Prologue
Kat brought a cup of coffee for Badger and placed it in front of him, then she sat down herself. “So another good ending,” she said, with satisfaction.
“I think more than either of us expected in this case,” Badger murmured.
“At this point in time”—she chuckled—“I’m expecting the best on every case.”
“Maybe, … it was definitely not a sure thing there.”
“And do we have any update on Taylor’s military assault case?”
“Yes, the army is doing a full investigation and looking into why she wasn’t dealt with fairly in the first place.” Badger smiled. “That should shake things up pretty well.”
“It needs to happen,” Kat stated.
Badger nodded. “It’s a sad world where men are allowed to prey on women, no matter what the industry,” he noted. He picked up a file sitting in front of him and dropped it in front of her. “Since you were so helpful on the last one …”
“You mean, on the last couple,” she stated, flashing him a big grin.
He added, “I’m only letting you get away with that because I love you.”
“I know you are.” Chuckling, she opened up the file and asked, “And who is this War Dog?”
“Her name’s Chica.”
Kat studied the picture of the beautiful shepherd Malinois–looking cross. “And what’s her story?”
“She was sent down to Mexico and somehow ended up in one of those large shipments, where the dogs go from Mexico up to Canada.”
She raised her gaze to him and frowned. “What? How did Chica end up in Mexico?”
“We don’t know that, but it looks like our War Dog was adopted by a man out of Texas, who became an ex-pat when he moved to Mexico, where he took the dog with him.”
“And then …?” Kat waited.
“We don’t know. He’s deceased now, and the dog was shipped to Canada. And we’re not sure where Chica is.”
“They tend to keep really good records on transports like that.”
“Sure,” he agreed, “but, when the shipment got there, apparently Chica didn’t arrive in Canada.”
“Crap. Did the shipment touch down anywhere in-between?”
“Some came by plane. Some came by train. Ones with health conditions were transported via a combo of trucking, then flying. A planeload was sent over our northern border with about seventy-five dogs on that flight.”
“And Chica wasn’t on the plane.”
He shook his head. “No.”
“So she’s got health conditions.”
“That’s what our assumption is.”
“And what about the rest of them in that truckload?”
“Everyone arrived except for three.”
She winced. “And of course Chica is one of the three.”
He nodded. “The truck driver says that the cages went missing from the truck on the last leg. No idea how that happened. The other problem is that Chica is not completely whole. She’s missing half a paw, and she’s had a leg broken in multiple places.”
“Which is why, of course, she ended up in the not-so-healthy group.”
“That’s partly it, but there could be a lot of other things wrong with her now.”
“So where did they cross the border?”
“New York.”
She stared at him. “That’s not exactly a city for a dog.”
“Nope, doesn’t mean that the dog is even in New York.”
“No, of course not. … Niagara Falls, I presume?”
He laughed. “And how did you guess?”
“The biggest border crossing,” she said, with a sigh.
“There’s a lot of paperwork that has to be done, and there was a problem at the border. Some of the paperwork wasn’t quite up to snuff. So they pulled the truck and the dogs off to the side, and apparently they went missing then—somewhere in that time frame, while the handler was taking down the cages, opening them up, letting the dogs out, taking them for walks, putting them back in again.”
“And yet he says three of the cages went missing.”
Badger nodded. “He didn’t know what to do, so he headed on to the next destination with the rest of the dogs and reported it.”
Kat sighed. “And Chica could be anywhere.”
“That’s the problem right now—that’s Chica’s issue. We still must find somebody who can go track down Chica. That’s our issue.”
She looked over at her husband. “You got anybody in mind?”
“Nope, I sure don’t. I’ve pretty well tapped out everybody we’ve got locally. You?”
She thought about it and frowned. “I do have one guy, I’ve been dealing with back and forth. He’s from that area.”
“Maybe contact him?”
She frowned, pulled out her phone, flicked through her contacts, and when she finally got to the one in question, she said, “I just don’t know what he’s up for.”
“Why is he contacting you?”
“He lost one leg and one hand,” she stated.
“How?”
“Bomb squad.”
“Military?”
She nodded. “Yes. So chances are he’s had some experience with the military animals.”
“I’m not even sure that he has. It depends more so on whether he has a soft heart and whether he has any compassion and whether he has any ability to get around right now.”
She quickly phoned him, and, when she got him at the other end, there was surprise in his voice.
“Hey, Kat. What’s up?”
She quickly explained the problem.
He sighed. “I’m due to have surgery.”
“Oh, crap, I forgot. Hey, that’s, … that’s okay. We’ll keep looking.”
“Hey, … I’ve got an idea,” he said, “but that depends if my brother would be okay with it.”
“And what’s your brother doing right now?”
“He was looking after a buddy of his, who just passed away. They were both in the same unit in Iran, and they both got shot up pretty badly. When his buddy started to go downhill, my brother basically stopped his move forward in life to help him out. But now his buddy is gone.”
“Oh, good Lord,” she said. “That’s gotta be hard.”
“Pretty devastating for him, yes. And he does have his buddy’s dogs now, so I’m not sure whether he’d be free or not.”
“What kind of dogs?”
He laughed at that. “You’d think that, you know, somebody like my brother would have shepherds or Newfoundlanders or something huge,” he explained. “Instead he’s got these tiny, tiny-ass Chihuahuas.”
She snickered.
He said, “Right? Anyway let me contact him, and, if he’s interested, I’ll get him to call you.”
“Sounds good.” She disconnected the call, looked over at Badger, and shrugged. “All we can do is try.”
He agreed. “And we’ll keep looking at our end.”
At that, they sipped their coffee and went through a bunch of other paperwork they had to deal with.