CHAPTER 2
An hour later, Liv had dropped off a very tearful Paxton at camp, fielded three calls from the camp counselor saying Paxton was still standing at the edge of the park waiting for pickup, and pulled into Mercy General with twenty minutes to spare.
Paxton had taken a huge step in the right direction today, and now it was Liv’s turn.
And she was ready. She had to be ready. It had taken her a full year to accept that Sam was never coming home, which was step one in Finding Life after Death. Step two had been terrifying, experiencing the loss and grief, which was why she’d acted on that step right away. Moving back to Sam’s hometown to be around people who had known and loved him was as much for Paxton as it had been for Liv. Which got her to today.
Step three: adjusting to the environment without the deceased.
Liv pulled out her phone, pushed the bottom button, and said, “Siri, what is listed in ‘Olivia, Take the Wheel’ under step three?”
“All right. Here is what I found in your notes, Take the Wheel, for what is listed under step three,” the computer-generated voice, which she’d set to sound like 007, said. “Survivor must assume some of the responsibilities and social roles formerly fulfilled by your husband. Change a tire, empty the rain gutters, tie a tie, throw a curveball, master the grill, and bring home the bacon.”
Check. Check. Check. Check. Work in progress. And as soon as she had her meeting with the head of family medicine, check.
Even though it was summer, a crisp early breeze blew past, bringing with it the scent of fresh earth and rustling the pine trees. Liv looked up at the jagged Sierra Nevada, which towered high above the small town she’d only recently begun to think of as home, and guilt seared a hole in her chest.
If she could come to think of this treacherous terrain that took her husband’s life as beautiful, then why did the idea of moving on feel like such a betrayal? Sam had been gone for two years, and nothing she could say or do would change that.
At least, not now.
And Liv was focusing on the now, the future. She had to if she wanted to give Paxton the kind of childhood he deserved. And he deserved so much more than a mom who worked swing shifts.
Shoulders back, Liv grabbed her job application and updated résumé off the passenger seat and headed into the hospital. If there was anything the past had taught her, it was that nobody cared about her family’s future as much as she did.
It was a mantra that had seen her through some of the roughest patches, and a mantra she’d adopted long before Sam’s accident. So when she reached the office of her boss’s boss, unannounced, she gave a strong, confident knock.
“Olivia,” Nicole said, glancing up from her desk.
Dr. Nicole Brown looked like a preschool teacher with her brightly colored glasses and pigtail, but she ran her career like a sniper. Precise and purposeful—leaving no room for surprises or error. Which had earned her the respect of her peers and the position of head of family medicine at Mercy General.
She looked at the papers in Liv’s hands and lifted a brow. “Did we have an appointment?”
“No,” Liv said, channeling her inner Xena, Warrior Princess, and entering the office, because while Liv’s surprise appearance might not have been a smart choice, with the board picking the final team in a few weeks, it was the only option she’d had. “I had some time before my shift started, and I wanted to congratulate you on your new Mobile Medic project.”
A project Liv desperately wanted to be a part of. It would get her out of the ER and into a position with stable hours and potential for career growth. It was also a project that spoke to Liv’s heart.
Having a mother who’d passed from diabetes, Liv knew how important it was to get medical care to residents who had difficulty getting to the hospital, and that’s what Nicole’s Mobile Medic project was—a fleet of mobile clinics that would service the surrounding community.
“Thank you,” Nicole said skeptically.
“I also wanted to speak with you about applying for the open RN position,” Liv said.
“You know that I’m only considering senior staff for the position,” Nicole said.
“I know I’ve only been at Mercy General for eighteen months, but I’ve been a practicing RN for more than ten years.” Granted, eleven of those eighteen months she’d been working part-time, but she didn’t need to point that out. “That’s four years longer than Kevin, who is one of the board-approved options, so I wanted to come and deliver these to you personally.”
Liv held out her papers, and to her utter surprise, Nicole took them. “I see you’ve done your homework.”
It wasn’t an official invitation for a meeting, but Liv knew that in order for her to take the wheel, so to speak, she first had to take a seat. Then lean in. So she did both. “They don’t call me the research queen for nothing.”
Nicole didn’t smile, just flipped through the pages of information, spending extra time on the referrals—of which Liv had collected several. She skimmed the last page and then set the papers down.
