Cornered In Conard County

“I don’t mind. So you grew up here?”

“Yup. Left when I was twenty for the law enforcement academy, then I took a job in Seattle.”

She sat at the table and watched him as he moved around digging out mugs and pouring coffee. Man, was he built. She wished he’d just sit down so her eyes wouldn’t be drawn like a magnet.

“This must seem awfully tame after Seattle.”

“I like that part.” Smiling, he brought her coffee. Sugar and milk were already on the table. “I get to spend more time with the dogs.”

“And ostriches,” she dared to tease.

He laughed and sat across from her. “And ostriches,” he agreed.

“So no idea how they came to be here?”

He shook his head. “Dad had enough time to set up the electrified fencing, but the vet, Mike Windwalker, tells me he only had them a couple of months before he passed. Mike had no idea where they came from, either—Dad just asked for his advice on keeping them healthy. Once. I wish he’d mentioned them when we talked on the phone, but he never did.”

“Maybe he thought he wouldn’t have them for long.”

He shook his head a little. “Possible, I suppose, but that fencing...well, yeah, he’d have needed to do something quick to keep them from escaping. I’d love to know where they came from, but when I ask around, nobody seems to know a thing.”

A smile suddenly split his face. “In a way it was funny. I got the call that Dad had passed, and as I was packing to get out here, I got a second call that left me floored. It was from Mike, the vet. He said he’d take care of the ostriches for a few days so not to worry. I’m standing there holding the phone with my jaw dropped. Ostriches?”

A giggle escaped Dory. “That’d be a shocker.”

“Believe it. And I was no less shocked when I got here and found out how ornery they are.” He paused. “Okay, maybe that’s just my feeling and I ought to give them more of a chance. But they’ve already killed two of my favorite hats, and I don’t much like being pecked whenever they feel like it. I’m hoping we can eventually reach a truce.”

She glanced out his window and saw the two ostriches in the small pen not far away. They weren’t especially cuddly looking, even now when they were just looking around. “Are they hard to care for?”

“I have to special-order feed for them. One of the big pet food companies also makes food for zoos, so that helps. Special ostrich blend. And in the winter when it gets too cold, I need to keep them in the barn.”

“So they don’t have to be in a warm climate all the time?”

“Evidently not.” He sighed, half smiling, an attractive man comfortable in his own skin. She envied him that. Had she ever felt comfortable within herself, apart from her work? “I really would like to give them to someone who actually wants them.”

“Wants them as pets?”

“Not likely. As far as I can tell, they weren’t hand raised as babies. Or maybe they just don’t like me.” He shrugged. “But I won’t sell them for meat or leather. Betty keeps reminding me that ostriches are worth thousands of dollars, but I’m not looking for that. There’s a market for their eggs, though, a very expensive market, so I’m just trying to find someone who wants them for that, or for breeding. Although some days I think they’d make fine boots.”

She laughed, delighted by his self-deprecating humor. “Are they really troublesome?”

He leaned back, turning his coffee cup slowly on the table with one hand. “In all fairness, no. If they were parakeet-sized, they’d be cool. They’re not doing a darn thing birds don’t do. They’re just doing it in a much bigger way.”

She laughed again. “I had a parakeet when I was ten. You have my sympathy. My bird liked to peck.”

“These like to peck, too. It can be painful.”

“And costly in terms of hats, you said?”

“Two of my favorites, gone.” He suddenly grinned. “Come on, let’s go work with Flash.”

Her own eagerness surprised her, but it shouldn’t have. Since she awoke this morning, she’d been impatient to see Flash again. She was already coming to love that dog, she realized. She hoped Cadell judged her ready to take him with her soon.

Then it struck her: she had no way yet to care for Flash. No food, no bowls, no bed, no leash...wow. She needed to take care of that fast.

She mentioned that to Cadell as they stepped out back through his mudroom. “I feel silly for not taking care of it yesterday.”

He shook his head. “Every dog here has his own bowls and leashes, and they go with him. Same with his favorite toy. As for a bed...he’ll sleep just about anywhere you let him, but I’m warning you, if you invite him onto the bed, he may claim possession.”

