ALSO AVAILABLE ON KINDLE BY ALEX KAVA
RYDER CREED SERIES
Breaking Creed
Silent Creed
Reckless Creed
Lost Creed
MAGGIE O’DELL SERIES
A Perfect Evil
Split Second
The Soul Catcher
At The Stroke of Madness
A Necessary Evil
Exposed
Black Friday
Damaged
Hotwire
Fireproof
Stranded
Before Evil
THE STAND-ALONE NOVELS
Whitewash (availabliity coming in 2019)
One False Move
THE NOVELLA ORIGINALS WITH
ERICA SPINDLER AND J.T. ELLISON
Slices of Night
Storm Season
SHORT STORY COLLECTION (Maggie O'Dell)
Off the Grid
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DEDICATION:
To Linda and Doug,Hunter and Buddy.
And also to my boy, Scout,the original inspiration for this series.
“We are made
of all those
who have built
and broken us.”
—Atticus
Prologue
Saturday, October 13, 2001
Rest Area along Interstate 85
Georgia/Alabama border
Lester Darnell told his wife it wasn’t safe to be on his mobile phone with all the lightning strikes. Truth was, he just wanted to eat his Big Mac in peace without her yammering on and on about her day. His back was stiff, his jaw clamped tight and his eyes bleary from too many hours keeping his rig between the lines while the rain beat down and the lightning snaked overhead.
He kept the truck engine running but shut off the windshield wipers. That squeak-swish sound had started to grate on his nerves like nails on a chalkboard. Tonight that was what his wife’s voice reminded Lester of, too. Sometimes he really did believe their marriage worked only because he was gone and on the road for six days out of the week.
Lately, his wife had been nagging him to sell his truck and take a warehouse job at one of the trucking companies. He’d been hauling product long enough that a couple of the local places had offered him a job. Less pay but he’d be home every night, and his wife was itching for them to start a family. But Lester couldn’t wrap his mind around the idea. He’d be trapped inside a building with no windows for eight hours a day loading and unloading trucks. Just the thought of being cooped up made his chest ache with anxiety.
Despite nights like this, he preferred to be on the road. He could breathe fresh air, not stale warehouse dust mixed with diesel fumes. There was a rhythm to his day, watching the sun rise and set, driving under the moonlight. He could make small talk and meet new people if he wanted, or he could keep to himself and not be bothered. Actually, he liked the solitude, listening to talk radio or the occasional audiobook.
Tonight he was tuned in to the football game—Alabama Crimson Tide taking on the Rebels of Ole Miss. Fourth quarter with Alabama in the lead, 24-20. Didn’t matter that neither team was ranked. This was a rivalry that would have all these ole southern boys glued inside their trucks until the end. All Lester had to do was glance around once a team scored, and he could see which team they were cheering for by their grimaces or their smiles. It didn’t matter how hard the rain came down, because in their minds they were miles away on the sidelines. As soon as the game ended, they’d be back on the road again.
That was the best part for Lester. He took breaks when he wanted. Ate when he wanted. What warehouse job would let him do that? He was his own boss, confined only by a delivery schedule. And he had fine-tuned that over the years to give himself plenty of time. Except for days like this. The downpours had put him behind, so he was short on sleep and cranked up on caffeine. He’d put off stopping for food and needed the Big Mac and fries more than he needed the shut-eye.
From the looks of the rest area he and his fellow truckers weren’t the only ones taking a break. The place was crazy, the steady hum of eighteen-wheelers in every slot with a half dozen RVs in between, the snowbirds escaping early this year. On the other side of the building, the car parking lot looked just as full. Smeared amber and red lights blinked as vehicles backed out and were immediately replaced by the headlights of a new set of travelers.
There was a steady stream of people, entering and exiting the building’s lobby. Some jogged, others cut through the grass, all of them trying to avoid getting drenched. Lester had stopped here many times. It was one of the bigger rest areas. Inside was a nice assortment of vending machines that even included hot coffee. The lobby had a set of glass double doors on this side of the building and another on the other side for the car parking lot, so no one had to trek all the way around like some of the smaller places.
Lester turned up the volume on the radio. There were still several minutes left. These truckers would be parked and inside their rigs until the very last second. Lester wanted to pull out and get back on the road before that. But first, he wanted to eat.
He unwrapped his sandwich and tried to pace himself. In between bites he noticed a little girl. She walked to the restrooms with her head down, arms crossed tight across her chest. The rain had let up a bit, a steady drizzle replaced the downpour.
His eyes darted back around to the trucks and RVs. A couple of guys and one woman hurried around the girl, but no one seemed to be accompanying her. She looked too young to be alone—maybe nine or ten, but what did Lester know? His wife always pointed out that he had a lot to learn about kids. Besides, the girl didn’t look scared. Instead, she marched from the truck parking lot and up the winding sidewalk, not glancing back or waiting for anyone. She looked like she was on a mission.