“Last week the board approved Mobile Medic on a trial basis, and they want me to finalize my team so we can be ready to go next month,” Nicole said. “However, they only funded one van so far.”
“Which means you’re only hiring one team,” Liv guessed, thinking that she hadn’t researched enough.
“You got it,” Nicole said. “And while I think you’d be an asset to any team, my job is proving this is an effective solution to the problem so that they will continue to fund this project. To do that, I need to pick the right team.” Nicole studied Liv for a long moment. “Do you know why Kevin is on the short list?”
Like Liv, Kevin Curtis was a registered nurse working the ER. Unlike Liv, he was Sequoia Lake royalty, his family going back five generations of Lake Sequoians, with the most recent generation being one of the largest donors to the hospital.
Not that Kevin relied on his connections—he was a great nurse. But for this project Liv was better. Sam wouldn’t have backed down because he lacked a few years of experience. He’d gotten ahead in his career by being the guy who showed up at the table and turned his weakness into a strength.
“Because he wasn’t afraid to apply even though he was a few years short on the required minimum?”
That earned Liv a smile. “There seems to be a lot of that going around.”
“I may not have the flexibility to work as many hours as some of the other applicants, but my patient-care rate is the best in my department.”
Nicole’s face softened. She was a working mom too, so she understood the struggles. “Your hours wouldn’t be a concern since the mobile clinic will be open in different locations around town from eight thirty until four thirty. No more on-call, but also no more overtime.”
There would also be no more swing shifts or split shifts. Kindergarteners qualified for after-school care, so she could pick Paxton up after work, and they could have dinner together every night. And the weekends would be family time.
God, to have the whole weekend with her kid would be amazing. Not to mention the money. Liv knew that this promotion also came with a nice pay bump—she’d heard Kevin talking about it. There was still some of Sam’s insurance money left over, but that was for Paxton’s college. Anything extra, she’d have to earn.
“If you took my collective experience into consideration, I would be the most experienced nurse applying,” Liv said confidently. “I’ve worked the ER, the OR, trauma, and family care. Which means I know how to follow directions as well as take the lead.”
Nicole glanced at Liv’s résumé again, then looked up over her glasses. “Working in the field is different than the hospital. We won’t have files at our fingertips and the database that we do with patients here.”
“I understand,” Liv said, a glimmer of hope flickering in her chest.
“That means it will be imperative that every team member can summarize their patient’s history in a matter of seconds. Knows who they are, what medical issues they’ve had in the past, and how to proceed.” The doctor gave a long, thought-provoked pause. “Kevin is in the Lions Club, belongs to the Sequoia Fishermen’s Association, and is in the local football hall of fame. He has that knowledge. I’m not sure you do.”
“Kevin was also prom king, but that doesn’t make him more qualified. And I just moved here from Sacramento two years ago,” she said, because Liv had learned just how many hats she could wear since becoming a single mom. But if the deciding factor came down to birthplace, that wasn’t something she could compete with.
“And in those two years you haven’t ventured very far outside of work and home,” Nicole said, and Liv wanted to point out that she didn’t have the time to get involved with the community, but she knew that would be a lie.
Liv had been selective in whom she opened herself up to, and it didn’t take a therapist to tell her why most of them hadn’t known Sam well. It was hard to find closure when surrounded by people who wanted to reopen the past. It was even harder when the past had so many different perspectives.
To the town, Sam was the hometown hero who went off to save lives as one of the top thoracic surgeons. To Liv, he’d been the love of her life who’d constantly chosen his career over their family. Well, Liv was choosing her family first, and that meant getting this promotion.
“I have a stellar memory, I’m a fast learner, and I work hard for my patients,” Liv assured her. “I might not know every detail of their history yet, but I will, if you give me a chance.”
“You don’t have to sell me on your qualifications,” Nicole said with a genuine smile, and that flicker of hope caught fire. “It’s clear that your patients love you, you have great instincts, and more importantly, you have a gift of putting people at ease. You seem to find common ground with every person you come across, and when we’re dealing with on-edge patients, you’re the kind of nurse I want in my corner, but—”
“Oh God.” Liv scooted to the edge of her seat. “There’s a but? That’s like offering up a box of cupcakes, then saying they’re sugar-free.”
