After his injury Owen had been airlifted out of the field and taken to Bagram Air Base. Once he was stabilized he’d been flown to Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany, then transported to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center for surgery. Within a few days he’d been on another plane across the Atlantic to Walter Reed in D.C. Reggie had followed the same general trajectory—Bagram to Germany, though he’d been taken to Dog Center Europe, about fifteen minutes from LRMC.
It was unusual for a working dog to return to the U.S., which on the one hand had made Owen nervous about the extent of Reggie’s injuries. On the other hand, Owen was glad he wasn’t alone. He was used to being with Reggie twenty-four/seven. Without him, he’d be more lost than he already was.
Once Owen had been released from Walter Reed, he’d met Reggie’s plane in New York. They’d flown from there to Minneapolis. They could have taken another hop to the small airport in Ashland, but the cost was astronomical.
Instead, Owen had rented a pickup truck, released Reggie from crate bondage, and driven several hours to Three Harbors. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept, eaten, or showered, and the desire for all three suddenly overwhelmed him.
Reggie climbed into the cab more slowly than he’d gotten out of it. He was favoring his injury more than Owen had ever seen. When he sat, he did so with his haunches against Owen’s. Reggie only did that when he was overtired, stressed, or ill.
The tap on his window made Owen jump so high he banged his bad leg on the steering wheel. Becca stood on the other side of the glass.
“I need a ride.”
He was so tempted to put the truck in gear he actually reached for the shift.
“Don’t you dare.” Becca yanked open the door.
Damn. If he’d put the vehicle in gear the door would have locked automatically.
“Always go with your instinct,” he murmured. One of the very first rules in bomb detection.
“I’m not letting go until you agree to give me a ride.” She glanced toward the house. “And if you don’t want to be stuck here answering questions you don’t know the answers to, we’d better move before Deb gets done talking to the station.”
“Then move.” He indicated the passenger side.
She ran around the front, shooed Reggie, who’d come over to greet her, back to the middle, and hopped in. Owen put the truck into gear, and they lurched toward the trees. Just in time too. In the rearview mirror, Chief Deb emerged from the house. At the sight of his taillights, she kicked the porch railing and it fell into the overgrown flower bed.
“Thanks,” Becca said. “I figured you’d drive off the instant I let go of your door and leave me behind.”
He would have if he’d thought of it. But he wasn’t thinking very clearly or very fast on so little sleep.
“How’d you get out here?” he asked.
“Wogged.”
Owen blinked.
“That’s what my brothers call my pathetic attempts at jogging. Faster than a walk, slower than a jog makes—”
“Wog,” he finished. He’d always liked her brothers, though not half as much as he’d liked her.
Owen cast a sideways glance in Becca’s direction, then had to lean forward to actually see her since Reggie’s big fat head was in the way. The dog stared at Becca too, mouth open, tongue lolling. Couldn’t blame him. She was stunning.
Her hair was long, thick, and fire red. She’d braided it; she always did. Otherwise the heavy mass got into everything—her eyes, her face, her food, his mouth.
Owen swallowed and dragged his eyes back to the road. He should never have kissed her. Though, to be fair, she had kissed him. It didn’t make the taste of her that still lingered on his tongue, nor the memory of how different things were—how different he was—any easier to bear.
“You—” he began, and his voice broke. He cleared his throat, tried again. “You always jog in the forest in the dark?”
“No. I wog.”
The dirt path had some deep ruts, the result of years of snow and ice and mud with no grading to even it out. The trees and bushes had encroached from the sides, narrowing the trail until branches scraped the truck. He was going to wind up paying for a new paint job by the time he returned it.
“Isn’t that a little dangerous?”
“In Three Harbors?”
“If you were jogging—”
She lifted her eyebrows.
“Excuse me, wogging, in Three Harbors I wouldn’t be worried.”
“You’re worried?”
He glanced at her; Reggie tried to lick him in the nose. “You saw my house. There’s something weird going on here.”
“I didn’t know that when I left, and I doubt it has anything to do with me.” She held up a hand. “Or you either. It’s one of those things. Sick, weird, freaky, horrible, all of the above. But in the end, probably stupid kids behaving badly.”
“You believe that?”
“Nope,” she said.
If what they’d been talking about hadn’t been sick, weird, freaky, horrible, and all of the above, her response might have made him laugh. As it was, he muttered, “Shit.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “Good times. I need you to drop me at Emerson’s place.”
The only Emerson Owen knew was Emerson Watley, a dairy farmer older than God, with plenty of hair in his nose and his ears but none at all on his head.
“Hot date?”
Why had he asked that?