Page 2 of Track of Courage

“Are you saying hemadeit look like he panicked and shot the girl?” Flynn asked.

“I’m saying...” He put his leg down straight, then closed one eye as he moved it into a ninety-degree angle. Tightened down a groan. “I should have made us go in. I knew Ravak. What he was capable of. We only spent six months watching him.”

She got up and handed Dawson his towel. He glanced at Caspian and raised an eyebrow.

Yeah,bud,that’s how it’s done.

Caspian set his head on his knee. No shame.

Flynn patted the dog. “He’s so sweet.”

“He sleeps with my shoes, carries my socks around the house when he’s lonely, drinks out of the toilet, sneaks my steak off the counter when I’m not looking, and sleeps in my bed. Sometimes in the middle of the night, he sleepsonme. Wakes me out of...” Well, he didn’t want to say the rest.

Because then Flynn would go all psychology on him and call him damaged on the inside too. That’s what happened when he partnered up with someone who specialized in criminal profiles.

“So, you two are getting along, then.” She grinned and leaned down, giving the dog a face-to-face. “Good boy.”

“When Shep said he was trainable, I thought that maybe I could get him to, I don’t know, fetch something. Maybe stay when asked. But no. The dog suddenly appears out of nowhere when I get up, right there to trip me. Or lean against me. I’ve never met such a needy animal.” He rubbed the top of his knee. “So, will there be a retrial?”

“Yes. I talked with the prosecutor. But”—she reached down as if to help him up, but he didn’t need help, thank you.

He pushed up from the bench. “Don’t start.”

“You should testify. Tell them—”

“What? That I had a gut feeling the guy was going to try and kill his own daughter?” His throat burned even as he said it.

Flynn drew in a breath, her mouth tight.

“Yeah,” he said. “Not a lot of evidence for my hunches.”

“Except ten years on the job.”

He refused to reach for the edge of something to balance himself and instead tried to walk without a limp.

Ha.

Caspian got up and walked next to him. At least he wasn’t getting in his way.

“If the chief didn’t believe me, I don’t think a jury will,” Dawson said.

“It’s hard to justify a headshot made on a hunch.”

He glanced at her, his gut tightening. “Might have saved a five-year-old her life.”

She sighed, nodded.

Caspian, however, nudged up against him. This dog. He petted him a moment and then hobbled out of the workout room, down the hallway, past Moose’s dark office and the empty locker room, all the way to the kitchen area.

A granite-topped island held a couple paper plates of unfinished sandwiches. The uneaten lunch before the team left.

He slid onto a bench at the counter and started to reach for the plates to clean them, but Flynn beat him to it, dumped them into the garbage, and began clearing the lunch debris.

Caspian sat down beside him, his back to him.

The sun hung low, casting the last of the golden light into the day, an early twilight given it was still the first week of March. Outside, fresh snow layered the ground, although a plow had shoved most of the frosting away from the tarmac and the parking area, piling it into massive drifts around the airfield.

The icy pavement made walking with his bad knee ever so fun.