Part 2
Lena believed him.
She clipped Nico’s leash close, gave the dispatcher the new information, and read the inventory markings without touching the cases. The nearest county deputy was still more than twenty minutes away. A Forest Service law-enforcement officer was coming from the south, and state police had been notified, but the woman on the line did not soften the instruction.
“Leave the vehicle. Put distance and cover between you and the road. Do not confront anyone who arrives.”
Lena looked at Mason. He was pale and sweating, his injured arm cradled against his chest. Caleb’s hands were red to the wrists from holding pressure.
“Can he walk?”
“If I help him,” Caleb said.
“Then help him.”
She could have left both men beside the truck. For several seconds she wanted to. They had blocked a public trail, tried to take her phone, and raised a piece of iron over Nico’s skull. Whatever bargain they had made was theirs to answer for.
Then the engine beyond the bend grew louder, and Caleb bent over Mason as if his own back might stop what was coming.
Lena pulled the first-aid pouch from her pack and tossed him a pressure dressing. “Wrap that over your hands. Tight enough to hold, not enough to cut off his circulation.”
Caleb stared at her. “Do it,” Lena said, and his hands began to move.
While he worked, she used a tie-down strap from the truck to secure Caleb’s wrists in front. Mason was in too much pain to be an immediate threat, and Caleb needed enough movement to support him. She took the truck keys and Caleb’s phone. The revolver went into the outer pocket of her pack, where no one could reach it quickly—not even her.
The sensible choice would have been to run downhill. Nico could still manage an easy pace, and Lena knew the trail back to the parking lot. But the man who had fled had gone that way. If he doubled back, she would be caught between him and the arriving vehicles with an injured dog and no cover.
Above the road, a shelf of dark basalt cut into the slope. Lena had noticed it on the way in because Nico had stopped to investigate a chipmunk hole at its base. She led the men through salal and young hemlock until the truck vanished behind brush. Nico followed without complaint, but his left stride shortened with every yard.
They reached the basalt shelf as the first vehicle came around the upper bend. Lena eased Mason into the hollow beneath the rock and crouched beside Nico. Caleb settled near him, breathing hard.
Two vehicles stopped at the pickup. Doors opened. Men called to one another in low voices, not the loose shouting Lena had heard from Mason and his friends. A moment later, the man she had sprayed came out of the trees below them.
“There’s a woman up here,” he said loudly. “She’s got a military dog and Caleb’s gun. She called somebody.”
Caleb closed his eyes. Lena lowered her mouth near the phone clipped inside her jacket. The emergency call remained connected, though the signal came and went.
“Four men,” she whispered. “At least two long guns. We’re about seventy yards northeast of the truck, under a basalt ledge. Two suspects are with me. One needs medical care.”
The dispatcher acknowledged her, then told her not to speak again unless she had to. Six minutes passed in a slow sequence of sounds: engines idling, doors opening and closing, boots circling the truck. On the last update Lena heard, officers had left their vehicles south of the junction and were approaching without sirens.
Nico’s breathing had quickened. Lena laid her palm over his shoulder, feeling the old ridges beneath his coat. His tags touched her wrist with a tiny metallic tap.
Caleb heard it. “He keeps looking at you.”
“That’s what he was trained to do.”
“No. Like he hasn’t figured out if this is a walk or a job.”
Lena looked at him, but he was watching Mason. The younger man had begun to shiver.
She loosened the top of her pack and draped her spare fleece over him. Caleb murmured something she could not make out and tucked it around Mason’s chest with his bound hands.
Below them, someone pulled the tarp away. Another voice swore.
“Where are the keys?” a man called.
No one answered.
“Caleb, if you can hear me, this is the last chance you get to keep your arrangement.”
Caleb’s mouth tightened. Lena could feel him considering the offer. His repair-shop patch had torn loose at one corner; he kept rubbing his thumb against it as if the small rectangle still stood for something.
“What arrangement?” she whispered.
“Forty thousand to move six sealed cases from one trailer to another.”
“And you never wondered why they needed a tow-shop owner instead of a freight company.”
“I wondered.” He looked down at the blood soaking through Mason’s bandage. “I just kept deciding I could wonder tomorrow.” Boots moved off the road below.
Lena’s fingers rested on Nico’s scar. For years, two taps there had meant prepare to search. Nico would turn his head after the first and launch after the second; she had never needed to repeat the signal.
On their last overseas deployment, he had paused at a doorway. Not refused—Nico had never refused her—but paused, nose lifted toward a draft Lena could not feel. The lieutenant behind her had said they were losing time. Lena had touched Nico twice and sent him through.
The blast threw him back into her arms.
Three soldiers had walked out because Nico went in first. Everyone had told Lena that when she sat beside his recovery pen and counted the staples under his shaved coat. It was true. It had never made the memory easier to carry.
Nico turned his head now, waiting beneath her hand. Lena lifted her fingers before the second tap.
A man passed less than fifteen yards below the ledge. He moved slowly, pushing branches aside with the barrel of his rifle. Lena could see his cap through the salal, then his shoulder, then nothing.
Mason’s teeth clicked once. Caleb drew him closer.
The searcher stopped. A loose stone had shifted beneath Nico’s rear paw. It rolled down the slope, struck another rock, and came to rest in the path below.
The man turned toward the sound. Brush parted. His gaze found Nico first, just as Caleb had said it would.
He raised the rifle. “Send the dog out first…”
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