Page 75 of Into the Fire

“I’ll let you know where he lands,” the woman said.

“You don’t have to do that.” Then, one second later: “Unless you usually do.”

“I do.”

She loaded the dog into a crate padded better than the bunkhouse beds and pulled out. I stood next to Shep as we watched the SUV pull through the gate.

“We have to tell Boone,” I said.

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“You’re coming with me.” I turned him toward the office by the shoulder.

Boone was at his desk with the statements still squared in front of him. He looked at Shep, then at me, and put his pen down.

“Tell him,” I said.

Shep told him the entire story from the culvert to the SUV following us through the gate. He didn’t dress it up or perform it. Boone listened without interrupting.

“You brought a stray dog onto the base.”

“Technically, the dog was already near the base.”

“Shep.”

“Yes?”

“And you hid it behind the gear shed.”

“Temporarily.”

“And when I asked you where you were yesterday, you lied to me.”

“Yes. I did that.”

“Because of the dog?” Boone asked.

“Yes.”

Boone looked at me.

“There was a dog,” I said. “I can verify that. I saw the dog.”

The corner of Boone’s mouth moved, but he stopped it.

“I asked you a direct question inside an active investigation, and you looked me in the eye and lied,” Boone said. “Do you understand what that lie could have cost you if Dante hadn’t gone after it?”

“Yes,” Shep said.

“I don’t care about the dog. If you’d come to me when you found it, I’d have told you to keep it out of the loft and away from the fuel, and Marty would’ve been feeding it within two days.” Boone paused. “The next time you have a problem on this base—a dog, dent, or anything—you bring it to somebody. You don’t manage it alone behind a shed.”

“Understood.”

“You’ll amend your statement today. Write it the way it happened, all of it, and give it to Hollis.”

“Yes, sir.” I hadn’t heard him use the word sir before.

Shep left, and Boone looked at me across the desk.