“It’s not as dire as sugar-free cupcakes.” Nicole laughed. “And while I know that you like your cupcakes sugarcoated, the facts not so much.”
“I’d rather leave with everyone on the same page than be blindsided,” Liv said, speaking from experience.
“This project’s success is going to hinge on my team’s ability to reach out into the community, work with different local organizations and groups, get the citizens to feel comfortable coming to us,” Nicole said with an apology already in her voice. “My strength is with hospital administration and the board. They trust me and my judgments based on my reputation in medicine and what I did with the clinic in Boise. I need a nurse who has earned the same kind of confidence within the community.”
Nicole pulled out a file from her top drawer and displayed its contents on her desk. It was charts, graphs, expected patient profiles. “These are the kind of people the Mobile Medic will serve. Sure, many of the patients we’re hoping to reach don’t come to the hospital because they can’t, but a good chunk of them simply won’t.” She flipped the page to a chart that showed the statistics of different outreach programs in the past. “As you can see, most of these failed. The ones that didn’t had two things in common.” Nicole looked up. “A fresh, new approach to draw interest from the community. And the patients had a personal connection with one or more of the staff members. I need to make sure that people feel as if they’re visiting an old friend when they seek care with the mobile clinic.”
“I belong to Living for Love.”
“Living for Love is a bereavement group, which you joined because it allowed you to do outreach without leaving the safety of medicine,” Nicole said, and Liv swallowed down the growing uncertainty.
There hadn’t been a lot of room for opportunity in Liv’s career. It was hard to move up the nursing ranks when Sam was transferred every few years to study under a new surgeon or learn a new procedure, but Liv had adapted. Finally, this was her big opportunity, her time, but in order to own it she had to move right past step three and on to step four. And that was the step she had been trying to ignore.
Taking the emotional energy spent on the one who had died and reinvesting it in another relationship or relationships terrified her. There were still times when she felt the loss so deeply it was hard to breathe. Then there were other times when she had to pull out Sam’s aftershave to remember what he smelled like.
That was one of the reasons she’d moved to Sequoia Lake and purchased Sam’s childhood home. She wanted to be surrounded by parts of Sam that weren’t a part of their marriage. Sacramento reminded her of their problems, but Sequoia Lake reminded her of the man she’d fallen in love with. The man she wanted Paxton to know. But moving on and reinvesting were two different things.
The first was necessary to find peace. The second felt as if she were being disloyal.
“So you want someone who has deep ties to the community?” she asked.
Nicole gave Liv’s packet one last glance, then picked it up and held it out to her. “That is the only thing missing on your résumé that would make you my top choice.”
Liv looked at the résumé. To most, it would be a series of hire and end dates with a collection of skills and hundred-dollar words. To Liv, she knew that between all the recent employers and references was a complicated story of love, sacrifice, frustration, and loss. But it was the blank part on the last page that had her straightening her shoulders. Because that was the part of the story she had yet to write.
And it was up to her how it would play out.
“I see your concern,” Liv said, taking back her application. “What you need, then, is for me to bring this back to you with more extracurricular activities and community connections. When do you need that by?”
Nicole lifted an impressed brow. “I need to bring my final decision to the board the first week of August, and I’d like a week or so to weigh my options.”
“It will be on your desk by the end of next week.”
She would make sure of it.
Commit today, forget tomorrow.
It was the one rule Ford Jamison swore by. A balancing act that had pulled him through some of the worst shit-shows of his life. First in the army, then as one of the top K-9 trackers for Washoe County Search and Rescue out of Reno. He was Washoe-SAR’s Hail Mary call, their great white hope, the one guy who could turn a worst-case scenario into a rescue. And he had—a dozen times over.
He celebrated the successes as much as he mourned the losses, but he never let either of them detract from the next search. Until he’d made one bad call—and forgetting became impossible.
Which was how he found himself eighty miles from home in the small mountain town of Sequoia Lake participating in a training exchange program with the local team, Sequoia Elite Mountain Rescue.
Participating? Ford snorted as he turned his car down a pine tree–lined road, because that made it sound voluntary. When in reality there had been nothing voluntary about it. Pissed that he’d skipped out on his type-one certification, his boss in Reno had sentenced him to desk duty in the same small town he’d been trying to avoid when he’d missed his certification.
