When she looked at him with her deep-set green eyes, she said quite seriously, “You do know if I won a bunch of money, I’d give you some, don’t you, Mr. Bridger? For the rescue.”
He smiled at her as she rinsed the dog. “How about you buy me an ice cream and we call it even Steven? Now, until then, tell me what I’m guessing. The suspense is killing me.”
She beamed from ear to ear, her sweet face ebullient. “I got an A on my chemistry test! I hung it up on your office bulletin board for you to see. Thanks for all the help with it the other day. I’m still a little fuzzy on the periodic table, but I got ’er done.”
Leaning in, he touched noses with the sodden black and white dog who was shaping up nicely and grinned. “I’m proud of ya, Lizzie. Always happy to help.”
He waved to her as he headed to the back of the old, rambling farmhouse with an enormous backyard and plenty of space for his special-needs rescues to run and play while they waited for adoption.
George would love it here. He’d often thought about bringing her to see the rescue.
Who was he kidding? He thought about her period, but he knew she’d love it. He’d resisted because that would mean he’d become too emotionally involved with an assignment and they frowned upon that upstairs, but she was also his trainee now—an equal, if you will.
The line between them had become blurred, but for the moment, he had other things to keep his mind occupied and off of his continually growing feelings for George.
Primarily, one of the kids who helped out at the rescue who’d been having a really shitty time of it.
Dex padded over to the back door where Justin, one of his high school volunteers, was playing with two blind huskies in the snow in the yard. “Hey, bud!” he yelled. “Good to see you. How was your New Year?”
Justin, a quiet, thoughtful fifteen-year-old with an alcoholic mother and a grandmother just trying to help him survive high school, simply shrugged, breaking Dex’s heart.
He’d been lethargic and despondent since his mother’s arrest on Christmas Eve at a local tavern, and despite seeing his guidance counselor at school, was still really struggling.
“It was okay,” he called, his cheeks red from the cold, before he turned back to the dogs, roughing them up as they rolled happily in the snow.
Justin was a good kid who’d gotten a crap deal in life, and if he could just use the genius mind he’d been given and get a scholarship to a school far away from the responsibility his mother burdened him with, he had a real chance.
And that was what The Furry Gates Animal Rescue was all about. Someone taking a chance, not just on the special-needs animals, but on the kids who volunteered as part of a program he’d managed to arrange with the local high school.
Furry Gates was a place for them to go after school. A quiet place for them to study and forge friendships with other kids from similarly troubled backgrounds. It was also a place for them to learn responsibility and, according to the principal at the local high school he partnered with, it would look good on their college resumes.
He’d created quite a network in the time he’d been a guardian angel, making connections with other rescues, local vets and specialists, and tons of foster families.
He wasn’t only passionate about animals; he was passionate about the kids who helped him keep the place running—the kids he actually needed a whole lot more than they needed him. They gave him purpose, a fulfillment he’d never known in life or now death, both the animals and the kids.
“Mr. Bridger?”
He turned to find Gaffney Brown holding Dex’s cat, Susan. The hulk of a seventeen-year-old foster kid was on the cusp of graduating high school and heading off to wrestle at Iowa State on a scholarship he’d just found out he’d earned.
“She was in the attic again,” he said with a cheerful smile, scruffing the cat’s ears. “Just can’t keep that nose out of things, can ya, Susan?”
Taken from his abusive father and mother when he was seven years old, Gaffney had been bounced around from foster home to foster home for years before he’d finally settled in at the Hawthornes’ when he was fifteen—a local family who were active in the foster community, if not distracted and a bit overwhelmed.
You’d think the experience of being shipped from place to place for half his life would leave a kid bitter, especially if you read his file with social services and knew about the abuse he’d suffered, but not Gaffney.
Gaffney was a ray of sunshine. Always smiling. Always willing to lend a hand when Dex needed one the most, and he was as proud of him as if Gaffney were his own.
He’d miss him like hell when he went off to school, but he’d send him off with a big party and a smile on his face because Gaffney was going places, and Dex was sick with pride about that.
Taking his calico cat from the boy, he held her close before looking her in the eye. “How many times do I have to tell you, the attic isn’t safe. One day we’re going to find you under a bunch of drywall and floorboards if you don’t stay out of there, Miss,” he chastised as she booped him with her misshapen nose.
When he’d found Susan in an abandoned house at what the vet estimated was six months old, her nose was red, swollen and distorted. Old Doc Leary had done some tests and taken some X-rays and diagnosed her with cryptococcus, a fungal disease that had been left unattended for too long.
Scar tissue had formed due to a long period of inflammation, and though with
