Cage (The K9 Files #27)

Chapter 2

C age reopened the digital file on his phone, wondering if more information had been added to it since he last looked. How was anybody supposed to find anything when there was basically no information at all? When he’d complained about it to Kat, she’d laughed and explained how that had been one of the challenges she’d been facing ever since they started doing this. The files were mighty slim, but, so far, they’d had phenomenal luck.

“ Great ,” Cage muttered to himself. That just put more pressure on him to do equally well. Not only would his pride not accept anything less, he knew his brother wouldn’t accept anything less either. It’s not that they were competitive, but they were competitive. All in good fun, of course, but it was a constant reminder that, if Cage wanted to do this, he would need to step it up.

No doubt that was a foolish attitude when it came to this stuff because who knew if the War Dog was even alive? The fact that nobody seemed to know where it could be was already extremely worrisome. They were great dogs, but they were accustomed to being well cared for. However, if not, then they could survive by hunting food on their own just fine. But then again, nobody wanted a War Dog out on its own, feeding itself as needed. It could take down other dogs, cats, small animals, even humans, if need be, but they weren’t bred for that. It would go against their instincts, but, if starving, they would find a way to survive. So Cage hoped he didn’t find anything to suggest that was happening.

It would break his heart if he located the dog, only to realize it had been euthanized because of its own actions, or because of ill health due to mistreatment or abandonment. Why did people expect a dog not to fend for itself? It was an animal first and foremost, and survival was the strongest instinct ever. It would be impossible for the dog to not look after itself, and that was an unfortunate scenario in many cases. Cage absolutely loved animals, so even contemplating this was hard.

After driving for ninety minutes or so, he now stood outside the small suburban house where the family had lived, when the parents were still alive. One of the things Cage always liked to do was walk around the scene of the crime, so to speak, and, in this case, it was the last scene of the boy’s happiness. Cage wanted to confirm that nothing was out of place. He wandered around, surprised that the residence hadn’t been sold.

After a few minutes, a neighbor came out and glared at him. “You looking for something?”

He nodded, put a pleasant smile on his face, and walked over to talk to the heavy-set woman who looked as if she had a grudge against everybody.

“I was hired,” Cage began, “to come look for the missing dog that used to live here.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “The War Dog?”

He nodded. “Yes. Did you have any problems with the dog?”

She shook her head. “No, I sure didn’t, though some people around here might have, but he was perfect with Brian,” she shared somberly. “For that reason alone, I would forgive that dog anything,” she murmured. “The boy had a tough go-round. I don’t even know where he is now.” She looked at him and asked curiously, “Do you?”

“Not yet. I haven’t made contact with him, but I plan to. I’m pretty sure this situation must be a terrible struggle for him.”

“Yep, it must be. He was very close to his family, and it was just him and his parents, so losing them left him high and dry, with nobody to look after him.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Cage muttered. “Everyone should have somebody.”

“Yeah, they should, but, from what I can recall, Brian’s mother had a much older sister, so I doubt she could take on the boy, particularly considering Brian’s in a wheelchair. It’s one thing to take care of a healthy child, but it’s another to accept responsibility for a disabled one.”

Cage nodded, knowing exactly how that felt. “My younger brother is disabled,” he shared. “So I know exactly what you mean.”

“What about you? Do you have anything to do with your brother?”

“Absolutely. We live together,” he declared, with a smile. “He’s at a basketball camp right now, while I’m out looking for this dog.”

“Basketball camp?” she repeated.

He nodded. “My brother is sixteen, and we’re very close. I was in the military, until a mission sidelined me,” he stated. “I’ve got my own injuries to deal with now,” he murmured. “My brother is doing great, but it wasn’t always that way. I do remember all the pain he went through.”

“Yeah, I don’t think it can be an easy road in this world,” she muttered. “Brian’s parents were basically good people, and nobody deserved to die like that. And I believe some suspicions were raised surrounding their deaths, which just makes it even worse.”

He frowned at her. “I hadn’t heard anything about that. Would you mind clarifying?”

She hesitated and shrugged. “I’ve got nothing to prove it, just what Fiona told me in confidence, but a lot of bad feelings existed between Oliver and his sister-in-law.”

