The Two Dog Solution, page 1
THE TWO DOG SOLUTION
A DILYA’S DOG FORCE STORY
M. L. BUCHMAN
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ABOUT THIS BOOK
After years of pursuing one dream, what happens when you find another?
Finding and saving her mentor consumes Dilya Stevenson’s every thought. The ex-master spy and covert librarian invested years to train Dilya as her replacement.
But as the final hunt approaches the finish, the danger escalates. As does the risk of losing something very precious...herself.
Can two Shetland Sheepdogs and the boy who always loved her save the day, and her heart?
1
Dilya Stevenson sent two text messages, then passed out in the passenger’s seat before he’d even pulled out of the parking lot of The Cog Railway.
Jimmy glanced in the rearview mirror at the trains that carried thousands of tourists to the top of Mount Washington. It was the highest peak in the Northeast and, after four months working there, he felt as if he’d left something important behind. He hadn’t quit his job there. Yet, still in the parking lot in the middle of New Hampshire, a piece of him had gone missing. There was a friendly pace here wholly different from his childhood in Washington, DC or his last few years at MIT earning his Masters in Mechanical Engineering. He’d miss the pace and he’d miss the people.
But another part of him now lay sleeping in the passenger seat.
At the first curve, the railway, the Marshfield Base Station lodge, and his comfortable life, all disappeared behind the golden birch and red-orange maple trees of the chill September day. He’d made a place for himself here, learning about the trains and how to drive them. Some day he hoped to help design them.
As he followed the narrow two-lane road twisting through the trees down to the barely larger two-lane highway in the valley, he could only hope he’d be back.
On the surface, he was taking a few days off to drive a friend to Washington, DC in her Mini Cooper car and visit Dad.
But with Dilya Stevenson, futures were never so straightforward. Things happened fast when she was around. Yesterday, out of the blue, she’d said she was coming to see him in northern New Hampshire. She’d arrived a bare four hours ago and now he was racing south in a desperate attempt to save her mentor from some killer who’d been hunting the ex-master-spy Miss Watson.
He looked again in the rearview mirror, hoping for one last glimpse of the life he’d been enjoying so much.
Instead, he saw the noses of their two dogs glaring at him from the back seat. The two Shetland Sheepdogs, her Zackie and his Merle, were used to riding in the front seat of their respective vehicles, the seat Dilya slept in.
He shook his head at them and swore he heard the mutual dog sighs before they turned once more to watch out the side windows.
Dilya had said she’d slept only a few hours in the last six days and the way she’d collapsed, he believed her. She’d raced all over the East, from Alabama to DC and the UN in New York, chasing clues to help her save Miss Watson.
It had taken the help of every member of their old high school group, the Chef’s Club, to unravel what was happening. The four of them had come together junior year, putatively to visit different restaurant kitchens and learn from the chefs. Because it was Washington, DC, it quickly became lessons in various global cultures to be learned from Thai, Ethiopian, Japanese, and other chefs.
Then they’d talked their way into the White House kitchen and met Dilya. She’d always been a mystery at school, that girl who worked as the First Nanny and First Dog Sitter. Who actually lived in the White House for crying out loud.
She’d kept to herself, making her easy to miss…for most kids. To him she’d stood out as bright as a lighthouse beacon. The top of almost every class, yet he’d seen her intentionally screw up on exams. Never by much. Just enough to stay off the valedictorian radar. That she’d left to Val, the founder of the Chef’s Club. The other three of them had vied valiantly for salutatorian—which Kimberlee had snagged, Dilya remaining quietly and carefully in their slipstream.
But in the White House kitchen, they’d met and inducted her into the club. And she’d transformed it into a think tank for the future because that’s the kind of thing she did…well, without thinking. Jimmy didn’t know if she was a genius, but she was brilliant in so many ways that it didn’t matter.
At the base of the mountain, the road swung wide around the Mount Washington Resort in Bretton Woods. It was an odd spot for major international conferences, but they held a number of them here despite its remoteness from any decent airport. Perhaps the attraction was the isolation itself. Other than Mount Washington, the only activities were hiking, fishing, and skiing. And leaf peeping.
He waited at the train tracks as the Mountaineer, a Conway Scenic Railway train, rolled through to their endpoint station a hundred meters farther on. Slowing to a crawl, someone opened one of the side doors.
And there was Marsha, looking out at him.
She’d been mounting a major campaign to date him ever since he’d arrived in the area. She was tall and beautiful, yet he’d avoided her. And now that Dilya slept in the seat beside him, he finally knew why.
Marsha watched him as she slowly shifted through his field of vision.
No sassy wink. No air-hip check with a radiant smile. Just…thinking. Her attention briefly slid to Dilya, who he’d arranged to sleep on Marsha’s couch for a few hours last night after she’d arrived exhausted in the wrong town—at the other end of the Mountaineer’s route.
Then Marsha nodded thoughtfully and sent him a friendly salute, one that might have been a goodbye, before disappearing around the final curve. It tempted him to pull in and ask her what that meant. He liked Marsha. He simply hadn’t wanted to date her.
