“Such,” Cloister told her and stooped to offer his forearm.
Bourneville sprang forward, nails scratching the dinged-up wood of the porch, and reared up onto her back legs.Her front paws hooked over Cloister’s arm, dust from her paws leaving reddish-brown stains on his sleeve, as she leaned forward to sniff along the handle intensely.Her breath misted the glossy black plastic as her equally glossy black nose twitched.
Once she had the scent, she huffed and slid off Cloister’s arm.She dropped her head and cast around on the porch, then scrambled back off the porch.Cloister let the long line spool out as she cast back and forth over the grass, tail up and flagged as she trotted back and forth.Once she’d locked into the scent, she shot across the garden and into the little plastic playhouse.She gave a sharp woof, muffled by the Barbie-colored walls, and her tail thumped briefly.
Cloister glanced at Gardner, who grunted.
“Doesn’t mean anything,” he said as he shrugged stubbornly.“She heard the girl—the prowler went in there.”
Cloister cocked his head to the side as he absorbed that.He would have said something, but before he could, Gardner held up a hand to stop him.
“Yeah, I fucking heard myself,” Gardner said, glaring at him as he reached up to thumb his radio on.“You don’t need to rub in it.Dispatch, this is 2-14.K-9 has a trail.”
Cloister could hear Mel’s voice, familiar even when he couldn’t quite make out the words, acknowledge that as he headed toward the playhouse.Bourneville backed up out of it as he got there—briefly ungainly—and dropped her nose to pick up the thread of scent.She picked up speed as she gained confidence in the trail, pushing through the scrub of neglected boundary plants at the bottom of the garden.
When she reached the chain-link fence, she went up and over it in one smooth move.Cloister gave the line a flick to make sure it didn’t catch and followed her, one hand braced on the stiff bar at the top as he hurdled the obstacle.
As he put his weight on that arm, a sharp twinge plucked from his wrist down into the heart of his palm.It made him wince, his fingers prickling with pins and needles, but he didn’t let it slow him down.He ignored the ache as he landed on the other side of the fence, boots sliding in the loose dirt down into the gully behind the houses.
It was darker back here, away from the ambient light of the neighborhood.Cloister pulled his flashlight from his belt and flicked it on, just in time to catch Bourneville in the beam as she loped away from him along the draw.
He followed on her heels, flicking the beam of the flashlight from her tail down to the dust and loose rock footing underneath.Cloister tucked his chin down as he tapped his radio.
“K-9-23,” he ID’d himself.“Going west on the trail down the back of Buckthorn.”
Mel copied him.
Cloister let the radio link cut off and lengthened his stride to cut down the distance between him and Bourneville.His attention was mostly on her and the uneven footing that threatened to roll his ankle, but a stubborn corner chewed over old patrol routes and maps as he tried to predict where the prowler was headed.
There was a small strip mall about a mile down the road, at the corner of Buckthorn and Meadow.Cloister had gotten coffee there before, and a burger that had been bad enough the memory stuck.There was a culvert at the back of the parking lot that would give easy access to the backs of the housesandgive the prowler a clean getaway once he’d scratched whatever itch had him crawling around back here.
It’s where Cloister would have—
Before he could finish theorizing to himself, Bourneville turned sharply and went scrambling back up the steep side of the draw.Her back paws kicked chunks of rock and dirt down the slope as she dug her nails in.
Cloister broke stride for a second, chest heaving, to try and work out why the prowler would make his exithere.Not that it mattered, Cloister supposed as he shoved his flashlight back in his belt, hehad.
And that meant Cloister had to as well.
He broke into a sprint that carried him six feet up the steep pitch of the hill before gravity caught him.As he faltered, he snatched at a scrubby handful of black sage.It held—just—and he dug the toes of his boots into the loose soil enough to scramble up to the next handhold.
By the time he got to the top, the twinge in his wrist had graduated to a dull, grating ache.He shook his hand to loosen the ache—didn’t help—and looked around.
A tall stucco wall ran perpendicular to the edge of the gully.The surface of it was scuffed with the scrubbed-off ghosts of old graffiti.Bourneville’s line, the red dulled from being dragged, trailed along the base of it back the way they’d come.
Before Cloister could follow suit, there was a sudden flurry of excited, sharp barks that meant she’d got something.It was followed by a loud crack and a startled high-pitched yelp that cut through the still night air.
Cloister dropped the lead and pulled his gun as he broke into a run.He held the weapon low in both hands.The red length of the long line disappeared under a dense mass of sage that grew up against the garden wall, woven between the woody stems.
Of course it did.
Oh well, it wasn’t like he’d asked Javi to waste money on dry cleaning his gear.
Cloister dropped to the ground.From this perspective he could see the shallow groove worn into the hard ground.He squirmed under it, using knees and elbows to drag himself along.
At the other side was an opening between the end of the wall and the vinyl fence that ran down the side of the house to mark off their drive.Cloister scrambled through the gap and hauled himself to his feet on the other side.
At the far end of the garden, Bourneville barked furiously as she bounced off the door.It jarred open a crack, and someone inside threw their weight against it as they tried to keep her out.