“The one who wouldn’t take the boy when they died?”

Martha nodded. “Yeah, but she’s too old. She might be close to my age. Besides, just because two people marry doesn’t mean the rest of the family gets along.”

“Understood.” Cage nodded in understanding. “Although not everybody is geared for that kind of commitment—to take on someone else’s child—and sometimes even family members aren’t the best choices.”

“Maybe, but that boy needed somebody to step up, and, when nobody did, he got shuffled off to a foster home,” she muttered, “and that ain’t a place for anybody, especially someone like him.”

Cage didn’t ask her why she didn’t try to get him herself. He knew that, when people weren’t family, it was hard for someone to navigate the fostering or adopting process, and the courts were quick to use the foster care system. “I’ll be talking to Brian,” Cage repeated, “and hopefully I can get a good idea of how he’s doing.”

“If there’s any answer for him, any place for him that’ll get him out of foster care, maybe you can help,” she noted, and such sadness filled her expression. “God knows I tried. I talked to the cops and everything, but family came first, and—if there’s no family, and if you can’t prove you have the means to keep and to care for him—it didn’t matter, so off Brian went.”

“How did he take it?”

“He went kicking and screaming, as far as I could tell. I cried for days, but I’m on Social Security, and I don’t have any way to make a living either,” she muttered. She stared off in the distance. “Life is brutal if you’re without money.”

“Sometimes money is not as selective as we want to think,” he offered. “My brother and I didn’t come from money, but he’s doing okay now. It was a hard road though, and for the longest time our mom was a single parent, and I know that was… Just the thought of having kids was enough to stop potential suitors, and finding out Jason was a disabled child,… that canceled almost all her dating life.”

Martha smiled and nodded. “And maybe that was a good thing.”

“Yeah, maybe it was,” Cage agreed. “I don’t have any way to know. I just know that, for the longest time, our lives were a little rough, but we had each other, and that’s what counted. She remarried my father eventually, but we lost both of them a while back.”

Martha eyed him approvingly. “When the chips are down, sometimes all you’ve got is each other. If you hear from Brian and if you get any chance to say hi for me, please do. He’s a good kid, wise beyond his years. He’s also quite the math whiz. He told me that he would grow up and be a mathematician—that is until he got the dog, and then he wanted to be a vet, so he could help protect dogs like that one.”

“What did he call the dog?” Cage asked. “I have the military name for him in the files, but it’s not necessarily the same as what the child might have called him.”

“He called him Scotty after some guy in Star Trek or something,” she replied. “Brian told me that his ears and rotund face looked just like him.”

“Rotund face,” he asked, with an eyebrow raised, “on a War Dog?”

She laughed. “I think it had something more to do with Brian dressing up the dog for Halloween.”

“I can’t imagine.” Cage frowned at her. “I mean, I would love to see it, but I just can’t imagine a War Dog dressed up in some costume.”

“That’s also why the two of them got along so perfectly. I know they were both heartbroken when the parents didn’t come home that day,” Martha added, “and now the house is just sitting here.”

“Any idea who it belongs to?”

“I imagine the bank, or maybe it goes to the boy. For all I know, it’s caught up in the courts, while some fake claim is made to take it from Brian.”

“There will always be people like that,” Cage muttered, then said goodbye. He smiled at her as he turned to walk away, wincing as his ankle joint caught ever-so-slightly.

“You’ve got a prosthetic yourself?” she asked.

“I do,” he replied with a smile, turning back. “Plus, a few steel plates, a few things missing. That’s just the way we come home from war these days.”

She sobered and nodded. “Ain’t that the truth? You take care of yourself now.” Then she walked back into her house.

Cage headed to his car, and, taking one last look at the lonely empty house, he whispered, “You deserve another life too. Not just people need to be taken care of but also property, and everybody forgot that here. Someone should give a damn about the house that looked after that family while they lived here.”

With one last glance around, Cage got into his vehicle, wondering where he should go next. Just as he was about to pull out, a familiar face walked by.

