Might be just as well. Who knew what Lyn would’ve done with the knowledge? Whatever information she’d been passing along all this time had to have been fragmented. Cruz cursed himself for sharing anything with her at all.
He picked up the harness, working over the chest strap and other parts, searching by feel for something out of place. He’d done it a hundred times before and after they’d found the micro SD card under Atlas’s skin. Too obvious for Calhoun to have hidden something in Atlas’s gear and others must’ve searched the same way. But until the bigger video finished going through Cruz’s decryption program, there was nothing else to go on.
Harris had ended up being a dead end, confirming what Cruz already knew but providing no further leads. The other man was probably subject to dangerous scrutiny for his trouble, too. A pang of guilt hit Cruz at the thought. The man did have a family—one that wanted him—and he seemed to be a genuinely decent guy.
Doing the right thing wasn’t as straightforward as it’d seemed before going down there.
Nothing was, actually. And it’d started getting cloudy from the minute Lyn walked onto the kennel property. He should’ve dug further into her story when she’d first shown up. Should’ve followed up with Beckhorn to find out who had approved of her assignment to a military project. Hell, he should’ve paid closer attention. Because she’d played him and he had only himself to blame. Idiot. Jackass. Stupid. A few of the possible ways he could describe himself at the moment.
He’d fallen hard for Evelyn Jones and all along, she’d been reporting back to Daddy on his progress with Atlas. He didn’t know which hit his pride worse: that he hadn’t even suspected her or that it’d always been about the dog.
Not fair to Atlas. Everything came back to him and none of it was his fault. Atlas was the catalyst in all of this, in so many ways it made Cruz’s head hurt.
Cruz placed Atlas’s harness back in its storage crate. He’d pack it up for shipment tomorrow. Today, he didn’t have it in him. He needed to get outside and do something more constructive.
Rojas was outside, working with one of the big German shepherds they’d rescued recently from a shelter. Three of them had been abandoned after their wealthy owners decided to divorce and leave, too concerned with their own affairs to worry about the futures of the very expensive dogs they’d ditched. Purebred, none of them older than six months, and all of them solid with basic obedience and the beginning of Schutzhund training in them. Not a one of them socialized for human interaction, unless you counted chasing intruders off private property.
The shelter hadn’t had the resources to rehabilitate the dogs for normal family homes. The aggression they were already showing, their training, and lack of socialization resulted in the shelter labeling them unadoptable. If Rojas hadn’t pulled them, they’d have been destroyed. Instead, he was working to see if they could be directed to a better life.
Cruz came to a stop and watched the dog watch him. Intelligence there, and suspicion. “How’s it going with this new batch?”
“Promising.” Rojas had a good hold on the leash, relaxed but ready to get control if the big GSD lunged unexpectedly. “This guy definitely has potential but he’s got trust issues.”
“I can see that.” Cruz noted the way the dog let loose a whisper of a growl as he took a step closer.
“Fooey.” Rojas gave the correction and deliberately continued to talk with Cruz in a pleasant tone. “These boys were all trained in German.”
Point was to demonstrate to the dog that Rojas would indicate when aggressive behavior was okay and when it was not. Trick was a dog had to trust his handler to let him know. This one, not so big on the faith yet.
“Huh.” Cruz kept his posture loose and nonthreatening, his gaze locked with Alex’s. “Not unusual for guard dogs. Track down the breeder yet?”
“Sent them an e-mail. They may not have the resources to place these guys, as old as they are.” Rojas shook his head. “But any breeder worth anything is going to want to know where their dogs went.”
And if they didn’t care, Hope’s Crossing Kennels would take note of it, too. They worked with breeders across the country to get the best dogs to train for military, police work, and rescue. No way did they want to support a breeder who didn’t care about where their dogs went. Said a lot about those sorts of establishments and none of it good.
“Any of the three likely for multi-purpose work?” Cruz figured this particular dog wasn’t likely. Not yet. Maybe after a couple weeks’ rehabilitation.
There he went thinking with Lyn’s line of thought.
Rojas shrugged. “Maybe one of the other two. This guy’s got a chip on his shoulder. I’m trying to work through it but he responds to Boom better than me.”
Cruz raised his eyebrows. “Is it a gender thing?”