Chapter Ten
Gabriel
Gabriel lay flat on his back with his laced fingers resting on the top of his head; the pillow supported his elbows as he drifted in that soft space between sleep and wake with his mind filled with memories.
Before he climbed under the covers, Gabriel had placed Whiskey’s nest on the floor on Gabriel’s side of the bed. He’d have to remember Whiskey was there if he got up in the night. She lay close enough that by draping his arm over the mattress, Gabriel could make contact.
It was the same configuration that Daniel had set up when he was in hospice.
Gabriel thought there had been a lot of upheaval for Whiskey in the last couple of weeks, and the familiarity of the positioning might help her settle in.
It seemed to work. There was Whiskey flat on her own back, her little paws hooked into the air, snoring deeply. It was a nice sound. It came and went like ocean waves or a baby being rocked as a mother hummed a song from some olden-days tune.
For a moment, Gabriel was back, his childhood curled up on the couch, watching cartoons, holding the ear of his childhood Labrador retriever, Spunky.
Closing his eyes, Gabriel remembered his mom bringing baby Daniel down the stairs. Overwrapped in his blanket, their mom had tucked baby Daniel up against Spunky’s stomach, resting Daniel's head on the dog’s shoulder. “Keep an eye on the baby while I go to the bathroom.”
Spunky's ears had been a place of soothing and calm when his little boy feelings had been hard, when he was tired or hungry, when the world just seemed too big for someone his size.
Nothing bad ever happened when Spunky was around.
Dogs were good medicine.
Gabriel turned over and reached for Whiskey’s ear, focusing on Whiskey’s face and whispered. “I don’t know that Whiskey is the best name for you. What with your sweet disposition and droopy jowls, I would probably have called you something like Saint Mary of Perpetual Sorrow.”
As Gabriel contemplated that name, another memory came back to him.
When he was oh maybe four years old, Gabriel remembered one of his good friends, Jim, describing his mother as the most beautiful woman in the world.
Gabriel filtered the memory of meeting his friend’s mom through an adult’s understanding; what he’d noticed back then was how rough and swollen her hands were from working as a maid at a hotel.
Her face was lined, and her eyes were red-rimmed from little sleep as she took care of her disabled daughter.
Yet when those eyes focused on Jim, they would soften with love and satisfaction.
It was as if she thought, “I made him; he’s amazing.
” It oozed out of every pore, the awe she felt when she saw her kid.
It was that way then, and it was that way now.
And Jim was right: his mom was the most beautiful woman in the world. It wasn’t an external beauty; it was a vibration.
Gabriel’s mom had loved him.
But she had been a precise, soldierly woman, and that had always come off as cold.
She had risen through the Army when women had extra to prove, and he was sure that it was the thing that gave her that hard coating.
Gabriel often wondered what it would be like to have grown up with Jim’s parents instead of his own.
With a final pat on Whiskey’s head, Gabriel punched his pillow, hoping to find a position where his body could relax, and he could sleep. He usually slept better when someone was in his bed.
It had been a while since his breakup.
Gabriel missed the quiet solace of lying with a woman in his arms and whispers in the dark.
But he wasn’t going to look for a new relationship while he was in a toxic headspace. He wasn’t a shit head that would impose his crap on someone, especially someone who didn’t know that normally he saw the world as sunny and fun, that he liked to laugh, and eat, and dance.
He thought he’d eventually feel like that again.
Time didn’t, in fact, heal all wounds.
But at least he’d like his emotions to scab over a bit.
Right now, he was raw grief.
As he settled under his blanket, Gabriel’s phone buzzed on the side table.
Gabriel wasn’t at all surprised. When he left the office after handing Hinton and Walsh two Washington D.C.
addresses—one for the apartment the videotape had been filmed from, and the second for the parking garage the victim had been marched into—Gabriel had offered to come back in.
“If you get there, and you need me to look at something else, just call. I’ll come. No man left behind.”
But when Gabriel saw the readout through squinted eyes, it was Reaper Hamilton on the line.
It was two in the morning.
Gabriel snapped upright in his bed and flipped on the light.
Reaper Hamilton wasn’t just Whiskey’s trainer.
He lived across the street from Cathy. And Reaper and Daniel had been neighbors and friends for years.
A fine friend, indeed. Reaper and his family—wife Kate and two little ones—often showed up at Daniel’s house with something they thought might tempt his appetite or to share a funny story, a bit of gossip, or to pin a child’s picture on the fridge while Daniel was going through treatment.
