Greyson (The K9 Files) - Dale Mayer Page 0,11

you made last night,” he declared.

She flushed with pleasure. “You’re still such a flirt.”

“I am not,” he said, laughing.

She smiled at him. “Well, in that case, I’ll go get ready.” And, with that, she disappeared from the kitchen and headed upstairs.

It was strange to be here, yet, at the same time, it felt completely normal, as if time hadn’t passed at all, and he was right back to where he’d been years ago. His father—their son—had died, along with his mother, just as Greyson was entering the navy. It had been tough on them all, but he at least had had his new career to bury himself into. They’d had each other, and that was all, but it was something.

Now the family was just the three of them. Greyson knew that they were hoping he’d get married someday and would have a family, but that wasn’t exactly on the top of his list at the moment.

He got out a notepad and jotted down ideas of where to check for Kona and what to do. The rescue center had surely opened a police file on the missing dog. If not, surely someone reported the car accident, or at least somebody should have, so he would contact the local police department, see just what they had for a file, if a file existed at all. A War Dog like that shouldn’t just disappear. He had a photograph of her in the file that he’d brought with him, and he’d photographed that so he had it on his phone too.

He brought up the photo, so the dog’s face filled the screen, and he set it as his backdrop. When his grandmother came in, she saw the picture on his phone.

“Oh my,” she said, “that’s a handsome-looking animal.”

“That’s Kona, the one I’m looking for,” he said.

“And that’s a very Hawaiian name,” she said. “Did you consider that?”

He looked at her and paused. “You know what? I didn’t,” he said. “I wonder if it was a deliberate misdirection, or maybe her handler was Hawaiian too.”

He quickly brought up his phone and sent Badger a text, asking him about the origin of the K9’s name and if maybe Kona’s previous trainers and handlers had been Hawaiian. It just seemed like an unlikely coincidence that a dog accidently shipped to Hawaii happened to have a Hawaiian name.

Badger replied almost immediately that they would check on it. Greyson liked that about that team. They understood communication and how important it was to have it happen as fast as possible. Nobody on a mission should be delayed too long by waiting on somebody getting information back to them.

As soon as his coffee was gone, his grandmother grabbed her purse. He looked over at her. “Do you want me to drive you somewhere?”

She shook her head and smiled at him. “Nope,” she said. “You go ahead and take the truck. I’m taking my car.”

He frowned. “I’m really struggling with that,” he said. “I’d be more than happy to rent a vehicle.”

“We’d be quite insulted if you did,” she said, putting an end to the discussion.

As she walked out and got into her car, he thought about that, wondering how his grandparents had such a great method of handling everything. He laughed. They used guilt and wielded it like a sword. Still, he got into the truck and pulled out, using his cell phone’s GPS to help him track backward to the rescue center.

As soon as he parked outside and walked in, the woman looked up at him in surprise. He just shrugged and said, “I’ll start tracking the dog from here. I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be around for a little bit.”

She nodded slowly.

“And you didn’t see anything else?” he asked. “You didn’t think of anything?”

She shrugged and said, “No. I don’t know anything about it. Like I said, there was a fender bender going on outside, but, other than that, I don’t really have anything to offer.”

“Do you happen to know who was involved in the fender bender?”

She shrugged. “Nope, I sure don’t.”

“Did you call the police about the dog?”

“I did, particularly because this wasn’t an ordinary stray or a surrender. This was a dog we had been asked to board for safekeeping.” Her tone was wry. “And I do have the name of the detective I spoke with.” Walking over to her desk, she riffled through a bunch of paperwork and handed him a card. “This is who I spoke to.”

Taking a photo of