“We are looking for a black backpack about this big.” Bree held her hands about a foot apart. “Either he tossed or dropped it while he was running, or it flew out of his hands when I tackled him. If you find it, just call me. Don’t touch it.”
Juarez nodded. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry. I mean, yes, ma’am.”
Bree sighed. “Either will do, deputy.”
“Where do you want to start?” Adam asked.
Bree turned in a slow circle, studying the clearing she’d chased Shawn into. They stood about a hundred yards behind the barn. Small piles of rotted wood dotted the weedy ground. Her gaze fell on a rusty metal bowl in the tall grass. Near it, an equally rusted chain was half buried in the dirt. Tension coiled in her belly as she realized where she was. “This is where he kept the dogs.” She didn’t need to specify who he was. Adam knew she meant their father.
Adam glanced around. “How many did he have?”
“Six or so most of the time. Some he kept for a long time. Others would come and go.”
“What kind of dogs were they?” Adam asked.
A thirty-year-old image appeared in her mind: a half dozen barking dogs chained just far enough apart that they couldn’t reach each other. If they had, they would have torn each other to shreds. She pictured a big brown animal with cropped ears and massive teeth. “I don’t know. He called them hunting dogs, but I don’t remember any retrievers or spaniels.” She shook her head, trying to clear the mental picture. She had work to do.
She waded into the high grass just beyond the spot where she’d taken Shawn down.
“Watch out,” Adam said. “This grass is probably loaded with ticks.”
Bree hesitated, one foot lifted. She hated the little bloodsuckers. She pointed a few feet away and motioned to the rookie and Adam. “Both of you, walk a line parallel to mine. Stay close. Some of this grass is high. We’ll have to be right on top of the backpack to see it. So, go slowly.”
They spread out and began making their way through the grass. Ten minutes into the hunt, they’d found no sign of the pack, but Bree did find two ticks crawling up her pant leg. She picked them off and flicked them into the woods.
Something black caught her eye. She walked closer. A small backpack was embedded in a patch of prickly vines. The nylon looked too new to be anything that had been in the woods for long. Pulling on gloves, she lifted a vine and disentangled the strap from its green thorns. “I found it.”
“I found something too,” Adam said from a few yards away. “But it’s not a backpack.”
Bree opened the main zipper compartment and found a plastic baggie containing a dozen round white pills. She was no pharmacist, but she’d seen hydrocodone before. The pills would explain why Shawn hadn’t wanted to claim ownership of the pack. She closed the zipper and stood, lifting the bag.
“Bree? Could you come over here?” Adam was squatting near a shallow runoff ditch. Something in his voice caught her attention. Recent heavy rains had saturated low-lying areas. She walked to his side, the mud sucking at the tread of her running shoes.
Adam pointed to something long and dirty-white half buried in the mud.
“It’s a bone.” Bree squinted. “Probably from a deer—or a dog.” Her stomach turned. They were standing near the place her father had put down the dog that had attacked her. Daddy had made her watch, after telling her she was responsible both for the attack and for the dog’s death because she’d wandered too close. She’d been five.
This is why we have rules, Bree. Her father’s voice echoed in her mind. An involuntary shiver passed through her. In her head he sounded like a character in a Stephen King novel—downright psychopathic. Was her recollection accurate, or was her imagination adding detail?
Did it matter?
Psycho or not, Daddy had been a lazy man. The dog had been large, and he’d probably buried it close to where it had fallen.
Bree scanned the shallow ravine and saw a few more bones seemingly exposed by the runoff. “It looks like this area flooded recently. There’s a stream on the other side of those trees.” She nodded toward the woods. “And we did have some big storms in the past few weeks.”
Adam shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a dog or a deer, Bree.” He waved to a spot about five feet away.
There were a few more bones. Wait. Bree moved closer to a large, rounded object wedged under a rock. She didn’t want to believe what she was seeing.
Bree straightened, suddenly light-headed. The implications of their discovery swirled in her brain. “It’s a skull.”
“Is it human?” Adam asked, but from the tone of his voice, he already knew the answer.
A stick poked through one of the empty eye sockets. The remains weren’t canine.
“Yes. It’s definitely human.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Matt Flynn threw the toy out into the pond on the rear of his property. The young, pure black German shepherd plunged into the lake and swam hard for the floating toy. She ignored the squawking ducks that half flew out of her way. Greta was 100 percent focused on her quarry. She caught it in her teeth, turned, and swam back to Matt. She ran out of the water, spit the toy at his feet, and shook. Water sprayed in every direction. Laughing, Matt wiped a drop of pond water off his face. She stood in front of him, tongue lolling.
“Good girl,” he praised her, then poured water from a stainless-steel bottle into a collapsible bowl. She lapped up half the water.
Matt was fostering the young shepherd for his sister’s dog rescue. With keen intelligence and a strong drive to work, Greta had been difficult to place as a house pet. Matt had been tempted to keep her as a foster fail, but he recognized all her pain-in-the-butt traits made her a perfect K-9 candidate. By the end of the month, she would be old enough to be paired with a deputy and sent to K-9 training, provided Bree could raise the money for her training and equipment. With July ushering in sweltering temperatures, he was using the month to get Greta accustomed to water and burning off her seemingly endless energy. He shouldn’t have worried, though. Greta was fearless.
Matt picked up a towel and rubbed the excess water off her coat. Then he stuffed his gear into his backpack and slung it over his shoulder. After clipping a leash onto Greta’s collar, he commanded her to heel in German. “Fuss.”
Matt’s former K-9 partner, Brody, had been imported from Germany and already obedience-trained in that language, so Matt was accustomed to using German commands. He also felt using foreign words helped avoid any confusion on the dog’s part, especially in the early phases of training. The dog was unlikely to hear the words from anyone other than the trainer.
She fell into step at his side as they walked through the large meadow and into the grassy rear yard that led up to Matt’s back porch. His restored farmhouse sat on twenty-five acres, and the summer sun was afternoon-high. Greta was nearly dry by the time they reached the backyard. They walked past the kennels where Matt had planned to train K-9s before his sister had filled the entire building with canine rescues. He waved to his childhood friend Justin, who was walking a timid pit bull around the yard. Justin worked for the rescue. Justin had suffered terrible tragedy and was battling a drug addiction. He and the dogs were healing each other.