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“Uh-huh.”
“She’s our dog.”
“I see that.”
Dalton’s jaw flexes. “She’s our dog,” he says, in a tone that tells her nothing else should need to be said.
Our dog. Our town. Yes, her grandmother invested in Haven’s Rock, but the majority of the money came from my inheritance and my sister’s, and even that is none of her business. Yolanda was hired to oversee construction of our town. We can bring in an elephant if we want.
So far, I’ve been calm, even conciliatory, in recognition of the fact that Yolanda is a damn fine builder, even if, like so many experts, she’s a pain in the ass. I guess, if you’re at the top of your game, you have that luxury and the confidence to use it, and I completely respect that ... it just doesn’t make her anylessof a pain in the ass.
We’d expected to be up here, helping build our town and getting a sense of this corner of the wilderness as we did. Yolanda vetoed that. If we wanted her, we had to stay away. She wouldn’t work with the “homeowners” peering over her shoulder.
“I have two missing crew members,” she says. “I called you in to find them. This isn’t a site visit.”
Dalton points at Storm’s nose. When Yolanda narrows her eyes, he says, “The dog is here for that thing on the end of her snout.”
“Her nose?”
“Yep.”
“She’s a tracking dog,” I say.
Yolanda’s look says this is a very fine excuse. We don’t argue, because she’s fifty percent right. Newfoundlands are water-rescue dogs. Dalton used the tracking-dog justification as an excuse for buying me my dream breed and pretending it was a practical choice.
“May we go into town and talk?” I ask.
“No.”
My head jerks up. “Excuse me?”
“I said ‘no,’ because once you’re in town, you’re going to want to look around, and I need my people back.”
Dalton’s jaw tenses, and his gaze shifts my way, lobbing this grenade in my direction.
“While we are certainly interested in seeing the town you built for us,” I say, trying hard not to emphasize those last four words, “the missing people are our priority, and we’re quite capable of focusing on that.”
“Not being easily distracted children,” Dalton mutters.
Yolanda turns to him. “You built a town in the middle of the Yukon wilderness for people in need of sanctuary, and you’re convinced it’ll work out, despite it failing spectacularly the last time.”
“Rockton didn’t fail,” I say, as evenly as I can manage. “It saved hundreds, thousands even. Which you well know, being the descendant of some of the people it saved. Your grandparents believed in it enough to devote themselves to keeping it alive for as long as possible.”
“And all it got them was heartache and disappointment. No, you aren’t children. You’re something worse. You’re idealists.” She waves away any protest. “Which is none of my business. It’s your money and Gran’s. My concern is my missing people, and I need you out there now, looking for them.”
I glance at Dalton. His expression is dark, but he says nothing. My call.
“I’ll need scent markers,” I say. “Recently worn clothing for both your architect and your engineer.”
“I’ll bring it.”
“Once we find your missing people, we will do a site visit. Then we’re staying.”
“We’re not—”
“Ready for that? We accept that our home may not be ready, and we’ve brought supplies to avoid using yours. We need to stay and get things ready, since we apparently have residents moving in next month, a year ahead of schedule.”
Yolanda grumbles under her breath. For once, those grumbles aren’t directed at us. They’re for her grandmother, the one pushing the timeline forward. She’s found people in urgent need and convinced us to open our doors right away, rather than living in the town for a year on our own, as planned.
