She looked up at the vet with tears in her eyes, and she whispered, “Thank you.”
He nodded. “And no charge for a War Dog,” he said. “This animal deserves everything good coming his way. He has seen the worst and the best in humanity. Let’s hope it’s only the best from now on.”
She smiled and said, “You can count on it from our part. Only the best for all of us,” she said, as she was surrounded by her dog family and Caleb. She’d never felt happier; she looked over at Caleb and said, “Right?”
He leaned over, kissed her, and said, “Absolutely. Now we’ll work on our wedding plans and see who to invite.” She opened her mouth, but no words came out. “Absolutely not Jackson. Not Sarah. No argument.”
She grinned and said, “Five dogs for sure, so that means the wedding is at home.”
And he burst out laughing, with the vet and Sandy grinning madly. He gave her another lingering kiss. “Anything you want, sweetie. I’m totally okay with it.”
And she knew that her life had taken a turn she had never anticipated and was damn grateful for it. She gave each of her dogs a cuddle and a kiss. They all seemed to understand something wonderful had just happened, and the smaller dogs danced around. The older, bigger two seemed to smile at her. She smiled back, stood up, and said, “Come on. It’s time to go home.”
And there were never any better words to be found in the dictionary.
Epilogue
Kurt Manchester walked into Badger’s office. “Wow,” he said. “I don’t know what to do with this. You actually have an office of your own.”
Badger looked up, grinned, and said, “Kat insisted. Otherwise I leave my shit everywhere.”
Kurt laughed, sat down on the nearest chair, and said, “What did you want to see me about?”
“Well, I’m sure you’ve heard about the War Dogs that we’ve been dealing with,” he said, one eyebrow lifted as he looked at Kurt.
Kurt nodded. “Yeah, heard something about it. You’re almost done with those, aren’t you?”
“Nope, not happening apparently,” he said. “We’ve got another half dozen here anyway. I haven’t even counted them but was trying to finish off the original files. And this is the last of them,” he said. “When the department went to check up on it, the adoptees admitted that they had only done the adoption for the husband’s brother because he’d really, really wanted it. But, when they followed up with the brother, he had taken off, and the dog was nowhere to be found.”
“And now?”
“We found the brother. He’s in jail.”
“Wow,” he said, “so where the hell is the dog?”
“The brother has no idea, says that the dog never adjusted well to being there, and wasn’t exactly friendly, so he didn’t really give a shit.”
“Great, and what did he do?”
“He gave her to a trucker.”
“Well, that’s still not necessarily bad news,” he said. “A trucker would probably enjoy the dog and keep her on long hauls.”
“Yep, until he got to Kentucky,” he said. “And he lost the dog.”
“Okay,” Kurt said, slowly getting an idea. “And that’s why you’re asking me?”
“Well, Kentucky is your home state, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he said. “But how long ago was the dog lost there?”
“We were given the file awhile ago,” he said. “And we did look at all these, and we found no good leads on any of them. So we weren’t in too much of a panic to put too many man-hours in this direction. We’ve done the best footwork we can, but this is the oldest one we’ve got.”
“So that’s a really cold case for me to look after,” he said, reaching for the file. He opened it up to a picture of a completely golden not-quite-shepherd-looking Malinois. “So definitely female,” he said, guessing from the size.
“Yes, she’s female. She’s fixed. She was an excellent War Dog. She was an IED-sniffing, bomb-sniffing dog, and she was really good at sniffing out the enemy’s weapons in hidden corners. She’s an expert at hiding herself and has done a ton of outdoor training. Her name is Sabine.”
“In other words, she’ll see the world as her enemy. She won’t know who to trust, and she spent these last weeks living on her own.”
“Maybe,” he said, “and I know you think the department was derelict in not getting into this earlier, but we did contact several people that we know throughout the state of Kentucky where the trucker was, where Sabine was last seen, and yesterday we got a tip, saying that somebody had seen a dog looking just like this one at a truck stop.”
“Would it be likely that she’d still be there?”
“The only thing we could think of is it’s the last place that she had human contact. And remember. She’s five, and she’s spent quite a bit of time with people.”
“And was the tip a good tip or a bad tip?”
“That’s where the problem comes in,” he said. “The tipster said that Sabine was trying to attack people. They’d called animal control, but so far nobody had seen Sabine since.”
“I’m on my way,” he said, jumping to his feet, clutching the file.
“Wait,” Badger said. “We can’t pay for this. We’ll cover your expenses, but there’s no wages.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “Any dog that’s been through military training deserves a few good years afterward. It sounds like she’s been given a short shrift this time.”
“It happens,” Badger said, “hopefully not too often. Do you have any K9 training?”
“Maybe not like you mean,” he said, “but I’ve certainly been around dogs all my life. My dad bred them. At least when he was sober enough. My foster families usually had them, for easier assimilation, yada, yada.”
“Good enough,” he said, “this one
