Rabbit brush and felled timber marked the edge of the clearing. Robo hit it at a dead run, coming to the end of his lead at the same time. Mattie sprinted after him, giving Robo enough slack to keep moving forward.
“Good boy. Search.”
Robo darted between two pine trees, entered the forest, and headed downhill. Mattie swept through the boughs, eyes to the ground, jumping over ankle-turning stones, stepping carefully between tufts of buffalo grass and scattered granite rocks. Each footfall jarred as she charged over the rough terrain. Still, she wasn’t fast enough to keep up with her dog.
Robo slowed to accommodate her pace. His ears shifted forward and back, monitoring the environment up ahead and then checking on Mattie’s progress behind. As they continued downhill, weaving between trees and around boulders, Mattie heard the crack of tree branches and the thud of someone running behind her. At least one of her colleagues was following, but she didn’t dare take her eyes off the rugged terrain to check.
Within minutes, Mattie reached that familiar physical place where her body warmed and her breath came and went in rapid cycles. She knew she could maintain this pace forever—well, at least an hour or so—if she had to. The noise behind her fell away, and she kept going.
Robo lifted his head, nose to the breeze, and she knew he was trailing the scent through the air. Whatever he’d found, they would come upon it suddenly, since there was little visibility. The forest had become dense, and there were no worn pathways to speak of. Dried branches scratched her arms; pine needles pricked her face and hands. Once again, the thought of Robo chasing a wild animal began to tickle her insecurities.
She was thirty feet behind Robo now, the full length of the leash, and occasionally she lost sight of him as he charged around thickets of squaw currant bushes or prickly rose. After a few minutes, they reached the bottom of the hill and leveled out into a dry creek bed. Without pause, Robo surged across it and up the steep bank on the other side with a half-dozen leaps.
As Mattie scrambled up the hill behind him, her leather boot sole slipped and she fell to one knee, cracking it against a sharp rock. She sucked in a breath. “Shit!”
Robo paused and looked back at her over his shoulder. She could swear he had one eyebrow arched as if asking, “What?”
“It’s okay,” she said, rubbing her sore knee as she got up. “Go on. Search.”
Moving on with a limp, Mattie could feel warm blood trickle down her shin. Robo slowed his pace for her, staying close as he continued. In the back of her mind, she plotted their course, realizing they had charged downhill parallel to the road she’d driven up. Now they seemed to be heading up the next slope, still parallel to the road. She began to wonder if Robo had scented something when he’d sniffed outside the vehicle’s window on their way up the mountain.
Despite the pain in her knee, Mattie quickened her pace. Robo responded by moving ahead to the end of his lead. Although it felt like much farther, Mattie gauged they’d covered about a mile since leaving the cabin. Once again, they headed downhill.
Disappearing from sight, Robo entered a thick stand of juniper surrounded by scrub brush. Mattie heard a deep growl, followed by a snarling bark.
Robo’s lead went slack.
He’d come to an abrupt halt inside the thicket, out of sight. Stories she’d heard about dogs tracking armed criminals and leading their handlers directly into an ambush made every hair rise on the back of her neck.
Reaching for her Glock 9mm with one hand and holding onto Robo’s leash with the other, Mattie hit the ground and rolled to shelter behind the trunk of a large ponderosa. She sat with her back to the rough bark, her heart pounding.
She rose to her knees, hugging the tree trunk. She knew only one thing for certain: she wanted her dog beside her. But if he’d engaged a bad guy, she might endanger Robo’s life by calling him off. He’d been trained to bite and hold an arm bearing a weapon. Releasing that arm could free up the weapon to be turned against him. Careful not to expose herself too much, she peered around the tree trunk and tried to get a visual on her dog.
He was trotting out from among the junipers, a happy grin on his face.
To her amazement, he came right up and bumped his nose against the pouch that held his tennis ball, his reward for successfully completing a find. He sat down at her feet, an expectant look on his face, tail waving, ready to play.
She grabbed Robo’s harness and hauled him in close, trying to shield him with the tree trunk while keeping herself hidden. “Stay,” she told him.
What the hell? She tried to size up the situation. Robo must have found something in the thicket. But what?
A dope stash, maybe, but that was unlikely. Dope was usually wrapped up tight against the elements, which impeded scent release. Not a person with a gun either. If someone was armed or threatening, Robo would have engaged him. An unarmed human, then?
She looked at Robo, wishing he could speak. He met her gaze without waver. He looked alert now, his playfulness set aside. She supposed he’d noticed that she’d drawn her weapon and had decided his work was not done after all.
Still worried about ambush, Mattie peered around the tree trunk, her handgun ready. “Police! Throw out your weapon!”
From inside the thicket came a deep, menacing growl followed by a ferocious bark.
Christ! There’s another dog inside there.
Robo had trailed another dog. And if that dog was all alone, unaccompanied by a human, there’d been a serious breach in his training. He’d been trained to track humans and to ignore other dogs.
From somewhere behind her, Mattie heard the crack of rocks colliding and branches breaking. The others must have crested the hill and were now headed down toward her, probably at a distance of about half a football field. But the trees were too dense for her to see them.
She assumed the one closest would be Brody. “Brody! Hold up. Take cover.”
“What’ve you got?”
“Unidentified party hidden in some juniper.”
“We’ve got your back.”
At least now, the person in the thicket knew he had more than one cop to deal with. But on the down side, if she and Robo had failed, they now had a witness.
She pushed on. “Throw out your weapon and show yourself, or I’ll send in the dog!”
Robo stood up. With ears pricked forward, he leaned around Mattie’s legs to stare at the stand of juniper.
Mattie knew the threat of a dog usually put the fear of God into the heart of a fugitive. If someone was in there hiding, that ought to bring him out.
Teeth bared, a huge black dog charged a few feet out of the thicket, uttering a deep-pitched growl. Suddenly, it whined and dropped down to a crouch. When it turned to slink back into the bush, Mattie could see its haunches were covered with dirty, matted fur. It had revealed itself for only a few seconds, but long enough for Mattie to recognize it as a Bernese mountain dog. And it appeared injured.
“Great, Cobb. Your dog found another dog.”
Mattie glanced behind her and saw Brody about twenty feet back, partially shielded by another large pine. He had drawn his weapon and was holding it down beside his leg.
“I’m going in with Robo,” Mattie told him. “Cover us.”
She unsnapped Robo’s lead. She didn’t want it hampering his ability to move. “Robo, show me what you found. Show me!”
Robo sprang up and darted into the scrub oak. Staying low to the ground, Mattie crashed in close behind him, weapon pointed straight ahead. Growling and snarling filled the thicket.