Jenner, page 14
“Hey.” He shrugged. “I’m alive and well. That’s what counts.”
She stayed, visited for a little bit, then she got up and asked, “Any idea how long you’ll be here?”
“Depends if I have a house to go home to,” he stated bluntly.
She nodded. “I was in there with Jenner yesterday, checking up on it. We thought somebody was still hanging around, and we did find Silas there, doing some sort of assessment.”
“Yeah, and I didn’t give him permission to go in there, so …”
She remembered that Jenner had called Jim from his house.
“I didn’t realize you were there at the time,” he noted, looking at her curiously.
She nodded. “Yeah, I was there. I struggle dealing with Silas.”
“He talked to my parents not long ago,” Jim shared. “I know he wanted to buy their place before, but they weren’t interested.”
“I wonder why Silas wants it though? I only know of him buying properties in town, not out in the boonies by us.”
“I don’t know. Something about wanting to level the house and put in a new hayfield or something.” She just stared. He shrugged. “Right?”
“I mean, I know it’s a farming community,” she noted. “Although we have an awful lot of horses in the area, so maybe the hayfield idea makes sense. Yet he told us that he wanted your house for a weekender rental, for people getting out of the city.”
“If there’s any money to be made,” Jim offered, “I’m pretty sure that’ll be what’s behind anything with Silas.”
“Yes. Given that it involves Silas, that makes the most sense,” she agreed. “I don’t think he’s the kind to let an opportunity slip between his fingers.”
“No, I suspect not.” Jim looked down at the cookies and grinned. “Thanks again for this.”
“You’re welcome. Hopefully I’ll see you home soon.” And, with that, she walked out of his room.
As soon as she stepped outside the hospital, she called Jenner.
He answered right away. “Hey. Sorry. I couldn’t talk before. First I heard a commotion and headed that way but found no sign of any of the dogs, so I wasn’t sure what was going on. Then I met up with the sheriff, who is hunting to kill any dogs he sees running loose, and we’ve been talking ever since.” He let out a sigh of exasperation. “Now I can talk to you. So what’s going on?” he asked suddenly, catching a breath.
“I made cookies this morning, and I took them to Jim at the hospital. Oddly enough, he mentioned that some dog or something hung around after he got attacked, but he doesn’t remember what exactly. He heard his attacker calling to the dogs, but Jim recalls another one remaining afterward.”
“Interesting,” Jenner murmured. “It could be mine.”
“That’s what I wondered. Any chance this War Dog was just checking up on Jim? Maybe Sisco would recognize …” She stopped. “No, that’s foolish.”
“What’s foolish?”
“I just wondered maybe if Sisco recognized Jim as being the Stippletones’ son.” There was a moment of silence on the other end. “Like I said, it’s foolish,” she murmured. “It’s not like they can sniff DNA and can recognize family members.”
“I don’t know about that. Dogs are incredibly smart and gifted in ways we don’t always understand. However, I wonder if Jim ever saw Sisco.” Jenner paused. “No, I think his parents only had Sisco like four months maybe, before they died. And that time frame means Jim was not mobile. He had had his accident, his surgery, was in rehab still, when his parents took on Sisco.” He went silent again. “I’d have to check.”
“I didn’t even think to ask. I’m sorry,” she said.
“No, that’s okay,” he murmured. “I can ask Jim myself. I was going to stop in and talk to him a little bit later.”
“Are you staying up there for long?”
“Yes, I need to find Sisco before that gun-happy sheriff does,” he noted. “I left more dog food at the same spot and saw no sign of the dog anywhere.”
“Yeah, but what about any weird feeling of being watched?”
“Oh, I know Sisco’s watching me,” he confirmed. “I’m just not sure what he’s up to.”
“Is he up to anything?”
“Well, that’s the million-dollar question here, and believe me. The sheriff wants to know too.”
“Yeah, I’m not at all happy with the sheriff,” she added in disgust.
“True, but it might be good if you two could mend some fences, as you need to be able to call him, whenever you need help.”
