Page 8 of Wild Card (Foster Bro Code #2)

Dalton

We headed back to Riverton after lunch. Halfway there, the radio crackled with the dispatcher’s voice: “Robbery at Clover Leaf Park.”

“We’re close,” I told Chloe. “Call us in.”

She radioed in. “Patrol to Dispatch, responding to Clover Leaf.”

Information began to flow onto the car’s computer. Chloe read it out while I drove.

“Report of robbery made by Rusty Waters at Lot 102 of the trailer park. Suspect took his dog and drove off in a green El Camino.”

Uh-oh. I knew that car.

“The dog is a white Samoyed.” She looked at me. “What the hell is a Samoyed?”

I shrugged. “No idea.”

“Report names the suspect as Axel Wilder.”

“Damn it,” I muttered.

“You know him, I take it?” Chloe said.

My jaw clenched, and I ground my molars, then blew out a harsh breath. “Just a little.”

This shit was exactly why I couldn’t get involved with him. He couldn’t stay out of trouble.

Clover Leaf Park came up on my left, and I hit the blinker and turned into the lot. There were only a handful of trailers out here, so it didn’t take long to find Lot 102.

Rusty and his girlfriend stood in the driveway, waiting for us. I pulled to a stop and turned to Chloe.

“I know,” she said. “You’re in the lead.”

“You’re learning,” I said with a grin. “Stay behind me. I know these people. They’re not usually dangerous, but they’re often strung out on meth.”

“Got it.”

I radioed in to let Dispatch know we’d arrived and threw open my car door.

Rusty rushed toward me. “You need to go get our damn dog and arrest that asshole. Make sure you charge him with a felony, too, because this dog is worth a lot of cash, man. I always fucking hated Axel.”

“He threatened me,” Candy added. “I was scared for my life!”

“He can’t come around here and threaten my girl and steal my dog, man. It ain’t right,” Rusty said. “We’ve been violated!”

“Yeah, I feel violated,” Candy said, nodding and smacking bubble gum. “I won’t feel safe until he’s off the streets.”

“He needs to go to jail,” Rusty added.

They were both a little twitchy. Rusty kept tugging at his hair and then pacing in a small circle, and Candy was working that bubble gum like her life depended on it.

“All right, calm down,” I said as their ranting took on a fevered pitch. “Why would Axel take your dog?”

“Because he’s a thief!” Candy screeched. “We’ve been over this already?—”

“Quiet,” I barked, bringing out the deputy voice to cut through the word vomit. It was a deep tone of authority that made most people stop and take notice. “I want to know exactly what happened. Is this the first interaction you’ve had with Axel?”

It took some doing, and finally, Chloe and I had to separate them to get a coherent report. I let her handle Candy while Rusty led me into the trailer to dig through clutter on the coffee table, knocking down half a dozen beer cans as he did.

“Here!” He thrust a piece of paper at me.

I took it and scanned the print. It was a purebred certification for a Samoyed dog named Freya. I scanned the details. “Your name isn’t on this anywhere.”

Rusty pointed to the “owner at birth” line: “That’s my grandma.

She died a few weeks ago. I got the dog, mainly because no one else wanted the damn thing.

I didn’t get any of her good shit.” He grinned suddenly and grabbed the certificate.

“But see, they don’t know this dog is my payday.

The look on their faces when they find out…

” He cackled. “It’s going to be sweet as fuck. ”

“How is she a payday?”

“A full-bred Samoyed with papers? I can get thousands for her, man!”

Damn. That didn’t bode well for Axel. If this dog really was worth thousands, it would be felony theft at the minimum.

“So now you see why I had to take my dog back,” he said. “If I’d known she was worth so much, I would have never let her go the first time.”

“Wait, what do you mean the first time?”

Rusty shook his head. “Uh, no, nothing, man.”

“What did you mean you had to take your dog back? Back from where?”

“Nah, just, that’s why I need her back. That’s all I’m saying.”

There was a cagey look to his expression that I wasn’t buying. “I think there’s more to this story you’re not telling me.”

He hesitated. “She’s my dog, right? You see the papers. My grandma was the owner. So it doesn’t really matter that I lost her for a little while. She’s still my dog, right?”

“So you lost her…”

“Out by Axel’s place, and you know how he is, always picking up strays. He took her in.”

“I see.”

“Yeah, but she’s my dog, so I had to go get her, right? It’s not my fault if he got attached or some stupid shit like that…”

I tuned him out while he continued to justify his actions. I had a pretty good guess about what had actually happened. Rusty got this dog when his grandmother died, and instead of taking care of her and loving her as his grandmother had, he’d chosen to dump his dog out by the junkyard.

It was a badly kept secret that if folks dumped their pets out that way, Axel would take care of them. Some he kept permanently, and others only until he could find a good home for them.

Rusty must have ditched the dog before he realized she was worth money.

“Okay, Rusty,” I interrupted his latest rant. “This has been helpful. We’ll take care of it.”

“You’ll get my dog back?”

I hated to say it, but the law was on his side. He had the papers to prove ownership, and I had zero proof that he’d abandoned the animal. Even if Axel confirmed my suspicion, it would only be hearsay. “Yeah.”

“Awesome, because I could really use that money, you know? Five thousand bucks might not seem like much to some people, but that’s huge for me, you know?”

I nodded. It wasn’t chump change, that was for sure.

When I left the trailer, the two women looked up.

“I think I’ve got what I need,” I told Chloe. “How about you?”

“Yep.” She snapped her notebook closed. “I’ve learned all I can here.”

