
He held up his hands. “Don’t worry. Nobody’s blaming you. They’re heading to the nearest road so they can get picked up by the a
mbulance, which hopefully will be in the next ten to fifteen minutes.”
“So it’s over?” She wanted to believe it, but …
“I hope so,” he said. “They’ve got the guy anyway. We’re collecting the rest of the officers, and I’m sure there’ll be a hell of a lot of paperwork over something like this. But it looks like, for the clinic and for the dog, it’s over.”
“Can I open the clinic tomorrow?”
“You mean, today?”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s a full business day.”
He frowned. “Let me talk to the others about it.”
He came back ten minutes later and said, “We’ve got a team coming in. They’ll photograph, take fingerprints and blood samples. They’ll do their best, but they need at least three or four hours.”
She looked down at her watch. “It would be best if they could be done and gone by nine o’clock.”
“We’ll see,” he said. “It’s not my decision.” And then he was gone again.
She sagged into a chair, wondering when she would see Zane again. She couldn’t believe they’d found the shooter. Good for Katch, that he’d managed to track McAfee. But then Katch had more motivation than most other animals and the most incentives.
With that news, she could feel the fatigue hitting her. To know Zane and Katch were only about fifteen minutes away from the road, she should see Zane in hopefully another half hour.
She thought about it, then realized maybe she should lie down and grab a power nap so she could handle what was coming. There would likely be a ton of questions and a ton of people in her space.
She walked back into the treatment room and returned Chico to his cage. He went willingly, curling up in the back, prepared to have a good nap. Then she walked into her office and stretched out on the cot. Definitely not time for a full-blown sleep session.
She lay down, closed her eyes and was out instantly.
The cops pulled the cruiser into the clinic parking lot and let Zane out. The front door was unlocked, and the place was full of people. He stopped and stared. “What’s going on?”
