Primal Force (31 page)

“Turn over. Now.”

The light caught a flash in his eye, something she didn't have time to process before he began squirming to turn onto his stomach. The entire time, Sam lay beside him, whining softly as if cooing to a child.

Jori pointed the light on her collection to choose a tool. But the light bounced around. She grabbed the flashlight in both hands to steady it. Of course, she was bordering on hysteria. She could feel it creeping in. But she pushed it back down into whatever hole in her psyche it had slunk out of. Time to fly apart later.

She chose the oversized wire cutters and, going flat on her belly, slid in beside Law. That's when she realized his prosthesis was missing. No time to wonder. She felt with her hands for a spot to cut and then slid the blades in under his right wrist.

The cuffs came off with ease. Two quick snips.

The first thing Law did was lever up, grab her by the shoulders. Hard.

Furious with him, she tried to push him away. He held her tight. His eyes were bright but his face was pale.

“You're no illusion.” For the first time he looked close to happy to see her. But Jori was too cold, achy, tired, scared, and worried to accept his version of an apology.

“Lucky for you. Now let go of me. I've got to go find help.”

“The hell you are.” She tried to move away but he continued to hold her in place with what seemed like very little effort on his part. “You aren't dressed for a long hike. You don't know the terrain. You could get lost.”

“Or fall and break a leg, and freeze to death. I know that.” Her voice sounded so reasonable. As if she were saying second place wasn't so bad. She didn't know why.

“Look at me, Jori. You're not going. And I don't have a goddamn leg to stand on—literally. So we're both going to stay right here until the storm blows through. At least we've got some shelter.”

Jori's gaze went to the man watching them both with hot feverish eyes of pain. He was breathing in short rapid gusts.

“You've got to help me get him down and find where he's bleeding. We can ride this out together.”

Jori held his gaze. She suspected Law could very well take care of his former kidnapper, or whatever he was, alone. But she wasn't perfectly sure she could find help.

“Maybe I'm not equipped to go for help. But I know who is.”

She looked at Sam, who came instantly alert as if she'd called her name. “Sam's been taught to go for help when her owner is in trouble. We can send her for help.”

Law shook his head. “I know search-and-rescue dogs. Sam's not the type.”

“Yes, she is. She will find another human to help. That's what she's been trained to do. Even if her owner can't send her for help, she knows to go and seek it.”

Jori scrambled back on her knees, making space. “Lie down, Law. And close your eyes.”

He watched her for two seconds then went prone.

Jori turned to Sam. “Look, Sam. Law is hurt. We need help.” She nudged Law. “Now your turn.”

Law opened his eyes and looked at Sam and said in a sharp voice. “Sam. Find help!” He gave the hand signal for
help
Jori had taught Sam.

Sam jumped to her feet, turned and sniffed Law's prone body, stopping at his hip, his left shoulder, and sniffing both wrists. Whatever she read coming off him was enough to convince her to act. She licked his face twice then turned and jumped past Jori to get out.

Jori crawled out of the tiny cramped cabin after Sam into a swirl of ice and tiny flakes.

She stood up and watched Sam orient herself.

The dog stood for a moment, nose up, ears lifted. Jori wasn't at all certain of what Sam was listening for and sniffing out. But she trusted that training and instinct were working together.

Sam barked a couple of times and started off in the direction they had come. But then something—a sound perhaps?—made her stop. She lifted her nose again, ears pricked forward, and turned slowly in a circle until again something caused her to pause. After alerting with rising tail, she ran off in the opposite direction, down the slope.

Jori watched the rusty-red dog, a bright moving blot against the creep of white over the gray landscape until she disappeared below the slope.

“It's a hell of a day to send her out into.” Jori had shimmied back through the cab's window.

“We didn't have a choice.” Law's tone was grim.

Jori nodded and bit her lip, wondering if she had just sent a wonderful dog on a suicide mission. The weather was brutal. The ice would damage her paws. If she didn't find someone quickly she might not have the stamina to lead them back when she did find help.

