“Kaboom,” Owen said.
The dog climbed the steps. Now he was gimping too. Owen sat on the top step, patted the area next to him. “Sitz.”
Owen ran his palm over the animal’s injuries, masked now by fur, but still there. When he reached the worst one, Reggie flinched.
Owen moved the hair away from the scar. No blood at least. This far out, there shouldn’t be.
“Looks like you’ve bought yourself an aspirin in your kibble, pal. Shouldn’t have been rolling in the dirt with a wolf today. Probably not any day with a wolf.”
Speaking of … The wolf had disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. Where had it gone? Why had it gone? Why had it come in the first place? Becca seemed to know the animal, which wasn’t surprising. She’d always had a strange affinity for them.
When they were children, she would entertain Owen with tales of “what the bunny said,” and “what the fox thought.” Forest creatures would walk up and eat out of her hand. The first time his mom had seen them surrounded by raccoons and opossums and squirrels, she’d flipped out. Started screaming about rabies, scared all the little beasties away.
He’d been six years old and already adept at knowing when he could calm her down and when he needed to call the EMTs. He avoided the latter as much as possible. Because if his mom went to the mental health facility, Owen went to foster care—at least until they’d moved here. Once he and Becca became friends, the Carstairs allowed him to stay with them while his mom “rested.”
He owed that family more than he could ever repay. Another reason he had left when he had.
Reggie’s tongue lolled. He appeared to be smiling. Owen rubbed behind the dog’s ears. “You liked tussling with that wolf, didn’t you?”
Reggie barked.
Owen had heard the Belgian Malinois described as the “sugar-hyped kid” of the dog world, and that could be true when they weren’t handled correctly. A Belgian did not make a good pet, unless you had a huge amount of land and all day to spend throwing sticks. Without constant activity, they got into trouble. Left alone and bored they would destroy anything, everything, just for something to do.
But that drive to go, go, and keep going was what made them excellent bomb-sniffing dogs. Belgians didn’t stop until they found something; they weren’t afraid of much, and most didn’t get twitchy when bullets blazed all around them. Owen thought Reggie kind of liked it.
“Steh.” Reggie stood, but he didn’t move until Owen showed him the red rubber ball that was his reward, then gave the forward command, “Voran.”
Reggie nosed open the door, which Becca had left ajar. Owen followed at a slower pace, using the railing, the wall, the door for balance. He should probably use a cane. He had one, but he hadn’t been able to make himself hold on to it for more than a minute, let alone walk with it.
He’d been on a plane since yesterday. Exhaustion, combined with more walking and more sitting than usual, then driving from Minneapolis, as well as the digging, had made Owen shakier than he liked.
What he should do was take a pain pill, then sink into a warm bath and fall into a fluffy bed. However, thanks to his mother’s drug issues, he didn’t take pain pills. He doubted the water heater worked any better now than it had when he lived here. Considering the electricity was off, along with the water, it wouldn’t matter if it did. The mattresses were as trashed as the rest of the furniture, and even when they hadn’t been they weren’t fluffy.
He’d grit his teeth and get along. One of the first things he’d learned upon joining the Marines.
Inside there was no sign of Reggie. As Owen had mentioned kibble, he’d thought the dog would be waiting outside the still-closed kitchen door to the right. When he’d gone out to dig the grave, he’d put Reggie behind it, not wanting him to mess with the disgusting scene in the living room.
Reggie was a well-trained dog, but he was a dog, and sometimes he grabbed things he wasn’t supposed to—like a terrorist—and dragged them around. While Owen often enjoyed that little mistake, having Reggie ingest charcoal pet remains wouldn’t be at all amusing. So he’d confined him in the kitchen. That the windows were broken wide open had escaped him until the dog vaulted through one.
Becca spoke in the living room. Was she talking to Reggie or herself? Owen had told the dog to voran, which was a command to go forward, in working-dog-speak to do what he was supposed to do. While Reggie was usually searching for explosives, he might also find and detain insurgents if he came across one. Though Becca was neither, she was standing in front of a scene that had to smell pretty nifty to a dog.
Owen swallowed. But not to him.