“Maybe, if he ever believed a word I said. So that would mean him actually accepting that his son was the father of my child, his grandchild.” She heard a moment of silence on the other end.
“Of course, if the sheriff lost a grandson and didn’t even acknowledge that he had one, that might make the mending-fences job quite a bit more difficult.”
“Not to mention after prom—after my supposed boyfriend failed to tell me that he had already broken up with me—I heard rumors that he had knocked up yet another girl from our high school and refused to claim her child as his either. I don’t know if that was true or just rumors. I’m not even sure who the girl was. However, in the last couple years since I’ve been here, he got yet another woman pregnant, but he married her. So I guess he’s grown up some since high school.”
“Which, given you were teenagers at the time of prom, not marrying him was maybe a good thing,” he suggested.
“Absolutely,” she declared cheerfully. “And what I went through with Quincy? His birth father wouldn’t have been the kind to stick around anyway.”
“Of course, a young man not at all interested in owning up or growing up.”
“No, still had to be forced into this recent marriage, as far as I understand—but maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part or just plain town gossip.” He burst out laughing. “Isn’t that terrible? I should be a better person.”
“After the experiences you’ve been through,” Jenner noted gently, “don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Understand that, whatever it was, it came and went in your life, and you are a better person for it, and the rest will heal. If karma is out there, she’ll come bite your high school boyfriend in the ass.”
“I think she already did.” She chuckled. “Anyway, if you’re coming home for dinner, it’ll still be a few hours yet.”
“Yeah, I’ll go back where I left the dog food,” he replied, “and do one more check, see if I can actually make contact with Sisco and let him know that he is safe and okay with me.”
“I’m really hoping that Jim maybe will be the answer to getting Sisco to come in.”
“Why’s that?” Jenner asked.
“Because I think Sisco found Jim down there, injured and on the ground. And, for all we know, then Sisco had something to do with the reason that our squatter guy called off the wild dogs.”
“You think he would have left the wild dogs to chew away on a dying man?”
Kellie hesitated. “I wouldn’t want to think so,” she murmured, “but we have seen all kinds of things in life that we don’t like and surely don’t understand.”
“Yeah, I don’t think I like anything about this.”
“Nope, and getting Jim home would be a huge benefit.”
“Well, it would stop people from getting into his house,” Jenner noted.
Then Kellie added, “Oh, and, by the way, apparently Silas also tried to buy the property from Jim’s parents. Something about turning it into hay fields. But they refused to sell.”
“Ooh, now that’s an interesting bit of news. One I don’t particularly like anything about. If you come up with anything else, let me know. And now I’ll search for Sisco for a bit, then I’ll be home. I’m hungry.”
“You took a sandwich with you, didn’t you?”
“Nope, I didn’t. I came out without food. Well, none for me. Just food for the War Dog,” he explained. “I need some quality time to just sit with Sisco.”
“Good enough,” she said. “I’ll see you in a bit.” And, with that, she rang off.
It was a beautiful afternoon, but, because of the trees, it was darkening quite nicely. Jenner found a spot and just sat and waited. He saw the dog food in front of him; some was still here but not a whole lot. He closed his eyes and just calmed down his energy. Animals knew. They always knew when you were upset. They knew when you were hunting them. They knew when they were in trouble. And this one? Jenner had no clue if Sisco understood what was going on or how close he was to death by bullet.
The fact that the sheriff was out there hunting these animals was enough to make anybody’s blood run cold. Once people started getting gun-happy, things could go downhill very, very quickly. Jenner was doing what he could to try to keep things calm and to keep Sisco out of trouble. But pretty soon it would get beyond Jenner’s ability to change the series of events that were coming.
As he sat here, his phone buzzed. Swearing softly under his breath, he quickly pulled it out and shut off all notifications and checked the text. The sheriff sent him a question, asking if he’d seen anybody. Which meant that they hadn’t located the dogs yet. Jenner wanted to smile at that, but he sent back a quick answer. No.
