Greyson (The K9 Files) - Dale Mayer Page 0,7

reached over, clasped her hands with his, and tucked her into a gentle hug. “It’s fine,” he said. “At that point in time, I needed to push everybody away so I could focus on me. You couldn’t have done anything for me while I was in that state anyway.”

“That’s not true,” she protested. “We would have been there for you.”

“You were there for me,” he said. “Physically, nobody could be there for me. I was a mess. I needed time and a lot of surgeries, and I wasn’t even cognizant of a lot of it,” he said. “Those months went by in a nasty blur, and I’m grateful they did, so that I had a chance to recover and to recuperate and to rebuild my life. Now I’m here, and you’re here, and you’re happy, and I’m fine,” he said with emphasis.

She smiled up at him mistily. “It was so hard to know what you were going through,” she said. “I’m so sorry that you had to suffer so terribly.”

“I know, and I’m sorry for the whole scenario. But it’s okay, and I’m fine now. I’m better than fine,” he said with a smile.

She smiled, then reached up and patted his cheek. “Well, you lie very well. There’s that.”

“I do,” he said, with a big laugh. “The bottom line is that it’s all good, Grandma. Really.”

She said, “Good then. You take these cookies over to the table, and I’ll pour some coffee.”

And that’s what he did. As soon as he sat down, Leo came lumbering over and sat on Greyson’s foot, looking for love. He gave the dog a good scratching; then Leo walked over to lie at his grandfather’s feet. Greyson nodded to his grandfather. “Good choice,” he said.

“I don’t know that there was any choice in it.” His grandfather reached a hand down, placing it on Leo’s head. “As long as it’s all good,” he said.

Greyson could see from his grandfather’s possessive stroking on Leo’s back that his grandfather was happy. And his grandmother? She had a soft smile on her face as she studied the man and his dog.

“Look at that,” she said. “You know something? I teased him for months and months about getting a dog, but he kept holding back. Now he’s with you for five minutes, and we already have a dog. What will we have in an hour or two?”

He burst out with a laugh. “Well, it was an accident that we went there in the first place. An accident in that Grandpa went along,” he corrected. “I’m here looking for a War Dog that was accidentally shipped to Hawaii instead of Denver.”

“How does that happen?” she asked in bewilderment. “Accidentally shipped to Hawaii? That doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“It doesn’t to me either,” he said, “but, once it was here, temporary arrangements were made for it to be housed by this shelter for a couple days, while another flight was scheduled. Only it disappeared that first night. I wanted to take a look at the actual location to make sure that the holding pen was adequate and to talk to someone firsthand.”

“And was it? Did they find it? What happened to it?”

He held up a hand at his grandmother’s questions. “They don’t have a clue. They don’t have any idea what happened to the dog.”

Jessica walked back outside again, her eyes constantly searching her huge backyard. When she had first found this house, she knew she had to rent it, as it would be perfect for Danny, with this great big backyard that he could grow into. And her landlord, knowing she was a single mom with a toddler, had installed security cams inside, just not in Danny’s bedroom or the two bathrooms. Yet her bedroom had a cam. Her landlord had a panic button installed in her bedroom, in case she ever had an intruder. Which was the extent of her interaction with the security system here, but it was everything to her. It made her feel safe.

Back then.

Not so much now.

And now she wished he had put up security cams outside.

She thought she’d seen that same dog but didn’t understand why he would stay here. She was a little jumpy as it was, since she and her son had been involved in a fender bender three weeks ago and subsequently had learned that her ex-husband had paid someone to intentionally slam into her. The very nerve of the man drove her crazy.

Separated for two years now, back then she’d