That elicited another laugh from her, and amazement wafted through her again. She hadn’t felt this good since she got the news about George. Her spirits were up, her confidence was high—all because of one dog trainer and a dog named Flash.

She wondered how long that would last.

He paused halfway to the dog run and faced her. “You can love him, Dory. Just don’t spoil him. Remember, he’s a working dog, and working makes him happy. Keep his training fresh and establish your boundaries. Then you’ll have a great relationship.”

She nodded and followed him, thinking that was probably good advice for people, too.

Flash’s tail wagged fast, and she could have sworn he grinned at her as they approached. Excited or not, however, he didn’t misbehave, and when released from his kennel, he merely nosed her hand in greeting. Dory, however, was a little more exuberant, squatting to rub his neck and sides. “You’re a beautiful boy,” she heard herself saying. Talking to a dog?

But as she looked into Flash’s warm brown eyes, it suddenly felt right. She suspected this dog understood more than she would ever know.

She looked up at Cadell and found him smiling affectionately down at her and the dog. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go. Maybe you can take him home with you today.”

* * *

CADELL REALIZED HE was developing a problem. His attraction to Dory wouldn’t quit. Yes, she’d caught his eye with her almost ethereal beauty, but that should have worn off quickly. It wasn’t as if she was the only beautiful woman he had ever seen.

No, something about her was reaching deeper than mere superficial attraction, and that wasn’t good. He had years of experience in a lousy marriage to teach him that even cop groupies didn’t necessarily like being married to a cop. The endless complaints that had assaulted him after the first six months of marriage should have been lesson enough. If something kept him late and he missed dinner, an explosion would result. If he had to break a date because of his job, he found no understanding. Sometimes he’d wondered if the woman would be glad if he never came home from one of his shifts.

It wasn’t his safety that had worried her. No, she was annoyed that his job interfered with her life, and that was not a happy way to live, for either of them.

In the process he’d learned that love could die fast with the wrong person, and that was painful all by itself. Since his divorce, finally agreed to when the fighting became almost constant after a few years, he’d avoided entanglements. He didn’t know whether he was guilty of lousy judgment—although as a cop his judgment was usually pretty good—or whether he was just poison. Brenda had turned into a woman he didn’t recognize, and he wondered if that was his doing.

Anyway, even in his new job the unexpected happened. A search for a missing person could keep him from home for days, often without warning. And that was only one example. So...he judged it best to avoid long-term affairs. Maybe later in life, he told himself. Maybe when he retired from being a cop and devoted himself to the dog-training school he was slowly starting. Maybe after he got rid of those dang ostriches.

He enjoyed helping Dory run Flash through his paces, though. As the sun rose higher, with frequent breaks for Flash to lap water, he watched the woman and dog bond more securely. From his perspective, Flash had totally given his loyalty to Dory. He was already crazy about her.

There was no better protection than that. But there was still her brother. Unease niggled at Cadell. While a trained dog was great, it wasn’t a perfect solution. There were always ways around a dog if you thought about it—usually a bullet.

When they were done with training and Dory sat on the hard ground to play tug with Flash for a little while, Cadell dropped beside her and stretched out, propping himself on an elbow.

“You ever marry?” he asked, mainly because if she told him she’d had a lousy marriage he could hope she’d have as many reasons to avoid involvement as he had. One thing for sure—with this woman he was going to need a lot of protection for himself. Everything about her appealed to him.

“No,” she answered as she threw the knotted rope and Flash leaped into the air to catch it. Her reply was remarkable in its brevity. Interestingly, she didn’t ask him, which would have been the usual conversational flow.

He decided to plunge in anyway. An understated warning to both of them. “I was,” he said.

Her attention returned to him as Flash brought the rope back to her and dropped it in her lap. “Flash, down,” she said. All of this was coming naturally to her, and he smiled. Flash obeyed immediately, head still high and curious. “Not good?” she asked.

“Awful,” he said frankly.

“I’m sorry.”

He wondered if he should tell her more, then decided to go for it. She’d gotten his attention enough in so many ways that he was going to be checking up on her frequently. Officer Friendly, as long as George might be a threat.