Shouts from the radio.
“Manning’s pass is complete to Joe Gunn. Touchdown, Rebels.”
Lester reached for the volume. But he turned it down, not up. He wanted to eat in silence before he had to listen to those windshield wipers again.
He finished his sandwich and fries but was still hungry. He reached for the bag of raisin oatmeal cookies his wife had baked especially for him. She did take good care of him. He’d call her back once the rain stopped.
He checked his watch. The game would be over very soon. He worked the lid off his Thermos and started to fill his stainless steel mug when he saw the little girl coming back from the restrooms, only now there was another girl walking beside her.
At first, Lester thought he was seeing double. Through the smear of the windshield the pair looked like twins, both with long brown hair, parted down the middle. They were about the same height and stature. The only difference was that one marched—again, with her head down, arms wrapped tight across her chest—while the other practically skipped along with a book tucked under her arm.
He saw several headlights flicking on. Game must be over. He started putting everything into place, getting ready to roll. He wanted to get back on the interstate before the others, or he’d be stuck in a long line on the entrance ramp.
Lester lo
oked up just in time to see the girls disappear between the trucks. As he buckled up and shifted into gear, he wondered how he’d missed seeing the other little girl going up to the building.
Days later, when he heard on the radio that a little girl had been taken from a rest area in Alabama, Lester Darnell would wonder if it was one of the girls he had seen. But quickly, he’d dismissed the notion. After all, he hadn’t seen any adult with them, let alone forcing them along.
And besides, they looked like sisters.
Chapter 1
Wednesday, October 18, 2017
Florida Panhandle
K9 CrimeScent Training Facility
Ryder Creed watched the black Labrador named Scout bound over the pile of broken concrete blocks. When he came to the makeshift ladder, the dog climbed the rungs without hesitation.
A little too fast. But Creed pushed the thought out of his mind.
The dog had enough puppy in him that everything was still fun. Creed didn’t take his eyes off Scout, despite being totally exhausted. He’d gotten back before sunrise and hadn’t slept yet. He and his best disaster search dog, Bolo had spent three days working an explosion site in east Texas. Bolo had scraped and cut his pads searching the rubble. They’d found two people alive. Creed worried there might be more and didn’t want to leave until other handlers and dogs arrived. But he knew not to push his dog’s limits. As soon as another handler and dog made it to the scene, Creed hightailed Bolo home.
Now, Creed kept his focus on Scout. The dog had stopped at the top of the ladder and glanced down at his handler, who stood beside Creed. But he hesitated only for a few seconds. Then the dog navigated the narrow beam that was ten feet off the ground and stretched for six feet before coming to another ladder.
That’s when Creed noticed the slight grimace on the handler’s face.
In a quiet and casual tone, Creed said, “Don’t do that.”
He chose his words carefully because Scout knew “stop” and “quit,” and Creed didn’t want to distract the dog.
To his credit, Jason Seaver, the young handler didn’t look over at Creed. He kept his voice calm as he said, “Sorry. Makes me nervous.”
Creed waited for Scout to finish treading over the beam, which he did with zeal. The dog was revved up and anxious to show off. Creed couldn’t help but smile. Scout was fourteen months old. He was a bit of a hotdog, an energetic jackass, but that drive was one of the characteristics that would make him an excellent scent detection dog.
“If you’re nervous, he’ll sense it. Why does it make you nervous?” he asked Jason when the dog had cleared the second ladder and was back on the ground sniffing out the canisters Creed had buried in the second pile of broken concrete.
The rubble reminded Creed of the explosion site and his concern for Bolo still nagged at him. He looked back over his shoulder toward the driveway, watching for Dr. Avelyn’s black Tahoe. She was their on-site veterinarian, but she also had a thriving clinic of her own in Milton. Still, she had already texted Creed that she’d check out Bolo as soon as she could get away.
“What if he falls?” Jason finally answered with a question.
Even though the two men stood side by side, neither turned to each other as they talked, not taking their focus off the dog. From the corner of his eye, Creed could see Jason rubbing his arm. Despite the shirtsleeve covering it, Creed knew it was the place where Jason’s new prosthetic joined his amputation site. The high-tech addition was only a couple of months new to the kid.
Funny, Creed still thought of Jason as a kid even after watching him grow and mature into a decent dog handler over the last year. Both men were in their twenties, Jason at the beginning, Creed at the end. In fact, Creed would turn thirty in a few months. Age didn’t matter to him. He measured time differently than others. Like how many years since his sister, Brodie had gone missing. It would be sixteen years this month. He knew the exact date despite how much else had happened in those years in between.
Life goes on. He hated that saying, but it was brutally true.
