It was a pit bull mix of some kind. Black. Its fur stood out against the white snow. It didn’t make a noise. Didn’t growl. Didn’t bark. Simply stood in the storm as if he didn’t even notice it raging around him.
“Where did you come from?” Chappy asked, his voice sounding deeper and more growly than normal.
Of course, he didn’t get an answer.
“You want to come in?” he asked, holding the door open a little wider.
In response, the dog took a step backward, but didn’t lose eye contact with Chappy.
He didn’t want to leave the dog in the storm. There was no way it would survive, considering its current condition. But he also couldn’t stand on his porch for hours with his door open, trying to earn the dog’s trust.
“Come on,” he coaxed. “I’m not going to hurt you. It’s warm inside. I’ve got some food and water. You can stay on one side, and I’ll stay on the couch.”
The dog took a step toward him, and Chappy’s hopes rose. But then the beast turned his head and looked out into the storm, then back at Chappy before whining.
“This is ridiculous,” he muttered under his breath. He was sick with the flu and felt like crap, for God’s sake.
Still, there was something about the dog that wouldn’t let him go back inside and forget about him. Something about his mannerisms that sparked a long-forgotten memory inside Chappy. A mission from years ago.
They’d been deployed with a group of men and women from the Royal Australian Air Force. The group had K9s and were using them to find unexploded IEDs in the desert. He’d been fascinated by the way the dogs communicated with their handlers. It was an awe-inspiring sight, and seeing how much trust the handlers had in their dogs, and vice versa, was eye-opening.
What struck Chappy at the moment was how the stray, starving and probably freezing, was acting exactly like one of those professional military dogs. As if he was trying to communicate something to Chappy.
“What is it, boy?” he asked. “Got something you want me to see? Maybe a mama dog out there with puppies?”
The dog woofed. Sort of. It was an odd sound, really, not much like a bark at all, but Chappy knew he couldn’t ignore it. If there actually was a litter of pups, they definitely wouldn’t make it through the storm. The snow was falling hard and would continue to accumulate. They were in for at least another foot and a half of the heavy stuff.
“Damn it,” Chappy muttered as he leaned over and placed his shotgun on the floorboards of the porch, then began to tie his boot laces securely. “Give me a second, and we’ll see what you have to show me.” He stood, grabbing the shotgun as he did, taking a moment to brace himself against the wall of the cabin before heading back inside.
Chappy propped the weapon near the door, went to a dresser against the wall, quickly ripped off his jacket, and pulled a sweatshirt over the long-sleeved shirt he already had on. He grabbed his hat and scarf, then put his coat back on. When he was as bundled up as he could be, Chappy went back to the door.
A part of him was hoping the dog would be gone. That he’d be off the hook in trying to figure out what the animal was trying to tell him. But when he opened his cabin door and shone a flashlight into the storm, the dog was sitting right where he’d last seen him.
As soon as Chappy stepped off the porch, the dog turned and started walking in the direction of the road. Which wasn’t a road, per se, so much as a meandering dirt two-track that connected to a rural road in one direction and dead-ended in the other.
Chappy’s cabin was well off the beaten path, which was how he liked it. In all the time he’d been up there, he hadn’t had one visitor except for his friends, and he didn’t count them as visitors. . . they were family. No one had accidentally stumbled onto the cabin asking for directions.
Shivering, and cursing his body and the flu virus raging within him, Chappy trudged after the dog. “Ten minutes,” he muttered. “That’s all you’re getting, dog. Because this is crazy.”
Not even five minutes later, the snow making every step an effort, Chappy was ready to turn around and go back to his cabin when, surprisingly, he thought he saw something in the distance.
He stopped in his tracks and blinked. The dog was standing in the middle of Chappy’s long driveway. They were almost at the end of it, where the path met what the map called a road. As he stood there, the shape in the distance slowly got closer.
It was a person.
Chappy couldn’t have been more shocked. What the hell was a person doing out here in this storm? It made no sense. Just as it made no sense that the dog had led Chappy right to him. If he’d ignored the dog or waited a little longer to see what kind of animal was making the noise or if he’d taken a few extra minutes to put on more clothes, the person probably would’ve walked right by the driveway to his cabin.
The chances that Chappy was here, at the exact moment when some stranger in distress was about to pass, had to be astronomical.
The person had yet to look up, keeping his head tucked to his chest and looking down at his feet while he walked. He was shuffling more than walking, really, as he followed the weak path of the flashlight in his hand, barely illuminating more than a foot in front of him. The snow was around six inches deep now and falling faster and harder than before.
It wasn’t until the person was about six feet away that he finally looked up.
Chappy saw huge blue eyes in a pale white face.
“Oh!” the person exclaimed in surprise.
“What the hell are you doing?” he nearly growled. He hadn’t given any thought to what he might say to this stranger, but his surprise and unease at seeing anyone out in this storm had taken over.
“Um . . . walking?” the person said.
Two things hit Chappy at once. The person in front of him was female—and the dog who had literally led him to her was nowhere to be seen.
“What are you doing?” she retorted when he didn’t respond.
The question sounded just as stupid coming from her as it probably had coming from his own lips. Shaking his head a little, Chappy said, “Come on, we need to get inside.”
To his surprise, the woman didn’t move and, instead, simply stared at him.
“What?” he asked.
“I don’t know you.”
Chappy wanted to laugh. “I don’t know you either. You could be a serial killer who chops off my head as soon as we get inside my cabin. But at the moment, I’m willing to take that chance. It’s freezing out here, I feel like crap, and we haven’t even seen the worst of this storm. You coming, or do you want to die out here?” he asked grumpily.
He was amazed when she still hesitated for a beat before saying, “I’m Carlise. Most people mispronounce my name when they see it because they add an extra L that isn’t there.”
Chappy blinked. “What?” he asked inanely.
“C-a-r-l-i-s-e. That’s how it’s spelled. Car-leese.”
Chappy couldn’t believe they were standing in the middle of a damn blizzard introducing themselves, but he simply shrugged. “I’m Riggs.”
He had no idea why he’d told her his given name instead of his nickname. He could tell her that literally everyone called him Chappy, but this wasn’t the time or place to go into more detail.
“It’s nice to meet you, Riggs. You said your cabin is near here?”
“At the end of this path,” he said, turning and pointing back the way he had come. Of course, neither of them could see anything but snowflakes swirling in the beam of his flashlight.
“I would be very grateful if you’d allow me to take shelter for a while,” Carlise said stiffly and formally. “And I promise I’m not a serial killer. Are you?”
“What would you do if I said yes?” Chappy asked.
She shrugged. “Keep walking, following my dog friend until I got to another cabin.”
“There isn’t another cabin out here. I’m the end of the line.”
“Oh.”
That was it. All she said. Just Oh. Chappy sighed. “I’m not a serial killer either,” he told her. “You’ll be safe with me.”