This Fallen Prey (Rockton #3)(45)

Next stop is the wolf-dog cub. When we enter my house, Dalton blocks the exit, expecting the cub to charge for freedom. He doesn’t . . . because he’s hiding behind the sofa.

I pull him out. I’m dressed in long sleeves and gloves, but he doesn’t try to bite. Just shakes and whines. I’ve brought sedative, and he yelps at the needle, but a few minutes later, he’s limp in my arms.

I work on his injured front leg. It’s not as bad as I feared. It’s just messy, flesh ripped as he’d struggled against the snare wire.

I bandage the wound. Then Dalton covers the cloth in a goop we use with Storm, when she insists on licking a cut or sting.

Once I’m done, I lean back on my haunches. He looks more like a lion cub than a wolf or a dog, with thick tawny fur, gray and dark brown striping, and an even thicker mane around his head. He has the same freckles as his mother, though.

“Do you think the father was a dog?” I ask.

“Probably not. Take away the coloring and those freckles, and he’s wolf.”

“Which is a problem.”

“Either way, it’s a problem. I’d rather face a wolf, but dogs have the genes for domestication. Wolves don’t.” He looks down at the cub and sighs.

“We’ll keep him until we know he isn’t rabid,” I say. “Then we can . . . do whatever.”

He slants me a look. “Do you really think either of us is going to be able to ‘do whatever’ after we’ve nursed him back to health?”

I don’t answer.

“Yeah.” He heaves to his feet. “We’ll wait and see. But if anyone comes looking to adopt a puppy, the answer is fuck no. This isn’t a pet. We can’t turn him out into the woods at this age, though. Can’t raise him and then release him after he’s lived with humans. That’s just as cruel. Dangerous, too.” He runs a hand through his hair and sighs again.

“We’ll figure it out,” I say. “You and I both understand this isn’t a pet wolf. But it’s not a rabid dog either.” I pause and look down at the sleeping cub. “Or so we hope.”

“He’s not. Just gotta wait to be sure and then we’ll . . . figure shit out.”



Figure shit out.

That’s what we’re doing, on so many levels, over the next twelve hours. There’s still enough light for us to get to Brent’s that evening, but Dalton doesn’t want to leave town. We’ll go at first light.

Dalton joins the last evening search. That’s where he’s best right now, as our top tracker.

He takes Storm. We’re hoping to make a search-and-rescue dog out of her. That’s what the breed is used for, though more commonly water-based, given their webbed feet and double coats. But her sense of smell is excellent, so that’s our plan. She’s only eight months old, just entering doggie adolescence, with the attention span to match. This is the one area of her training where I’ve discovered I can’t push. I’ve introduced her to the concept of tracking, and we work on it weekly, but it’s mostly play at this point—I give her the scent of someone in town, and if she can find her target, she gets a treat. If the trail’s too convoluted, though, she loses interest.

Still Dalton takes her, along with Brady’s and Val’s dirty clothing. Storm has spent enough time around Brady that we hope that helps—she’s definitely better at finding residents she knows. She knows Val less well—big dogs make Val nervous—but Storm only takes a quick sniff at Val’s blouse, as if to say, “Okay, I know who you want.” Which is promising.

They leave, and I stay behind to “figure shit out.”

Some of that is investigating, some is talking to people, and some is just staring into space and thinking, and then jotting those thoughts into my notebook.

Brady had an accomplice in town. That is a fact. There is absolutely no way someone coincidentally set fire to that shed when Brady was out of the cell. His accomplice put poison in his food, enough to make him violently ill. That gets Brady out of the cell and into the clinic, which was exactly the scenario I expected the moment I saw him throwing up. Not this old chestnut—prisoner fakes illness to get to a less secure environment. Except he hadn’t been faking. He’d gone the extra step and let himself be poisoned.

From there, I’d supplied Brady with a hostage. A nurse at his bedside. Then his accomplice sets the fire and Brady grabs Val as insurance to get him out of town.

Next Brady knows the wolf-dog is near that spot. He poisons her—and kills her poor cubs—to slow us down. It also gives him an “excuse” for Val not being there, in case we catch up with him. He couldn’t exactly leave her with a frothing canine, right?

And the sniper? It could very well have been his accomplice, hoping to convince us Brady was in danger. Or hoping to scatter us so he could rescue him.

As a hypothesis, this solidifies Brady’s guilt. He is a monster. A killer.

But it’s only a hypothesis. The assassin might have come from his stepfather. That would give Brady reason to panic. Then Brady enlisted a local mercenary of his own, with promises of rich reward.

Was Kenny that local mercenary? He is just about to leave, and he’ll need money. Still, when I consider him as a suspect, I feel sick. I won’t interview Kenny until both Dalton and Anders are back. The point is that Brady has a confederate in Rockton, and it doesn’t matter right now if it’s Kenny or . . .