Maren released his shoulder, but he kept her from slipping her hand away with a slight squeeze before he let go and re-gripped the steering wheel. She folded her hands in her lap, but the warmth of his touch remained imprinted on her skin. Haven, tucked in the space between them on the bench seat, rested her snout on her hands.
“There’s something both comforting and thrilling about a working dog as a partner.” She smoothed her hand over Haven’s short fur.
“True,” Colt said. “Rusk kept me from going dark when the whole thing with Rebecca blew up.”
With her other hand, she scratched Rusk behind the ears where he sat at her feet.
For a long moment, they were both quiet.
“I get why you went into law enforcement,” she stated softly, her heart aching for his loss. “But surely Shadow wasn’t active when you were sixteen?”
No matter how strong, capable and brave Colt may have been at the beginning of his career, filled with aspirations of removing drugs from the street so people like his cousin wouldn’t lose their way, she hated to think of him going up against someone as notorious and dangerous as Shadow alone. Even with the backing of the DEA, he was on a one-man-and-dog crusade.
She was determined to make sure they all survived.
* * *
Colt sighed. Going down this road would be painful. But he couldn’t shy away from the truth. That wouldn’t serve any purpose. Better to face it all head-on. “No, he wasn’t active when my cousin was alive. I didn’t come across Shadow until a few years ago. He’s why I became a K-9 handler. I needed a partner to sniff out drugs.”
“To stop him.”
“In short, yes.” For a second, Colt contemplated leaving the story unfinished, but they were partners now. She needed to understand. And for some reason, he felt compelled to explain. “I was mentoring a teen, Tony, through my church on my days off. Good kid but from a chaotic home. Tony swore up and down to me that he wasn’t using, yet I saw the signs. He’d come to our meetings jittery and his eyes glassy.”
The memory stung. “Yet, when I searched through his things, I came up empty. His parents were negligent in caring for him, being addicted themselves, but without a warrant, I couldn’t search their home. One day, Tony didn’t show up. Later, I learned he’d fled when a patrol officer saw him buying drugs off a known dealer. The dealer was arrested but Tony ran into traffic and was hit by a car.”
Grief was a chain Colt wore around his neck. With each death, the burden grew heavier. “If I had had Rusk with me back then, maybe Tony wouldn’t be dead.”
“You can’t know that for sure,” Maren said. “Was Shadow the dealer?”
The anger that had spurred him on rose, burning in his chest. “Even back then, Shadow kept out of sight. But he was the supplier and boss of the dealer. The dealer died in a jail cell waiting for his arraignment.”
Maren made a distressed sound that had both dogs shifting closer to her. “You think he had the dealer killed.”
“I do. Though how, I don’t know.” The not knowing kept him up at night.
“Shadow’s always been deadly.”
“Yes.” Acid ate at Colt’s gut. Through the rearview mirror he clocked a black truck cruising up fast through traffic. “And ever since then, I’ve been trying to bring him down.”
He shook his head with self-recrimination. “Then there was Rebecca, my ex.”
Just saying her name had the volcano of suppressed rage inside of him bubbling. “Rusk never liked her.”
“Dogs are good judges of character.”
Seeing how Rusk put his head on Maren’s knee had Colt’s heart softening. “Yes. They are.”
Returning his gaze to the road, he steeled himself to share his story. “Rusk barked at her as if telling her off. I thought he was jealous of having to share my attention. Little did I realize he was alerting, just not his normal, passive alert. I don’t know how I missed it.”
“But you and he weren’t working, so a passive alert in that case wouldn’t have worked, right? You would have thought he was just sitting nicely, being well-behaved, around this new person,” she pointed out.
He hadn’t thought about it that way. “You’re probably right,” he admitted, grateful for her understanding. “Rusk didn’t like her the moment I brought her around. She was the first relationship I’d been involved in since I’d become partners with him, so I wasn’t prepared for his reaction. I didn’t know what to expect.”
“The first time for anything is always a learning curve.”
“He must’ve smelled the residue of narcotics even though she didn’t have any substances on her. There were times when I thought her behavior was very strange and suspicions flared,” he admitted. “I felt guilty for even thinking such thoughts about Rebecca.” He shrugged. “I once searched her house and came up empty. I figured I was being paranoid.”
“It sounds like a tricky situation. I don’t know how I’d react if I were in your shoes.”