I nodded. “Then let’s roll out. We’ll follow up on the report and get back to you both.”

“Finally!” Candy said. “Geez. I don’t know how many times I had to tell you that we were robbed.” She crossed her arms over her chest with a huff of annoyance.

I ignored her and walked around to the car, my mind spinning.

On the one hand, Axel had stolen this dog.

No way around that. On the other, if Rusty and Candy abandoned the dog, then they may have stolen her from Axel’s property first. They had the ownership proof on their side, but Axel couldn’t know that.

It was a gray area at best. Maybe just gray enough that I could keep him out of jail.

Chloe slid into the passenger seat and closed her door with a sigh. “That was exhausting.”

I chuckled. “Tell me about it.”

“What now?”

I started the car. “Now, I’m going to take you by the station. This is a murky situation, and I think it’ll go over better if I talk to Axel alone.”

She blinked. “Are you sure? I’ll hang back, if that’s your concern. If this guy is violent, you shouldn’t?—”

“He’s not violent,” I said sharply.

She drew back, eyes wide. “Okay. So why…”

I chewed the inside of my lip, trying to decide how to explain it. “Working a place like this, it isn’t like in the city. Probably not even like a small city like Hayworth.”

“Okay…”

“You get to know people. Get to know their personalities. There are sometimes situations where cuffs aren’t the answer. I’m hoping this might be one of those times.”

“You don’t want to arrest Axel,” she said slowly.

“Not if I don’t have to.” My gut twisted. “I’m not saying I’ll turn a blind eye, but the situation is convoluted.”

I filled her in on the full story I’d gotten out of Rusty.

“I just want to see if I can work this out without an arrest. Rusty only cares about getting the dog and selling her for money, so he might be persuaded to drop the charges.”

She nodded. “Got it. And you think Axel will be easier to handle without me there?”

“Something like that.”

If I were smart, I would take her as a buffer. But truth was, I wanted to talk to him alone. He was going to be upset, no doubt about it. I might still have to arrest him. And as crazy as it sounded, I didn’t want anyone else watching me slap the cuffs on him.

I dropped Chloe at the sheriff’s office and headed back toward the edge of town and Axel’s junkyard. I parked on the side of the rutted road just outside the gate.

The wire fencing gave me a clear view of rusting, dented, and flattened cars, old appliances, and scrap metal piled up. A path ran through the center of the junk, wide enough that a tow truck could haul in salvaged wrecks.

Or an El Camino could easily drive in and park off to the side. I spotted it amongst the other junk, doing a pretty good job of blending in where it stood between a stripped-down minivan missing its doors and a sedan with a front end so smashed up I couldn’t recognize the make or model.

A pack of dogs came running toward the gate, deep woofs and high-pitched yips spilling from them as they alerted Axel to his visitor. The group included a rottweiler, a German shepherd, a border collie, and a Chihuahua.

There was no sign of a Samoyed. A Google image search had told me I was looking for a white, fluffy dog with a curly tail.

Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe Rusty had only assumed Axel was the one to take his dog.

Please let that be the case.

I hit the buzzer on the gate, just in case Axel had missed the racket his dogs were making.

“I’m coming!” he called out from a distance.

He emerged from behind a rusting tractor. He wore faded blue jeans and a plain gray T-shirt—no leather jacket—his hair tied back and mostly hidden under a ball cap.

He looked like an entirely different man from the badass biker I’d pulled over Friday night. But which version of him was the real one?

My gaze trailed over the ink on his arms and even the tops of his hands, then inevitably over the curve of his hip to those long-as-fuck legs. He was sexy as hell, whatever he wore.

It took me a long minute to see anything but him.

Then Axel’s steps faltered. “Aw, hell.”

A tuft of white caught my eye, and I finally saw her. The missing dog was right behind him, practically stepping on his feet as she stuck close, a white fluff ball with a huge doggy smile.

“Deputy Harvey,” he said lightly, even as his jaw looked tight enough to crack stone, “you really didn’t have to make a house call for my sake.”

“Secure the dogs and let me in,” I said. “We need to have a talk.”

He eyed me warily. “This the kind of talk that ends with me in jail?”

“That will be up to you.”

He swore under his breath, eyes locked on me, the look of a trapped animal about him. I worried he might try to run or hide, maybe hole up and force a standoff. That wouldn’t end well for anyone.

“Let’s just start with talking,” I said as soothingly as I could. “All right?”

He swallowed hard and jerked his head in a nod. “Fine.” He whistled sharply, drawing the dogs to him, and herded them inside an RV a few hundred feet away.

I shifted uneasily as I waited. I didn’t think Axel would pull anything underhanded on me. But we were on opposite sides of the law, and he was unpredictable at the best of times.

A few minutes later, he stepped outside again.

“Put your hands where I can see them,” I said, muscles tensed to reach for my holster.

I hadn’t drawn my gun even once in the two years I’d worked for the Elkhorn County Sheriff’s Office. I didn’t want to start now.

Axel held his hands in front of his chest, just high enough I’d see he wasn’t holding any weapons.

I relaxed a fraction. “Okay, come on over here and unlock the gate.”

Axel stepped up to a keypad and punched in six digits. There was a whir, followed by a loud click. He tugged open the heavy gate.

“Come on in, Deputy. Sorry, I didn’t clean. I wasn’t expecting company.”

Always with the flippant attitude. It was a defense mechanism, but now was not the time for his games.

“This is serious, Axel. I just came from taking a robbery report over at Rusty’s place. I’m sorry, but I’m here to take his dog back.”

He glared at me, snarling, “Over my dead body.”