by Kay Hooper
A pit bull staring back at Deacon.
“Yours?” he asked the sheriff.
“He seems to think so.”
Deacon kept his brows up questioningly.
“We don’t have strays around here to speak of,” she said. “Or abandoned pets. Good people who care, mostly. Good and longstanding laws and ordinances prevent backyard breeders, and the few licensed breeders in the county are good ones. Everybody else spays and neuters their pets, mandatory, even the cats; part of my job is to make sure the citizens comply, and the fines if they don’t are pretty stiff and handed out without exception.
“My grandfather was an animal lover, and he believed it was part of his job to make sure people took care of their pets and livestock. Got pretty hot on the subject if he found out otherwise; neglect, abuse, even carelessness wasn’t tolerated. Since he was sheriff, and since those were tougher days with fewer . . . constraints . . . on law enforcement, people listened and did what he demanded. Even the mayor and board of commissioners did. Until it simply became . . . the way of things. My father shared his views on the subject, and so do I. We’ve never even needed an animal control officer or shelter.”
“And yet this guy was a stray? Maybe he got separated from his people while they were traveling.”
She looked at the dog a moment, then returned her gaze to Deacon. “Well, I thought that might be, so I did the usual things. Ad in the papers all through the region; fliers put up; online posts where people from all over go to look at lost, found, or adoptable pets; phone calls to the three vet clinics in the county and fliers up in those offices. Even followed one lead supposedly to a suspected dogfighting ring about fifteen miles outside town.”
“And found?”
“They weren’t fighting dogs, they were cooking meth. Damn near blew the house up before we could get the whole thing shut down and the idiots doing the cooking safely locked away.”
Deacon considered. “A lot more money in meth than in dogfighting, especially in a place this isolated.”
“Yes, thank goodness.”
He lifted his brows at her.
“People making idiots of themselves and risking their own lives for money or whatever to do it is a choice. A stupid choice, but a choice. Abusing animals for entertainment or money is unconscionable and torture in my book.”
In Deacon’s book as well. “Okay.” He looked at the dog again, then back at her. “Well, he certainly doesn’t look like he’s been in a fighting ring. And I imagine you’d know fast enough if one existed.”
“I would.”
He didn’t question that. “So you had this . . . misplaced dog.”
She nodded. “Even notified the ranger service in case a hiker or camper along the Blue Ridge missed him, asked about him. Not a peep. Weeks passed, and nobody claimed him. Which seems to be just fine with him. No tags, but his name is Braden. It’s on a little brass plate on his collar.”
The dog immediately lifted a paw, directed at Deacon.
He accepted the paw for a brief shake, saying merely, “Hey, Braden.” Then he returned his gaze to the sheriff. “So there was somebody who cared. Or did you train him to do that?”
“Must have been somebody who cared, because he’s obviously had obedience training.” She glanced at the dog. “At least.”
Just because Deacon couldn’t read her didn’t mean he wasn’t aware of . . . undercurrents. “So he offers to shake when he hears his name?”
“No, he offers to shake when it’s appropriate. Like just now.”
“You didn’t signal or anything?”
“Nope.”
“His idea?”
“Seems to be. He’s like that. A mind of his own.”
Hollis Templeton looked at the wide, boulder-strewn creek that seemed just inches from the edge of the winding blacktop road her partner was navigating and said, “Why do we always end up in or near tiny little mountain towns?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?” Reese DeMarco asked, keeping his eyes on the road.
“No.” Hollis was a little disgruntled, and it showed.
“Because this is where the SCU-type crimes always seem to be, I suppose. A majority of them, anyway. Always a good hunting ground for monsters, these peaceful little towns. Because nobody expects it, or suspects their neighbors. Because they tend to be isolated and not really on the media radar. Because nobody notices anything is wrong until bodies start to turn up.”
“And local law enforcement gets overwhelmed.”
Her partner sent her a quick glance. “Yeah, especially when there’s a chance of something out of the ordinary going on. They don’t exactly teach courses in paranormal investigation at cop school. And locked-room murder mysteries are seldom found outside mystery novels.”
Hollis sighed. “I just don’t know why Bishop pulled us off the mountain serial and sent us here to investigate a single murder.”
“You heard what Miranda said the same as I did. The team needed fresh eyes, so Bishop decided to send down Isabel and Rafe; they’re just coming off a break. And since we’ve been tracking—or trying to track—the mountain serial for more than a month, he thought we needed a break, at least from that case.”
“Miranda and Dean are staying,” Hollis muttered.
“Miranda’s the primary, and we all know one of Dean’s strengths is recognizing patterns. Besides, both of them had a break before the mountain serial started.”
“Well, our last case wasn’t that demanding,” Hollis objected. “We had a spree killer who practically had his motive tattooed on his forehead. Took us all of four days to track him down, and only across one state line.” She sounded disgruntled. “There wasn’t even anything weird about that case. I mean, just a regular FBI team could have caught him.”
“Uh-huh,” DeMarco murmured.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Okay.”
