Yet his people wear rags.
After the command center, the dog led them to the storage unit where Mercy had been held captive.
After finding the unit, Truman watched the agent reward the dog with a rough game of tug-of-war in the big garage. He moved outdoors after a few seconds of the dog’s happy tail and enthusiastic leaps. The cheerful sight was too much. How could the world move forward as normal when his world had been ripped into pieces?
Impatience percolated under his skin. The dog was getting results, but they weren’t the results Truman wanted, and the process was slow. The agent wouldn’t rush the dog, letting him take his time and stopping for frequent breaks and play.
“We’ll find her,” Agent Gorman said to Truman as he joined him outside. The man’s face was long, weighed down with guilt and exhaustion. Truman was still angry with him and Agent Aguirre for leading Mercy into this disaster.
Truman didn’t reply.
When reward time was over, the dog led them across the clearing and then stopped at the trees. The handler led him in a circle, giving him encouragement.
From what Truman had seen, Mercy had walked through every part of the complex.
Catching a scent, the dog shot off, and the men jogged after him, breaking paths in the fresh snow. Truman panted as he moved, suddenly aware he’d forgotten breakfast that morning. His life was completely upside down and backward. He couldn’t think straight.
Is this how Mercy felt when I was stuck in Ollie’s cabin last spring?
Truman had gone missing for nearly two weeks, ill with a fever and nursing a broken arm, unable to communicate that he was alive and safe in the isolated cabin. Back home, Mercy had led an aggressive search, and his town had started to grieve. It’d been worse for her than him. At least he’d known he was okay and would eventually be healthy enough to walk several miles out of the forest.
But Mercy hadn’t known if he was alive.
Just as he knew nothing right now.
Not knowing was hell.
His nerves had grown hypersensitive and his temper short during the three days he’d known she was missing. He felt like water simmering in a pan, hovering just at that moment before it breaks into a boil. It was just a matter of what triggered his boil and when.
The dog started down the ravine that bordered one side of the compound. It was steep, and it was impossible to see if there were footholds under the snow. The men slowed, and the handler called the dog to wait. He stopped, furiously wagging his tail as he looked expectantly at the shuffling men.
They inched their way down the ravine. Truman stumbled twice, tripping over rocks hidden under a foot and a half of snow. It took twenty minutes for the men to get to the bottom. Delighted to resume his work, the dog darted along the bottom of the ravine for a hundred feet and then circled under a tree and sat in the snow, ears forward and eyes eager, looking to his handler.
“Did he lose the scent?” Gorman asked.
Truman’s pulse raced as he watched the immobile dog.
“No,” said the handler. “That’s a hit.” He glanced nervously at Truman. “Something dead is under there.”
Truman and the other agents attacked the snow with their hands only to find bare ground. Men were sent back to the compound for shovels. The long minutes of waiting nearly heated Truman over that boiling point.
The men returned and started to dig, immediately finding results. Parts of severely decomposed bodies began to appear. Twice Truman had to stop digging to lunge away and vomit. Gorman tried to make him return to the compound. He wouldn’t.
“The decomposition is far too advanced,” one agent stated, holding his collar over his nose. A half hour of digging had determined the dog had hit on a shallow grave containing three bodies. “These have been buried for months if not longer.”
Relief sent Truman to his knees, and he was not ashamed that he cried.
The canine’s handler made increasingly wide circles around the grave, trying to find another trail. The dog didn’t catch Mercy’s scent, and the search was temporarily halted to recover the dead.
***
The next morning Truman and Agent Gorman followed the K9 team again. The other agents who’d searched with them yesterday had been pulled to help the investigation inside the compound. Truman felt slightly abandoned, but he knew the dog was what was important. A dozen men could follow the dog, and it wouldn’t speed up the search.
The Labrador started where they’d left off yesterday and spent two hours in the ravine without results. The handler took the dog on a slow, thorough search around the perimeter of the camp, hoping to pick up another trail. The dog’s tail didn’t wag as it had the day before, and the handler took more breaks and played more games, trying to keep the Lab’s spirits up. The dog seemed nearly as down as Truman felt.
No more trails were found.
After a long afternoon, the K9 handler told him he didn’t believe there was anything else to be found outside the compound. His eyes were cautious as he spoke to Truman, offering to try again tomorrow but stating he had faith in his dog’s abilities and believed any further search time would be a waste. Truman told him he didn’t care, and two days with the canine was not enough. The handler pressed his lips together but didn’t argue.
That evening, back at the base camp, Truman rubbed his face with his hands as he paced outside the camp in the heavy snowfall. A tiny voice in his head told him the K9 handler was right, but Truman refused to admit it. He wasn’t ready to stop.
He unzipped an inside pocket in his coat and pulled out her engagement ring, staring at the piece of metal and diamonds.
She’ll wear it again.
Truman no longer felt the cold. He wanted to scream. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to get drunk. He wanted to feel her in his arms. And never let go. He shoved the ring back in the pocket and carefully zipped it closed.
“Truman.”
He whirled around to find Agent Ghattas watching him. Jeff and Eddie were behind him, snow speckling their hats.
“What happened?” Truman choked out.
“Nothing has happened. We just need to talk.”
Fear overcame him, and he held his breath. No good news ever came out of that phrase, and Eddie and Jeff wore faces of stone. Whatever Ghattas had to tell him didn’t please them.
“For the last few days we’ve covered every inch of this compound,” Ghattas began. “Actually, we’ve covered every inch multiple times, and the snow keeps getting deeper. The K9 has thoroughly covered the area outside the compound more than once.”
“Send up a drone with FLIR. It can cover—”
“Have you even noticed the weather, Chief?” Ghattas held out a hand, and snow accumulated in his palm. “The snow screws with the infrared.”
Truman held very still, his vision tunneling on the agent.
Don’t . . .
“The forecast for the next few days isn’t any better.” Ghattas looked aside and rubbed his neck. “The Labrador’s handler is concerned about a third day of work in the snow. It’s hard on the dog. It needs some downtime.”
“Don’t do this.” Truman could barely speak.
Regret filled Ghattas’s face, his gaze soft and his mouth turned down. “I gotta put a halt to the outside K9 search for now—”