He either needed to find some closure and get his head back in the game or risk losing a career he loved. Which was a hell of a lot better than risking lives.
Something he’d promised himself he’d never do again. So he didn’t even roll his eyes when he pulled up on a residential search in progress that a Boy Scout could handle.
The call had gone out over the wire as a missing female—LuLu, a five-year-old with golden hair, last seen wearing pink bows and a tutu, was suspected to have wandered off from her front yard earlier that morning—but Ford knew the moment he rolled up on the scene that he should just keep on driving.
Because on the porch, dressed in curlers and a fuzzy robe, was the grieving mother clutching a stuffed toy in one hand—and a pink leash in the other. Making Ford wonder just how many legs this LuLu walked on.
And if the FIND MY BABY flyer with the picture of a prissy purse-dog in bows nailed to a nearby tree wasn’t enough to let him know this was his “Welcome to the Department” party, then his boss of less than a week smiling like a smug prick certainly was.
Harris Donovan stood on the porch waving him over, a familiar shit-eating grin on his face.
Ford and Harris went way back. All the way to Ford’s first day at the police academy when Harris, a senior, thought it would be funny to screw with the new kid’s GPS. It had taken Ford two months of changing out brake pads to afford the GPS handset—and six hours to complete a sixty-minute hike.
Ford failed his first in-the-field assignment, and the two had a come-to-Jesus meeting—Harris telling Ford he needed to lighten up, and Ford introducing Harris to his right hook. They were both sentenced to twenty hours of volunteer time picking up trash on one of the trails they’d trained on, and they were serving their time when they came across an injured father with his son.
Harris’s confident charm allowed him to connect immediately with the kid and earn the father’s trust—a necessary skill for any first responder. While Ford’s relentless nature and attention to detail turned what could have been a holiday tragedy into a family reunion that made national news. That’s when Ford switched his focus from SWAT to search and rescue.
He wasn’t interested in a reunion with his own father, not anymore. But bringing other families together always took him one step closer to filling that empty hole deep in his chest. Until Ford had been forced to make an impossible call—and he still wasn’t sure if he’d made the right one.
“You stay here while I see what’s going on,” Ford told his copilot and partner, who sat in the passenger seat, his eyes on Ford.
Bullseye was stubby, tubby, and sixty pounds of wrinkles, with ears that hung to the ground. He was part shepherd, part sloth, but all bloodhound when it came to tracking. He also objected to being sidelined—something Ford could relate to.
“Sorry, man, but we both know what happened the last time you ran across a stuffed animal you just had to smell.”
Ford had ended up playing doctor to the pretty nurse he’d set out to avoid—and missed the morning debriefing. Which was probably why he’d been the only person called out to today’s search.
Not that he was complaining when the alternative was sharing coffee with a woman he had no business sharing anything with. Unless it was the truth.
And that wasn’t going to happen.
Bullseye gave Ford a convincing look that he was all business. Too bad his body vibrated with excitement the second he saw the old lady waving that doll.
The dog could pick up a week-old scent in the middle of a bacon factory and not lose focus. But put him in front of something fuzzy that looked as if it needed to be rescued and added to his ever-growing flock of stolen goods, and Bullseye went nuts. Because he didn’t work for treats or dog toys like normal dogs. Nope, that dog was a klepto and would climb the Himalayas if he knew that at the top he’d get his reward—a fuzzy trophy in need of saving.
Bullseye had a box full of trophies he’d collected over the years, and if Ford tried to remove even one, the dog wouldn’t sleep until he found it.
A Beanie Baby in Ford’s pocket was effective for a simple door-to-door urban search. When it was a high-altitude search with rough terrain and difficult conditions? Bullseye demanded a real game of find the fur-baby. And when a search turned into a recovery, Ford had to pull out the big guns: Lambkins. Bullseye’s number one choice in tchotchke therapy.
Carrying a stuffed animal should have been easier than carrying a stash of jarred baby food. But strapping a wheel-size bubblegum-pink lamb puppet with a matching tutu and cotton-ball fur to Ford’s backpack was a hell of a lot more embarrassing. Especially when done in front of some of the goliaths of the SAR world—who responded with offers of lotion and mood music.
