Page 152 of The Ampersand Effect

Her confession was abruptly cut off by a metalclangcracking through the air, followed by a sudden flurry of fur and frantic movement.

Tobin swiveled her head, still holding onto Grier. The gated pen lay in pieces on the ground, caving after a camper had unknowingly unlatched the keystone piece.

The dogs scattered instantly with the noise of the crash, darting in every direction, tails wagging and paws scrambling with gleeful rebellion as they swarmed through the market.

“Tobin! Help!” Anchor shouted, dropping a tote of paperwork and immediately sprinting after the escaped dogs.

Tobin knew that if she didn’t get this situation controlled, they’d be chasing dogs all morning—risking injuries to dogs and humans. They needed to be calm and organized, and theyneeded to have a place to secure the dogs once they were collected.

She assessed, and started speaking before the plan was fully formulated. But there wasn’t time to idle with indecision.

“Anchor, no!” Tobin’s voice cut through the chaos. Anchor froze mid-stride, eyes flicking to her for direction.

“You stay with me,” Tobin ordered, already kneeling by the collapsed gate. “We need this pen reset or we’ll have no place to secure the dogs once we retrieve them.”

She snapped her gaze to Grier, who was already in motion, understanding her assignment before Tobin had to state it.

Grier gave her hand a quick squeeze, and gave voice to Tobin’s thoughts. “I’ll organize the campers and start rounding up the dogs. We’ll use kennels to hold them until the pen is ready.”

Tobin squeezed Grier’s hand in acknowledgment, then met Anchor at the pen in a matter of steps. She dropped to one knee and hoisted a panel upright, securing it to the keystone piece that Anchor was already hefting. They huffed in synchronized efforts, while they wordlessly moved from piece to piece, latching the locks with practiced efficiency.

In her peripheral vision, Tobin could see Grier delegating assignments to the campers, before briskly walking off with Delta. They dispersed like trained search teams, fanning out in a coordinated sector pattern that would’ve impressed any SAR professional—leashes and treat bags in hand. Tobin felt a flicker of pride swell in her chest.

Anchor snapped the final piece into place and locked it tight, returning the pen to its completed form. She grunted as she closed the final latch, and looked at Tobin with a mixture of comedy, relief, and disbelief. Her posture exuded weary anxiety, and Tobin noticed that she had a cut on her hand that was dripping a good amount of blood.

Jodi strolled up with a coffee cup in one hand and Smooch balanced casually on her opposite hip, his familiar tongue lolling out the side of his mouth while he panted heavily. She raised a single, arched eyebrow at the sight of them.

“Do I want to know?” she asked dryly, eyes darting between them.

Tobin and Anchor exchanged a glance before collapsing into folding chairs with exasperated chuckles. In perfect unison, they answered, “No!”

Tobin shook her head and ran her fingers through her long mahogany strands. The ferocity of their recovery efforts had destroyed her ponytail. She gathered the unruly waves into her hands and pulled them back and away from her face, slick with perspiration.

Jodi placed Smooch in the pen, just as two groups of campers returned—three wayward dogs between them.

“I should get some bungee cords from the van, see if we can reinforce this pen a little more,” Anchor said, starting to rise from her chair.

“Uh, I think you should tend to your hand first,” Jodi protested, gesturing pointedly at Anchor’s bloody hand. Anchor squirmed with the sudden attention to her injury, clenching and unclenching her hand under the uncomfortable scrutiny.

“Let me take care of the bungees,” Jodi added, handing her a bottle of water.

Anchor poured it over the cut without protest, to wash it and inspect it.

“I can clean and dress that for you,” Tobin offered. “Do you have a first aid kit in the van?”

“Yeah, there’s one underneath the passenger seat,” Anchor said, standing to retrieve it.

“Stay. I’ll get it,” Jodi admonished her forcefully, already at the van in search of the bungees.

Tobin tended to Anchor’s cut, which was not as deep as the amount of blood would have suggested. “How did this even happen?”

Anchor shrugged and winced as Tobin poured peroxide over the long but shallow cut along the back of her hand. “I scratched it on a latch somewhere along the line. I felt it when it happened, but was too focused to really assess it. It’s not that bad.”

“So you say…” Tobin replied dubiously as she finished securing a square of gauze with pre-wrap and athletic tape on the back of Anchor’s hand. “Have you had a tetanus titer recently?”

Anchor nodded, flexing and extending her fingers, testing the boundaries of the bandaging. She looked up—and Tobin felt her eyes drift behind her, widening as she took in whatever she was witnessing. Tobin watched the curve of her shoulders relax, then turned to follow her line of sight.

The last of the campers approached the booth in a discombobulated line, Delta in the lead with a rambunctious lab mix tugging her along, and Grier bringing up the rear with a tri-colored ball of fur tucked under each arm—Smooch’s litter mates.