“No.” The little girl wiped her teary eyes. “I lost Betsy. We came home from church, and the door was wideopen.”
Betsy was an old gray Labradoodle and just about the friendliest dog intown.
“Oh, sweetie, that’s awful.” Linx held out her arms and Jessie folded herself into herembrace.
“Can you help me find her?” Jessie waved a picture of the sweet dog with curly gray hair. Her family had had Betsy since before Jessie was born, and the two wereinseparable.
“Of course I will. Do you have anything of Betsy’s you can give to me? Anything with herscent?”
Jessie nodded and produced a blue and white gingham-checked dog bandana. Betsy’s name was embroidered on one edge of it. “Can you use your Wonder Woman powers to findBetsy?”
Linx stroked the little girl’s silky hair. “I will do everything I can to findBetsy.”
When Linx was a little girl, she’d lost her dog, or the family dog, for longer than a week. Every day had been torture—imagining the worst. She couldn’t sleep at night and had no appetite until the day Dolly wasfound.
“I really miss her,” Jessie said. Two large tears tracked down herface.
“Let’s make some posters,” Linx said, taking the photo of the dog and putting it on the scanner. “Then we can put them up and pass themaround.”
It would give the girl something to do, and hopefully help bring Betsy back. It was strange that someone would break into their house, but a lot of people in town didn’t bother locking theirdoors.
The only problem was summer vacation season had started, and now that the kids were out of school, some families had rented their houses to outsiders while they took vacationselsewhere.
Linx scanned the picture and brought the image up on her computer. She typed in the basic information about Betsy and contactinformation.
“I’ll put a reward on this,” Linx promised, not that she had any money. She must have been drunk on sex hormones or simply out of her mind when she’d splurged the last of her grandmother’s money on a wedding dress to fund Grady’scharity.
That man would never use her for anything other than a quick lay, and she should have more self-respect.
But then, after what he’d made her do, she had no self-respect left, and the only way she could justify herself would be to make him feel as horrible as he’d made herfeel.
As to how effing his brains out would do that? She didn’t know. A guy without a conscience wasn’t easy tohurt.
As the printer printed out the posters, Linx entered Betsy’s information to the online networks for lost dogs. She also checked the “Found” listings in case anyone had already locatedBetsy.
Unfortunately, there hadn’t been any sightings for an eight-year-old grayLabradoodle.
While Jessie wasn’t exactly happy when her mother came to pick her up, she was hopeful that the posters and “Wonder Woman” would do thetrick.
After they left, Linx called Cedar into the cabin and let her sniff Betsy’s bandana. Cedar wasn’t a bloodhound, but she’d once been a lost dogherself.
“I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you, baby.” She kissed Cedar and attached her leash to take her out on a walk. “You’re the only way for me to have a little bit of him—the onlylink.”
It wasn’t as if Cedar’s owner had looked all that hard for her. He’d given up way too easily—treated it too cavalierly, the same way he’d stomped over her heart and brushed her off like ashes off hishelmet.