“Stop humoring me, dammit.”
DeMarco sent her a glance. “What’s really got you bothered?”
Damn telepaths.
Hollis sighed. “Bishop. God knows he never gives away anything he thinks might . . .”
“Mess up the plans of the universe?”
“Well, yeah. He and Miranda are always so careful when they’ve caught a glimpse of the future. You can always tell when it’s one of those cases.”
“You can always tell. Me, not so much.”
She looked at him in surprise, then nodded. “You were undercover all those months in that church cult, really focused on that. I went through a whole bunch of cases in those two years or so.” She frowned.
“So you think the mountain serial is one of those cases Bishop is being careful with? Even though Miranda said she hadn’t seen anything of the future?”
“I think I wouldn’t play poker with either one of them, because they can lie and have lied to our faces if they truly believe it’s for our own good—or the greater good.”
“It’s necessary sometimes.”
“You’re former military; of course you think that way.”
“It isn’t because I’m former military. It’s because I stood at the side of a megalomaniacal cult leader with a serious messiah complex and watched very bad things happen when I knew I couldn’t intervene to stop them. No matter how much I wanted to. Because some things have to happen just the way they happen.”
Hollis wasn’t quite sure what she would have said to that, so it was a good thing that her partner went on calmly.
“Bishop didn’t say much about this case.”
“No. And this time I got the feeling he knows a lot less about whatever’s going on here than he usually does when he sends us in.”
“That would be a change.”
“Yeah.”
“Not a change you like,” he noted.
“Oddly enough, no. I get as pissed as anybody else when we find out he held back on us, even if his reasons are understandable once a case is done with. But I don’t much like fe
eling that he’s as in the dark as we are and might not be able to . . . anchor us if we need it.”
After a moment, DeMarco said, “I’m pretty sure we can handle whatever comes on our own, Hollis.”
“I’ll remind you that you said that,” she said with a sigh.
“Well, whatever he knows or doesn’t know, Bishop tends to match agents with the situation pretty well, so I’m sure he knew what he was doing when he decided to send us.”
“You’re sounding a lot more charitable than you have in the fairly recent past. I thought for a while there you were at least going to challenge him to a sparring workout just so you could legitimately get a few shots in.”
“Legitimately?”
In an absent tone, she said, “You aren’t the type of man to physically challenge another just because you’re pissed. And you were pissed. But still respecting of the chain of command. That pretty much has to be the military background.”
DeMarco glanced at her preoccupied expression and smiled faintly, but all he said was, “I’m sure Bishop has his reasons. And we’ll find out what those are. When we get there. To Sociable.”
Gloomy, she said, “You just know with a name like that the town will be anything but.”
“Probably.”
“Especially to us.”
“Well, I imagine any strangers are going to be eyed uneasily, given the situation.”
She sighed again. “I know. Because nobody in Sociable could have killed, especially like that. Nobody in Sociable is capable of that. They all know their neighbors, and there’s just no way any of them are killers.”
“Except,” DeMarco continued in the same vein, “for that one guy. The guy everybody knows. The one who lives in a crappy house or trailer and drives a car that’s broken down more often than it’s running and who has four more junk cars up on blocks in his overgrown yard. The guy who always gets himself into trouble. Gets thrown in the local jail so often he has his own cell with his favorite pillow on the cot. Maybe has a problem with drinking or beats his wife or has serious anger issues with the world and takes it out on anybody who even looks at him the wrong way. The guy his neighbors will mention because he’s made them uneasy. The guy who could turn out to be a killer without surprising anybody.”
“Right. The one guy we can usually rule out right away.”
—
“MAYBE WE SHOULD have warned them.”
“We couldn’t, you know that. They have to figure it all out for themselves.”
“But they have no idea what they’re walking in to. It all looks so simple—and it isn’t. It all looks like just another case. And it isn’t. If this plays out the way we think it will . . .”
“It has to, you know that. We both know that. It has to end finally, with no questions left unanswered. With no vague shadow of a threat left out there to haunt us. It has to end. And it has to end on our terms. Not his.”
“He’ll know they’re coming.”
“Yes. But I don’t believe he’ll know what they’ve become.”
“They don’t know what they’ve become.”
“After this, they will.”
“If they survive.”
“They will. They’re probably the only two we could send who would.”
“They’ll be blindsided. God, what a word.”
“They’ll survive. And they’ll win. More than that, they’ll emerge even stronger.”
“Maybe. But even if they do, this time they may never forgive us.”
“Me. They may never forgive me.”
“Can you live with that?”
“I’ll have to, won’t I?”
—
DEACON WONDERED IF it was a coincidence that they started talking about the dog when he had mentioned the paranormal.
No. Surely not. The dog had come in and they were talking about him. That was all.
Casually, the sheriff said, “He didn’t have a rabies tag, so my vet checked him out and vaccinated him. He’s in good health, not much more than a year old, well nourished, and he’s been neutered. No physical or behavioral signs of neglect, mistreatment, or injury. No microchip, no tattoo, nothing to indicate who he belonged to before I found him on my front porch about two months ago.”
