Greyson could hear her whispers.
“Thank you so much, Kona. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Kona’s tail went crazy, and she rolled over, still in Jessica’s arms.
Laughing, he said, “Kona, you don’t look all that fierce now.” He reached over and scratched her gently on the neck and chest. He gave her a good belly rub too. “I think those crazy hard days are over now, girl.”
“Absolutely they are,” Jessica said. “I don’t have any dog food though, but I’m sure I’ve got something in the house.”
“What you need to do,” he said, “is go call the cops.”
“What about Kona?” she asked. “We don’t want the dog to be picked up.”
“Do you have any rope?” he asked. “I’ll make a lead and put it on her.”
“I might have something in the garage,” she said.
“First the cops,” he said firmly. “Then go to the garage and see if we’ve got something I can use to restrain her.”
“Do you think she’s still dangerous?”
“No, but, if she’s the model of a well-behaved dog on a rope,” he said, “the police won’t have any argument with me keeping her.”
Chapter 6
Jessica didn’t even know what to say. She stared out in the darkness around the house and then back down at the intruder. “I guess he’s not saying anything, is he?” she whispered. She didn’t even know why the hell she was whispering, but it just seemed like anything above a whisper would disturb the peace. And that made no sense. She gave a half maniacal shout of laughter. “Dear God,” she said, “here I’m worried about being quiet, when I need to have the cops come and haul this asshole away.”
“You go do that,” Greyson said quietly.
As she watched, he pulled out the guy’s wallet.
She frowned. “What are you doing?”
“Once the cops get here, they won’t tell us anything,” he said. “I want to know who this guy is.” He flipped the wallet open to the driver’s license, pulled it out, as well as several credit cards, and took photos.
“Why the credit cards?” She hated that tone of suspicion in her voice, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why he needed photos of them.
“Because look. They’re all in different names,” he said quietly.
At that, she gasped and bent closer. Sure enough they were. “Did he steal them?”
“Possibly,” he said, “or he’s using fake IDs.” He flipped through the wallet and found some cash, as in several hundred dollars, which was way more money than she’d seen in a long time. Making sure nothing was of interest, he shoved the wallet back in the guy’s pocket, then Greyson proceeded to check the rest of him over. In a front pocket, he found the guy’s cell phone.
With that, she watched an almost feral smile come across his face. She crouched beside him. “You’ll need a passcode.”
He nodded. “It would be needed in most cases.” But he double tapped the screen, and, sure enough, up came the icons.
She gasped again. “Seriously?”
He nodded, looked at her, and said, “Did you call the cops?”
She hesitated, not wanting to leave him alone with the phone and miss something. “I’ll call in a minute,” she said.
He chuckled. “You make a great sidekick.”
“Not exactly what I was going for in life,” she said drily.
He nodded and smiled. “You could do much better.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said. “So far you and the dog have teamed up to save my son’s life and mine. And speaking of which”—she spied the dog as she laid on the grass beside them—“I never got the rope.” She quickly went to the garage and picked up a bundle she remembered being there, although it was more of a braided cord. While here, she placed a quick call to 9-1-1, then returned to the scenario outside. “This is all I have,” she said quietly and set the rope next to him.
He looked up from taking photographs of the guy’s phone screen. Then he connected the two phones with a cord.
She frowned and asked, “What are you doing?”
“Transferring contact information,” he said, just above a whisper, as he reached out for the braided cord and quickly created a loop at one end. Walking over to the dog, he sat down, and, with the loop up over his shoulder, he reached out and gently scratched the dog on the back of the neck. In a smooth move that she’d never seen before, he lowered the loop down his arm and very quickly around the dog’s neck. With Kona now on a rough leash, she seemed to understand and behaved more like a War Dog, Jessica presumed.
When Greyson stood and commanded the dog to come, the dog walked toward them. When he told her to heel, she went around his back and sat on his right side. Greyson reached down and gave several rewarding scratches and reinforcement to Kona.
Jessica shook her head. “I’m really glad you got her,” she said. In the distance she heard sirens, and she groaned. “Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you. I also called the cops.”
He nodded. Walking back to where the phones were, he gave a small sound of satisfaction and quickly disconnected them, putting the guy’s phone back in his pocket, then sat down on the veranda step beside the stalker as Greyson sent those contacts to Badger to cull through.
Once her attacker came to, lying between Greyson and Kona, he knew he was caught. When he heard the sirens, he panicked. “I’ll give you money to let me go,” he hissed, then he stayed silent.
“I’m sure you would,” she snapped, “but you’ve been stalking me and my son, making our lives miserable for a long time now.”
He shrugged. “The money was good.”
“Yeah? Who’s paying you? That’s what I want to know,” she said.
He gave her a half a smile. And, from the position he was in, facedown on the