She stopped, took one look, and her eyebrows rose. Suddenly she shook her head, turned, and walked back in the opposite direction. Cage had no idea what seeing Risa again would be like, so he just got a first-hand experience with it.

He called out from his car window, “You didn’t used to be afraid.”

She stopped, then turned and glared at him. “I’m not afraid.”

“Then why did you turn and walk away?”

“Maybe a better question is, why are you even here?”

“Not because of you,” he stated, with half a smile, looking her over greedily. They hadn’t left things on the best terms, as he’d wanted to go into the military, and she’d wanted nothing to do with it. But before all that, they had been best friends, first loves. They had been all those things that people smiled and wrote books about, but nobody ever seemed to write books about what happened when things didn’t go well.

She walked back over, took one look, and asked, “So you’re really home now, huh ?”

“I am home, have been for a while,” he replied. “How are you doing?”

She shrugged. “I’m fine.” She frowned at him intently. “What about you?”

“I’m good. Why?”

She hesitated and then said, “I’ve seen Jason a time or two.”

“Well, you could probably see him a lot more than that if you wanted to. He’s always been very fond of you,” he shared. “He told me to say hi if I saw you.”

“He told me about your accident.”

Cage nodded, his expression noncommittal. “Good,” he noted. She deserved the truth, and he would have had a hard time telling her about that. “It’s good that you know, so, when I stumble and fall, it won’t be a surprise.”

Immediately her face twisted in concern. “Does that happen?”

“Not so much now,” he said, with a wave of his hand, “but it used to.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I have a better prosthetic now,” he stated, with half a smile.

“Are you using the same person that Jason is?”

Cage nodded. “That woman is hell on wheels for getting us back on our feet,” he declared with a growing smile. “It’s because of her that I’m here.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, leaning in and studying his face. “You’re seeing her?”

“Hell no, nothing like that. I’m here at her bequest. She’s married and has what, two, maybe three kids? God only knows, it seems they multiply every time I’m there.”

She snorted at that. “That’s got to be tough. You didn’t want kids. That much I remember all too well.”

“Where the hell did you get the idea that I didn’t want kids?”

She frowned at him. “You told me yourself, right before you left.”

He couldn’t remember saying any such thing and stared at her uncomfortably for a while, before he finally shrugged. “I sure don’t remember that, but whatever.”

“What do you mean,… whatever ?” she asked, narrowing her gaze, her temper starting to spike.

He grinned at that. “Still got your temper, I see.”

She shook her head. “Oh no you don’t,” she countered. “I’ve only just seen you, and you’re already egging me on.”

“Not at all,” he argued in all seriousness. “You look good, and I’m absolutely delighted to see you.”

She stared at him in surprise, flushed now, and then nodded slightly. “Thank you.… It’s nice to see you too.”

He could see that she wanted to ask more questions, but he turned on the engine instead. “I do have to go, but it was great to see you again.” With a smile, he returned his attention to the road, and, not giving her a chance to say any more, he pulled out and drove away.

Risa Harney stared at the vehicle taking Cage away once again. It seemed as if, for all her life, all she’d done was watch him leave. He’d been a year ahead of her in school, and he’d left to go to university. Then he left her to go into the military, and, even now, once again he was driving away.

She knew it was stupid, fanciful even, but just once she wanted to be the one who drove away. In truth, she wanted to be the one who made him stay, instead of driving away. They’d once had a hell of a relationship, as steamy as they came, but it wasn’t enough to keep him by her side. She wanted him to be free. She wanted him to go do whatever it was that he felt he needed to do, but she hadn’t expected him to really go and do it without her in his life. She never wanted him to just leave her behind without another thought.

She’d thought for sure that he would find something nearby, something that would keep them together, but he hadn’t. He had disappeared into the military machine, and she hadn’t really seen him much since then.

It had been a fluke that she’d seen Jason at one of the recreation centers, when she was playing volleyball, and he was there with his ever-present basketball, and she’d had a chance to talk to him for a few minutes.

He told her a few things that she hadn’t really understood about Cage, things that had made her stop and question why Cage had always been driven to enter the military and was always driven to a life of service. Now she realized it had mostly been because of Jason. She hadn’t understood that Cage blamed himself for Jason’s accident, and so Cage had been trying to make up for it ever since.

