Part 4
The veterinarian found no new fracture and no failure in the old repair. Nico had badly strained the muscles around his shoulder and bruised the joint when he hit the truck, but rest, medication, and several slow weeks should return him to the life he had before Black Ridge.
Lena sat on the floor of the exam room while the clinic moved toward midnight around them. One side of her face had swollen, and every deep breath pulled at the bruise along her ribs. Nico lay with his chin across her boot, sedated enough that his eyelids sagged.
Dr. Simone Patel had treated him through his transition into retirement. She finished writing the discharge instructions, then rested her gaze on the old scar beneath his shoulder fur.
“Did he engage after the first incident?” she asked.
“No.”
“Did he try?”
Lena rubbed the smooth edge of Nico’s ear between her fingers. “He waited.”
Dr. Patel studied her for a moment, then nodded and returned to the instructions. She circled the medication schedule and slid the page across the floor, close enough that Lena did not have to move Nico’s head from her boot.
Federal agents identified the stolen shipment within a day. The cases against the men took months. All six containers had disappeared from a secured transport lot two nights before Black Ridge, and all were recovered before their contents left the road.
Caleb Dunn was charged along with the others. He gave investigators the records from his shop, identified the people who had hired him, and pleaded guilty. His shove beneath the ledge appeared in the report beside the decisions that had brought the cases to Black Ridge. Mason recovered the use of his arm.
For several weeks, Nico’s world narrowed to rugs laid over the slippery kitchen floor, pills hidden in soft cheese, and five-minute walks to the end of the block. Lena slept on the couch because stairs were forbidden and Nico refused to sleep downstairs alone.
The old harness had always hung beside the front door, though Nico no longer wore it. For the first weeks after Black Ridge, Lena dusted around it and reached past it for the blue collar. One morning she found Nico standing beneath the harness, looking from it to her, his ears forward and his weight shifted onto his sound leg in the posture he had once used before a search.
Lena took it down. She wiped the dust from the buckles, wrapped the straps around the faded chest panel, and stored it in the cedar box with her uniforms. In its place she hung the plain blue walking collar and a leash with a padded handle.
Nico still checked every room before settling. He disliked men in baseball caps and woke at delivery trucks that used diesel engines. Lena still chose restaurant patios by their exits and sometimes reached for a leash that was already in her hand. But she stopped calling their morning walks patrols.
When Nico was cleared for longer outings, she began taking him to the quiet field behind the county shelter. She scattered cedar chips in the grass and let him search at his own pace. There was no timer and nothing dangerous at the end—only a piece of chicken, a drink of water, and Lena’s hand open beneath his chin. In early spring, after the snow retreated from the lower road, they returned to Black Ridge.
The damaged pickup was gone. Pale rectangles in the gravel showed where evidence crews had set their markers, and rain had softened the ruts left by the police vehicles. At the bend, Nico stopped in the same place as before.
Lena felt his attention travel up the empty road and into the trees. Her hand rose from habit, two fingers ready to touch his shoulder. She let it fall beside her.
They stood there until Nico lowered his nose to a fern uncurling at the edge of the trail. He sniffed it thoroughly, sneezed, and moved on. His brass tags clicked against his blue collar with every step.
Nico chose the sunlit side of the trail, where the ground was soft, and Lena walked where he led.