Sawyer McKenna:
Your dogs perform.That's not the same as fine and we both know it.She's already en route.Don't run her off before she gets out of the car.
I lock the screen and stare at the mountains.The Bitterroots climb into a sky so blue it looks painted, snowcaps glinting in the afternoon sun.Silent.Permanent.About as far from the Oregon coast as I could get without falling off the edge of the continent.
I came here to get away from the ocean.To stop hearing it in my sleep.To stop tasting salt water in the back of my throat every time I close my eyes and see two faces sinking below the surface while I swim the other direction with a screaming woman and a four-year-old clutched against my chest.
Forty-seven people I pulled from the water during my career.
I know every name.
I know the two I didn't pull.
Thomas Bellamy, forty-one.His son, Caleb, fifteen.The storm came in faster than the forecast, a forty-foot swell that turned a fishing charter into a coffin.I reached the mother first.She had the little girl in her arms, already taking water, thirty seconds from going under.I got them to the basket, got them up to the helicopter.
When I turned back for Thomas and Caleb, they were gone.
Six seconds.That's how long I hesitated at the surface, scanning the water, before the current told me what I already knew.I made the choice.I saved two.I lost two.Every rescue manual in the Coast Guard says I did the right thing.You save who you can reach.
Nobody mentions what happens after.When you're standing on solid ground and the math still doesn't work and you can't stop running the numbers like maybe this time they'll come out different.
They don't.They never do.
"Ryan."I keep my voice even."You recommended a behaviorist for my program."
He has the sense to look almost guilty.Almost."Mira read her book.Said the methodology is the most comprehensive approach to canine trauma she's ever seen."
"Mira studies wolves."
"Mira studies behavior.And she doesn't impress easy, so when she says something's good, I listen."He opens his truck door for Atlas."Just hear Brooke out.You can say no after."
He drives off before I can tell him exactly where he can put his recommendation.A move I recognize from every man in this town who's figured out that standing within arm's reach of me during an argument is a tactical mistake.
I scrub a hand down my face.Two-fifteen.Feeding at three, evening training runs at four, conference call with a county sheriff in Idaho at five-thirty about a contract for a new tracking dog.I've got fifteen minutes for this woman.Twenty if she says something interesting, which she won't, because people who write books about dog feelings tend to speak a language that makes my jaw lock.
I'm restocking the scent kits in the supply shed when I hear tires on gravel.
Slow.Steady.Not the hesitant crawl of someone unfamiliar with dirt roads.This is someone who's driven back roads before and doesn't need to white-knuckle the potholes.
A mud-caked Subaru Outback rounds the bend and stops near the main gate.The engine cuts.
The passenger door opens first.
A dog launches from the vehicle before the driver even moves.Belgian Malinois.Fawn coat, black mask, ears cutting the air like antennae.The dog hits the ground, sweeps the immediate perimeter in a tight circle, nose working in fast precise passes, then loops back to the driver's side and sits.
No leash.No verbal command.
The dog just cleared an unfamiliar environment with eight reactive dogs twenty yards away in the kennel run, and the animal hasn't so much as flicked an ear in their direction.
I've been training dogs for four years.I have one who can do that reliably.Maybe.
The driver's door opens.
Long legs in worn athletic leggings and trail boots that have actually seen trail.Then the rest of her, standing and stretching one arm overhead like she's been in the car for hours.The movement pulls her fitted tank top up, exposing a strip of tanned stomach that I have absolutely no business noticing.
I notice it anyway.
She's tall for a woman.Lean and athletic in the way of someone who moves for a living, not someone who goes to a gym.Honey-brown hair pulled back in a ponytail that's half escaped, loose strands catching the sunlight like warm copper.Sun-kissed skin.No makeup that I can see.A face that doesn't need it.
