“Not a problem,” he said, “but I need the address where the dog is then.” The caller hesitated and then it came out in a rush. “Good enough. Where do you want your money?”
“Leave it at the bar where you were earlier,” he said.
“Anybody there who’ll find out what you did and want to hunt you down?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and there was hesitation in his voice. “You got any other place to leave it?”
“Not safely, no. Do you want to meet?”
“No!” the guy’s voice called out.
“Okay,” Caleb said, “so I’ll leave it at the cantina then. But I don’t know if you’ll get it that way though.”
“Leave it for José. Put it in an envelope and leave it for José.”
“Will do.”
“When will you leave it?” he said.
“I’ll make the trip tonight.”
“Okay, I want the money tonight,” he said.
“Got it. Should be at the cantina in about an hour, an hour and a half.”
“Good,” he said. “If you’re going after that dog, you’ll need some firepower. As I said, that bastard is mean.” And, with that, the caller hung up.
He looked at her and said, “I don’t want to leave you alone tonight, not with the shooter loose.”
“Good,” she said. “I didn’t want to be left alone either. So I’ll come with you.”
He winced at that.
“Oh no,” she said. “Obviously we have to do this because that dog is out there somewhere. And, if he’s tied up, that’s also not good for the dog. It’ll make him mean.”
“Well, it will take a bit for that to happen,” he said, “but he’s certainly not getting the care he was expected to get.”
“So what’re our choices?” she asked curiously.
“Well, I have to make the drop.”
“You don’t trust the people where you’re dropping the money?”
“Hell no,” he said. “And obviously this guy doesn’t either. So we’ll wait, be a little bit late, and, when we get there, we’ll see if we can catch this guy too.”
“Why would you do that?” she said.
“Because it’s obvious that he needs money, and he might have a little more information than he’s given us so far.”
“Got it,” she said. “When do we leave?”
He looked at the empty plates, back at her, and said, “How about now?”
Chapter 7
Laysha was determined to go with him. She was terribly uncomfortable staying at home—especially after the shooting. But it was also dangerous for Caleb to meet this guy alone. However, after finding the dead body and then being shot at, she didn’t want to be separated from Caleb at all. Not to mention the fact that they still hadn’t settled their future. If he was leaving in a few days, she wanted to spend as much time with him as she could. She got up, let the dogs out of the spare bedroom, gave them some food scraps. As she watched them eat, she asked, “Do we take any?”
At that, Graynor walked up to her and put his muzzle against her hand. She bent down and gave the great big dog a gentle cuddle. “You should stay here,” she said. “You’ve worked hard all your life. You get to just relax for the last year.”
“I forgot how big he is,” Caleb said. “Standing up like that, he sure shows his heritage.”
“I know, and he’s still such a big watchdog.”
“But he didn’t notice the shooter,” he murmured.
“How could he? The shooter was outside at the far edge of my property, and Graynor was probably sleeping in the guestroom where we locked him in. And he should be sleeping now. After I feed them all properly.” She got up and quickly fed all the dogs. As she looked at the three smaller ones, she asked Caleb again, “Do you want to leave them inside or take some with us?”
“I don’t know what their reaction will be to the War Dog, if we find him,” he said. “It might make us appear less scary if we have them with us.”
“Good enough.” She looked at the four dogs, all the dog food bowls empty now, and hesitated. “Why don’t we take the two smaller males? Fancy over there, the Pomeranian, has a sore foot.’”
“We’ll leave her with Graynor,” Caleb said. He walked over to Graynor, gave him a gentle scratch at the neck. The dog wagged his tail, looked up at him, and walked to the front door. Caleb frowned. “Graynor seems to think he should come with us.”
She hesitated. “He could have the back seat,” she said. “He doesn’t usually want to go anywhere.”
“Well, if he wants to, I’m not against him coming,” he said. “When you think about it, maybe he knows something we don’t.”
“Well, he shouldn’t be seeing any action,” she said. “That would make me very unhappy.”
“And yet,” he said, “it’s a good thing. It’s what he wanted. It’s what he would want. I’m not saying that we’ll see any action today or that we’ll see anything difficult or unpleasant. However, if he wants to come and if he thinks he should come, I believe we should let him. If he needs to go to battle one more time,” he said, looking at her, “who are we to take away his last fight?”
She winced at that. “I’m not ready to lose him at all.”
“You might not be,” he said, “but that time frame isn’t yours to decide.”
“I know,” she said. “It’ll be deadly whenever it happens.”
“Would you prefer to get up one morning and find him dead on the couch or rather have him go into one last battle and be what he is, which is a protective guard dog?” He reached out a gentle hand and squeezed her fingers. “Still, as a warrior, it’s what he would want.”
“He was hardly a warrior,” she protested but relented when Caleb opened the door, and Graynor bounded forward. “And yet he seems like he’s got so much life in him yet,” she murmured.
“Lying around on the couch isn’t always the best thing,” he said. “Graynor’s got to stay nimble, fit, and healthy.”
“I know that,” she murmured, “but I let him do it for so long now.”
“Let’s load up.”
She took her three males, the two Heinz 57 mixes that she’d gotten from rescues over the years—Kali and Max—and Graynor; she left just one at home. But then Fancy had a sore foot, and it was probably better to leave her home. Although Laysha felt guilty.
They all were in Caleb’s rental truck now, and he drove them down the driveway. “You don’t take them everywhere, do you?”
“No,” she said, as she fastened her seat belt. “I do leave them home a lot.”
“It’s good for them to be accustomed to both,” he said in that noncommittal voice.
“Yeah,” she said, “but they were also my saving grace all the years that I was working my way through the marriage and the divorce,” she said. “So I’m very aware of how many emotional needs they helped me deal with.”