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.