Chapter 8
Eight
I hope when Karma fucks you, you scream my name.
—Gentry’s secret thoughts
Gentry
I’d never expected her to show up at my door.
I thought she was going to avoid me and my place forever.
I would have had I been put in the same position.
Talking to her was stilted at best.
It was a week following our emergency room encounter, and a week since I’d spoken to her.
I’d seen her around town a lot, though.
At the grocery store. The dog park. Walking along the side of the road. Coming and going from the RV park.
But never once had she come to my house.
However, there she was, shifting from foot to foot, looking like she was nervous as hell.
“Herb…”
Her face went cold.
She didn’t like when I called her Herb.
I knew that.
“Sage,” I corrected. “What’s going on?”
She pulled at both sides of her ponytail and tightened it to her head.
“I got home from work.” She wrapped her arms around herself protectively. “And Neo was missing.”
That surprised me to hear.
I frowned. “How?”
“The RV door was wide open,” she said. “But here’s the thing.
I don’t think that I left it open. My lock is a finicky bitch, and it has to be all the way closed for me to lock it or unlock it.
I know I locked it.” She leveled me with a look.
“I lock it every single time. No matter what. And the dog walker that I usually use was busy today and couldn’t take him out.
I had to come back on my lunch break to let him out for a few minutes before going back to work. Seriously, I know I locked the door.”
That I knew she did.
She would.
With the upbringing she had, there was no way that she would ever leave without locking her door.
“Does he have a microchip?” I asked, already reaching for my phone.
She nodded.
“Does it have your current address and name?”
I watched her face fall.
She exhaled deeply. “It’s registered under the old name. I didn’t think to change it yet.”
I grunted and placed a call to Apollo.
He answered in the first ring. “Hey, what’s up?”
“You got a second to change the name of a pet microchip to Sage’s new name?”
That being Sage Ryan.
When we’d run into each other three months ago, one thing had come from the huge blowout.
She’d agreed to change her name to match mine.
Now we both had new names and new identities. It would make it easier to hide.
According to others, we were both fools for divorcing. It was ‘clear as day’ that we should still be together.
I wasn’t sure how anyone got that information seeing as Sage and I hadn’t spent more than a few minutes together here or there since she’d arrived, but they had.
“On it,” Apollo said. “What’s going on?”
“Sage says her dog’s missing,” I answered. “I’ll keep you updated.”
“I’ll search the local classifieds…” he said distractedly before hanging up.
She shifted from foot to foot and I realized that I’d just left her standing out on the porch without inviting her in.
I gestured for her to come in, and she did, but not too far.
Right inside the foyer.
I gestured toward the kitchen. “Do you want a drink?”
She immediately shook her head no.
“Have you searched around the campground?” I wondered.
“Yes,” she grumbled. “I looked everywhere before coming here. I was hoping that you might know where the pound is. Maybe the dog catchers picked him up.”
“Herb,” I said softly. “We don’t have a dog pound. The closest thing we have to an animal catcher is the local game wardens.”
Her shoulders slumped.
I hated seeing that defeated look on her face.
Hated even more that I said, “And it’s dark. You’re not going to find him tonight.”
She straightened her spine and stood up. “I’ll find him.”
I caught her hand before she could launch herself out the door. “It’s dark, and there’s seriously nothing that you can do tonight besides wander around in circles. Go home. Let me search for him in the morning. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
She scrubbed at her face. “He means the world to me, Gentry.”
I knew that.
Which was why, the next morning, I was out looking as the first light of dawn lit the Montana sky.
The search for Neo went on for what felt like a lifetime.