“Absolutely. Then I didn’t have to do it all alone,” she said with a cheeky grin.
He laughed. “Tell me what other plans you have for the place.”
She filled him in on the gist of it, knowing that some of the plans would take years to get off the ground, and, maybe by then, she wouldn’t care about them, but it was fun to talk about. “What about you?” she asked. “Have you thought about buying a place?”
“No, I haven’t,” he said. “That whole recovery thing sidelined me for future plans, and, when I did see that I was slowly regaining my normal health, I wasn’t sure what to do in any aspect. Still not in some ways. I don’t have a job. Not exactly sure what to do about a career.”
“Well, you do have a job,” she said gently. “It might not be a career job right now, but it is something.”
He looked over at her and frowned.
She said, “Beowulf.”
“Well, there’s no payment for that,” he admitted. “It’s purely voluntary.”
“And I love that even more,” she said warmly.
He shook his head. “Only you would. Most people think it’s a waste of my time.”
“Hell no,” she said forcibly. “Those dogs deserve everything we can give them. If that means freeing them from an ugly situation and giving them a better one, then that’s what should be done.”
“See? I knew I liked you.”
She burst out laughing. As they drove up the long driveway to her place, she looked around. “How would we ever tell if there was a visitor?” she asked.
“If they are any good, it’s pretty hard,” he said. “Honestly, if you don’t have any security system and motion sensors and video tracking, I don’t know how you would. Particularly when there are no tracks to show any new presence around.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” she said, “but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do about it.”
“We’ll solve the problem,” he said.
“Once you find the dog, you’re leaving though, aren’t you?”
He looked at her in surprise and then shrugged. “Are you sending me away? I thought we were past that.”
“And I thought you had to go home, and we would see how the long-distance thing worked.”
“Hell with that,” he said. “I have no intention of doing a long-distance relationship.”
“So,” she asked, “have you made any plans yet?”
“Sure haven’t,” he said with a big cheeky grin. “But you could probably talk me into anything.”
She smiled, and, as they pulled up outside the house, he shut off the truck, and they could hear the dogs all inside. “You should put a front fence around here,” he said, “and a doggy door, so they at least can come out to the front yard when they want to.”
“It’s on the list,” she said, as she hopped out. She looked down at her dress and said, “At least I got to wear this for a couple hours.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I can’t wait to get out of this monkey suit.”
“Well, we’re not refinishing floors in these outfits,” she murmured.
“Nope, we aren’t, but, at the same time,” he said, “I’m just glad to have that behind me.” As he walked up the front steps, his phone buzzed. He looked down and laughed. “My boss just asked if I made it through the wedding.”
“Tell him you did and with flying colors,” she said with a smile. She walked in and greeted the dogs, trying to keep them from jumping up on her dress, but, as soon as one did, it seemed they all threw out their good manners and jumped. Eventually she got free, and she kicked off her heels, raced upstairs, checking out the floor. She went down the hallway on her bare feet. It looked pretty decent but felt a little tacky in some spots. She quickly changed into her jeans and a T-shirt and, putting socks on, she walked back across the floor. As she came downstairs, he came out of his bedroom. “The floors aren’t done,” she murmured.
He nodded.
“We need to give it another six or so hours. Sounds like road-trip time to me.”
“I’m good with that,” he said. “Let’s see what you’ve got in the fridge. We have to do some grocery shopping at some point.”
She checked out the fridge and realized it would be sandwiches again. But that was okay because she loved sandwiches. By the time she had them made, he had the dogs fed and coffee made. They sat down with their sandwiches and a cup of coffee, and she asked, “Do you have a game plan for the dog?”
“Yep,” he said.
“Oh, what’s that?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
Not long afterward, they quickly got ready to go, all the dogs in tow—this time not leaving Fancy behind—as they headed out toward his big rental truck.
“What are you doing?” she asked, as he did something to her front door.
“I set it up to see if anybody goes in while we’re gone,” he said quietly.
She stared at him, looked back at the door. “And how did you do that?”
“Setting a hair in the doorjamb, and, when somebody opens the door, the hair falls. It’s basically hard for them to see at the time, but it’s easy for me to see if it’s still there when I get back.”
“Did you do it on the back door too?”
“I did,” he said, “when you went to the bathroom, before leaving.”
“Wow,” she murmured, “I didn’t know.”
“And that makes it a nice and easy thing to do,” he said.
She nodded, and they loaded up in his truck and headed out toward the area where the asshole’s property was. “Are we going back inside that empty house?” she asked nervously.
“No,” he said. “However, I want to go back up and around from this side to see just how far the dead-body house is from the asshole’s property.”
“The drug dealer?”
“If that’s what he is, yes,” he said.
“Are we walking it?”
“That was the plan,” he said. He looked down at her footwear and nodded. “Those are okay to walk in, aren’t they?”
She stared at her hiking boots. “Yeah,” she said. “I wasn’t exactly sure where and what we were doing.”
“Good thinking,” he said.
“No,” she said. “I was just more or less grabbing at straws to figure it out.”
“Well, rough terrain tends to be the name of the game here,” he said, “so we’ll see.” He pulled into the property where the body had been, and he saw no sign of police activity or that anybody had been here recently.
“Do you need to go back inside?” she asked, as she got out with all the dogs milling around her feet.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m not sure if that dead body has anything to do with my War Dog or not, but, at the moment, I want to take a walk toward the asshole’s property.”
“Is it close?”
He looked at her with a smile and said, “Very.”
She stared at him in surprise. “Oh, wow,” and then she turned to look at the hills. “It’s just the other side of there, isn’t it?”