Ford preferred to refer to Lambkins as a chew toy. Only that was as ridiculous as slapping a John Deere logo on a Speedo and calling it manly. But pink lambs and baby talk happened when one adopted a service dog trained by a day-care provider who specialized in wanderers.
“All right, but one tail wag before it’s playtime and you’re back in the car. Understand?”
“Woof!”
Ford clipped on his harness, and the two hopped out of the truck.
“I know she’s a wanderer, but she’s been gone over an hour, and she never skips her breakfast,” the older woman cried. “Not when it’s beef and peas.”
“Don’t worry, Ms. Moberly, I’ve called in the best tracker we have. If anyone can bring LuLu home, it’s this guy,” Harris said in welcome as Ford walked up the cobblestone walkway. “Meet Ford Jamison, the department’s newest community-outreach officer. And his partner, Bullseye.”
Bullseye sat at attention, his chest puffed out, belly dragging the ground. Ford managed not to roll his eyes at the mutt as he tipped his hat in greeting. “Ma’am. I’m actually head of the K-9 search division out of Reno.”
Ms. Moberly pressed a hand to her chest. “So you specialize in finding canines? Thank the Lord.” And there went a quick sign of the cross. “When I called Harris about my LuLu disappearing, he told me that he had the perfect person for the job.” She looked at Harris with hero worship. “I didn’t know you were going to bring him over from Reno.”
Harris rocked back on his heels. “Only the best for our residents. Now why don’t you tell Ford here what you’ve been telling me.”
The woman’s eyes went wide as she turned her focus to Ford. “My LuLu hasn’t been missing the necessary twenty-four hours to coordinate a full search party, but she’s a special-needs dog—got the depression pretty bad—and I read on the website that you waive that rule for a special-needs child.”
“But LuLu is a dog,” Ford pointed out.
“With the depression,” Harris reminded, and Ford gave him an Are you kidding me? look. To which Harris replied with a Welcome to desk duty tip of the hat.
“She needs her pill.” Ms. Moberly looked around and then leaned in and lowered her voice. Bullseye leaned in too, and when he realized that she wasn’t handing over the stuffed animal, he plopped onto his belly with a sigh. “Last time LuLu stopped taking her medication, I caught her paws deep in a box of chocolates. By the time I got to her, her muzzle was covered in the poison, and we had to pump her little belly. The vet shaved her naked, made her so self-conscious she wouldn’t even go to Wag and Waddle until it grew back.”
“Maybe she was just hungry.”
“She wasn’t hungry—she was ending things. Death by chocolate. It’s what the ladies at Wag and Waddle call it when they think LuLu can’t hear them, but she knows she’s being ostracized.” She clutched her chest. “Dear God, do you think that’s why she left? We have Wag and Waddle in an hour.”
Ford channeled his people skills and offered a small smile. “Ms. Moberly, couldn’t LuLu be hiding inside? Maybe she found a warm corner and curled up and fell asleep. Or maybe she’s at the neighbors’ house.”
Ms. Moberly’s gray bob danced around as she shook her head. “I checked every inch of that house and even offered up bacon. Nothing. And she doesn’t like the neighbors—they have cats. She’s scared of cats.”
Probably because the cats heckled the poor dog for dressing like a ballerina.
“Strangers too.” Ms. Moberly froze. “You don’t think she was snatched by a stranger, do you?”
Ford and Harris exchanged looks, but it was Harris who spoke. “Do you?”
“Well, I don’t know, but if that would speed up the search party, I will have it known that LuLu is a front-runner for this year’s Wagon Days Darling. If she’s selected, she’ll ride in the float with the mayor.”
“Wagon Days Darling is a big honor around here,” Harris said ever so helpfully.
“The biggest,” Ms. Moberly agreed. “Which is why I wouldn’t put it past Dorothy Pines to dognap my LuLu to get an edge up. She was the one who started the ‘death by chocolate’ campaign against us when LuLu was first tapped to enter. And now we find out she’s a finalist and she goes missing. Don’t you see the pattern?”
All Ford could see at that moment was Harris’s smug grin. “There could be a lot of reasons for LuLu’s absence, but if you suspect theft, then you’d need to contact the sheriff’s department.”
