What the hell had happened to that James kid? Maybe he’d run away from an abusive home. He was the scion of Massachusetts tech wealth that had fled the Boston area for a simpler life in Shepherd’s Bay.
Funny how he had never viewed his hometown as anything special. The rugged ocean and nearby mountains he’d taken for granted. He had grown up poor and as a kid had worried more about surviving than having fun. Nowadays, leisure seemed to be the new norm in this town, and he had landed on the short end of that coveted American dream. But material things had never given him much pleasure, anyway.
He parked in front of the house. A light shone in the kitchen. The chirp of crickets pierced the humid air as he made his way out of the cruiser. A cursory glance around the grounds convinced him that no break-in had occurred. And yet Isla was no pushover. If she called the police for help, she really had to believe that someone had broken in.
Something seemed off to him as he walked toward the front steps. He took out his flashlight and shone the beam along the matted dirt. Instinctively, he rested his hand on his holster. In all his years as a Shepherd’s Bay cop, he’d not once fired his weapon. He had taken it out a few times but thankfully had never had to use it.
He climbed the stairs. The briny tang of ocean struck him as particularly strong as a breeze blew in from the northeast. On a clear day, one could see the ocean from here, as well as all the expensive homes that had been built on Harper’s Point. A new monstrosity had risen up on the north side of the peninsula, and it looked more like a castle than a home, replete with a giant rotunda. Although many of these newcomers had become year-round residents, some who lived in these McMansions stayed in them only a few weeks each summer.
His heart raced in his chest, not from fear but from the anticipation of seeing Isla. They’d spoken off and on throughout the years, whenever they bumped into each other at the post office or the supermarket. They spoke awkwardly, like exes were prone to do. Sometimes, on slow days, he’d cruise past her salon in the center of town and catch a glimpse of her cutting a client’s hair. One day he had even sat in Cafe Bello across the street and had watched her work. He hadn’t thought she could see him from where he sat, especially while wearing a baseball cap with the visor pulled low. Although it had pleased him to watch her, it had also filled him with guilt and made him feel like a stalker, and he’d never done that again.
Something had passed between them the day they bumped into each other at the missing boy’s vigil. An understanding? The realization that there but for the grace of God go I? It just as easily could be their own child who had disappeared instead of Dakota James. The mystery of the kid’s disappearance fourteen weeks ago had been driving him crazy. He had been struggling to find a clue indicating where he’d gone or who had taken him. Was there a killer in town? Had Dakota bolted from an unhappy home and settled somewhere else? Or if someone had killed him, was his body still in Shepherd’s Bay?
He knocked on the door and waited a few seconds. What would he say to Isla? How would she react upon seeing him again in person? He stared down at his feet for lack of anything else to do. Finally, the door opened, and he raised his head in anticipation of old times.
ISLA
HER FATHER GAZED INTO THE BARREL OF THE GLOCK, LOOKING AT her with a puzzled expression. Gray whiskers poked out of his chin and cheeks, and he had cuts from where he’d shaved. Isla froze upon seeing him. On the floor lay shards of broken glass. All the lights in the kitchen shone down upon them. Her father, barefooted and in his boxers, turned casually away from her and began to shuffle toward the refrigerator, mindless of the fact that his daughter had a gun pointed at him.
Isla felt a tear forming. And yet before she had a chance to process her father’s reaction, Scout turned the corner with a bell in his mouth and dropped it at her feet. It was the dog’s way of telling her that her son’s blood sugar was rapidly dropping. She turned and ran frantically up the stairs toward Raisin’s room. Scout followed behind her.
After waking Raisin up, she inserted a test strip in a blood glucose meter, then used a lancet to prick Raisin’s fingertip. She drew a drop of blood, and then touched and held the edge of the test strip to the drop of blood. Seventy. The reading was low but not dangerously so. But that number could change quickly if the boy didn’t get sugar into his system. She cradled Raisin’s sweaty head in her arm and lifted him up to a sitting position.
“What’s the m-m-matter, Mom?”
“Scout alerted me, honey. You need sugar,” Isla said. She grabbed the packet of Skittles on his nightstand and emptied a handful into his sweaty palm.
“But I feel fine. I just want to go back to sleep.”
“You know the drill, kiddo. Now hurry up and swallow these.”
“Why are you holding that gun?” Raisin asked as he wiped his eyes. He held the Skittles in his hand and stared at the Glock.
“I thought there was an intruder.”
“Cool. Can I hold it?”
“You know how Mommy feels about guns.”
“But you don’t mind when Dad goes shooting.”
“Your dad’s a grown-up and can do whatever he wants. When you become a grown-up, you can do as you please, too.”
“So why do you have one?”
“This gun is for defending ourselves,” she said, nodding toward the Skittles in his palm.
“From what?”
“In the event someone ever tries to break in or hurt us.”
“Why would anyone do that? We have nothing valuable in here.”
“Please, just eat your Skittles,” she said, pointing at the candy in his hand.
Isla waited until he swallowed them. Then she passed him the juice pouch and watched as he sucked all the liquid out through the straw. Her nerves on edge, she waited impatiently for the sugar to kick in while Scout sat quietly on the floor below her. After cleaning the sugar off his fingertips with a wet wipe, she tested him again fifteen minutes later, and this time his blood sugar sat comfortably in the low one hundreds. She grabbed a liver treat out of her pocket and held it out to the miracle dog who’d saved her child’s life more times than she could remember.
“Good dog. Good dog. Treat. Treat,” she said, watching as the Lab wolfed down the reward treat. When he swallowed it, she scratched behind his ears. She turned to see Raisin closing his eyes and slipping back into sleep, as if nothing had happened. And like that, another disaster had yet again been averted thanks to Scout.
She stood at the threshold of Raisin’s bedroom and watched as Scout sat beaming by her son’s bed, his chest out and his head held high. The Lab always appeared proud of himself after his life-saving actions. Smiling, Isla didn’t know what she would do without Scout. The dog had cost twenty-five thousand dollars, but thanks to the generous donations from her church and the community, they had been able to buy this highly trained animal. A dog keenly attuned to the rising and falling blood sugars in her eleven-year-old son, who had suffered from this debilitating disease from the age of three, when a severe bout of strep throat compromised his immune system.
Something shattered downstairs, and she remembered that her father was still roaming around in the kitchen. It chilled her to think that just five minutes ago she had had a fully loaded Glock pointed in his face. She pulled the door shut and proceeded down the hallway until she came to Katie’s room. Her daughter must have been exhausted after her softball team won the state championship yesterday. She twisted the doorknob and peeked inside the darkened room. Light from the hallway streamed inside and illuminated the empty bed. Where had her daughter gone?