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“I guess sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d kept going with veterinary medicine.”

“The road not taken.” Mac took a bite of pizza.

“Yeah, exactly.” Jodie picked a piece of pepperoni off her pizza and popped it into her mouth. “Kyle actually offered to help me with school years ago. Whatever I needed to get there.” She shrugged. “Watchdog would help with tuition. Work around classes. All that.”

Mac swallowed before asking, “And you turned him down?”

“I didn’t turn him down.” Her expression turned sheepish. “I said maybe someday.”

Mac took a drink of beer, mostly to give himself a second. “How long ago was that?”

“Long enough that ‘someday’ is starting to sound suspiciously like ‘never.’” There was humor in her voice, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Why didn’t you do it?”

Jodie looked down at her pizza. “Timing, mostly. Watchdog was growing. Kyle needed help. Then one crisis seemed to happen after another.” She stopped and looked up at him through her lashes. “A lot happened before your time, but you were there for some of it.”

Mac nodded, thinking about April and her ex.

“Then, more people hired, more dogs trained, the certification, more paperwork, more everything. Somebody had to keep track of it all. Kyle’s basically a living, breathing action figure—you all are—but he’s totally lost when it comes to the nitty-gritty details.”

Mac smiled. “And by somebody, you mean you.”

“Well.” She reached for another slice. “If I leave everybody unsupervised for too long, somebody will accidentally buy a killdozer.”

Mac laughed. “Probably Kyle, and probably not by accident.”

“Absolutely Kyle, and absolutely not by accident, yeah. Then he’d hand me the receipt and ask me to figure out where to park it.”

Mac could picture it far too easily. He chuckled again.

Jodie took a bite, chewed, then shrugged. “I like being needed. That’s the part I can’t talk myself out of.” She set the slice down. “Going back to school would change…everything.”

“Doesn’t mean it would change anything for the worse, Jodie.”

She looked at him for a moment. “I can’t know that for sure. And I can’t take the chance.”

That went straight through him. He knew all about having your life rearranged by circumstances you hadn’t exactly chosen.

Let it go. Tonight should be fun, not heavy.

“So what do you actually do with the horse group?” he asked, changing the subject. “Besides know every horse in northwest Colorado by name.”

Jodie laughed. “Not every horse.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Fine. A lot of them.” She leaned forward, warming to the subject. “I run the database. People all over the state send in photographs and field notes, and I’m the one who works out which horse is which and where she ended up.”

“And when you’re at Sand Wash?”

“Same thing, except in person for once.” She took another bite. “Observer work, mostly. Making sure somebody’s standing there with a camera and a clipboard while the horses come through.” Her jaw tightened. “It’s a lot harder to lose a horse in the paperwork when somebody’s watching you do it.”

Mac set his slice down. There it was. That was the whole thing.

“And I’m supposed to help whoever they find to replace Arden. We’ll be short-handed as it is.”

Mac nodded slowly. It sounded like they were going to need people who knew horses. People who could handle equipment, drive bad roads, and keep their heads when animals were scared and plans went sideways—and not just because of the animals.