Ms. Moberly shook her head so fast her gray halo danced. “Absolutely not. Have you seen the sheriff’s dog? Tyke is nothing but a big bully, likes to sniff my LuLu hello even when she hides behind my feet. Do you believe that no means no, Mr. Jamison?”
“Of course he does, ma’am,” Harris said, and Ford wanted to punch him.
“Then you’ll understand why I called your office. I won’t have that dog taking advantage of LuLu’s weakened state when we find her. Not when this sweet thing here is ready for action.”
Ms. Moberly leaned over and gave Bullseye a head scratch. Bullseye didn’t even bother opening an eye. He was already asleep. “Now, you might want a notepad and pen so you can take notes. I saw on Criminal Minds that in a missing-person situation, it’s important to walk through their final days.”
“LuLu’s a dog,” Ford repeated as Harris took a notepad from his chest pocket and handed it to Ford.
Ford ignored this. “Could you excuse us for a moment?” Before Ms. Moberly could argue, Ford grabbed his “boss” by the back of the neck and walked out of ear range. Bullseye rolled onto his side and farted.
“Look, I’m sorry for missing your briefing,” he whispered. “It won’t happen again. So you can stop with the whole first-day prank wars.”
“No prank, Jamison. We got a call. You were on the schedule. I thought, How lucky are we to have a K-9 officer on our team today?” Harris laughed. Ford did not.
“I’m the head of the division.” Well, he was back home, where he wouldn’t have to deal with this kind of crap. “And I’m here to consult on recruiting and organizing your new volunteer K-9 team and maybe find some lost hikers. I train dogs—I don’t find them.”
“You’re here because you decided to play hooky on the biggest test of your career, and your boss sent you to detention—in my department. So you get to play community-outreach director while you’re here, which means riding the desk and the occasional callout.” Harris gestured to the manicured lawns, neatly kept houses, and newer SUV parked around the cul-de-sac. “So for the next three weeks, this is your community. And it’s time to start reaching out. Making connections. Building bonds.” He leaned in. “You can start with Ms. Moberly.”
“Making nice with the residents isn’t really my thing.” It was why he’d stuck with the more extreme cases. He had an innate confidence to him that worked in rescue situations. Small talk with townsfolk? That was not on his list of skills.
Although he’d done some pretty good small talk earlier that morning. His body was still humming from the encounter.
Harris hooked his thumbs through his belt loops. “Great time to turn your weakness into your strength, then. Practice makes perfect.”
“Do you have any other fortune-cookie advice for me?”
“How about beggars can’t be choosers, so gear up,” Harris said, pointing to the mountain range behind them. “Because until you decide to stop bailing and haul your sorry ass up Canyon Ridge and pass your certification, this is as exciting as work will get for you.”
It wasn’t the hike up one of Sequoia Lake’s most treacherous peaks he was worried about. It was spending twenty-four hours up there alone, looking down on the site of the accident that had changed everything, with nothing but his memories and what-ifs to keep him warm.
“I didn’t bail. I was doing a search at the mudslide in Montana,” Ford pointed out.
“A search you volunteered to go on even though you knew your yearly test was that weekend,” Harris said. “And you didn’t tell me that Sam Preston was the victim of that car crash two winters ago that went from rescue to recovery when the big snowstorm hit.”
Ford froze at the name he hadn’t heard since all the media had died down more than a year ago.
“Yeah, that was the same look I had when Bob from Reno called to see if I could offer some air support on a search, then asked me if I knew I’d brought on the guy involved with Sam’s recovery.”
“It was a recovery and a rescue. His son made it out.”
Barely. Ford had found Sam and his son in a cave, a quarter mile from the accident site. Sam was in critical condition, Paxton hardly old enough to understand what was happening. And both were at risk from the elements.
It had been touch-and-go for a while, and when the temperature dropped to freezing, Ford began to doubt if any of them would make it out. A therapist would argue that he never had. That a piece of him was still back there.
A piece he was hoping to reclaim by coming back to Sequoia Lake.
“Does his widow know you were the responding officer?” Harris asked.
“No,” Ford said sharply. “And I intend to keep it that way.” Which was why he’d backpedaled over buying her coffee.