Once upon a time, Creed believed there couldn’t be anything worse than losing your eleven-year-old sister and not having a clue as to where she was. But Afghanistan proved him wrong. He’d joined the Marines as soon as he was old enough and learned quickly that he had only replaced one hell with another.
That was one thing he and Jason had in common. They were both war veterans, having served in Afghanistan: Jason in the Army, Creed in the Marines. Both had returned home early after being blown up. Both damaged in different ways. And now it occurred to Creed that both of them had been lucky enough to be saved by dogs in one way or another.
“He won’t fall if you train him so well that he doesn’t even think about falling,” Creed told Jason. “Make sure it’s second nature to him. Then believe in him. Believe in him so strongly that he can feel your confidence radiating off your entire body.”
Right at that moment, Scout sat down at a crevice between the rocks and lifted his right paw. He looked over at Jason. Not exactly at Jason, but at the handler’s pocket where he knew his toy—his reward—was.
“Hurry up. Reward your dog,” Creed told him as he checked his diver’s watch. Scout had found the scent in record time.
Jason yanked the rope toy from his pocket and tossed it to the dog who caught it in mid-air despite the awkward pile of jagged concrete. And when Creed saw Jason wince, the kid shook his head before Creed could say a word. This time, Creed couldn’t blame him and glanced, again, at the driveway. He felt a surge of relief when he spotted the black Tahoe winding its way up the long drive.
Scout came racing to the two men, prancing and shaking his head so the rope slapped around, the knots hitting him upside the head. Jason held out his hand for the dog to give the toy back. When Scout relinquished it, drool dripped from his mouth in long strings as Jason slipped him a treat.
“What did you just give him?” Creed asked, his tone still calm.
“Just a little training treat.”
“I told you, you can’t use food as a reward.”
“It’s not food. It’s just one of those tiny, little training treats.”
“He doesn’t know the difference. To him, it’s food. You can’t have him alerting to someone’s discarded fast-food wrapper.”
“I don’t give it to him when he alerts. I give it to him when he gives me back his reward toy.”
“He needs to give it back to you with only a command, not another reward. The rope toy is the reward. That’s what you want him to be excited about. Not a treat.”
Creed stopped when he noticed the dog’s head cocking from side to side. Scout recognized the words “treat” and “reward.” It didn’t matter what tone was being used. This was a conversation they shouldn’t be having in front of the dog.
“Let's move on,” he told Jason. Now that Dr. Avelyn was here, he needed to relax. Focus on the work at hand.
And he could see that’s exactly what Scout was waiting for. He wanted another chance to earn his rope toy. The dog was staring hard at Jason’s pocket.
“I’ve hidden a surprise for him,” Creed told Jason and pointed to the woods. But the idea of a surprise brought another grimace from Jason. “You’re clenching your teeth.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” Creed told him. “Just relax. He’s doing great.”
Creed dug out a plastic bag from his pocket and handed it to Jason. Inside the bag was an extracted wisdom tooth wrapped in bloody gauze. In the woods, Creed had planted another training canister with a second tooth. Both teeth were from the same person. He kept a cache of items like this that friends had given him to use for training—anything from teeth to pieces of bone and even one gall bladder.
“Scout,” Jason called and waited for the dog to stand in front of him. He snapped on a leash to the dog’s harness. The
n he pulled open the seal on the bag. He held it low for Scout’s nose to hover over the top. As soon as his tail stood straight out, Jason gave the command. “Go find.” And he waved his hand toward the path into the woods where Creed had pointed.
Scout bounded off.
Too fast, again. Yanking and jerking at Jason to hurry up.
By the time they got inside the woods the dog’s breathing had changed. His nose poked and sniffed the air as he pulled and plowed through the thick brush, not interested in following any of the existing paths. Jason kept up with no problem. He held on tight to the long leash, wrapping it a couple of times around his wrist for an extra grip just like Creed had taught him.
The kid was shorter than Creed, but he’d put on weight in the last six months, most of it lean muscle from working with the dogs and all the daily chores around the kennel. But Creed noticed Jason still wasn’t using his high-tech prosthetic. Almost as if he didn’t trust it…yet. He kept it hanging at his side like something he simply carried along.
It would take time. Creed knew that, so he didn’t say anything. He left conversations about such things to his partner, Hannah. She had more patience than Creed. And she knew what to say. Hannah was the one who had hired Jason. Creed rescued dogs and Hannah rescued lost souls.
When they hired him, Jason was a recent war amputee war with a chip on his shoulder the size of Montana. Hannah said the kid reminded her of Ryder. When she and Creed first met, Creed was belligerent and drunk, a Marine, injured and sent home to recover. Hannah saved him before he picked a fight and took on three drunken patrons in the bar she was tending. In that way, Creed supposed he and Jason were similar. Both had come home damaged and pissed off.