He got off the bed as quietly as he could, doing his best not to disturb her, then moved around the bed to where Sophie lay and straightened the covers, tucking her back in so she wouldn’t catch cold.
It was reasonably challenging to move around the cabin silently. The wood floors squeaked unpredictably. He might have been irritated normally, but this morning he found it a sort of challenge. Lighthearted, he crossed to the bathroom as quietly as possible. Once he’d taken care of his own business, he headed out to the hallway via the second bedroom and found Haydn waiting for him in the hallway.
Sophie’s cat was nowhere to be seen for the moment.
Forte continued down the hallway, and Haydn fell in at his side. They stopped at the breakfast counter separating the kitchen from the sitting area. He grabbed his tablet, then Haydn’s leash.
Sophie’s cat hopped up on the breakfast counter and directed an imperious meow at him.
“After we go out for a walk, you both will get breakfast.” He didn’t know when he’d started talking to the cat, but it didn’t feel awkward. He talked to the dogs he’d trained all the time.
Sophie’s cat sat right there on the counter and proceeded to groom, extending one of her hind legs toward the ceiling and giving him the cat finger again.
All righty then.
He and Haydn headed outside, though Forte made sure the front door was firmly shut. The last thing he needed was for Sophie’s cat to follow them and potentially take a trip into the woods.
These woods were dense and provided a home for plenty of wildlife. Raccoons were out there for sure. He thought he’d heard a fox or even two calling out in the night. Plus, it was a good sign there were bears in an area when the trash cans at the entrance to the clearing were all enclosed in latched cages.
Haydn didn’t need the leash. Forte let him range out to the edge of the clearing on his own. Mostly, Forte kept the leash in hand to reassure anyone who might be out walking from one of the other cabins or someone from the main house.
Haydn stopped to sniff a tree, then turned and lifted his leg nice and high to mark it. Could be another dog. Could be a bear. Forte shrugged. “You do your thing. Probably can’t hurt to have the scent of another large predator around this clearing to keep some of the deer from coming in and eating the landscaping.”
The browse line in these woods was discernable, though not as bad as it could get up in the woods in Pennsylvania. He was happy to see there wasn’t much underbrush in these woods, giving him a clearer view of what might be in the woods around them.
Haydn, for his part, had apparently decided to delineate the entire clearing as his territory and was patrolling the perimeter to establish it. This included a brief stop-and-piss on likely looking trees or stumps. Forte walked a full circuit with him the first time, then called him in and put the leash on him.
Haydn was ready and eager, standing with his weight evenly balanced on all four feet despite the prosthetic. All the recent activity had done him good, and he’d acclimated to the prosthetic faster than Forte had anticipated.
Forte strode over to the cabin’s porch and pointed to indicate a spot under a bench where he wouldn’t be immediately noticed. “Hier.”
Haydn immediately placed himself where indicated.
Forte smiled. “Bewaken.”
Leaving Haydn to guard the cabin, he walked up to the main house.
The household was just beginning to stir. They had full Wi-Fi there, but he bypassed the inviting wraparound porch and continued up yet another hill toward the tasting house.
They were at a cidery, actually, and he planned to bring Sophie up to taste ciders later in the day if she was up for it. For the time being, he parked on one of the picnic tables looking out over the area and fired up his tablet to connect to the public Wi-Fi they had there. From his vantage point, he could see all approaches coming into the cidery grounds.
Once the tablet was on the public Wi-Fi, he opened up the app for the virtual private network Cruz had set up. Safely anonymous on the Internet, he went to his e-mail and read through the messages there. It didn’t take long.
Kennel business was mostly handled by Elisa now, and his family e-mailed him to check in occasionally, but more often, he was included on the family distribution list when someone wanted to let all of them know something at the same time. That was the way his family worked. Loving but not really bound tightly together.
One message sat in his inbox, out of place. The subject looked like spam, but the e-mail address was legit, so it hadn’t been flagged by the spam filter.
Mr. Forte.
Please call this number for an exclusive offer just for you.