Acknowledgments:
Thank you to my new editor, Shana Asaro, for asking me to write a K-9 mountain rescue story! I’ve always loved these stories from LIS and this gave me a chance to showcase my own dog (though not a K-9)—an English mastiff named Solomon. As always, I so appreciate the encouragement and support from my writing friends—we’ve journeyed long and hard to get here! All my gratitude to my agent, Steve Laube, for believing in me. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway—thank you, Dan, Christopher, Jonathan, Andrew and Rachel for your patience with this novel-writing mom.
Contents
Note to Readers
Southwest Rocky Mountains,
Colorado
The wind picked up and whipped big snowflakes around Deputy Sierra Young’s head as she followed Samson, her K-9 mountain rescue English mastiff, up the densely wooded incline. She maintained a steady pace but her heart rate increased along with her breathing.
She hoped the small plane hadn’t crashed too high in the San Juan Mountains. That could make it impossible for her and Samson, as well as the SAR—search and rescue—volunteers, to reach the site before nightfall or the snowstorm grew worse. But they had to find the plane before they could rescue anyone.
Two snowmobilers had returned to the small tourist town of Crescent Springs, Colorado, earlier this afternoon claiming they’d seen the prop plane go down but they hadn’t been sure where it had crashed.
She’d brought Samson as far as she could before releasing him to find any human scent. Samson had been trained to find humans, whether air scenting for anyone in the wilderness or tracking a specific person. He was smart and used his skills to find whoever he was searching for. The other SAR volunteers searched downwind from Samson. It was important to spread as wide a net as possible. The victims could have escaped and gotten lost in the mountains, or they could be trapped in the plane. Or worse.
She couldn’t think about worse.
Lord, please let us find and save them, whoever they are.
Before the weather turned too harsh or night took over. Sure, Samson could work through the night, but not in this weather. The terrain and elements during the winter months here in the Rockies were currently too harsh for searching at night. Sierra worked as a part-time deputy and K-9 mountain rescue handler for the county. She knew that Sheriff Locke would protect the volunteers, and if it became too dangerous to search, he would call it off.
Samson’s massive two-hundred-pound form plowed up the hill through the deepening snow, giving credence to his aptly picked name. Snow could tire out some breeds of search dogs and limit their time searching, but mastiffs were the stronger working-breed dogs, and Samson hadn’t tired yet.
An old friend—Bryce Elliott—had given Samson to her when he was a puppy, and had even named him. After the attack when she’d been a detective in Boulder, she’d wanted a big dog, and Bryce had surprised her with the English mastiff. A pang of regret that she’d left her friend behind when she’d moved from Boulder stabbed her at the worst possible moment. She missed Bryce. But she needed to focus on this search.
The sheriff radioed he was calling the search, bringing her back to the