Page 20 of Chasing Creed

“Everything okay?” Brodie asked.

“Did he know about the electric wire?” Jason wanted to know.

Creed chewed. Took another bite, letting Hannah do her magic before he responded. The dogs were lying around them, unbothered by the sheen of mist on the scrub grass or the drip-drip off the leaves above. The fog should have started to lift by mid-day, but instead, it had settled in even thicker as the afternoon wore on.

“He claims they didn’t know about the fencing. To be honest, I think he got the report from the hunter about the vehicle. Ran the plates. Hit on the missing person report. But when he came out here and saw the mess, he decided someone else should take care of it.”

“You think he’s waiting for Sheriff Norwich?” Jason asked.

“That’s my guess.”

“At least they searched all the buildings,” Brodie said.

“That might not have happened either. Earlier he said they were empty. Now, he told me there’s trash inside the house that they didn’t want to poke or move.”

Creed glanced at Grace and took a sip of water. She could sense his simmering anger, frustration, and discontent. Whatever it was, he needed to steady himself despite the urge to punch the man. “He hasn’t even called in a forensic team yet.”

“Really?”

“Said there’s no verification this is a crime scene.”

Jason shook his head. “You were right,” he told Brodie, as the two exchanged a look. Then to Creed he said, “Brodie knew he was lying.”

Creed wasn’t surprised. He continued eating his sandwich between gulps of water. Grace watched him. Emotion runs down the leash. She could read him almost better than Hannah could.

“This whole thing seems off. If Sheriff Norwich wasn’t already on her way, I’d say we pack up and go home. What do you two want to do?” Creed finally asked. He trusted both of their instincts.

“We’re already here,” Jason said. “The dogs are running a scent. Let’s give them a chance to find it. I think Scout might be itching to get to that mess at the edge of the trees.”

He pointed to a debris pile about a hundred feet away. Chunks of concrete, spears of rebar and pieces of cracked drywall were tangled with fallen branches and discarded tires. Grass and kudzu swallowed portions of the mound. That’s where Grace had been headed, too. Neither dog showed any interest in Sheriff Daniel’s narrative.

Creed nodded then looked to Brodie. She was staring at the area Jason pointed out, not paying attention to them as if her mind was somewhere else. When she glanced over, she did a double-take, only then realizing he was waiting for her response.

“Is it weird that we haven’t seen any blood out here?” she asked.

Creed hadn’t thought about it. “Judging by the condition of the blood in the SUV, it’s been a few days. All this mist, the humidity, wildlife…details can get swallowed up out here pretty quickly.”

“But the sheriff seemed convinced someone left the vehicle and was still injured. That’s his urgency, right?” She looked back at the abandoned vehicle, now in the distance. “I can’t imagine anyone taking refuge in that pile of stuff. And yet, that’s where the dogs want to go.”

“If someone was injured,” she continued, “Wouldn’t they take shelter in one of the buildings? And wouldn’t they have already crawled out or yelled when they saw our vehicles?”

Creed looked over at Jason, but he already knew his handler agreed with him. Neither believed their dogs would find a survivor.

“You think they’re dead.” A statement, not a question.

“We’re not investigators,” Jason told her.

Creed watched Brodie take that in, then nod as if she and Jason had discussed this before. He finished his sandwich. Jason was right. It wasn’t their job to investigate. Or speculate. He wiped his mouth with a napkin. Took another gulp of water.

“Okay, okay,” Brodie conceded. “I do think we should let the dogs finish. They’ll have a bunch of pent-up energy if we don’t. But maybe Hank and I should scout ahead,” Brodie offered, holding up the telescoping pole. “Just to make sure there’s no more hidden obstacles in the grass.”

Creed’s jaw clenched before he could stop it, and Brodie noticed. To her credit, she didn’t call him on it. His impulse to protect her, or as she would insist, “overprotect” her, was a challenge. How can you lose someone you love for sixteen years and not instinctively want to prevent that from ever happening again?

It didn’t matter how relentless she was. That she’d completed her GED in three months. That every day she worked to get stronger. He could see the evidence in her defined biceps. She was lean and fit and tough even though he thought she was still too thin. Hannah used the word, “willowy” to describe her figure, and Creed tried not to use “scrawny.”

As Brodie waited, his eyes scanned the surroundings again. He knew the dense fog weighed heavily on his decision. It contributed to his hesitation. It threatened to trigger his claustrophobia. It was like walking through clouds. The ground became invisible, and so was anything and everything behind and between the trees.

He didn’t like hidden obstacles. Electric barbed wire reminded him too easily of buried IEDs outside the wire. In Afghanistan as a Marine K9 handler, he and his dog were the first ones out. First to die. The fact that he and Rufus were almost killed, but not killed, was due to gut instinct, not some fancy weaponry.