“Derrick, can I drive you to your sister’s?”
“Nah, if you loan me your phone, I’ll call her to pick me up. You don’t want to drive all the way to Green Oak this time of night.”
She handed her phone over and stooped to pet Maverick again. “How’s he doing?” she asked Rob.
“He’s limping a bit on his left rear leg, but the EMT thought maybe he’d pulled a ligament. Mentally, he seems okay. This is probably the closest he’s been to a working dog in a long time. Luckily, I hadn’t forgotten the Italian word for ‘jump’. As far as I know, he’d never needed to jump out of a window or off a building before. He did it, though. Maybe he was trained to do it. We never had to exit that way when I was with the squad.”
“Hopefully, you’ll never have to do it again.”
Derrick approached them and handed her back her phone. “My sister’s on her way. You don’t have to stick around. I’ll tell Chief Williams he can find you at MJ’s if he needs more info.”
“Right.” Rob shook the man’s hand, and MJ gave him a small wave. “Let’s go, Maverick.” Together the three of them headed across the street to the car.
“If you put the passenger seat back as far as it’ll go, you’ll probably fit better,” she suggested.
He shook his head and opened the rear door for Maverick. The dog took up the entire back seat. He carefully moved his seat back. She peeked into the backseat, not surprised to find that the leg room behind him had dwindled to only a few inches.
“We don’t have that far to go.” She peered into the rearview mirror at Maverick. “You okay there, buddy? Brace yourself and lie down. You can do this.”
Rob snorted, and she shrugged. Okay, so her car was too small for a big, well-built man and his large dog. Her large dog. Would she need to get a bigger car when Maverick was with her all the time? She hadn’t thought of that. He did well in the crew cab of Rob’s truck, but in her little import, not so much.
“Do you think l need to buy a new car?” she asked into the silence as they drove.
“What?”
“Do you think I should buy a new car to accommodate Maverick? I just realized he takes up the whole backseat.”
“Don’t worry about it, MJ. We’ll figure that out.” He looked like he was deep in thought. “Do you have people who sit back there?”
“Not often. If Maverick needs more room, though, I’ll buy a different car.”
“We’ll see. We can drive him around in this car and see how he does.”
She looked at the mirror again. The dog had turned around and was looking out the back window. “Does he move around a lot?”
“Yeah, just like anybody. He shifts positions to get more comfortable. Why?”
“He’s sitting backward now.”
Rob twisted around to see Maverick better. “Yeah, he likes to watch the road to see what’s coming up onto us. It’s a military dog thing—always on patrol, always watching, always protecting.”
“Is that what happened tonight?”
“Yes. He jumped on the bed, which he never does, to wake me up. He was alerting like he did when we were on patrol.”
“Didn’t he bark?”
“No, he’s trained to alert silently so as not to let the enemy know our position. I don’t quite understand why he went back into military mode, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s trained to alert to explosives, large amounts of gunpowder, and chemicals used in bombs. Maybe he just extended it to fit with fires. The thing is, when we were in a war zone, he never paid much attention to burning buildings or other fires.” He sounded thoughtful. “There must have been something else that set him off, or maybe it’s just his animal instinct.”
“How do arsonists usually start fires?”
“With flammable liquids like gasoline or kerosene. Usually stuff that’s readily available. They might use fertilizer, like the Oklahoma City bomber did. This wasn’t a bomb, though. There was no explosion. I’d have felt something like that.”
“Would Maverick have smelled gasoline or kerosene?”
“Oh, yeah. You bet. When he isn’t working, he gets edgy when we stop for gas, but he depends on me to tell him it’s all right.” He paused. “If I hadn’t smelled the smoke, I would have thought he was having a flashback or something.”
Maverick stuck his head between the seats, and Rob ruffled his fur. “You did well, buddy. Saved our lives. Ben fatto, canine guerriero.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well done, warrior dog.”
“Ben fatto, canine guerriero,” MJ echoed. “Bravo.” Maverick nudged her neck with his nose.
“Hey, nice pronunciation, MJ.”
“Well, I’ve been researching when there’s not much to do at the library.”
“Of course.” He grinned at her.
She pulled into the driveway and parked near the back door. She slid out and grabbed her purse while Rob unfolded himself from the front seat and let Maverick out of confinement in the back.
Now that they were here, she had butterflies in her stomach. She led them in through the kitchen and showed Rob the guest room. Since there was only one bathroom in the vintage Craftsman, she pulled several towels out of the storage closet nearby, and handed them to him. She found an extra toothbrush in the bathroom drawer.
“I’ll be awhile,” he said. “I’d better give Maverick a bath, too. Don’t worry, I’ll clean up any mess we make.”
She smiled, impressed that he’d think to make the offer. “I’ll make a bed for Maverick out of beach towels. Do you want anything to eat? Or coffee?”
“No, I’ll