He knew it wouldn’t be long before somebody would see the wild dogs because they would have to eat again. And Jenner didn’t know where they were stalking down their food; it could be any number of places. He also didn’t want them running through town and trying to pick up more dogs to join their pack. Two was bad enough, but, once you started getting twice that, well, it would just get uglier.
He closed his eyes and tried to calm down again. Almost immediately he heard a rustling in the woods around him. He dared not open his eyes; he also had no clue which animal it was. He did have a knife with him this time, not that that would be a great weapon of choice if he had to take down a dog trying to kill him, but it would do the job if he had to. It’s just he would end up paying more of a price than he would want to if there were two of them.
He stayed calm and quiet. When he opened his eyes, an unwavering stare gazed right into his. The dog was still hidden in the trees, but his focus was right-on. Jenner took a slow deep breath. “Hello there.”
Sisco didn’t move.
“I know. You’ve had a tough couple months, haven’t you? But it wasn’t supposed to be like this. You were supposed to have a nice happy retirement home. Unfortunately sometimes life happens, as you well know. You were in a great place, and that changed.”
He kept talking to the dog quietly, but the dog didn’t move, didn’t budge. And what could Jenner expect? Five minutes of talking and have the dog running to greet him and wanting a leash put on him? Not likely. The dog had been through too much already. Chances were it would take a heck of a lot more than that. It was all about patience; it was all about gaining trust.
“And I’m not so sure about your companions,” he added, continuing to talk to the dog. “I suspect they’ve got some issues that will be hard to save them from a bullet,” he murmured. “But, if I can save you, that would be something. Given a choice, I would like to save them all, but you are my priority,” he noted. “So, with any luck, you haven’t actually gone down that same pathway yet.”
As he watched, the dog shifted ever-so-slightly. It was enough that he saw his dark coat. And he smiled.
“At least it’s you,” he said. “I know it’s a tough life for you, isn’t it, Sisco?”
At his name, the dog’s ears twitched.
Jenner nodded. “And you do know your name, which means they probably kept it while they had you.” Which would make sense, but not everybody liked to do that. Sometimes people got it in their head that an animal should respond to something completely different just because it was cute, completely ignoring the fact that the dog’s training would be under one name. Sometimes dogs were adaptable and sometimes not even close.
He stayed for about half hour, and then, hearing another rustling nearby, the War Dog was instantly gone. Jenner turned to look off to the side, and, sure enough, it was the two wild dogs. Swearing to himself gently, Jenner said, “And now it’s you two.” Jenner still kept his voice soft.
“Not exactly sure what’s going on with you both, whether you’re just bad or you’re just lost because you’ve also lost your owner. And is somebody out there, around town, looking for you? Or did the guy dump you and not give a crap? In which case I’m so sorry because this isn’t the life that you expected either.”
He kept his voice controlled, as the first dog, the more aggressive leader dog, got ever closer. As Jenner watched, the second dog came limping out of the woods from the right-hand side.
“Ah, and you’re hurt,” he stated, with a nod. “Which is also why this one is doing the hunting on my left, and you’re coming up on the right side to help take down any target. Well, I’m sorry, boys. I’m not your dinner tonight.” Looking around carefully, Jenner wondered where Sisco had gone but saw no sign he was even in the tree line anymore.
What Jenner needed to know was whether Sisco would partake in what was likely a coordinated attack on Jenner—or whether Sisco would stay completely separate. Watching warily, Jenner had chosen this spot specifically in case there was such an interest in what he was doing here. He didn’t want to fight these wild dogs, but, once again, he found himself pinned in place by them. And he really didn’t want to kill both of them either.
As he watched, the second dog came forward a little bit closer.
“You’re not sure either, are you?” he asked. The dog just looked at him. He nodded. “I get it. You’re hurt. You don’t want to be here.” The dog wagged its tail ever-so-slightly. Jenner nodded but kept an eye on the bigger, meaner one.
