Part 7
Sarah leaned against the door of her cruiser, the afternoon heat radiating off the dark metal. She watched as Dan Miller opened the back hatch of their SUV. Faith hesitated for only a fraction of a second before jumping inside, settling onto a thick, folded blanket between the two boys.
As the SUV pulled out of the gravel lot, the dog rested her chin on the edge of the back window. She watched Sarah shrink in the distance, her dark eyes calm and steady, until the vehicle turned onto the main highway and disappeared behind a line of heavy oak trees.
Sarah stayed in the empty lot a moment longer, listening to the dry hum of cicadas in the tall grass. The silence felt different now. She didn’t need to write a report about what she had witnessed in Arthur Vance’s shed, and she didn’t need to explain to anyone how a starving stray had managed to hold onto a fragile life when the rest of the world had walked away.
The radio on her dashboard crackled, breaking the quiet.
“Unit Three, dispatch. Got a 10-40 out near the county line. Stray livestock in the roadway.”
Sarah reached through the open window, pulled the mic from its clip, and pressed the button. “Copy, dispatch. Unit Three is in route.”
She slid into the driver’s seat, put the cruiser in gear, and drove back out into the county.