She hadn’t really understood that Cage had always been one to assist anyone in need, not until she remembered all the times before Jason’s accident—where Cage had volunteered to help people and had gone out of his way to do more than most people would, even those who were dedicated service types. In time, though it didn’t come to her quickly, she realized that the military made sense to Cage. He’d served his country because he could, helped out because he could, and, in some way, it made him feel as if he was doing something because his brother couldn’t.

And now, as she stared down the road, where Cage had disappeared from her view, she realized that he still had the same effect on her as always.

She hadn’t exactly been welcoming. As soon as she’d seen him, she wanted to turn and walk away. It was almost as if she understood that fate was calling, and, whether she was ready or not, now fate was making her answer the call.

Shaking her head, she headed back to her car. Her girlfriend had moved into this neighborhood not all that long ago, but was now regretting her decision after some weird things had happened. So Risa had been staying with her off and on to make her feel better. Risa hadn’t had or seen any weird incidents, but her girlfriend Celina was adamant that something bizarre was going on.

Risa tried to tell her that it was time to move if she was that uncomfortable, because Risa didn’t want her friend to spend her whole life avoiding places because she thought it had a bad vibe, a comment guaranteed to get Celine’s back up. And that is exactly what had happened. Celine got her back up and dug in her heels. Risa’s friend had always had a worst-case-scenario mentality.

Risa threw her bag into the back of her car and headed home, and, just as she got there, her girlfriend buzzed her.

“Did you make it home okay?” Celine asked.

“I did,” Risa muttered into the phone, as she grabbed her bag. “However, I can’t keep doing this. You have to find another solution.”

“Maybe.… I did meet my neighbor today.”

The flirty tone and little-girl excitement in her voice made Risa groan. “Celine, that’s probably not a good idea.”

“Oh, come off it,” she replied. “I mean, if I can’t sleep alone because of the neighborhood, and I’m so uncomfortable being on my own, I might as well sleep with somebody.”

“Sure, but maybe you should vet him a little first,” Risa warned. “You do have a tendency to leap into relationships pretty quickly,” she muttered.

“I know,” Celine conceded, “and I can always count on you to keep me grounded.”

“And yet you’re ignoring me right now.”

“Not at all,” she declared. “I’m taking your advice under consideration, and then I’ll ignore it.” With a peal of laughter, Celine added, “Besides, he’s lived here for a long time. He tells me that there’s nothing to worry about in the neighborhood, but… I don’t know,” she muttered. “This place still seems to be a strange place to live.”

“Which is why I keep telling you that it’s time to move.”

“I just got here though,” she replied, “and I can’t afford to lose my deposit.”

“You only have to stay two months, first and last, because you didn’t sign a lease.”

“No, I didn’t, thanks to you,” she muttered, with a sigh. “It always seems as if you’re looking out for me. And I appreciate that. I really do,” she stated, with a laugh. “Anyway, I’ve got to run. I’m having lunch with my neighbor.” With that, Celine quickly dashed off, before Risa could say anything more.

Staring down at the phone, Risa shook her head. “Good God,” she muttered. Her friend really didn’t like sleeping alone, but sleeping with just anybody wasn’t the answer. Risa sighed, tossed her overnight bag on the counter, then quickly opened it up, adding these few items of laundry into the washing machine, and got it started. She put on the teakettle, while she crashed on the couch.

All she wanted to do was contemplate the return of somebody into her world that she hadn’t really thought she would ever see again, or, if she did, it wouldn’t be often. However, this was one of those strange circumstances that she wasn’t very happy about. Yet she didn’t have any reason to be unhappy. It was just a change, something she hadn’t initiated. She had a feeling that the universe was laughing at her—and probably not for the first time.

Her mother called soon afterward. “What are you doing?” she asked in that parenting voice that urged Risa to Tell me the truth or else .

“I’m just sitting here, having a cup of tea.”

“I tried to call you this morning,” she stated in an accusing voice.

“Yes, and I was over at Celine’s.”

