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Chaos was lying on the floor on the passenger side. She lifted her head and whined. She never did that. I climbed in and crawled across the passenger seat to get to her. I tried to see what was wrong with her.

“Oh baby, I want to hug you so bad, but that might hurt you.”

Woof.

It was such a soft bark that I could barely hear it.

“I’m going to go get you some help. Okay?”

I crawled backwards, got out of the car, and ran into the vet’s office. There was a nice young kid at the front desk and I immediately started talking.

“I was in a car wreck. Someone rear-ended me then hit the side of my car. Bad. My dog was in the back seat. She’s not moving. I don’t know what’s wrong. But she needs immediate help.”

The kid, who couldn’t be more than twenty, bit his lip. “You don’t have an appointment.”

A brunette with a cat carrier came up to the desk. “Rick, go back and talk to Kizzie. You’re an animal hospital. This is an emergency. She needs to know about this.”

“Ms. Avery, she doesn’t like it when I interrupt her when she’s with a patient.”

“She’ll be more upset if you don’t. Trust me, okay?”

The young man looked at her like she hung the moon, nodded, and went through a door to the back.

“Thank you,” I told her. “I wasn’t going to handle that well. Would you tell them I’m right out front? It’s a green 4Runner.”

“I’ll tell her. She needs a stretcher, right?”

I nodded as I went outside.

I opened the other back door this time, the one near Chaos’ head. I put my hand near her muzzle and she licked it. She tried to lift her head, but it seemed too much for her.

“It’s okay sweetie, just rest. Kizzie will take care of you.”

“Marlowe, right?”

I hadn’t even heard Kizzie come up behind me, I’d been so focused on Chaos. I spun around and looked straight into Kizzie’s concerned blue eyes.

“Yeah, I’m Marlowe, and this is Chaos. I got a pretty bad jolt when we were hit, and I was buckled in. Chaos wasn’t buckled in, so I don’t know what happened to her.”

Kizzie took one look at Chaos and said, “We’re going to have to get her out of the car and onto a stretcher.”

13

Not for the first time, it occurred to me that Lettie must really have a close relationship with Gretchen if I was only paying three times the rate as the LeeHy motel and getting this phenomenal suite at the Whispering Pines Inn. For God’s sake, it had a desk and comfortable rolling chair, and there was a couch and coffee table along with a nice-sized walk-in shower and a soaking tub that I could actually fit in. I’d questioned Gretchen twice, and she said that it was part of the owner’s guidelines. Whenever possible, put members of the armed services in the nicest accommodations possible.

The second time I clarified, she told me the same thing, so I just shrugged and asked her to relay my thanks. Then I went back to my room to do some online searching to see what I could find out about the owners. Turned out the hotel was partially owned by a development company out of Nashville, but the main owner was a company named O’Malley Enterprises that operated out of San Diego. I dug a little deeper and found that the officers of the company were a husband and wife, Aiden O’Malley and Evalyn O’Malley. Aiden was a Lieutenant of a Navy SEAL team out of Coronado and Evalyn’s maiden name was Drake and she was born and raised here in Jasper Creek.

It wasn’t the first time that I ran into someone in the service who had family money, but this was some serious coin if the man could afford to be the major investor in this hotel. Not that I was complaining. This was a sweet deal, especially since I didn’t know how long I was going to be in town.

I got up from my chair and did some stretches. Yep, I’d been sitting too long. Probably time for a walk or a ride. I also needed to see if I could get in touch with the elusive Bernie Faulks. Voicemails and e-mails didn’t seem to work. According to Lettie and Pearl, who were my primary sources of information, Bernie was basically a hermit, even if he had gotten hitched. Their word, not mine.

I’d asked who he’d married, but they’d clammed up. Said if they’d given him her information and I’d tried to reach Bernie through his wife, there’d be hell to pay.

Interesting guy.

They did give me the coordinates to his cabin. I had to chuckle at that. Seemed that the man really was off the grid if I was getting latitude and longitude instead of an address. But I had to say I preferred it that way. More precise.

I got into my hiking clothes and made sure that I was kitted out to find someone. The idea of hunting someone down felt good.