“Leave it!” Kenzie called.
The dog stopped to watch but didn’t give chase.
Good boy.
“Back to work!” Kenzie called.
Gizmo let the rabbit go, dismissing the lumber and heading toward a jumbled pile of broken concrete blocks. He stopped, pawed at the rock, climbed to the top of the mound, then ran down again, circling to the other side. He pawed, sniffed—and sat.
Kenzie glanced at her watch. “That didn’t even take him five minutes.”
She hurried over to him, drew a bag of doggy sausages out of her pocket, and fed him a few pieces, petting and praising him. “Good boy! Good boy! You found it.”
The “it” in this case was a bit of donated cadaver—a section of humerus with decomposing muscle, adipose tissue, and skin still attached. Kenzie kept it in a steel container in the freezer in her garage, taking it out early enough so that it could thaw and release its god-awful stench for the dogs. Fortunately, she wasn’t a dog. Unless she was right on top of it, she couldn’t smell it at all.
JoAnne knelt down beside Gizmo, her gray hair fluttering in the warm evening breeze. “Good job, Gizmo. I guess you passed HRD—again.”
“You hear that, buddy?” Kenzie pulled Gizmo’s favorite toy out of her pocket and played tug-of-war with him for a minute before letting him have it. “Who’s up next?”
Back down at the road, several other handlers waited beside covered pickups and SUVs, dogs crated inside, each waiting its turn to be tested. Most had driven long distances from homes across Colorado to be here today. It wasn’t a bad day to hang out in the mountains. The sky was cloudless, the sunshine warm, the breeze fresh.
JoAnne was busy filling out Gizmo’s certificate. “Cathy’s here with Sam. She has to get to the airport to pick up her brother, but she wants Sam to have a shot.”
Sam was a young bloodhound, barely a year old. Today would be good practice for both Cathy and Sam. A handler had to relearn search-and-rescue with each dog, as each dog’s body language was different. That had been true for Kenzie when she’d started training Gizmo, and she was a professional dog trainer.
JoAnne handed her the certificate. “Are you going to stay, or do you have to get back to the kennel?”
Kenzie glanced at her watch. “I might hang around to see how Sam does.”
Kenzie wasn’t in any particular hurry. It was Friday, so she didn’t have any classes to teach this evening. She trusted her staff to close up her pet supply store and manage the kennel while she was out.
She bent down, clipped the leash to Gizmo’s collar, and was about to take him back to her truck to give him water and crate him when her Team buzzer went off.
Kenzie had been a primary member of the all-volunteer Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue Team, called the Team by locals, for five years now. She wasn’t a climber like most of its members, but provided canine help.
She drew the pager out of her pocket, glanced at the message—and the breath left her lungs.
DISASTER ON EVEREST. LISTENING IN TO BASE CAMP.
Harrison.
Gizmo whined, always sensitive to her mood.
“Uh-oh.” JoAnne looked up from her clipboard. “Something happened.”
“I have to go.” Kenzie jammed the pager back into the pocket of her jeans and ran toward her truck, heart thrumming, Gizmo bounding along beside her.
“What do you want me to do with the human remains?” JoAnne shouted after her.
“Stick them in your freezer!” Kenzie was barely aware of what she was saying. “I’ll pick them up later!”
Had Conrad’s team been hit by a blizzard? Had someone fallen?
Please don’t let it be Harrison! Not Harrison.
Harrison Conrad was a world-renowned climber and the Team’s lead alpinist. More than that, he was a good friend. He’d left Colorado a couple of months ago, hoping to summit Everest again with his Aussie friend Bruce Jones and those Swiss climbing twins. Kenzie couldn’t understand what drove him to risk his life like this, and she’d told him as much. He had already climbed Everest twice. Why take his chances with the mountain again?
He’d grinned, his tanned face so damned handsome. “I promise I’ll come back in one piece.”