“Again? You can’t just continue to sleep over there. If she doesn’t feel safe in her own neighborhood, she really needs to move.”

“I told her that,” Risa pointed out, “but she’s not too interested.”

“Of course not. She’s got you coming and going at all hours of the night, doesn’t she?”

As usual, her mom went on a tirade about it for the next twenty minutes, then finally she slowed down. Now Risa had a chance to speak. “Did you have a reason for calling?”

“I was just checking to confirm all was well,” she snapped, “only to find out you were being foolish with that friend of yours again. Celine is a big girl and needs to take responsibility for herself, rather than dragging you into her business.”

“Well, I’m hardly being foolish,” Risa muttered, “and nothing is different or changed around here.”

“How come you sound different then? What’s the matter? What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” she snapped.

“Oh, now I know something’s going on.”

“Nothing’s going on. I just saw somebody I wasn’t expecting to see today.”

At that, her mom stopped and then stated forcefully, “ Cage .”

Risa gasped. “Why would you even say that?”

“Because he’s the only person I know who can rattle you,” her mom declared in a triumphant voice. “Tell him to get lost. He’s a loser.”

“What the hell, Mom? That’s not something you can say about anyone, much less a veteran. So why on earth would you say he is a loser?”

“Because he walked away from you, and you know that as well as I do.”

“You also know that he had his reasons and that I told him to go.”

“Sure, but where did he go when he came back? It’s not as if he called you after that.”

Risa winced at that.

“Or did he?” her mom snapped.

“Well, he might have, and I might not have picked up because I was a little pissed off. I was still really mad at him.”

First came silence. Then her mother stated, “You really are great at sabotaging everything you want, aren’t you?”

“ Gee, thanks, Mom ,” she muttered, with a sigh, “as if I need to hear this right now.”

“Maybe not,” she conceded, “but maybe you should look at why every time something good in your life happens, you intentionally screw it up, so it disappears.” And, with that last barb, her mom said, “Drink your tea. It’ll make you feel better.” With those final words, she disconnected.

Risa stared at her cell, then tossed it on the couch beside her. “God, why do I even begin to tolerate you?”

Of course she was her mother, and it was just the two of them. Plus, her mother had always been this way, one day saying that what Risa did was smart, then the next day telling her how she was an idiot. It was almost as if her mother could easily be persuaded to take Risa’s side, but, when she questioned Risa about her why, her mother shimmied back and forth like a bouncing ball. Her mother was an enigma that Risa found hard to understand. Her mother claimed to be checking to see which way Risa was leaning—and, if she would only make up her mind, the vacillation wouldn’t be necessary on her mother’s part.

Risa had laughed at that because it made absolutely no sense. To Risa, her mother’s message was that Risa was always doing it wrong.

“Well, I’m just trying to get you to think, something you don’t do that much. So I have to push you to really think about what you’re doing and whether what you’re doing is really what you want to be doing,” she’d explained.

Talk about confusing. Her mother was nothing if not full of double-talk, making Risa question if her mother even knew what Risa was talking about in the first place. Yet, her mom was right on one thing though; tea did make her feel better.

As Risa sat here, she knew that Cage’s family home wasn’t that far away, yet far enough that it could be about a two-hour drive with traffic, just one way. He was on the outskirts of Lansing, and she was on the outskirts of Detroit, which she’d been hating for a very long time. It just wasn’t the easiest place for her to love because her mother wasn’t the easiest to deal with. Risa loved Lansing, but that’s where Cage called home, so she’d left around the same time as her mother had moved here as well.

“Not moving there,” Risa stated out loud. She dreaded even the thought of it. No way in hell she would subject herself to that torture of seeing more of Cage.

Her mom would just laugh and comment that Risa would grow up one day. Whatever that meant, Risa didn’t want to know. The truth was, she still wasn’t ready to go back there. However, she had been thinking about it lately. She just didn’t have any reason one way or the other, and that was more troublesome than anything.

After her bath, she grabbed a bite to eat, then settled on her deck with another cup of tea and a book. As she sat here, she couldn’t relax because she kept thinking about Cage.