“Now you will help me.” Becker was pointing his hand with a gun in it at Jori.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Find Help.

Sam knew those were very important words. It was a game she had played most of the two and a half years of her life with her trainers.
Find Help
was the toughest game. It meant Alpha was down. Alpha was sick. Alpha was in trouble.

It meant locate and bring back a human, sometimes a stranger, to where Alpha was.

“Find help. Sam.”

Sam looked back. The trainer woman was watching her. She would give good treats for the completion of her job.

But treats weren't the only motive in Sam's eagerness. There was a stronger force pushing her. The innate instinct to defend the pack.

Alpha was down.

She could smell anger and fear on Alpha even before she'd found him in the truck. Only it wasn't just from him. A flurry of odors created by injuries blanketed the truck as she'd neared it. Some were from the man with Alpha who had tried to take Alpha away.

Alpha did not like the man. Sam did not like the man.

Sam lowered her head, approaching the driver's side of the truck. She ignored the woman's calls and stuck her head in through the broken window to sniff the man.

Yes, bad man.

He had attacked Alpha.

An attack on Alpha was an attack on the pack.

Alpha down.

Sam would act to defend the pack.

Find Help.

Sam circled the truck several times and then ran back the way she had come. But the odors died that way.

She paused and pushed her nose into the cold air. Surprise. The cold wet wind was now spitting ice.

She did not know what it was. But it worried her. Like a horsefly that once stung her nose and eyes and ears.

She stopped to snap at the white stings before she again put her nose into that cold wind.

She turned back from the woods. There were so many new smells on that stinging airstream. Cows and goats and chickens were known. A feral cat family burrowed in an outcropping of rock nearby. Rabbits, beavers, raccoons, squirrels, and deer. All known. But there were spoor of things she'd never even seen.

The cold seem to be crystallizing them before her. She licked at the air. The cold stings landed on her tongue. She tasted plowed fields and wheat chaff and a scrap of corn husk. Things not known.

This new frigid wind bathed her nose in the giant perfume bottle of the earth.

She danced in a circle, breathing in delight. But she soon pulled out of the overwhelming need to catalog every new and old scent.

Find Help.
That meant human scents.

Humans had odors different from cows and chickens. So many chicken scents in the wind today.

Sam paused and sneezed twice to clear her scent palate. Then she licked her nose and pricked her ears. Humans made sounds, too. It took several seconds to catch the sound's orientation. Yes. There it was. That faint wail of a police siren, followed by several short whoops. It sounded like Alpha's cruiser. He'd turned it on only once. But it was enough.

Sam wheeled and headed out in the opposite direction from the one she and the woman trainer had come.

Find Help was this way.

The white air pelted her, becoming more and more annoying. That and the ground. It was cold, getting harder to sink her claws in for traction. She could not run long.

The white air stung her insides, too. Made white stuff come out of her mouth.

Sam crossed a field and then a ravine, stopping only for the scent of human and the sound of the Alpha cruiser. The ravine was not wet. It was smooth like glass and crusty in places. In one place it gave way, plunging her up to her underbody in a current of liquid chill.

Sam scrambled out and made it to the other side. There she paused and shook herself, trying to make the cold leave her. She licked at her paws, trying to dry them and make the sting of cold go away. But they didn't feel right. And her tongue dragged across hard pads.

Find Help.

She shook herself again and lifted her nose. This time human scent. But not in the same direction as the siren. Siren was closer. Human unknown.

Sam did not make a decision so much as follow the instinct bred in her dozens of generations ago.

Find Help. Help is what you identify with.

Alpha was siren.

Go to siren.

Sam took off toward a line of telephone poles. The decision made in a fraction of a moment.

A minute later she found a road. Veering left toward the direction where she'd last heard a siren, she picked up speed.

