Page 97 of Midnight Creed

“This is sounding more like a very bad idea,” Brodie told him.

“But what if Will is out there? Maybe hurt? Maybe just lost?”

The dogs were waiting. Hank leaned against Brodie’s legs as if to nudge her into action. Grace’s front paws were tapping the ground.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go do this.”

Any semblance of natural light quickly was gobbled up under the canopy of pine trees and live oaks. Grace jumped over fallen branches and disappeared in and out of shrubs, despite Creed keeping a tight leash on her. In several places, she stopped completely. Once, she stood on her hind legs to sniff the top of a plant that stretched over her head.

She huffed at it. Turned to Creed as if to say, “not here,” before taking off again further to the right of the misleading plant.

It didn’t take long, and Creed heard the crunch under his feet. He winced and stopped immediately, calling for Grace to stop as well. They had come upon one of the dreaded garbage dumps. In the daylight, the debris had made him cringe about Bolo’s unprotected feet. Now in the dark, the sound felt like a sucker punch.

“What’s wrong?” Brodie asked, stopping in her tracks. She and Hank were several paces behind.

“Garbage,” he told her.

“Garbage?”

“Some people dump their trash out here. Bolo and I ran into some the other day. We’re kind of in the same vicinity.”

He shot his flashlight across the floor of the forest. Broken glass glittered. In looked like a couple of tires were lobbed on top of a debris pile that animals had still gotten into and scattered. Every nerve in his body told him to pick up Grace, turn around, and go back.

Of course, the Jack Russell terrier didn’t notice any of this as a threat. She waited impatiently, her nose still taking in scent.

As Creed waved the beam over the ground, something caught his attention on the other side of the trees. He angled the light up, raising his arm high. Through the tree trunks, he could see a long stretch of open grass. That’s exactly where Grace wanted to go.

They navigated the garbage as best they could. When they cleared the woods, Creed stopped Grace again.

“What is this place?” Brodie asked.

Acres and acres of pristine grass extended for as far as the flashlight’s beam. The area was still under development, but Creed could tell what it eventually would be.

“I think it’s a golf course.”

He didn’t remember any public roads that drove by this. It looked like the equipment came through a dirt road along the edges of the forest. He couldn’t investigate that right now. Grace wasn’t finished.

She led him to a stretch of new sod not even fifty feet from the forest. There was nothing here out of the ordinary. No equipment or leftover piles of anything. Just the pristine grass. She sat down and looked up at him. Directly up at him. Her eyes meeting his.

“Ryder,” Brodie said from behind him.

He turned to find that she and Hank hadn’t followed all the way. Brodie was on her knees and shined her flashlight at Hank’s front leg. There was blood.

“The garbage,” she said. “The glass must have cut him.”

He could hear an unfamiliar panic in his sister’s voice.

He yanked Grace’s reward out of his pack, but the Jack Russell was already headed over to lie down beside Hank. Creed continued digging in his pack for his first aid kit as he came over.

On his knees, he could see the cuts.

“Shine your flashlight here,” he told Brodie. He gently took Hank’s foot. He could already feel glass embedded in his paw. Creed’s hand came away bloody.

“Oh, no!” Brodie whispered, hugging the big dog to her body even as she kept the flashlight steady.

It took Creed about fifteen minutes to carefully remove the pieces he could see and feel. He told the dog how brave he was as he tweezered and dabbed alcohol. Hank let him do what he needed to do without a flinch. Creed had saved him once before, and the dog trusted him.

“He’s gonna be okay,” he tried to reassure Brodie even as he noticed her biting down on her bottom lip. “But I don’t want him walking all the way back or putting pressure on it until we know all the glass has been removed.”