“My wife, Brenda, was a cop groupie.” He watched her eyes widen. “Now, a smart cop knows that’s dangerous, that most of those women just want a notch on the headboard. But Brenda seemed different. Maybe she was. I never heard of her sleeping with any of the other guys. But she used to sit there in the bar with big eyes, encouraging us to talk, basking in as much of the camaraderie as we were willing to share with her.”

Dory nodded slowly. “I’m picturing it, but probably all wrong.”

“Probably not. Some women love the uniform, not what’s inside it. And some cops want brief affairs and one-night stands, just like the women. Consenting adults and all that. But Brenda seemed different. Unfortunately, she was.”

Dory looked down and scratched Flash behind one ear. “How so?”

“I felt drawn to her, so I started sitting with her more and more often. As we got to know each other better, I decided she was genuine and I liked her. So we started dating. Long story short, I fell in love, we got married, and six months later I started to learn how wrong I was.”

He plucked a blade of dried grass, shaking his head, then stared away from her out over the pasture to the nearby mountains. He’d had mountains in Seattle, but here...these were already special to him somehow.

“Anyway, it turned out she couldn’t stand my job. Irregular hours, broken plans. She started in on me for being unreliable, demanding I find a regular job.”

She drew an audible breath. “She called a police officer unreliable? Really?”

“In all fairness, from her perspective I probably was. I lost count of the times I missed dinner or a movie date with her. She wanted a very different kind of life, and I wanted to remain in law enforcement. So then it got truly ugly. No reason to rake it up. But I learned something.”

“Yes?”

He looked up and found her blue eyes on him. “That maybe I should just avoid marrying anyone. I sure as hell was doing something wrong, something I never seemed able to fix unless I gave up part of myself.”

Now it was her turn to look away toward the mountains. Whatever she was thinking, Flash sensed something and stirred a bit, raising his gaze to her face. Almost instinctively, she petted him.

“I never got that close to anyone,” she said after a minute or two. “I couldn’t tell you whether either or both of you were at fault.”

“I’m not asking for that,” he said quickly. “But since we’re probably going to be seeing each other quite a bit because of Flash, I thought...”

“We could be friends,” she finished for him. She turned her face toward him. “I don’t make friends, Cadell. Except for Betty. She’s the lone exception.” She closed her eyes briefly, then snapped them open. “I’m incapable of real trust. Even years of therapy didn’t help with that. So...consider me broken, which I guess I am.”

Then she rose to her feet. Flash stood, too.

Cadell gave up on trying to reach her. He’d issued the warning he’d wanted to, but evidently she didn’t need it.

Closed up, walled in, all because of something she saw as a child. He wished he could say that surprised him.

He stood, too. “Want to take Flash home with you today?”

“Betty’s cats might object.”

“I thought you were moving?”

“I almost decided to, then changed my mind. Tomorrow, when the internet is installed.”

Everything settled, returning to normal. Back to business. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll keep him for you and bring him over tomorrow.”

Flash wanted to go with her when she started toward her car, but she told him to stay. Looking forlorn, he settled on his belly and put his snout between his paws.

Dory didn’t miss the expression. “Tomorrow, Flash. I promise.”

Cadell watched her drive away, forgetting himself and standing too close to the penned ostriches. He ducked just in time and stepped away.

“Dang birds,” he said, but his mind was elsewhere. He’d just learned a lot about Dory Lake, and far from putting him off, it made him hurt for her.

Damn her brother. If that guy showed up in this county, Cadell was going to feed him to the birds. The big birds.

Chapter Three

The next morning, Betty insisted on helping Dory move many of her belongings. Most of it was computer equipment, some very heavy, but Betty brought the clothes and lighter items for the kitchen.

The house was partially furnished, which made Dory’s life easier, and already contained the items she’d had shipped here, mostly work related office furniture, including the extra battered old chair that tipped back farther than the new one. She loved to sit in it sometimes just to think. Eventually she could spiff the house or her office up if she wanted, but with most of her attention on her job, on creating graphics with her team, she was seldom more than half-aware of her surroundings.

The pile of clothes on her bed amused Betty, however. Jeans. T-shirts. More jeans. Sweatshirts. “Lord, girl, don’t you ever dress up?”