He knew walking up to that counter exactly whom he’d encounter. Prepared himself for the familiar rush of guilt that came whenever he’d caught a glimpse of Sam’s family on his visits to the area over the past couple of years. But nothing could have prepared him for the spark of attraction he’d felt.
“Good luck with that, man.” Harris laughed. “This is Sequoia Lake you’re talking about. Gossip is like gold in this place. A bear can’t shit in the woods without the town calling a council meeting to discuss it.”
“Well, there will be no discussions here. I won’t be around long enough to create any buzz.”
“Hate to break it to you, but the gossip mill started churning the moment you were spotted flirting with the town’s favorite single mom this morning. I give it until dinner before people claim that destiny placed you in the rental right down the lake from her.”
Ford snorted. “It wasn’t destiny.”
“Right. Bob didn’t think so either. Just like I don’t think he sent you here to ride the desk to scare you into getting recertified,” Harris said. “I think he sent you here so you’d have to face the one site you’ve been avoiding.”
“I’ve worked in Sequoia Lake on over a dozen searches with you since then.”
“All of them were type-two searches, and none of them lasted more than a few days. You do the search, disappear for a day, then burn rubber out of town.” His friend’s face went serious. “Hell, I don’t think you’ve spent more than a week anywhere in the past few years.”
That was how Ford liked it. As long as he kept moving, the what-ifs couldn’t pull him under. As for the disappearances, that was repentance.
“So you want to be straight with me? And don’t give me that BS story about Bullseye needing some time off after the search in Montana.”
Ford looked over at his dog, eating up the attention he was getting from Ms. Moberly, and felt his heart go heavy with concern. Ford wasn’t the only one struggling with the job.
Bullseye was more than a trailing dog. He was one of the top air-scenting dogs in the country. A talent that had them at the top of the national registry list to call when a natural disaster hit.
Bullseye could detect a body fifteen feet underground and know with a certainty if it was a person or a corpse. Each rescue lit Bullseye with excitement, but recoveries took their toll. And the Montana job had more recoveries than rescues. The last being a seven-year-old boy named Thomas.
It wasn’t normal for Ford to know the subject’s name in this kind of search, but he’d seen a weeping mother standing helpless by an ambulance, staring at the site where her house had once stood. So when the search was over and the small body was recovered, Ford had done the one thing he’d promised himself he’d never do again.
Instead of moving on to the next case, he’d spent a week looking into the boy’s life. Knew he’d liked Star Wars and played T-ball and that his favorite subject in school was science. Knew that he wanted to be a fireman when he grew up, like his dad. And even before his boss called to chew him a new one for missing his certification again, Ford knew he was in up to his neck.
His inability to let go started when he’d met Sam down in that frozen ravine. Listened to the stories about his wife, witnessed the deep love and commitment to his small son. It was what had driven him to leave Sam behind and get Paxton to safety. It was what had fueled a two-year-long promise—that was going to end this summer. Ford was going to make sure of it.
“We both needed a break,” Ford admitted. “And we’ll both be back on our A-game, ready for Canyon Ridge before the summer ends.”
Harris studied him for a long, hard moment. Ford didn’t know what he was looking for, but clearly he didn’t find it, because he said, “Well then, you might want to grab your notebook. Looks like you’ve got a missing dog to sniff out.”
Ford held up his hands in surrender. “I should have told you about the connection to the town, but if I limited jobs based on distance to past subjects, I’d be living in Alaska.” He paused. “No, wait, spent five weeks there during that avalanche.”
“Point taken.”
“Good, then can you drop the hazing bullshit and give me a real job?”
“Since you’re no longer a high-mountain rescue officer, this is as real as it will get for you,” Harris pointed out. “As for the hazing, as soon as you find LuLu, I need you to pay a visit to the assisted-living home on the west side of Lake Street. Mr. Gordon in room 34 has wandered off again.”
“Alzheimer’s?” Ford asked, because although it wasn’t the kind of search he usually headed up, at least this subject walked on two legs. “I’ll get right on it.”
“Oh, and you might want to check the senior center. It’s casino day.”
Ford made a note. “Is he a gambler?”
“Nope. Bring a blanket, though,” Harris said with a tip of his hat, then headed toward his department-issued Jeep. “The last time this happened, he forgot his pants and ended up mooning the ladies. From the front.”