Finally admitting it was a losing proposition, she called him at the same old number that he had had years ago. When he answered, she asked, “Why are you even in town?”

He snorted with laughter. “Wow, didn’t take you long to reconnect.”

“Maybe, then again, maybe I’m just looking for a way to disconnect permanently.”

“Maybe so,” he replied, “since obviously you were pissed the last time I was in town. You didn’t even pick up when I called, then never called me back.”

“No, I didn’t, and I shouldn’t be calling you now either.”

“Probably not,” he agreed, with a smile in his tone, “but you did. So what’s it all about?”

“I want to know why you’re in town.” When he didn’t give her an answer right away, she asked the question that was really on her mind, without even thinking it through. “Or are you here with someone?” Wincing at her immediate assumption that he was probably not alone, she waited. “In which case just tell me.”

“Would it make any difference?” he asked curiously. “I mean, you made it clear that you didn’t want anything to do with me the last time I was here.”

“I was also very angry and upset, since you’d come home and hadn’t told me.”

“I was in the process of telling you. I left flowers for you in the lobby, but you wouldn’t even give me a chance to say anything.”

She frowned. “I don’t remember any flowers.”

“Of course not,” he muttered. “You were too busy jumping down my throat. Somebody told you that I was in town, and, because I hadn’t rushed over to see you first,… in your eyes I was guilty, and you were livid and pissed off. God only knows what I was guilty of, but it was enough to send you into a tailspin.”

“I don’t remember,” she said. “All I knew was that you were home and that you didn’t care enough to come see me.”

“I cared enough,” he countered, “but you made it very clear that I wasn’t welcome. So I figured you had somebody else on the hook.”

“On the hook,” she repeated, almost laughing at the phrase. “God, I don’t even know why I called you.”

“Well, when you figure it out,” he noted calmly, “call me back.” And, with that, he disconnected.

She stared down at the phone, absolutely positive that her world had gone bananas. She shouldn’t have called him in the first place, and no way they should have just had that crazy-ass conversation. But the fact of the matter was, she hadn’t stopped caring for him, and, if he was here in town again, maybe there was a chance that they could clear the air and could see if they had any potential future together.

Then again, he hadn’t told her if he was here visiting somebody or if someone else was in his life. She was still lost in thought when Celine called her back, bubbling over about her new boyfriend.

“Good God,” Risa muttered, hearing the silly girl rave on and on. The last thing Risa wanted was to be like Celine, who went from one guy to the next, as if they were tissues or something. At the same time, something always seemed to be happening in Celine’s world that made Celine happy, and a lot could be said for that. Though Risa didn’t know what exactly, and right now she could do with any distraction at all.

When her girlfriend finally ran down of things to talk about, Risa asked, “What about being scared in your neighborhood there?”

“Oh, about that, he told me that one of his neighbors here was murdered.”

“What do you mean, murdered?” Risa asked.

“Yeah, apparently a young boy and his parents lived here, but the parents were murdered, and the boy was put into foster care, so it just was very sad energy. You know how I’ve always been sensitive that way, so I’m pretty sure that’s what I was picking up.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“No, he didn’t say a whole lot, just that the parents were killed in a car accident.”

“How is that murder?”

“I don’t know, but he said murdered , and I didn’t question it. All I can tell you is what he told me, but it explains why I was feeling so bad. So I should be fine tonight.”

“Fine tonight,” Risa repeated, hearing a note in her girlfriend’s tone that Risa wasn’t sure she liked. “Did you bring him home?”

After a pause, Celine replied, “I’m going to make it an early night. So I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” And, with that, Celine disconnected.

Risa groaned, knowing exactly what her girlfriend had done. No matter how many warnings Risa gave her friend, Celine always ended up doing this. She jumped into relationships and into bed without even thinking it through. Celine kept telling Risa that she should try it herself more often, if for no other reason than to de-stress.

Maybe that was one way to de-stress, but Risa preferred to at least know the guy’s last name before she jumped into bed with him. With a headshake, she turned out the lights. Only as she drifted off did she note that the empty house Cage and she had been standing by could have been the one that housed the family that had been murdered.

Instinctively Risa knew that was exactly why Cage was in town.