Page 11 of Desperate Creed

“Brodie’s not scared of thunderstorms,” Creed said as he took his towel and playfully rubbed it over Brodie’s short, wet hair. She actually smiled wide enough he thought he might get a laugh from her, too.

“Really?” Hannah asked Brodie. Then she placed her hand on her ample hip and said, “Sweet Pea, you’re a better woman than I am, because they scare the bejesus out of me.”

“Do we need to go to the basement?” Brodie asked. She had folded up and placed aside her own towel and was suddenly stroking the kitten in her arms.

Creed hadn’t even noticed the cat coming into the kitchen. The two were inseparable. Only in the last several days had Brodie ventured outside the house without taking the kitten along. When she first arrived, Creed wasn’t sure how a cat would fit in with a houseful and a kennel full of dogs, but the kitten didn’t appear scared of anything. It took only a couple of swats and the dogs quickly learned to keep their distance.

He felt Hunter bump his leg, and Creed reached down to scratch the black spot behind the yellow Lab’s ear. The Border collie named Lady shifted back and forth in the doorway to the living room. Hannah was making all of them a bit skittish.

“No, no,” Hannah told Brodie, her eyes darting back to the television screen. “Willis Dean says our area will mostly get a lot of thunder and lightning. It looks like the dangerous storms are staying to the north of us.”

Very dangerous, Creed suspected but he kept it to himself. A tornado may have already touched down. A flash of lightening and a quick clap of thunder made the entire kitchen vibrate. Hannah jumped despite her best effort not to.

“I wish I had kept the boys home from school today,” she said. “But it’s only the beginning of March. Good Lord!”

Creed knew they were in for a weekend of wicked weather. All the warm, damp air from the Gulf was set to collide with colder air coming down from the middle of the country. He didn’t watch as closely as Hannah, but he checked the forecasts regularly to help prepare and take care of their dogs. Unfortunately, several of the dogs didn’t tolerate the thunder and lightning. Dogs could smell the changes in the atmosphere.

During the first storms of the season, Creed kept a close eye on how the newest members of their kennel did. Some preferred the safety of a crate. Others looked to and huddled with the alphas in the pack.

All of their dogs came to them after being abandoned. Many of them came from the street or from alongside roads and highways. Some came from shelters, others through well-meaning owners dumping their dogs at the end of Creed and Hannah’s long driveway. Hannah called them “well meaning” owners, changing their minds for one reason or another and at least attempting to give them a second chance. Creed considered them cowards.

It wasn’t that long ago he’d caught a man off-loading a new mother. If Creed hadn’t seen the man and confronted him, the gunny-sack full of the dog’s puppies would have been thrown in the nearest river. It took every ounce of self-discipline Creed had, to keep from pounding the guy into the mud. Instead, he told Bolo to stand guard and watch—and yes, intimidate the hell out of the guy—while Creed grabbed the wiggling bag out of the back of the vehicle and took it, along with the mother dog to safety.

All the puppies and the mother survived. One of those puppies, a smart and funny jackass, was now one of their best scent dogs. And Creed knew for a fact, that puppy named Scout had rescued his new owner and handler, Jason Seaver. Sometimes it still surprised Creed how quickly the two of them had become invaluable members of their team.

Even last night, Jason had worked alongside him checking generators, securing gates and fence lines and adding crates and bedding. The kid genuinely cared about the welfare of the dogs. He’d learned from Creed what each dog needed and catered to them. Taking care of the dogs was second nature to Creed, but he realized he had no idea what he could do to help settle Hannah’s nerves.

“I’ll go pick the boys up, if you want,” Creed volunteered. He’d do anything if it would bring a shred of peace to her. She was usually the one calming everyone else down. Her kitchen, with her comfort food and words of wisdom, was a sanctuary to anyone who came into Hannah’s care.

“You know just as well as I do, the worst place to be during a tornado is a vehicle,” she said this without looking up at him. Instead, her eyes turned back to the small television screen. Both hands were on her hips. Lines of worry didn’t leave her brow, but Creed could see a hint of relief. The angry patches of red on the map appeared to be staying to the north of them in southern Alabama even as the rain started to pound against the glass. Lightning flickered but the thunder took a beat longer.

“Thanks for the offer, Rye.” She finally looked over at him, but her eyes were studying Brodie. She glanced back at Creed as if to say she couldn’t believe the storm didn’t scare the young woman.

Brodie sat by the table, petting the kitten stretched out on her lap. She was staring out at the dark sky. Creed didn’t think she looked afraid at all, but she did seem far away. She’d been living with them for only two months and already he’d caught her staring off like this at least a dozen times. He wondered what she saw, what memories in particular still haunted her. And he wished he could wipe them all away.

Her therapist had told him Brodie was suffering from PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), and that it would likely get worse as things settled down around her. PTSD was something Creed was familiar with. He’d been a Marine, a part of a K9 unit in Afghanistan when an IED sent him home early.

Everyone dealt with PTSD differently. He understood that, but it was still difficult for him to watch Brodie stare off into the black clouds and not know what she saw or thought or feared. Because he knew from experience that despite her insistence that she wasn’t afraid of thunderstorms, there were a whole lot of internal storms. Some that could rip a person apart from the inside out.

The phone rang and everyone in the kitchen—including the dogs and kitten—startled at the sound.

Hannah grabbed the phone off the counter. One glance at the caller’s I.D. and her face relaxed. She was smiling when she answered.

“Girl, we are in the middle of a thunderstorm. Can I call you back?”

But the caller’s response made Hannah’s eyes go wide and wiped the smile from her face.

“Slow down,” Hannah said. “You best start from the beginning.”

8

Birmingham, Alabama

Willis Dean had been on his feet for the last six hours, most of them in front of a green screen with a camera pointed at him. A phone call from the weather desk had awakened him around 2:00 a.m. Truth was, it hadn’t really wakened him. He couldn’t get comfortable in his youngest son’s bedroom. Off to college for nearly three years now, the room was still decorated with the sports paraphernalia of a teenaged boy. Plus, how could he expect to sleep after the bombshell his wife had hit him with over dinner.

The truth was, Willis knew it was going to be a bad day even before it became a very bad day.

What was worse, he was relieved to leave the house. He was relieved to be thrown into the thick of things at the studio, juggling the National Weather Service alerts, social media posts, video cam feeds and live updates from storm spotters. Violent weather made the adrenaline surge through his veins. It made him feel alive, and it always had since he was ten.