Rodney immediately reeled off names. “They all work for me, either on a full-time or a contract basis,” he said.
“And give us the date of the fire and the time of the fire,” Badger said, “so we can check out alibis.”
“Well, I can give you the basics,” he said, “and you can talk to a Detective Watson at the local precinct, who has it under investigation.”
“Will do.” At that, Badger said, “I’ll ring off. Let me know as soon as you find out anything.”
“Well, I hope I find out something fast,” she said, “because any other answer will be bad news.”
“Don’t even go there,” Badger said. “Tucker is an old hand at this.”
“Says you,” she said, “but nobody gets lucky every time.”
“Which is why he had his accident. We’ve already told him that he’s used up a couple of his lives, and he needs to be more careful,” he said with a note of humor.
“That’s not funny,” she said. “I don’t want anything to happen to him.”
“Good,” he said in the gentlest of voices, “and that thought alone will help him fight a little more.”
With that, Badger hung up, leaving her staring at the phone, wondering exactly what he meant. But Rodney raced ahead in the woods.
“If you go too fast,” she said, trying to keep up, “we won’t see him.” She turned Tucker’s phone to Flashlight mode and used it to peer through the area. She looked down and grabbed Rodney’s arm. “There are tracks through here,” she said, pointing out a spot where the weeds had parted under heavy traffic. Rodney looked at it, nodded, and the two of them raced in that direction. “Do you think it’s safe?”
“Safe for us or safe for him?”
“Should we call out for him?”
He hesitated and then shook his head. “I don’t think it matters at this point. We need to find him.” He raised his voice and yelled out, “Tucker! Where are you, Tucker? Answer me.”
With him calling, she raised her voice at the same time, and the two of them went slightly different directions, calling out for Tucker. They kept at it for a good ten to fifteen minutes, and then they both stopped and looked at each other. She strained her ears and called out once as loud as she could. “Tucker!” Then she thought more about it and called out, “Bernie, bark!” She yelled again, “Bernie, bark!”
Up the path came a small yelp. They looked at each other and tore in the direction of the bark from the dark.
Tucker opened his eyes, stifling the groan seeping through his taut lips. Tucker knew from old times that, upon first waking up, the silence was instinctive, now ingrained only after long years of training and experience. He’d taken a blow to the head. A blow he hadn’t seen coming. He was on the forest floor and reached out a hand, and it landed on a furry back. Hearing a whine from the animal, he opened his eyes. Bernie sat here, looking down at him, worry in her huge chocolate-colored eyes. She leaned over and nudged his cheek and chin with her nose. He reached up and gently stroked her.
“Hey, girl,” he whispered. “You’re standing guard over me.” She gave a tiny whine again and then laid down alongside him, her body heat soaking into his. He lay here for a long moment, regaining his breath and a sense of awareness as to where he was and what had happened. He reached up a hand to the sore spot on his head, and his fingers came away sticky. Almost no daylight remained, and it was hard to see anything.
In the distance, he heard the brush being trashed as somebody raced through the trees. It didn’t take much longer to realize the sounds were coming toward him. He put a hand on the dog’s neck and, using her for support, pulled himself up to a sitting position. He didn’t know if it was a friend or foe racing toward him, but he needed to be prepared if it were the latter. He heard somebody call out, and then the dog barked again. He calmed her down and whispered, “Stay quiet, stay quiet.” Then he heard a female calling out, “Tucker!”
With his croaking voice, he answered, “I’m here.”
Seconds later two people broke into the clearing where he sat and came to a dead stop. Shock, relief, and dismay were on their faces. Addie raced over and dropped to her knees beside him. “Oh, my God,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“I’m not sure yet,” he said. “I just woke up a few moments ago.”
“You’ve been missing for hours,” she whispered, her hand going to his head. He winced as she touched the wound, but, remembering she was a nurse, he let her take a look at it. She had a phone in her hand, turned on the flashlight, and took a good look. “You’ll need stitches,” she announced. “Let me see if there’s any other damage.”
He lay back down again, as she did a quick check of his body. Everything felt okay, but he couldn’t be sure because he hadn’t stood yet. She checked his eyes, noted that his pupils were at least moving properly. “Somebody attacked you from behind, I presume, given the site of the injury,” she said quietly, as she sat back on her knees.
He looked at her, frowned, and said, “The last thing I remember was going to the truck to let Bernie here out.”
“You said you would check on her, and you left me inside the restaurant.”
“I didn’t even hear anything around me. Next thing I knew, something smashed into the back of my head, and I woke up here.”
“Why would they drag you out here and leave you?” she murmured.
“It’s hard to say,” Rodney said, behind her. “Maybe he thought that Tucker was alone and didn’t know you were here too.”
“And yet, if we’re working on the theory that the arsonist followed us here, then he would know that I left the arson site with Tucker,” she said, looking back at Rodney.
“Maybe they thought he’d dropped you off already.”
“I don’t know, Rodney. That’s kind of flimsy,” she murmured. “Or whoever it was thought I would take off because Tucker stood me up?” She shrugged. “Whatever the reason, you’re big and heavy when conscious. So you’re a dead weight to carry,” she said. “And you’re out here, some distance from the restaurant.”
“But am I still on the property?” he asked, as he sat back up again.
“I don’t know about on the property,” Rodney said, “but you’re not that far away.”
“So somebody big enough to carry me,” Tucker said. “The question is, why?”
“Unless they thought the blow to your head was more than they had expected it to be,” she said, “and then figured that, if they’d killed you, they might want your body far enough away that nobody would find you for a while,” she said.
“That would imply that they panicked,” he said, reaching up and holding his head. He suddenly lunged to his feet, where he stood with his legs spread apart as he braced himself to stop the swaying. Addie wrapped her arm around him. “Use me to help stabilize yourself,” she urged.
He slung his arm around her shoulders and let her take some of his weight.
“What about Bernie?” she asked. “What would they have done with her?”