“What I don’t know is if you’re just a distraction, and, when everybody gets kind of sucked in by you, then this guy comes up from behind and takes me down.” He didn’t know for sure that these dogs had actually killed a human, but Jenner sure wasn’t signing up to be the first. He continued to watch both carefully, talking to the second dog, seeing that he really was injured. His back leg was half dragging.
“Crap,” he muttered, frowning. “Any chance I can get close enough that you might let me get beside you?” He watched as that second dog shuffled anxiously on its feet.
“You’re hurting too. I’m so sorry,” he whispered. As he sat here and waited, watching to see what the alpha dog would do, the injured one laid down beside Jenner. He was just far enough away that Jenner couldn’t touch the dog. Yet it was also evident from the look on the poor dog’s face that he was in great pain.
Jenner whispered, “I’m so sorry, buddy. This isn’t exactly how you thought your life would go, was it? You had a home. You had somebody you hoped would look after you. And where that guy went, I don’t know. And chances of him getting you back again aren’t great. And I don’t know if I’ll be able to save you either, but I can try.” He looked over at the first dog, only to realize he’d disappeared. At that, Jenner’s blood ran cold.
“Okay, that’s not good either,” he whispered, slowly shifting to look around. He didn’t trust that one at all. Something was going on with him, and it sure as hell wouldn’t be empathy for the other dog. If the lead dog could get this poor injured one up on his feet again, the lead dog would force the beta dog to move until he collapsed. At a worst case scenario, a dog like that first one would try and hound the second one to walk some more and either eventually would kill him or would just walk away and leave him to die. And that’ll have the first one running to get another pack and another meal.
Jenner just didn’t know what else was on its agenda.
Once again he swore at the missing squatter, who’d decided that these animals didn’t deserve any kind of a second chance—because they did. Jenner just didn’t know about any such possibility for the first one now, having stalked him twice, now prepared to eat Jenner. Sometimes things happened, and the animals just couldn’t be saved. And other times things happened, and you could do everything that you tried hard to do, and it just wouldn’t be enough to make a difference.
He watched as the injured one whined and just kind of rolled into place. “Sorry, buddy.” Jenner continued to look around to see where the other dogs were. He saw absolutely no sign of the leader or of Sisco, and that worried Jenner even more, until he caught sight of Sisco, who stared just behind Jenner to the left. And knowing instinctively that Sisco saw something important, Jenner shifted and rather than going up a tree, he immediately pivoted to face the lead dog, coming right toward him.
The dog froze, and Jenner nodded. “Yes, you better believe it. You really don’t want to be coming at me right now.” Jenner cast a quick glance at the injured dog, just to be sure, but it wasn’t moving.
“You’re on your own now,” Jenner stated. “Is that what you want? You’re used to hunting in packs, and right now you’ve lost everybody but yourself.”
The dog curled a lip.
“Yeah, I see you. You still think you’re pretty tough, but, without that pack behind you, you’re nothing. And this dog is injured and needs help. You? I’m not so sure about. There might be only one answer for you. Sorry, buddy. Sometimes life just does it to you, and, in this case, it’ll be bad news.” The dog, looked over at his partner, but seeing absolutely no action from the injured dog, the alpha dog immediately backed up a few feet and then, with a bark, took off.
Feeling a sense of relief, Jenner looked over to see that Sisco had also disappeared, as if not trusting the other dog. Jenner just hoped Sisco wasn’t anywhere near the alpha when the sheriff found that one wild dog in particular.
As Jenner approached the injured beta dog on the ground, he called out to him. The dog whined. “Yeah, I hear you. However, circumstances and all that, I just don’t know if it’s safe to trust you.” He bent into a crouch position and just watched. The dog whined again, his tail trying to wag. “And the other dog that I saw, you didn’t have your heart into killing, like he did, but not many people understand that. When a wild dog pack like that is formed, either you survived or they would often kill you, if you couldn’t keep up.” He’d seen it time and time again, and, in a case like this, he could only hope that this dog would get a second chance.