*   *   *

“You sure they'll try to get away in this storm?”

The detective nodded at the trooper as they stood at the roadblock intersecting two rural roads. “They'll definitely try it. Less traffic on the roadways. Easier to slip through. Our tip said they'll use the state roads in this weather.”

“Yeah. Remind me how good a capture is going to look on my record, Detective.”

“Makes it worth the blue balls, Trooper.”

“I'm already afraid to sit down.” Another of the task force operatives cradled his weapon to his chest. “My ass is frozen solid. Might crack right off if I apply pressure.”

The detective shared the laugh, though he envied the SWAT team member his tactical high-visibility parka. As a detective, he wore his own clothing, but he'd been caught flat-footed by the sudden winter storm and had to borrow a goose-down vest and knit cap. The suit sleeves weren't holding up their end against the sleet.

“No one's been through here in the past twenty minutes. I think I'll duck into my car to check in with the other details to see if they've made a capture.”

The state law enforcement officers nodded but exchanged glances that said they knew the fed needed a moment out of the cold. They were made of hardier stuff, drinking scalding coffee from thermoses held in waterproof gloves.

No one noticed the dark red speck coming up the road until they heard a bark.

“Damn. Is that a dog?”

All members of the roadblock turned to look. One trooper pulled high-resolution binoculars from his pocket. “It surely is. And booking it toward us.”

“Probably hoping for a cozy lap to curl up in.”

“Or a piece of your sandwich.”

“I don't think so.” The trooper adjusted his binoculars. “She's wearing a service dog vest.”

At about fifteen yards out, the dog suddenly stopped and began barking like crazy.

“Something's got her riled.”

“Who's in charge of something like this?”

The SWAT guy kicked his head toward the detective's auto.

A trooper knocked on the glass and explained the situation.

The fed stepped out of his car. He stared for a second at the rusty-red dog in a service vest. Fine icicles hung from the fur around her eyes, ears, mouth and beard, and the curly fur on her legs. She was still barking but now running a few feet away and then looking back over her shoulder, as if to signal the need to follow.

“I know that dog.” One of the troopers who'd been checking in joined the group. “She belongs to Trooper Lauray Battise.”

“That's right.” The detective nodded. “I've seen her with him, too. Sam, right?”

The younger trooper started jogged toward her, calling, “Here, Sam. Here, girl.”

Sam began barking frantically, backing away as she did so. She stopped and executed a couple of bouncy turns, her barking thinning out from the cold. Then, when the trooper got close, she turned and shot away back down the road she'd come up.

The other men turned to the detective for advice.

He nodded. “One of you better follow her in a car. Service dogs are trained to get help when there's trouble.”

*   *   *

“Jori, back out.”

Becker held the gun closer to his chest to steady it. “If she moves I'll shoot her.”

“If you shoot her, Pecker, I won't just kill you. I'll let you bleed out. Slow.” Nothing in Law's expression said he could be moved from this position. “This is between you and me. Jori just made it possible for me to save your life.” He tapped the K-9 first-aid kit. “You're bleeding pretty good. There's a tourniquet in here. She goes free. Then we deal.”

Becker was sweating even though his every breath was frigid. Finally his gaze shifted to Jori. “Get out.”

“But—”

“Jori. Get out. Now. Take cover and wait until I call you. Now.” He didn't raise his voice. He didn't have to.

Jori sent one wild pleading look Becker's way and began sliding backward out of the truck's cabin.

Law reached for the tool kit.

Becker jerked away. “What the hell do you think you're doing?”

“About to cut you down, you bastard. Unless you'd just rather die.”

“Why would you help me?”

“Because so far, you're just an extortionist asshole. Do you intend to up the ante? If not, put the goddamn gun down.”

The two men eyed each other for a long moment.

Becker swallowed. “I've got grandkids.”

“Sounds like you're not ready to die.”

Law held out his hand.

“It's my leg. I think it's crushed.”