As things progressed to hospice, the Hamiltons made stopping in to see Daniel part of their daily walk, so they could check in and let him know he had a bigger family than just Gabriel and Cathy.
Illnesses like Daniel’s required a bigger family because it took time, effort, and a heavy emotional toll.
Knowing that others stopped by with glued pasta art for the walls and banana pudding for the fridge meant a lot to Gabriel and Cath.
But now that Daniel was dead, there was no reason for Reaper to be calling at zero-dark-thirty.
Gabriel jabbed his finger against the button to open the line. “I’m here. Is everyone okay? What do you need?” Gabriel flung his covers to the side.
“I can tell I got your blood flowing,” Reaper said.
“I didn’t mean to startle you. My family’s fine.
Kate and the kids are sleeping. I was just on the line with the state emergency management team.
They’re the ones who organize search-and-rescue missions and coordinate disaster response.
They’re staging a search for two little kids in their pajamas and bare feet who got out of the trailer house earlier tonight. ”
“Is Cerberus going?” Gabriel asked. They probably wanted to use Whiskey.
“The call-outs started at eleven. They’ve been pulling in people from all over.
We already have Cerberus Team Charlie and some of Team Delta on the mountain with their K9s.
But the grid they were given is a good distance from the ‘point last seen.’ Their job is to keep an eye on the outer search ring and make sure no one gets out of the lasso. ”
“Okay.” Gabriel scrubbed a hand over his face.
“The call I just got was a specific request that we get Whiskey out to the family’s trailer.”
“Whiskey specifically?” Gabriel looked down at his dog, completely unperturbed by what was happening, softly snoring with her ears dangling out of her nest and draping on the ground. She didn’t look like a hero.
“Whiskey’s got a reputation in the field for having an unbeatable nose. They had a search K9 and a tracker working the area, and neither one was able to fix on a specific trail.”
“So they still don’t know the direction of travel?”
“They have two missing kids and a set of parents that are hysterical with worry,” Reaper said.
“What often happens on a search is that the parents go out and look. Then they call their support teams in—neighbors and friends. In this case, the mom works for a church, so the whole congregation came over to help find the kids.”
“That’s why there was no track.”
“And the scent cone—the smells that fall off a body and move with the air—that cone is full. Most search K9S are trained to detect a random human scent. That way, when a team goes out to work their section of a search grid, they know they’re looking for a missing hunter, and the dog knows he’s looking for a human.
And that’s why we need a K9 specifically trained to smell all the scents, latch on to the correct one, and follow it to the end.
And Whiskey is one of the best in the state at doing just that. ”
“Of course. She’s right here with me,” Gabriel said. “I can bring her anywhere you need me to. I just need to know if there’s any equipment in her bags that needs to come with her. Are you the one who will be handling her? Do you know how long she’ll be out?”
“I sure appreciate your willingness to help,” Reaper said.
“I’ve got a K9 search bag already packed with everything she’ll need in the field.
But I was thinking that, since you already do adventure races, and you’re used to mountainous terrain and dark skies, you might like to go along and see Whiskey in action. ”
“You want me to go on the search?”
“It might scratch an itch, as my wife likes to say.”
Gabriel was so tired.
He was so tired.
He thought he’d have decades in him before he felt this worn down.
It wasn’t just Daniel.
It was the garbage in his head that he’d brought home from the war.
It was shrapnel still embedded in his body that the surgeons decided was best left alone.
It was the emotional part of his job with the FBI, where he knew lives were on the line and it was up to him to save them from some horror. If only Gabriel were sharp enough, fast enough, he might be able to send trained teams in to snatch them from harm’s way.
Gabriel felt pressure on his knee and looked down to see sad eyes gazing up at him. Whiskey could probably hear Reaper’s voice and knew why there was a middle-of-the-night phone call. Her tail thumped rhythmically on the wood floor.
“That’s fine,” Gabriel said. “I can help out tonight. Where should I meet you?”
“You’re right on my way. I’ll come pick you up.
Once we get there, Emergency Response will need to check you in and have you sign papers before we get on the trail.
But they’re expecting us. They’ll be quick about it.
We’ll get our best chance to follow the trail before the sun comes up and the air starts to warm. ”
“What should I bring?” Gabriel asked, sliding down his bed so he could get up and get going.
“Dress like you’re heading into a race and carry a pack that can see you through for a few days. I don’t expect to be out anywhere near that long. But it’s one of our safety requirements. And Gabriel, come strapped. See you in ten.”