TO HELL WITH speed limits.
He was driving on a dry, sunlit back road without another vehicle in sight, the perfect place to open it up and make time. And he was already late.
Florida trooper Nicholas Stanton put his foot down hard on the gas and felt his senses make a corresponding shift into overdrive. He registered the wire fences along the sides of the county road, hummocks of scrub palmetto and stubborn live oaks, cattle grazing and smatterings of cowbirds and egrets around farm ponds. Heat radiated visibly off the worn macadam, and of habit, he touched the air-conditioner controls—which were already set on high. Barely five minutes went by before he spotted something in the road ahead.
“Sh—crap.” He was trying to work on expletives. He was a single dad with a kid who was all eyes and ears. And who was playing in his first ever soccer game in exactly—he glanced at his watch—fifteen f—frickin minutes. As he crested a small rise, he could see far enough to know he had to take his foot off the gas. The big engine of the cruiser whined as it slowed, and when he topped the final rise, there they were.
Dogs. One lying smack in the middle of the road with the other standing over it.
“Aw, hell.” Nick slammed on the brakes and came to a jarring stop twenty feet from where they blocked the center of the narrow two-lane road. He paused for a minute, breathing hard and taking in the situation. He could probably slide around them on the berm, but he could see a drop-off into a concrete culvert just ahead—and those dogs would still be here when some local came shooting down the road at breakneck speed. With a growl, he pulled his front wheels over the centerline and flipped on his light bar.
It was his job to make sure accidents like that didn’t happen.
He stepped out into the heat, his shirt sticking to his back, and donned his Florida Highway Patrol hat against the still-fierce evening sun. He stood for a moment with his legs spread and his hands on his belt.
Dogs. It would be dogs.
He took two steps toward them, and the standing dog—a black-and-tan German shepherd, thin and rangy—sprang in front of its companion. Its ears were up, nostrils flared, and a low growl reverberated deep in its chest. In full protection mode. The downed dog had long reddish-gold hair and a pretty face...golden retriever for sure.
Nick watched the shepherd’s eyes, sensing he was being sized up even as he was assessing the dogs. He’d seen that wary body language dozens of times in Iraq and Afghanistan. Muscles weren’t tensed to launch—yet—but every nerve in that lean body was firing in preparation. Closer now, he could see scars on the shepherd’s face.
“Tough guy, huh.” He took a deep breath, determined to get it over with. “Well, I’ve seen my share of action, too. You got a buddy down, and if you want me to take a look, you’re going to have to back off. Now.”
When he moved in, a full-blown snarl came from the shepherd. But as Nick hoped, the dog backed up a step, then two, still growling, glancing fiercely between Nick and his wounded friend. They were both thin and looked like they had been on their own for a while, but the shepherd, at least, seemed to know something about humans. Not entirely feral.
Nick kept one eye on the shepherd as he knelt cautiously beside the golden and surveyed the damage. Female. There was blood on her hindquarters, and a rear leg was canted at an odd angle. A glance across the worn pavement showed spatters of blood, some not fully dried; the accident had happened here and not long ago.
Aw, damn. She didn’t even have the energy to drag herself off the road.
He ran his hands gently over the golden’s side, avoiding the shepherd’s gaze and the blood on the injured dog’s rear quarters. Her ribs were prominent but seemed intact. The dog lifted her head and opened her eyes.
“It’s all right, girl. It’s all right. Just checking you out.” He held out his hand for her to sniff, and she gave a couple of feeble thumps with her tail before dropping her head and falling back into a half-conscious state.
She’d be dead before long unless he did something. There was a new shelter in the east part of the next county...
If he thought about it too much, he’d make himself crazy.
“Just do it,” he muttered irritably.
Instinct took over. He stalked back to his cruiser, retrieved a thick wool blanket from the trunk and opened the cruiser’s back door. He covered the bloody rear of the golden with the blanket and lifted her carefully into his arms. She was fifty pounds of deadweight, but didn’t protest at being moved, though it had to be painful as hell. He managed to slide both her and enough of his shoulders into the back of the vehicle to position her on the seat so that her hindquarters would be supported.
As he withdrew from the car, the shepherd shoved past him into the footwell of the back seat.
“Hey!”
The shepherd gave him only a glance before sniffing and nosing his injured companion. Nick stood braced across the door frame, watching. God knew what would happen to the dog if he was left here alone. Big, alert brown eyes searched him. The trust Nick saw—or imagined—in those eyes caused an unwelcome tightness in his chest.
Dogs. Why the hell did it have to be dogs?
“All right,” he snapped, rationalizing the only course his troubled feelings would allow. “You go, too. The public will probably be safer with you off the streets.”
He closed the back door, slid behind the wheel of the cruiser and took off. He was halfway to the county line when he remembered why he’d been flying low earlier and felt his stomach clench.
“Sorry about the game, Ben.”
* * *
ALL IT TOOK was a touch.
The little balls of fur sensed something warm and good and migrated toward her, climbing sightlessly over each other, tumbling, mewling.
“It’s okay, little Mama,” Kate Everly, DVM, said as the dirty, matted schnauzer sat up anxiously to watch the calm, soft-spoken stranger kneeling beside her. Even if Kate hadn’t had a special knack for reassuring animals, the mother dog was too depleted from whelping to do much more than worry. “I’m just going to check your babies.”
With a sniff of the back of Kate’s hand, the mother looked up at the humans standing around the old cardboard box and sank back with resignation. Kate picked up the puppies, one by one, and gave each a thorough examination.
She felt the pudgy little legs and soft pink pads of the feet of each of the four puppies, then she turned them over and checked their abdomens and listened to their hearts. Afterward she settled them against their mother, who sighed and lay back in the newspaper bedding as the last pup recognized her scent