Page 36 of Fifty First Times (Sharing You 0.40)
“What are you going to do with that?” Tanner asked, nodding at the syringe.
“Giving the dogs something to find.” Earlier in the day I’d unloaded several bags of stuffed animals I’d purchased from Goodwill and left them outside. I reached into the bag and pulled out a ratty brown bear.
“You teach the dogs to find teddy bears?”
“Not just teddy bears.” I plunged the syringe into its stuffed belly and inserted the liquid. “Corpse bears. I also have bone fragments and placentas that people have donated to me after their surgeries.”
He made a face. “Gross.”
I tossed the bear to the ground and folded my arms across my chest. “Why are you here, Tanner? Obviously you’re not interested in a career switch to the glamorous world of canine search and rescue.”
“I—no. Of course not.” He straightened, his face becoming serious. “This morning, Olivia O’Dell, a five-year-old girl, disappeared from her yard.”
My breath caught in my throat. Now he had my attention. “What happened?”
“We don’t know.” He swept his hand through his hair, something I’d seen him do a thousand times whenever he was frustrated. The familiarity of it made my chest ache. “According to the mother, the girl was outside playing for approximately forty-five minutes while her mother straightened the house. Around ten A.M. when the mother went to check on her, Olivia was nowhere to be found. We have no witnesses. No idea if she was abducted or simply wandered into the woods and got lost. That’s why we need you. We’ve got a search party assembled and the chief requested your help. If she is lost in the woods, we’re hoping one of your dogs can locate her before . . .” His words trailed off.
But he didn’t have to finish. I was all too aware of the things that could happen to a child lost in the woods. Accidental drowning, injury, and animal attacks, just to name a few.
“How about it, Cricket? Can you help us out?”
I flinched. Cricket was a nickname he’d invented for me in high school because of my size and black hair, a name I hadn’t heard in the four years he’d been gone. I’d never expected to hear it again.
I turned around and swallowed several times as a wave of fresh pain washed over me. A popular saying in dog training was that emotions traveled down the leash. Tanner’s sudden appearance was affecting me more than I cared to admit, which made me wonder how well I’d be able to perform as a dog handler. With a little girl’s life at stake, I couldn’t afford to be distracted.
He touched my arm and it was all I could do to keep from trembling beneath his fingers. I wondered how many girls those fingers had touched in the years he was gone, and why I wasn’t enough to make him stay. As if he could read my mind, he said, “I know I owe you an explanation.”
“No.” I whirled around, forcing him to drop his hand. The second it left my shoulder, I could breathe again. “You don’t owe me a thing. Besides, there’s a little girl to find.”
“But later, maybe we—”
“There’s no we.” I unbuckled the leash I’d tied around my waist and brushed past him on my way to the training building entryway.
“Cricket,” he called after me. “Do you trust me?”
I froze with my hand on the doorknob. Those were the words of a game we’d played. He’d sneak up behind me, whether I was in study hall, cheerleading practice, or walking the hallway to my locker, and he’d whisper in my ear, Do you trust me? And each time without hesitation, I’d close my eyes and fall backward into his waiting arms. He’d never once let me fall. But I wasn’t a teenager anymore. After what he’d done to me, there was no way I could trust him again. I looked over my shoulder. “No, Officer Wade. I don’t.” And just to be sure the point was driven home, I added, “And the name is Avery.” Before he could respond, I entered the building and let the door shut behind me.
I tried to steady my breathing as I walked across the large training room where I taught obedience classes on the weekends. When I heard Tanner had been hired by the police department, I knew it was only a matter of time until we ran into each other. I just hadn’t expected his appearance to impact me so much. Sure, I’d been devastated when he seemingly dropped off the face of the Earth. But I had four years to get over it. I’d even dated a couple of guys since. True, those relationships fizzled out almost as soon as they started, but that just meant I hadn’t met the right guy yet. It wasn’t like I’d been looking too hard, anyway. Training took up practically all of my time—and that was probably why Tanner looked so good. I was a dieter staring at a piece of chocolate cake. Just because he looked good didn’t mean he was good for me.
I opened the door at the far end of the training building and entered the kennel’s air-conditioned dog runs. I couldn’t help but smile as I walked past the grinning, hopeful faces of the two German shepherds and Belgian Malinois I had in training. In my opinion, nothing equaled a dog’s devotion. A small part of me wondered if I had Tanner to thank for my career choice.
A familiar woof broke through my thoughts and I looked up to find my black Labrador, Shawnee, wagging his tail happily at me from his kennel run. “Hey buddy. Ready to get to work?” I unlatched his door and he burst through, bounding a circle around me. I grabbed the leash off his door and he immediately sat. “We have an important mission today. There’s a little girl missing and it’s up to us to find her.”
Shawnee’s tail thumped softly on the ground in response.
“And there’s something else, too.” I snapped the leash to his collar and led him to the door. “There’s a police officer right outside. You’re welcome to bite him anytime you want. Okay?”
Shawnee barked and his tongue rolled out the side of his mouth. Even though I knew he couldn’t understand a word I said, I was going to take that as a yes.
AFTER A SILENT, uncomfortable twenty-minute drive, Tanner parked his police cruiser at the end of a row of police cars and pickup trucks edged along a line of trees. Several times during the car ride Tanner glanced at me and appeared on the verge of saying something before thinking better of it. I opened the passenger door and retrieved Shawnee from the backseat before he could change his mind.
I’d finished snapping Shawnee’s harness in place when Harold Schwimmer, the town’s police chief, walked toward me. “Avery, glad you could make it.” A tiger tattoo, a tribute to his former college football days, adorned his left forearm. Given the solid mass of muscles straining beneath his shirt, he obviously cared enough about fitness to keep lifting weights even though he was well into his sixties.
“Of course,” I answered him. “Anything I can do to help.”
“You’re a good kid.” He clasped a hand on my shoulder. “We’ve got at least three dozen people searching the woods now, but we can certainly use your dog’s nose.”
Tanner stepped beside me. “Have there been any new developments?”