“So now he’s yours.”
“Appears to be.”
Deacon still couldn’t tell how she felt about that. “You said you were an animal lover,” he ventured.
“I am.” She paused, then said, “Always had pets growing up. And as an adult. I have a cat, who Braden is very polite to. And two months to the day before Braden showed up, I had lost my most recent dog to age and cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, so was I. We’d been together a dozen years.” Her shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. “I found him in one of the rural pounds between here and Atlanta. A pit bull or pit mix; the sort I favor. We clicked.”
“And Braden?”
“Well, I had just decided it was time to get another dog, because I’ve seldom been without one and I like my home and my life in general better with a dog in it. I had literally just decided to get online, contact rescues and shelters within driving distance. Then I opened my front door, still thinking about that, and there he was. Sitting on my front porch as though waiting for me.”
“Already named and trained.”
Her smile was faint. “Yeah. And . . . we clicked. In that first moment, when he lifted a paw to shake. He sleeps on the foot of my bed and comes to work with me every day. Always near, at home or around town, but never underfoot or otherwise in the way. He sits in the Jeep if I’m out on a call—with the window all the way down, at his insistence. And while I’m outside the vehicle, he watches. Our town drunk got belligerent with me one night, and Braden was just suddenly there, between us. Didn’t growl or make a sound. But . . . Never seen Amos back down so fast, and he’s been known to charge bears unarmed.”
“Real bears?”
“When he’s drunk, yeah.”
Deacon looked at the dog for a moment, noting that Braden at least appeared to be following the conversation, looking at whoever was talking. “Think he has law enforcement training?” he asked, finding those intelligent brown eyes fixed on him.
Until Trinity answered.
“I think he has a mind of his own. Whatever his background, whatever . . . shaped him . . . left him unlike any dog I’ve ever known. He knows all the basic commands and appears to be not only observant but . . . intelligently so.”
Deacon was curious. “For instance?”
“I couldn’t find my keys the other day. Didn’t say anything, just started looking. About a minute later, Braden came to me with the keys in his mouth.”
“So . . . maybe a service dog?”
“Maybe. But mostly he just . . . does exactly what he should be doing at any given moment, to respond, to help if there’s a problem, or just to make things easier. Assesses the situation and behaves accordingly.
“He has chosen to be with me, that’s clear enough. He has chosen to be the sheriff’s dog. And, so far, I’ve never had to tell him to do anything. He just seems to know what’s expected of him, from walking at heel without a leash and looking both ways before he crosses the street to making sure he’s beside me if there’s a threat or trouble of any kind.”
She looked at Braden. “I have to say, though, always before, if I’ve been in a restaurant or one of the coffee shops, he waits outside. Sits politely out of sidewalk traffic and waits. No one would object to his presence, but it’s supposed to be like most places where food is served, only service animals allowed. Something else he seems to know without having to be told.”
“So—what? He came in to meet me? To listen to us talk about him?”
“Maybe.” She frowned, then lowered her voice when she said, “From the little I was told, I gather each agent in the unit has a unique ability. Mind if I ask you what yours is?”
“Melanie didn’t tell you?”
&
nbsp; Trinity said, “We didn’t talk about the unit. Plus, from things that have come up in the past, I get the feeling that Melanie isn’t all that comfortable with even the idea of psychic ability, never mind talking about it.”
He hesitated, then said, “Some abilities are a lot more difficult to learn to live with. Some people struggle with them. Some people try to just ignore them. Melanie belongs in the latter camp.”
“She’s psychic?”
“We’ve found it tends to run in families. But having a latent ability, being for all intents and purposes suppressed, is a long way from being able to effectively tap into and use that ability.”
Instead of asking about that, Trinity said, “Well, since you’re part of the SCU, I gather you use your ability. Which is?”
Deacon didn’t hesitate. “Empath. I pick up on emotions sometimes. Not all the time, not with everybody. But sometimes.”
She appeared to accept that, nodding. “Do you have to concentrate to do that?”
“I have to drop my guard, usually.” He shrugged. “Those of us born with abilities usually build our own individual type of mental or emotional shielding by the time we hit our teens. A kind of self-defense mechanism so we aren’t . . . bombarded.”
“You were born an empath?”
“As far back as I can remember, I’ve been able to feel what some other people feel. Especially if the emotions are powerful. Anger, pain, grief, fear. Those I pick up on pretty easily if I pick them up at all.”
“I imagine that could be overwhelming.”
“Under the right circumstances, yeah, definitely. Hospitals and prisons are the worst, generally speaking, but any situation where emotions run high can be . . . uncomfortable for people like me.”
“Prisons?”
He smiled. “I wasn’t an inmate, I promise you. Just a visitor. Part of why the unit is so successful is that Bishop . . . challenges and tests us on a regular basis. Sends us to places or into situations where we’re able to practice using our abilities. Or not using them, which can often be more important.”