“I don’t have any need.” But Dory laughed, too. It did look odd, all together like that. Add the plain undies and the three pairs of jogging shoes and she was sure she would appall most women.

“We have to do something about your fashion sense,” Betty remarked.

“Why?” Dory asked. And that really was the question. She worked long days, she had no desire to socialize and the one man who’d managed to pierce her desire for isolation had told her he wasn’t interested because he’d had a bad marriage. She didn’t need a neon sign.

Betty followed her into her office and watched as Dory unpacked the real center of her life. “You know I love you,” she said as Dory pulled out the first of six monitors.

“I know.” She braced herself for what she was certain was coming.

“You need more of a life than your job. Won’t you at least meet one or two people I think you’d like?”

“I met Cadell,” she reminded Betty. “Nice guy. Also seriously burned by life.”

Betty sighed, then said a bit sarcastically, “Well, at least you’re a pair, then.”

“Nope,” said Dory. “Nice and all that, great dog trainer...”

“And gorgeous as hell,” Betty said bluntly. “At least tell me you’re not blind.”

Dory paused, a power cord in her hand. “Betty? Please tell me you’re not going to keep pushing me this way. Because if that’s your goal, I’ll stop unpacking right now.”

The room nearly turned to ice as Betty stared at her. Then almost as quickly as it came, the ice thawed. “No, that’s not my goal. I just worry about you. None of my business, I guess.”

Betty turned and went to get some more items from the car. Dory stared after her, realizing she had just hurt her only friend in the world.

Well, take that as a warning, she told herself. All she brought was pain. Whatever lay at her core, it was locked away forever. And that hurt other people.

She returned to setting up her office, glad to know that soon she’d been in touch with her team, the nerds who were fun and smart and never demanded she get personal about anything. A meeting of minds. Who needed a meeting of hearts?

As she turned back to her desk and began to connect more cables, she felt herself easing back into her comfortable world where she could control everything she needed to. Even her desk, shipped from her old home, seemed like a warm greeting, encouraging a new life.

Her life. Then she thought of Flash. Okay, so maybe there was more to it than the digital world she lived in.

Betty returned, her voice announcing her. She was speaking with someone, and Dory instinctively stiffened. She pivoted quickly to see Betty enter the office space with a woman wearing a tool belt.

“Dory, this is Rhonda, your cable man.”

Rhonda laughed. “I’m your cable tech person.”

Dory couldn’t help grinning. “You get that, too?”

“All the time. Say, I hear you’re into graphics design?”

Dory nodded.

“Then I’ll make sure you have the best connection this company can offer. I’m a gamer. So what graphics cards do you use?”

Betty rolled her eyes. “I’ll go get the last few things, then make some coffee. I can see what’s coming.”

Dory and Rhonda both laughed but soon were involved in the nuts and bolts of computing and bandwidth and a whole range of technical subjects. While they gabbed, Rhonda busied herself putting the connectors in the wall, testing them and then adding the routers. “The best we have,” she said, placing the two routers on the desk. “Betty kind of rattled some bars, you know? So you’ll have two broadband connections. That’s what you wanted, right?”

“As long as they’re not piggybacking and sucking up the bandwidth from each other.”

“I’ll take care of that at the junction outside. It’s wonderful how far we’re coming. A federal grant is making it possible, you know. High-speed connections in rural areas. You wouldn’t have been able to stand it here a few years ago. We were still with the dinosaurs and dial-up.”

“Oh, man, dial-up was a nightmare.”

Rhonda finished quickly, considering all she had to do inside, including hooking up Dory’s TV and converter box, and that was just the beginning. A lot more to do outside. But she took time for a quick cup of coffee with Dory and Betty before getting to it.

“Hope to see you again,” she said cheerfully to Dory before she zipped out the door.

“Nice woman,” Dory remarked and went back screwing, snapping, plugging and otherwise turning a collection of expensive hardware into two expensive, smoothly running workstations. Everything top-of-the-line. The max.

At last, though, she was able to turn everything on and test it. All good. She sent an email blast letting her team know she was back on the grid. Almost immediately her computer pinged with the arrival of emails.

