Running Wild(Wild #3)(11)

My indignation flares. “I’m not on anyone’s payroll!”

“Aren’t you his veterinarian?”

“Yes, but—”

“She only got away a few hours ago, which means he called you and you dropped everything on a Sunday afternoon to trespass onto my property so you can build a case against me and take my dogs away. Do you do that for all your customers, or just the ones who have decent competition living next door?” His eyebrows arch in mock question.

I set my chin. “I take every report of animal abuse seriously.”

“That, she does,” Howie pipes up. “Marie’s got a bit of a reputation around here as a crusader. I swear, if she collected a buck for every time she helped someone out for free, she’d be flying around in her own private plane by now. Ask anyone, and they’ll tell you there’s no one more generous in all of Alaska.”

I flash an appreciative smile to Howie for his kind words, even as that term pricks at my chest. Crusader. That’s what Wren Fletcher used to call me. Sometimes I still have to remind myself that the kindly owner of Alaska Wild is gone.

“So, if I called up Dillon Wagner and asked him, he’d tell me that same thing?” Tyler asks.

“You know Dillon?” Howie’s voice is laced with surprise.

Wasilla’s chief of police.

“Yeah, we go way back. Same with Marshall Deeks. What about him? Would he say the same about your little crusader here?”

Marshall runs parks and rec for the Mat-Su Valley. I can’t believe this asshole is name-dropping, a not-so-subtle way of letting us know he may have just moved here but he has connections.

He’s not the only one. “Maybe we should call Wade Phillips to see what he thinks about this entire situation.” The race’s chief veterinarian and the man I did my surgical residency with. “Or Grant McManus. How about him?” The race marshal for the past seventeen years and one of my father’s best friends. “I’ve got him on speed dial. Should I call?” I slide my phone out of my pocket to make my obnoxious point.

Tyler pauses, his eyes skating across my features. There’s a haunted—almost sad—quality to them. “Marie Lehr. I know that name. You volunteer at the race.”

“A lot of veterinarians do.” It’ll be my tenth time doing it, and I’ve done everything from prerace dog prep to working the drop dog hubs to checkpoint care. Unease slips down my spine with the sudden recognition painted across his face, and where this conversation is likely going.

“I hear Skip Haygert would’ve won last year, but you made him withdraw to give Hatchett a chance.”

“I did not do that for Harry.” I feel my cheeks flush. “Skip’s dogs had a virus. They were ready to collapse. Two were dehydrated, one had frostbite. They needed to be pulled, so I pulled them.” Leaving him with only four dogs. Mushers need at least five running to the finish line.

Skip, a small-minded, fifty-year-old veteran of the race and three-time winner, did not agree with my assertion, especially not when he was leading with only seventy-seven miles left to Nome. As far as he was concerned, I had no business telling him how to run his team. But he didn’t win that fight. Harry couldn’t make up the time, though, and finished second.

After the race, with the backing of a veterinarian who happens to be a Haygert family friend, Skip filed a formal complaint, accusing me of being hostile and inexperienced and making bad judgment calls. He demanded I be removed from future race checkpoints.

Unfortunately for Skip, Wade sided with me.

Tyler tosses his gloves and balaclava onto his snowmachine’s seat, seemingly unbothered by the biting cold. “You were quick to make the call, weren’t you? A lot faster than some, from what I hear.”

“Some don’t have the guts to do what needs to be done,” I snap before I can stop myself. I’ve heard the odd rumor of volunteers “suggesting” a dog be pulled but not making note of it in the race log for fear of backlash in the community. “Plenty of dogs dropped in that race. Over two hundred.” For everything from exhaustion to injury to pneumonia. In most cases, it was the musher making the call for their dog’s sake.

Skip should have dropped his dogs without question, without argument. He should have slid into the checkpoint already aware that they were struggling. Good mushers are skilled at watching for the signs. But I know his type, and he would’ve kept them going the last seventy-seven miles.

If I had my way, he’d be banned from ever racing again.

Tyler reaches down to scratch the top of his dog’s head. “What do you think, Tank? Is someone getting defensive?”

I am getting defensive. I can’t help it, though. The fact that this guy—an outsider who moved to Alaska from a foreign country within the last year—has heard this story means Skip and his fanatical fan base are smearing my name around town.

“And now, here you are, trying to take out Hatchett’s competition for him again.” Tyler’s lip turns in a thoughtful frown. “Did you already call the ITC on me, or is that your next stop?”

I shake my head at this idiotic accusation. “I don’t care who wins that stupid race. All I care about are the dogs.” Animals who aren’t protected well enough by the state that lauds the sport they’re bred and trained for, who are deemed “lesser than” in the world of animal statutes.