In Safe Hands (Search and Rescue #4)(133)
The delivery truck rounded a bend and disappeared from view. Still feeling spooked, Jules opened the door just wide enough to grab the pot. Once she’d secured the front door behind her, she brought the plant into the kitchen and opened the attached card with shaking fingers. Irrationally, she half-expected the flowers to be from Courtney, a sort of I’ve-got-you kind of mind game. When she saw the inscription, Jules’s lungs finally relaxed enough for her to take a breath.
Welcome to your new life. —Dennis
Chapter 9
Present Day
Theo was staring at his bedroom ceiling when the howling started.
It was a low whine at first, barely catching his notice. As usual, Theo was spending the hour between two and three a.m. rerunning the last few days before Don’s death. Sometimes he’d play the what-if game—what if Theo had said this? Or what if he’d done that? Tonight, though, he was just replaying the hours and minutes, catching every single clue he’d missed now that it was too late to do any good.
The high-pitched sound increased in volume, and Theo raised his head before letting it thump back onto the pillow.
“Stupid dog. Useless dog,” he muttered, but guilt and his innate sense of fairness wouldn’t let that stand. “Stupid me. Fucking useless me.” As galling as it had been to hear, his LT had been right. Viggy had been a great dog and a great officer when he’d worked with Don. Theo was ruining him. He wasn’t just useless; he was destructive. It was sheer luck that no one had been seriously injured in the explosion at Gordon Schwartz’s house. Everyone would be better off if Officer Theodore Bosco wasn’t around.
The whine amped up to a full howl, as if Viggy was providing a soundtrack to Theo’s self-loathing. The neighbors would be calling dispatch soon, and then Otto would be making a house call. Before, Theo would’ve just gotten a cranky phone call, but the guys had been worried about him since Don died. Although the rational part of Theo’s brain understood why Hugh and Otto had been acting like anxious mother hens for the past couple of months, he still felt smothered. Every “Are you okay?” made him want to punch someone…hard and repeatedly.
He didn’t know what to do with that kind of anger.
The howl switched pitches and increased in volume. With a huff of mingled annoyance and concern, Theo got out of bed, yanking on track pants before heading to the back door, turning on the porch light on his way. The second he stepped outside, the howling stopped, as suddenly as if someone had flicked a switch.
Theo peered through the gloom to see Viggy slip into his shelter, tail tucked. Feeling like he was suffocating on his pity and hopelessness, Theo headed back to his bedroom. He wasn’t even through the kitchen before the mournful howl began again.
Shoving the heels of his hands against his eyes, he sucked in an audible breath before dropping his hands. He reversed his path and returned to the back door, not bothering to turn on the porch light this time. Again, Viggy went silent, darting back into his shelter as soon as Theo came into view. As he stood on the porch, the cool air of the now-silent night brushing over his bare skin, Theo’s annoyance trickled away, leaving only guilt and sadness in its wake.
He picked his way toward the fenced enclosure, careful not to step on anything prickly with his bare feet. For a long time, he stared at the dark entrance to Viggy’s shelter. Theo was suddenly exhausted, more tired than he’d ever felt, and he sank down to sit on the rough grass next to the chain link.
“I’m sorry, Vig,” he said, his words sounding loud in the quiet darkness. “I should’ve done something. Not sure what, exactly, but there had to’ve been something I could’ve said or done or…something. I’m sorry for being an oblivious * and not seeing when Don was hurting so bad he thought dead was the better option.”
Viggy’s muzzle poked out of the shelter, followed by the rest of his shape, silhouetted dark against darker. When he was several feet away from Theo, the dog sat and watched him.
“And now you’re f*cked up, and I’m f*cked up, and I don’t know how to fix it.” Leaning forward, Theo felt the cool chain link press into his forehead. “Don’t really see the point in fixing it.”
With a low, almost soundless whine, Viggy lowered his front end to the ground and rested his head on his paws. The silence stretched, filled only by the low whistle of the almost constant wind, and it almost felt like he and Viggy were the only living things in the world. Loneliness hollowed him out, and he tried to think of something, anything, else.
Jules popped into his mind, and he relaxed fractionally. As messed up as he was, there couldn’t be anything between them, but at least she was a mystery for him to solve. It gave him an excuse to talk to her, too. He found himself actually looking forward to going to the diner, and it had been a while since he’d looked forward to anything.
And he was back to thinking about Don. Viggy shifted and whined, as if sensing that Theo’s mood had dimmed.
“I know you miss him.” His voice came out rough, almost hoarse. “I do, too.”
They sat together quietly until the sun turned the sky orange and the neighborhood began to wake. Only then did Theo stand and stiffly walk toward the house to get ready for another shift.
*
“This is a bad idea.”
Viggy didn’t respond from his spot in the back of the SUV. Not that Theo needed confirmation that this was indeed a very, very bad idea. It had been a long, frustrating shift, and he needed to go home. Despite knowing this, he couldn’t stop himself from turning onto the rutted driveway leading to the old Garmitt place—the one currently occupied by a squirrelly, yet extremely hot, waitress.