Chapter 7 #2
“He’s the most amazing animal I’ve ever worked with.
Our K-9 unit isn’t that big, but our dogs are pretty special.
I’ve worked with Atlas and his dog Evie, and they are really good.
Each of our teams had specialties. Evie is really great at sniffing out contraband.
Before Dexter, I worked with a dog named Duke.
He was an older dog whose partner was wounded in action.
I worked with him for a year. He was great, but in the end he retired with Carl and his wife.
It was hard to let him go, but it was the right thing to do.
Then I got Dexter, and we just clicked.”
“Mr. Grant, watch me,” Cameron called and then hurried to the top of the play structure before launching himself down the slide headfirst. Marty was out of his chair to try to catch him in a second. He caught him at the end, his heart racing a mile a minute.
“Don’t do that, okay? Only go down the slide feet first.” He tried not to overreact, but the thought of Cameron getting hurt was too damned much.
“But it was fun,” Cameron told him, and Marty set him on his feet. Grant was right behind him.
“You might get hurt, and then Dexter would be sad,” Grant added, and that seemed to get through.
Cameron sighed. “Okay. I promise.” He climbed to the top once more and slid down correctly. “But it’s… boring…,” he said as though the weight of the world were on his shoulders.
“You little scamp. Go on and have fun. But no headfirst down the slide,” Marty said, his hand on his chest as Cameron climbed once more. He returned to his chair.
“I thought you were going to fly over there,” Grant told him. “You were up and out of that chair like a flash. Like a parent.”
“I know. It’s scary sometimes. I worry about him.”
Grant leaned over and kissed him. “It’s because you worry that you’re going to be good at this.
You have good instincts, and that’s going to make all the difference.
” Marty sighed softly and went in for another kiss.
Grant tasted like mint and man, and that was the perfect combination as far as Marty was concerned.
He wanted more, but with Cameron playing just a little way away, he pulled back and closed his eyes. “I think about you all the time,” he confessed.
“Me too. But I know you have Cameron, and he has to come first. That’s as it should be.”
Marty knew that was true, and yet part of him pushed him back into his old single ways.
It would be so easy to ask Grant to stay and spend the night with him.
It was what he wanted. But he was a parent now and had responsibilities that he had never thought of before, and on top of that, everything was so new with Grant.
“I keep wondering sometimes if life will ever go back to the way it was, and then Cameron does something like trying to go down the slide the wrong way and I realize it’s never going to happen. My life has changed in lots of ways.”
“I’d say that was a good thing.” Grant took his hand.
Cameron raced over, skidding to a stop. “You can play too.”
“I’m too big for the slide,” Marty told him with a smile. “But you play with Dexter and enjoy yourself. Show Officer Grant how high you can swing.”
Cameron jumped on the swing and began to pump his legs, going higher and higher. He was having so much fun, and Marty grinned.
“Did you teach him to do that?”
“No. He did it on his own.” Marty was getting tired, and his phone buzzed in his pocket. He checked out the message. “Would you watch him for me? I have a client whose having an issue that I need to take care of.”
“Of course,” Grant answered. Marty hurried inside to his office and logged into the system.
One of his clients’ jobs had stopped completely, and he checked the code and found the issue.
Unfortunately, this was one of the steps in their processing that held up everything.
He managed to work around it before requesting that they restart the process at the beginning of the step that had the issue.
Marty watched the system to make sure it finished that part the program before logging off.
When he checked the time, he realized he had been working for two hours. The time had flown by. Leaving his office, he heard talking and followed the voices.
“I’m making a helaphant,” Cameron said.
“I’m making a tiger,” Grant said as Marty walked into the room to find a pile of Legos that seemed to have grown overnight.
“Did you get more?” He was starting to wonder if the bricks were breeding.
“A few more of the guys at work brought some in, so I added them to his stock,” Grant said as he worked on his tiger. “What do you want to make?”
“How about I make dinner?” he quipped and went to the kitchen.
Grant and Cameron were still having fun, and it seemed Cameron had worn Dexter out, because he lay stretched out on the kitchen floor.
Marty put down a bowl of water for him and then began peeling potatoes.
Cameron loved two things most of all: mashed potatoes and french fries.
So tonight it was pork chops and mashed potatoes with green beans.
He got everything ready and the potatoes boiling as he heard Grant’s phone ring.
He spoke softly and then came into the kitchen.
Dexter sat up, and Grant got him into his harness.
“I have to go. There’s another little boy who has gone missing.
His parents just called it in. He was supposed to go to a friend’s after school and didn’t show up there or at home. ”
“Of course. You find him.” Marty hoped that it wasn’t the same guy that had taken Cameron, but his gut told him otherwise. This was too coincidental in his mind that they had found both Bobby and Cameron and now another child was taken. “If there’s anything I can do, you let me know.”
“I will.” He kissed him hard and held him a second before backing away and hurrying out the door. Marty closed it and went to check on Cameron.
“Where’s Mr. Grant?”
“He and Dexter had to go to work. But I’ll play with you after dinner. Okay?” He tried not to let the worry bubble up from the pit of his stomach, but he couldn’t stop it.