But there wasn’t time.
If the secret code that Dilya had found hidden at the UN and needed him to decipher was accurate, then Miss Watson was in terrible danger and needed help by tomorrow afternoon at the latest. Dilya hadn’t explained why.
DC lay nine hours away. It was already noon.
As soon as Marsha’s train cleared the tracks, he turned onto the highway and punched south.
2
He managed to rouse her when he stopped at Munroe’s in Twin Mountain. He’d phoned ahead and they’d made him two mushroom-Swiss burgers that they were both partial to—he hoped she still was. And two bare burgers, uncooked, for the dogs.
She ate it, took a sip of her root beer, and passed out again with no other clear indication that she’d actually been conscious for it.
He picked up I-93 South and aimed for DC.
He set the cruise control to free up his attention. Quickly bored by the highway, the two dogs curled up for a nap together. At least they got along.
Then he tried to think about the code Dilya had brought him. He didn’t have much luck. Every time he tried to focus on it, he kept remembering that she’d driven all of the way from New York to New Hampshire to ask for his help. And that he’d been kind of a shit about it.
Dilya Stevenson had always flummoxed him. He was a DC local boy who’d stumbled into one of the city’s most elite schools because his family happened to live a block away. When the district had tried to palm him off on Metro High, his mom had stalked into the main office with his test scores clenched in her fist. She’d been a DC cop, the kind that no one in their right mind would ever mess with.
Soon after, close by Washington Metropolitan High School, she’d run into someone not in her right mind. He still couldn’t stand to venture into the neighborhood where Mom and her partner were gunned down during a domestic.
In contrast, Dilya had been this White House goddess. He’d lost count of how many times they’d pulled her out of class because the First Family was flying halfway around the world and needed her as First Nanny.
Exotic—with tan-dark skin, ruffled black hair that wafted about her shoulders, and the greenest eyes on the planet—he’d rarely spoken coherently in her presence. When the club was together, he pretended he was talking to the others and could function like he was at least partly human. On his own with her? Well, he’d proven today how crap he was at that.
Yet she’d hugged him fiercely when he’d asked if she wanted company on her race to DC. That was something he’d never forget. Nor how she’d let him lead her by the hand through the icy battering wind atop Mount Washington. Or while sitting over hot cocoa as he’d deciphered her coded message from Miss Watson. And…
Yeah.
He’d figured that once they were in the car, they’d discuss the message’s contents. But she’d collapsed with exhaustion.
The process of decryption hadn’t required him to read the message, instead he’d been solely focused on a letter-by-letter analysis and that the letters were forming clear text words.
He recalled most of it. Some made sense, some didn’t.
After warning her to Be very careful in the first line, Miss Watson had turned around with a counterintuitive instruction. Use ID prominently. Use my name. Visit as many head librarians as possible in one half day: LOC, Folger, Ink, Mint, NPM… The list was long. CIA last. Then meet me at SLA tradeshow 1pm.
He’d recognized the LOC as the Library of Congress like any DC kid would. Folge r? Was that the Shakespeare one? NPM might be the National Postal Museum. He recognized less than half of the others, though he certainly recognized the CIA. And he had the nasty feeling that if Dilya and Miss Watson were involved that it wasn’t the Culinary Institute of America they were talking about.
And what was the SLA tradeshow? Was that like a show about spying tradecraft? If so, he definitely didn’t want to know about that.
Into the deep end. Was he ready for that?
He checked on his passengers, all still asleep.
Dilya Stevenson. Asleep beside him. Even in a car zipping south, it was an unexpected gift. Yeah, if she was involved, he was on board wherever it led them. He tried not to think about that, but it was a long quiet drive.
3
Dilya woke to a crick in her neck the likes of which made her afraid to move. The least shift of position and her head might fall off. She eased upright with the greatest of care and discovered that while her head might remain attached, she might be happier if it hadn’t. Shooting pangs of overstretched muscles released only a tiny bit at a time.
Car seat.
She didn’t recognize it at first. But… Oh! She’d bought this car five days ago in Tennessee. Or had it been Kentucky? South Carolina. Four days. She rubbed at her eyes. Four days of chasing—
Dilya jolted upright.
Darkness. Night.
She sat in her car’s passenger seat. Parked in some rest area.
Zackie offered a half-awake whine from the back seat. Moments later, two dog heads popped forward between the seats. Her own Sheltie and Merle, who belonged to—
Slumped in the driver's seat like someone had shot him lay Jimmy Martin. He’d…
Her brain finally came fully online. He’d agreed to help her drive back to DC.
She reached out a tentative hand to touch his. It was warm, though he didn’t stir. A finger slipped around his wrist and she found his pulse. Steady and solid. She released a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.
Alive. Sleeping. Not dead. That was good.
Why had he stopped here of all places? Not that she knew where it was. Out the window, all she saw was a couple of lights shining on empty sidewalks, a dumpster, and the inevitable concrete block bathrooms trying to pretend that they didn’t look like exactly what they were.
