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“Oh, great.” Sunny smiled. “She’s getting out and about. Tabitha worked with Pete and Trinity so hard. I could tell that she had never wanted something so much in her life than to work with that dog. That’s so cool that you know her. What a small world, huh?”
“Yeah. Real small. So has Pete ever tried to train this one?” Delaney nodded at Wyatt, who was still happily settled near the ’33.
“Yeah. Pete tried to train him. Said he’s never met a more stubborn dog. He got some of the commands but never quite masteredstay.”
“Ha. Me neither.”
Sunny paused to smirk at her. “Maybe he should give it another go.” Sunny sighed and attached the leash to Wyatt’s collar. “Speaking of. We should get going. C’mon, boy. Back to my place. We’ll see what Pete can do with you this weekend.”
Wyatt whined, but clambered to his muddy feet.
“See you later, buddy.” Delaney waggled her fingers at him as he trotted after Sunny, a spot of clean, bright pink against the blue sky, a muddy dog and a bike shop.
“Thanks, Delaney. Hopefully I can keep him contained this time.” Sunny gave a wave as they disappeared.
Once they were gone, the shop seemed too quiet. Whereas Delaney had been enjoying the solitary time with her bike, knowing Dad would be proud she was keeping it in prime shape, now all she could think about was how Dad would never ride it again. That, and Tabitha, the poor kid with demons that continued to haunt her. Delaney finished cleaning up her mess and smiled at the muddy paw prints and the short white hairs stuck in the motor oil, even as her throat tightened.
Only one way to beat these kind of blues.
Delaney grabbed her helmet off the counter and pulled it on, then straddled ’33 and rolled it out the bay. She kicked twice to prime, then fired it up. The bike rocked gently, back and forth. Once Delaney got going, it’d be a smooth ride, though. Delaney needed a smooth ride right now.
As clear as the day had been, the night was lit up with thunderstorms. June had been fickle so far, caught between warm and cool temps, but it had definitely been more wet than dry. Tonight’s storm wasn’t an Omaha thunderstorm by any means—those suckers sounded like the gods were waging full-out war in the sky. But this Virginia storm was wild enough to wake Delaney from a dead sleep. The world lit up for a half a second, then ceded to darkness as the thunder gurgled around and seemed to swallow the apartment. Delaney’s phone lit up, on silent for the night. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and grabbed it off the nightstand, even though it was probably just a shipping notification or spam. Instead, there was a text from Sunny.
Do you have Wyatt?
Delaney’s pulse rose. She checked the time—just after midnight. For a split second, Delaney wondered why Sunny would know the pittie was missing so late at night, but then, she didn’t know Sunny’s schedule. Delaney had been early to bed, early to rise for so long there was no use in trying to do anything else. Sounded like Sunny was a night owl.
She threw back the covers and headed downstairs. Wyatt hadn’t shown up since this morning, when Sunny took him home, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t outside the shop door right now, standing in the rain, waiting to curl into his dog bed. Delaney opened the door and was met with fat drops of cold rain that reminded her she was only wearing her “Mauna Kea: Ski a Volcano!” tank top. There was no dog waiting to get inside. She flicked on the outdoor lights and stepped out into the wet, in her bare feet, just as the sky burst into light. The heavens rumbled while she peeked around, but saw no dog.
“Wyatt!” she called. Nothing. She whistled. Still nothing.
The pit bull was nowhere to be seen.
Delaney stood in the rain for several seconds, peering into the darkness and calling Wyatt’s various names, including “hey, doggo!” When he didn’t appear, she went back inside and headed for the rear workshop. There was no way he could be inside the locked room, but she checked anyway. As expected, the dog bed was empty. Damn. She hated to think the poor guy was out in this mess. If he’d left Sunny’s place, why hadn’t he come here? Was there somewhere else he went that nobody knew about? Or was he lost?
Delaney shuddered and combed her hands through her wet hair, then wiped the rain from her face and arms with a clean shop rag. She didn’t know what to do. Should she wait up for him? Go look for him? What if he’d been hit by a car? Delaney realized that, in her haste to check for Wyatt, she hadn’t texted Sunny back. Her phone was upstairs, in the apartment. She turned to go, but at the last second, Delaney grabbed the chain to the back bay and raised the door just enough for a dog to get through. If Wyatt showed up while she was gone, she wanted him to be able to get in, out of the storm, as quickly as possible.
The sky rumbled and burst and it felt like the shop actually shook with the force of the storm. Delaney rushed upstairs and sat on the edge of her bed while she texted Sunny.
He’s not here. Are you sure he’s not there?
Ten minutes went by. Fifteen. Twenty. Maybe Sunny had gone out to look for Wyatt in the storm. Well, of course she had. Delaney tapped her foot nervously. No way she would fall back to sleep until she heard back. She grabbed her jeans from the foot of the bed and jumped into them, crossed the room to the kitchen, snagged her flashlight from the top of the fridge and headed back downstairs. An umbrella seemed like a bad idea in a thunderstorm, so she left it behind in favor of a windbreaker with a hood that she had hanging off the shelves in the workshop. She jammed her feet into her motorcycle boots, which were right next to ’33, not far from the dog bed—strategic planning—and left the door raised in case she and Wyatt missed each other.
Using her flashlight to create a trail, Delaney followed the beam across the parking spaces out back, toward the woods. She knew that the worst place to be during an electrical storm was under a tree—or, in her case, smack-dab in the middle of a forest of trees—but while she’d been waiting to hear back from Sunny she’d been counting the seconds between flashes and rumbles. Her last check had been at forty, putting the storm far enough out to not be a danger.
The sky grew darker the nearer she got to the trees and the more she left the world of electrical lighting behind. Now it was just Delaney and her flashlight. The concentric circles of her beam only caught about a yard at a time, but the whole world was muddy and soaked. Her motorcycle boots grabbed at the muck and kept her steady as she took her first tentative steps onto a discernable trail. This wasn’t a path that some park service had made, merely a worn groove through the surrounding oaks, maples and hollies that had been created by the feet of short-cutters, teenagers and dogs who couldn’t make up their minds where to call home.
Delaney kept to the makeshift trail so she could find her way back out, but occasionally whistled or called out her array of names for the pit bull. Though the storm had moved off, rain continued to drum against her windbreaker and roll down the slope of her nose. The day had been warm, but the night had cooled and she started to feel the chill on her skin from the soaked tank top beneath her jacket.
She paused to pull out her phone and check for a message from Sunny. A text was there, but Delaney’s heart sank as she read it.
I can’t find him anywhere. He’s really not with you?
“Dammit.” Delaney sighed and shoved her phone back in her coat pocket. This was pointless. The dog could be anywhere. She stuck her pinkies in the corner of her mouth and gave another loud, long, sharp whistle. She pushed back her hood and closed her eyes, straining for any sound above the raindrops pattering on the leaves and gurgling into the ditches. Nothing. She’d just turned around, ready to head back home, when suddenly, the rain stopped. Like she was back in Hawai‘i, where the rain would start and stop on a dime, the drumming just quit. In that moment of sudden silence, she heard it, low but unmistakable: the whining, yelping, desperate sound of a scared or trapped animal.
“Wyatt?” Delaney’s voice rose, even though she tried to control the wave of excitement that gripped her core. She stuck her pinkies in her mouth and whistled again.
The yelping grew more frantic, rising in pitch.
