AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Poirot limped slightly but didn’t let the injury slow him down.
Josh was worried about Chloe. She was shaken more than what seemed reasonable. He wanted to pause the whole search. He wanted to make sure she was okay. He wanted to hold her close. He wanted to tell her what she meant to him. But now wasn’t the time.
Lance whistled. “Got something.”
Poirot ran over, sniffed where Lance was pointing, and barked.
When Josh and Chloe joined them, they saw that Lance had found a woman’s footprint along a tiny stream that ran along the forest floor. Lance took pictures and tagged the spot on the GPS. Josh called it in.
After finding no other clues in that spot, they continued on.
Thirty minutes later, Poirot’s ears perked forward, and his energy level jumped back up to where he’d been at the start of the search. Even though he was limping some, he ran all over the place and barked. He’d found something, but he hadn’t grabbed the Kong off Chloe’s hip.
Josh noted the change in behavior, and they kept moving. Fifteen minutes later, Poirot had ended up almost out of their line of sight. But no one could miss his barking. The excited bark echoed among the trees and off the rock faces.
Josh moved closer to Chloe, and Poirot jumped over a fallen log and ran full speed at Chloe.
He jerked the Kong from her hip, ran five feet back in the direction he’d come from, stopped and turned to Chloe.
She asked, “You found them?”
Poirot dropped the Kong and barked. He picked it up and darted off again.
Josh laughed.
Chloe’s smile nearly knocked him over. “I guess that’s ayes,” Josh said.
She swatted Josh’s arm and took off.
His arm tingled, but he ignored it and focused on the task at hand. Poirot had found the hikers, and Josh had to be ready to step into his role on this team and administer first aid.
He’d followed in his father’s footsteps and gone into the medical profession, but surgeon wasn’t his cup of iced tea. Instead he’d gone into family medicine. He loved his small practice in Knoxville and wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Being able to administer medical care to lost hikers or victims of a natural disaster was an added bonus. While he was in med school, he’d gone to help in the disaster relief after Hurricane Katrina, and he had been part of search and rescue teams since then.
He rounded a giant boulder jutting out from seemingly nowhere and spotted the couple playing with Poirot.
The couple, both in their early twenties, were a bit tattered, but didn’t look too worse for the wear. The team converged on them.
Josh introduced himself and the rest of the team and attended to their needs. Both just needed food and water. Lance pulled out water bottles and protein bars for them both. The woman, Tasha, had twisted her ankle, but it was barely swollen.
After examining it, Josh said, “Seems like a mild sprain, but wouldn’t hurt to get it x-rayed just to be sure.”
He wrapped it for her, and when he was finished, he searched for Chloe.
As was her usual after the initial introductions, she had taken Poirot off to the side to play with him. He was always wound up after finding the missing person and was rewarded for his hard work with an intense game of fetch.
But today was different. The dog and his beautiful handler were sitting off to the side, not running around.
Lance was talking to the couple, so Josh slipped over to Chloe.
“You guys okay?”
Chloe swiped her hands across her cheeks. “Yep.” The word came out a little too quickly. “Well, Poirot is hurting.”
Josh squatted down next to Chloe and Poirot, whose head and front legs rested on Chloe’s lap. Josh petted the dog’s head. “When we’re out of here, he should go to the vet.”
She nodded but pressed her lips tightly together.