“Jimmy?”
When he didn’t wake, she shook his shoulder a little. His head, which had managed to rest at an uneasy equilibrium against the seat’s headrest, slipped to the side and hit the window with an audible Thunk!
“Ow! What? Where are we?”
“I’d hoped that you knew that.”
Jimmy blinked out the window, but didn’t come fully awake until Merle licked his face. “Oh. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
“Why didn’t you wake me? We could have switched.”
“Uh, you needed the sleep. I figured that I’d close my eyes for a minute and dredge up some reserves. Sorry. Guess I didn’t have any. Didn’t sleep much last night.” His grimace said not at all. Had that been because of her pending arrival? Why would he have been worried about that?
The whines from the back seat were escalating.
“Dog walk area behind us,” he hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’ve got it.”
He opened his door and the dogs both zoomed over his lap, squeezing between his chest and the steering wheel. Hard slaps to his face with their thick tails as they wriggled by, left him spluttering and wiping at his face.
Dilya laughed aloud.
“That’s a sound I don’t hear much from you.” He turned to her.
“I laugh plenty.”
“Not that I’ve ever heard.” He slid out of the car and called to the dogs, waving them toward the assigned grassy area.
Sure she laughed. Okay, maybe not often, but she was sure she had. Of course, there’d not been much to laugh about since her parents’ murder in the Hindu Kush mountains when she was nine. Her life was good, but laughter? Her stepdad Archie frequently offered a low chuckle, but stepmom Kee not so much.
Dilya clambered out of the car to stretch the last of the kinks out of her body. Jimmy’s laugh carried easily from the mostly empty rest area. Since she’d woken, two cars had arrived and one left, but at this hour no one seemed hurried.
This hour? She checked her phone. Midnight? After sleeping twelve straight hours in the car, no wonder her neck felt the way it did. The real problem was that car sleep was like airplane sleep, at best a breakeven proposition but never truly restful.
She tried, but her head wouldn’t be turning comfortably to the left for hours to come.
They should have been in DC by nine, or ten with bad traffic. A quick check on her map app said they were an hour out.
Jimmy must have stopped three or four hours ago and fallen asleep once he’d parked. That meant he’d driven the whole way without any complaint, simply to allow her to catch up on her sleep.
She tried to see him in the dark but caught no more than a silhouette racing back and forth on the rest area lawn, chased by a pair of happily yipping Shelties.
Jimmy had a good laugh that carried easily across to her. She remembered that from high school too. And he used it often and easily. His quick mind turned everything into a game. He’d even made the President laugh when Dilya had introduced the Chef’s Club to him.
A gift. It was some kind of a gift that she didn’t have. People liked her well enough—at least the ones she cared about. But none shared laughter with her.
Dilya took over the driving for the last leg.
In minutes, despite his exercise with the dogs, he’d once again fallen asleep. She wondered if she should warn him about the painful crick he’d have if he kept sleeping like that.
Instead, she focused on getting them into DC.
There they could both sleep for a few hours before she had to start on Miss Watson’s totally mad task.
4
“Morning, Dilya. Whose car?”
Dilya blinked at Linda and her mutt Thor. “Uh, mine. What are you doing working the graveyard shift on the fence?” Their usual shift was daytime inside the White House itself, not at the outer gate.
Linda smiled as Thor sniffed around the tires and under her car. She rolled down the back window enough for Zackie and Merle to peer down at him. Thor didn’t look like much, but Dilya knew that he and Linda had saved a lot of lives during an attack on the White House.
Thor was on duty and ignored the two Shelties past a simple glance and a quick sniff to make sure they wouldn’t explode any time soon.
“Filling in for Juanita. She’s off at a wedding shower.”
“She’s getting married?” How had Dilya missed that?
“A cousin. Who’s sleeping beauty over there?” Linda ducked down to peer across at Jimmy, who still slept.
“Jimmy Martin. You might remember him from my Chef’s Club.”
“I do. I’ll still need his ID and yours.”
She nudged Jimmy awake enough to hand over his wallet. He leaned his head on the window and headed once more toward sleep.
Then he jolted upright. “Cheez! We’re at the White House?”
“Oh, very observant. Got yourself a winner there, Dilya,” Linda laughed. “You two stay where you are.” She handed their IDs off to a second guard who had stayed in the small hut but kept a sharp eye on them. Linda walked Thor around the car, sniffing at every corner. The Shelties followed Thor from window to window, trampling on Jimmy whenever necessary. Dilya was spared as she’d preemptively blocked them by holding onto the steering wheel with her right hand, elbow out.
“Hey, cut that out, you two.” They ignored Jimmy’s protests.
“Grab hold of Merle.”
At her instruction, he wrapped his arms around his dog. Dilya whispered “Fuirich” to Zackie, who instantly settled.
Jimmy blinked in surprise, then smiled. “I forgot that Zackie speaks Scottish Gaelic.”
“What does Merle speak?”
“Dog. And not very fluently. Think he’d respond to Gaelic?”
