“Until the engines move,” he said, and the engines answered by revving, two at a time, rough call and response. He closed his eyes for one breath, the way a man does when he puts numbers on things he cannot see. “They have a handler who knows his dog. He’ll hunt where he can walk first, then let the nose choose the second pass. We make sure the first pass finds nothing worth a second.”
I thought about Sunshine’s face when she realized the blonde was being dragged, the way her body became a choice. “She told us to run,” I said. Not a confession. Not an apology. Just the fact that built this moment and kept Juno beside me breathing air she chose. We could not get Sunshine out. I promised her I would come back.
“Then we run smart,” Cap said, and set his palm on wet bark. He listened to the tree like it might have news. I listened for his heartbeat and found mine lining up with it even though we were not touching.
The first sweep of men came close enough that I read the brand of their cigarettes in the air. The dog chuffed and sneezed.Wet dirt is tricky. Then it dropped its head and pulled. The handler spoke one word I knew. Good. Boots chewed sod. A flashlight stitched a seam of white across the ferns and moved on. The shed held its breath with us, old boards remembering what weight feels like and refusing to complain.
When the sweep moved past, Cap breathed once, slow, and I let mine go with his. “You did good,” I told Juno, because she had, and because truth is a kind of food when you have not had any.
“Is Sunshine,” she started, and the sound broke.
“Alive,” Cap said, as if he had seen through metal. “And loud.”
Juno made a small sound that might have become a cry if the shed had been bigger. It did not. She swallowed it and turned it into a nod. The man’s cough stayed in his jacket.
Engines shifted. The watcher’s voice slid through the trees and arranged men without raising itself. The dog turned. Its breath hitched in anticipation. Cap’s hand closed on my sleeve. “Now,” he said. “Creek.”
We slid out of the shed one at a time and let it fold us back into rain. Juno first, then the man, then me, Cap last. We moved toward water that made the right kind of noise to hide us. My count rode my breath. One two three four. Juno matched me. The man found it a bit behind, then caught up.
At the lip of the creek, the cold came up from the rocks and bit through our shoes like new teeth. Cap stepped in without flinching and turned to offer his hand. I took it and took the water to my ankles and then my shins, and the sound of it filled the same parts of me that panic had tried to fill.
“Keep to the stones when you can,” he said. “If you slip, sit. Do not stand fast. Standing fast breaks ankles.”
The dog’s voice cleared behind us. Not a bark. A call. The handler answered in praise, not excitement. Praise meantconfidence. Confidence meant we had not earned our second pass yet, or we had and did not know it.
We moved down the creek as silently as we could. Somewhere behind us the dog chased scent and let out a sharp, urgent bark.
Cap did not look back. He did not need to.
“Faster,” he said, and pulled me with him.