She was home.

* * *

CADELL LEFT FOR work a couple of hours early, carting two dogs with him, Flash and Dasher. Dasher was eager to get to work, recognizing the backseat cage of the sheriff’s department SUV as the beginning of adventure. Flash didn’t see it that way, but he was glad to take a car ride.

He hoped he didn’t unnerve Dory, dressed as he was in his khaki uniform, gun belt and tan Stetson. Not the guy she was used to seeing in shirts with rolled-up sleeves and jeans.

He pulled into Dory’s driveway, behind a blue Honda sedan that had seen better years. The house was small and old in the way of many in this part of town, but it had been recently painted white. The driveway was two wheel paths of concrete, the sidewalk cracked but not heaving yet, and the porch from a time when porches were inviting.

Not that Dory would probably care about that. Betty had mentioned that Dory wasn’t very sociable, and that she worried about her being too deeply mired in her work.

Being mired in work was something Cadell understood perfectly, so he didn’t hold that against her. Given the woman’s background, he wasn’t even surprised that she had told him she couldn’t trust. He figured Flash would be the best therapy he could offer her. Dogs had a way of getting past defenses.

He left Dasher in the car with the engine running so the air-conditioning would keep him cool and walked Flash on a leash to the front door.

“Your new home, Flash. You take good care of it.”

He knocked. There was a doorbell, but cops never used them and the habit was impossible to break. At least he didn’t use the heel of his fist or his big flashlight to resound through the house. A normal type of knock that shouldn’t startle her.

A couple of minutes passed while he looked around the neighborhood and wondered if she had decided to take a walk. Clearly her car was here.

Then the door opened, and Dory was blinking at him. “Oh! You look so different in uniform, I almost didn’t recognize you. I’m sorry, I forgot you were coming this afternoon.”

He smiled. “Not a problem. If you want to take Flash’s leash, I’ll go get his supplies. Can’t stay—my dog’s in the car, and while it’s specially built with heavy-duty air-conditioning to keep him cool...well, I never trust it too far.”

He hesitated, holding the leash out to her. She bit her lower lip, then blurted, “Can you bring Dasher inside, too?”

He glanced at his watch and saw that he still had plenty of time to grab a bite at Maude’s Diner and get to the station. “Sure. It might help Flash feel a little more at home.”

She smiled then, a faint smile, but it reached her eyes as she accepted the leash. “These dogs are practically people to you,” she remarked.

He had turned and now looked over his shoulder. “Nah. They’re nicer than a lot of people.”

That made her laugh quietly, and the sound followed him as he went to turn off his vehicle and get Dasher. He liked her, he realized. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful. Oh, hell, he didn’t need the trouble.

But he brought Dasher inside anyway and left him with Dory while he returned to the back of his car. Two bowls, a large padded bed, several tennis balls, chew toys and forty pounds of dry dog food later, he was sitting at her rickety kitchen table, watching her search her fridge for a soft drink to give him.

“So it’s true computer types drink a lot of soda?” he asked casually.

“As long as it has caffeine. I can do a good job with a pot of coffee, as well. Orange, cola or lime?”

“Orange,” he decided. “Cheetos?”

“Now that’s a stereotype too far,” she said with humor as she passed him the bottle of soda. Evidently it didn’t come with a glass in her world. “Although,” she said as she slid into the one other chair, “I did have a friend in college who loved to eat them sometimes, but she didn’t like the grit on her keyboard. So she ate them with chopsticks.”

The image drew a hearty laugh from him, and her smile deepened.

She spoke again. “Thanks for bringing all the doggy stuff. You never said, but how much do I owe you? You’re giving me a well-trained guard dog that you must have spent a lot of time on.”

He shook his head slowly. “I’m kinda thinking of Flash as an extension of my oath to serve and protect. He’s a gift, Dory, if that won’t offend you.”

Her eyes widened. “But, Cadell...”

“No buts. You can be my advertising around town, how’s that?”

Both dogs, trailing their leads, were sniffing their way around the house, checking out everything. Dory watched them for several minutes, the faint smile still on her face. After a bit she said, “I’ve never received a better gift.”