Indivisible. Part 25

"I need someone to pray. Someone who can. Who knows how."

"You want me to pray with you?"

"No. I mean, I think Tia would want it, but I don't know how. I convinced the police chief to send a search team, and I wanted to do something too, but all I could think of was pray."

"I tell you what. I don't drive in bad weather, so let me call Carolyn. Are you home?"

"Yes."

"Unless you hear back, we'll be there directly."

Piper hoped the tremor in her voice was the palsy. One hopeless worrier was enough. "Thank you." She wasn't sure what she was doing, only that Tia would want it.

Fifteen minutes later, the two women arrived. Mary said, "This is Carolyn Wells, my dear. We would be honored to pray with you for Tia's safety and rescue."

Shivering hard, Tia rounded a hairpin turn and saw lights, three strong beams far enough down the mountain that it would still be a long pull to reach them. She drew a haggard breath. She did not look forward to Jonah's scolding, but she would accept their help. Fatigue had become a force.

She slowed her pace. It did no good to rush, now that a team had already come to find her-at least she hoped it was a rescue team and not the animal torture club. She shuddered. Her teeth had been chattering so hard she'd have to check them for chips, but a fresh chill shook her.

She had intended to call out when they drew close enough, but now she wasn't sure. She gripped the staff, biting her lip against the pain in her palms, her knees, her elbows, and most of all her left leg. It felt like a dog had sunk its teeth into her ankle and took a new hold with every step.

She hadn't realized until the cold soaked into her knees that she had sunk to the ground like a penitent. Pulling herself back up seemed tantamount to climbing Mount Everest. But Jonah would not find her on her knees. Digging deep, she climbed the staff and regained her feet as the light beams caught her.

"Tia Manning?" The voice calling was Adam Moser's.

"Yes," she called back. "I'm all right."

She waited for Jonah to stalk up, glaring, but he wasn't among them. She hoped that didn't mean another team was out in the storm searching.

"Are you injured?"

"Not badly. My ankle slowed me down."

A sheriff's deputy wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. She almost collapsed under its insubstantial weight.

Another officer she didn't know said, "Put your arm around my shoulder. We'll get you down." He was short and st.u.r.dy as a pony. With Adam Moser on the other side, she hardly had to work at all. Relief rushed in, so potent she shook with it. She'd been closer to collapse than she'd realized.

"I'll run you to Emergency," Adam said when they'd reached the trailhead.

"Can you please just take me home?"

"You should be checked out."

"I'm fine really. There's no one else searching, is there?"

"No ma'am." He unlocked the patrol car.

She slid out of the rain and closed her eyes as Jonah's officer walked around and climbed in with the phone to his ear. "Yeah, Chief, Moser here. We located Miss Manning. Minor injuries, exposure. She's declined the hospital, so I'm running her by the fire station, let them look her over."

She started to object, but Jonah would hear. Besides, the officer hadn't asked; he'd decided.

Moser listened for a beat. "All right then." He signed off.

Tia looked out the slush-soaked window, relieved and devastated. She hadn't wanted to face Jonah, hadn't wanted him to think this a stunt for his attention like the things she'd done as a girl, taking dares and challenging him. She had dreaded him finding her, scolding her, but this new dread seeped in like an infection. Jonah had known she might be in trouble and turned it over to someone else. He'd finally let go.

Jonah pocketed his phone. Tia was found, safe and stubborn. He'd made the right call. He relaxed his muscles, working the tension from his neck. Having seen Sarge to bed, he let Enola out once more before she settled in for the night. Her wary eyes and scabby side reminded him how short the time had been since she'd dragged herself into his yard.

He had to agree this might not be her first sojourn in the human world. Maybe she'd been bred intentionally like the wolf hybrids. Leaving the outside door open, he went back to the closet and looked at the little, lumpy pups. He didn't want to swipe them, didn't know why Liz had insisted he bring them over tonight. Being there when the eyes opened might matter, but that was at least a week off.

With a sigh, he lifted and s.e.xed each one. Two females, one male. He turned the last in his hands and studied the face. They looked more like rodents than dogs. No way to tell, yet, if she'd been mated by a coyote or a domestic dog. How could he even think of turning two of them over to a woman who thought she could pattern them like ducklings? She wanted to mother them into pets, but it just- Jay tapped the door. "The vet's here."

Right now?

She came into the room, her coat and hair slushy, her face determined. "You promised me puppies."

He still cradled one in his hands. "I think it's too soon, Liz."

"You'll have the same concerns six weeks from now, and I'll have lost the chance for patterning."

She cast her gaze around the room he had almost invited her into the other night. That misstep gave her leverage and she knew it, yet in the midst of her resolve, he still sensed her awkwardness, a naivete that didn't match the outward boldness.

She looked into his face. "We had a deal."

"I know." He nodded. "I was going to bring them to you."

"Sure you were." She half smiled and looked at her watch.

"Tonight got busy."

"So I'm saving you the trip."

He nestled the one he held against his chest. "Those two are female, I think." He nodded toward the closet. If she was determined to have them, they'd better move quickly before Enola returned. "You have something to carry them in?"

She fetched a small carrier from the floor of the hall, checked them over and confirmed his guess, then loaded them in. "This is an opportunity for nurture to conquer nature."

"Nature won't give up easily."

