“Yes.”
He drove her car the ten minutes to the claim center and parked it near the bay doors of the garage.She pulled up beside him.“Need to get anything out of here before we leave it?”he asked.
“No.Guess there’s no point in locking it for the night, huh?”
He smiled at her wry humor.“Probably not.Slide over.I’ll drive you home while you text Rafe.”
“Okay.”
By the time they got to her house, Rafe knew all the details about what had happened.“Rafe just texted back,” she said as Tripp turned down her street.“He’s on his way here with two deputies to check out the cache site.ETA fifteen minutes.”
“Good.I’ll go with ’em.”
“Oh, I...”
“What?”he asked when she didn’t continue as he pulled into her driveway.Looking at her darkened house, he thought he understood.“Would you rather I stay with you?”
“If you don’t mind,” she said in relief.
A totally selfish part of him was glad that she wanted him with her, that she was looking to him for reassurance or protection.“Okay, then I’ll stay.”
Rufus started barking his head off inside the moment they got out of the truck.
“I need to feed him and let him out,” Willow said, hurrying to the front door.She managed to quiet him down eventually, but probably it was mostly because of the food dish she set in front of him.
Rufus wolfed down his dinner, giving Tripp the hairy eyeball every so often.
“He’s worse with people here at home for some reason,” she said when he’d finished, taking the stainless-steel bowl to the sink to wash it.“I can’t figure out if he’s being defensive, protective, or territorial.”
“Maybe all three.”
“Maybe.”She took Rufus through the house and let him into the backyard, flipping on the back porch lights.He immediately raced to the back fence and jumped up to put his front paws near the top of it, snorting like a bear.
He’d scented something.Maybe heard something too.Human or animal?
“I think we might need some spy holes back there too,” Tripp said.He didn’t like that this had happened behind Willow’s house.
“He’s obsessed with whatever’s back there.”Standing at the edge of the steps, she wrapped her arms around her body the way he wanted to.“But now I’m wondering if he heard or smelled whoever buried that ammo.”
It was possible.“Might have.”He turned at the sound of vehicles coming up the street out front, went back through the house and emerged onto the front porch just as Rafe and two deputies got out of their vehicles.
“Tripp,” Rafe said.“Hey, Willow.Sorry I couldn’t get up here sooner.”
“It’s okay, we literally just got back,” she said.
“You good?”
“Yes.”
“Have you got a location on where you found the ammo?”
“Not really.Rufus found it.We were wandering around back there because I was letting him explore.”
“He’s got a good nose.Maybe we should think about deputizing him as a search dog.”
“Ha, good luck with that.”
“Think you’d be able to show us the general area where it was?”
