He hopped the fence. His feet landed in mud on the other side, and it sucked at the bottom of his boots as he moved. The beam of the flashlight had already caught up with Mac’s heels as he tromped through long, scrubby grass.
Flynn stretched his legs and caught up. Instinct twitched his fingers to hand the light off to Mac, but the kid was the lead rescue. Flynn was just there for moral support and advice.
“This isn’t like him,” Harris said over his shoulder. He tripped over a tussock of grass. His long legs gave him a comical air, but he caught himself. “We’ve had him since he was born practically, and he’s never any trouble. The dog is the one you can’t trust. She found a dead… thing… the other day and dragged it back.”
Flynn grimaced at the unsubtle self-edit. So that would have been a lamb, then. He would decide whether to pass that news on to the local farmers later. A sheep-worrying dog would cause problems and wouldn’t last long.
“He maybe just wanted the adventure. You know what kids are like, they love breaking the rules.”
“And eating,” Harris said. “That’s probably why he snuck out, looking for food.”
Mac gave Flynn a desperate, sidelong look. The whites showed around his eyes as he mutely mouthed “What the fuck?” Flynn shrugged and kept walking. He could just hear the edge of a bawl on the wind, attenuated by distance and the dark to a thread of sound.
“What’s your boy’s name, Mr. Harris?” he asked.
Harris’s stride faltered long enough for him to glance over his shoulder. The flashlight gave enough light to pick out the baffled expression on his face.
“Oh, umm… Bilbo,” he said. “Ah, sorry. I misheard you there. We’re almost there. I hope he’s all right.”
Bilbo Harris.
By the time they reached the slipping edge of the sinkhole and Flynn pointed the light down to the bottom, he was kind of expecting what he saw. The light reflected back from barred, horizontal pupils.
“Bilbo’s a goat, isn’t he, Mr. Harris,” Flynn said while Mac gawped in disbelief.
Harris gave him that dubious look again, like he was wondering what Flynn was going on about. He crouched near the edge of the hole and made encouraging noises down at the trapped animal.
“He’s a prizewinning angora goat,” he said proudly. “Or he will be when he grows up.”
The goat, who was small and dog-sized with a cream-and-tan coat, bawled up plaintively. It was lying on its side on the slope of the hole, its hooves braced against the rest of the drop. Mac turned his back on the hole and stepped away. He had his hand clapped over his mouth, either to hold in a laugh or a burst of swear words.
“When he grows up,” Flynn said. He rubbed his thumb between his eyebrows in an attempt to squash the headache he could feel brewing. “Because right now he’s just a kid, right?”
Harris looked like he was questioning Flynn’s intelligence. “Yes. He’s four months old. His breed don’t reach maturity until….” He trailed off as his brain caught up with his mouth and he realized what had happened. He pursed his mouth around a dismayed “oh” and lifted the wavering beam of his flashlight to Flynn’s face. “I did… wonder… why you came so quickly. I mean, for a goat.”
Yeah, well, Flynn would have come even quicker if he hadn’t been dragged out on a wildgoatchase. He dragged his hand down over his face.
“I’msosorry,” Harris said. His apology had a desperate “not sure how much trouble he was in” note to it. He glanced from Flynn to Mac’s back and then at Flynn again. “I didn’t… when I said ‘kid,’ I didn’t realize they’d think I meant achild.”
Mac turned around and glared at him. His face was flushed red—redder around the spots—and he jabbed an angry finger in Harris’s direction.
“Do you know what the penalty is for wasting Rescue’s time?” he asked sourly.
Flynn was tempted to wait and see if either of them knew the answer, because he didn’t. Instead, since he still had better things to do that night, he interrupted. “Mac, why don’t you call in to Dispatch and let them know about the crossed wires.” He slung his kit off his shoulder and crouched down to unhook the looped rope. “I’ll get Mr. Harris’s goat.”
No one laughed at the joke.
“Oh, come on,” Mac protested. “We’re not frigging Animal Rescue.”
About 50 percent of the time, they were—mostly dogs and the occasional wayward sheep. Bilbo was the first goat. But Mac was still into trying to impress girls with his exploits—or boys. Flynn had never asked. It had definitely been a better story for him when there was a helpless child involved.
But there wasn’t, and Mac needed to suck that up.
“Just call Dispatch,” Flynn said, “before they have the cops out here.”
“I don’t see why I should have to—” Mac spluttered indignantly.
Flynn stood up. He rolled his head to the side and made his neck pop. Maybe he wasn’t as bad as most people in town thought, but he could still be pretty awful—enough to make Mac swallow and take a step back. Flynn was his dad’s son, after all, and the old man had always been ready with his fists.