She glanced up sideways. "Neither will I."

Jay murmured, "The coydog's at the door."

She lifted the carrier.

He returned the last pup to the closet. "I'll let you out the back." He led her down the new hall past Sarge's room. As they reached the door, he shook his head. "Why do I feel like I let the fox into the henhouse?"

"The one she has left will get her full attention. And yours." Their eyes met.

At a loss for words, he pushed open the door. Drizzle struck his face. "Be careful, Liz. Don't take risks with them."

"Everything valuable has risks. You either take them or you don't."

He watched her limp away, carrying the pups, then closed the door. Guilt clutched him as Enola walk-ran through the rooms, processing the foreign scents and the trail of her now departed pups. He wished he could explain.

Her pace slowed, became methodical, eyes darting, her tongue hanging to the side. Again and again her eyes flicked over him, but it was not an accusatory glance. She didn't realize he'd surrendered her offspring. Finally, she returned to the closet, licking his scent off the one she had left.

Jonah watched for a time, then went to the living room and stared at the bottle. He remembered diving down inside its depths, the warmth, the caress, the satiation. The feeling in his brain like softest fur.

Jay came up beside him. "Want to split it?"

Jonah swallowed. "Yes."

They stood, shoulder to shoulder, acknowledging the threat and giving no ground. Jonah sat down. Forearms resting on his thighs, he hung his head. "I wish she hadn't come."

"Your veterinarian?"

Jonah scowled. His His veterinarian. "Enola. Why did she choose me?" veterinarian. "Enola. Why did she choose me?"

"Might be the half cow in your freezer." When Jonah didn't smile, Jay shrugged. "Maybe she couldn't go any farther. She got too weak."

"You said she came for a reason, to teach me, to show me things."

"That was the Cherokee answer. This is the Dane."

He preferred to think she'd simply collapsed. But that wasn't what he'd seen. That little drag toward him made Jay's explanation a lie. She had trusted him. His mouth felt parched. His hands shook.

Jay said, "This isn't about the dog, is it?"

Jonah clenched his hands.

"Why didn't you look for Tia?"

He looked at Jay. His friend had never met Tia, but he knew the score, knew they'd reached the bottom of the ninth, just not that earlier in the day he'd made the final out. He had blocked the fear while she was out there. Now that she'd been found safe, it hit. What if they hadn't found her? What if she'd died? He rubbed a hand over his face. "Because it's over."

Jay let the words settle over them. Jonah hadn't said it before now, even to himself. He had gone into her shop intending one thing and accomplished the opposite. "Cold turkey?"

Jonah nodded. He'd beaten one addiction. If he just got her out of his blood ...

The rain dwindled and left shredded clouds across a faintly starry sky. Finally Jay stood. "I start a remodel tomorrow. I'll be tied up the next three days, maybe more."

Jonah nodded.

"Six years sober."

Jonah nodded again.

"The Lakota Sioux Chief Yellow Hawk said, 'I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy-myself.' Strength, brother." Jay squeezed his shoulder on the way out.

With each slow beat of his heart, Jonah desired the bottle. Did he even want to fight himself? What difference did it make? So he'd get drunk. Who was there to care? Who was there to harm? He could drown it, cover the pain with the smooth burn. His throat cleaved, dry and needing.

Jay had told him keeping the bottle was holding hands with the devil. Jonah wanted it to remind him he could get burned. He didn't pretend it would be only one swallow. If he opened the bottle, brought it to his lips, they'd make love until nothing remained.

The devil wasn't in the booze. It was in him, driven deep, deeper with every fist, every welt, every searing word that had left his mind as raw as his flesh. And with the blows, the smell of whiskey, the taste of fear in his nose and mouth and lungs.

Lord. Did it ever end?

He had shielded Reba from his fall. But Tia had been there, she'd always been there, in the dark and terror. In the pain. In the shame.

"The worst of it," Sarge murmured, shuffling in behind him, "is going on, day after day. What for?" He spread his hands, then lowered himself into the other recliner. He smelled like an old coat, pulled from a trunk where it had rested too long.

"I hope you don't mind being here, Sarge. It means a lot to me."

"You like to rescue people."

"I didn't-"

Sarge held up a hand. "It's not the first time."

Jonah waited.

"The first was the night Marty died."

Sarge had not talked about it before, not to him anyway.

"When I saw your face, a little boy tormented by a twisted man, I knew. In the moment of my failure, I'd been given a second chance."

"You didn't fail Marty, Sarge."

Sarge shook his head. "I wasn't that different from your old man."

"You're different."

"Hard and immovable. Always proving something. Do you know how it was, being a cook when the others were out there risking their lives? I felt invisible, inconsequential. A poser in uniform." He raised weary eyes. "But at home I was king."

Jonah didn't argue.

"Marty." He tipped his head, looking wounded. "Marty never made waves, not like the girls. He was sensitive. Smart. Introspective. He had a soft heart, and Ellen wouldn't let me harden it."

Billie must not have been so lucky.

Sarge's lips pressed together, his brows gathering. "She was a good mother, a good wife, better than I deserved."

"I wish I'd known her."

Sarge nodded. "She'd have taken you under her wing."

"Your wings were enough." Sarge looked up. Their eyes held.

"You did well by me, Sarge. Anything I return is because you gave me the chance to be something."