3. Chapter Three

Cally

“Tater! Shit! Come back here!”

Crap. Just my luck that the best-behaved dog in the world decides this is the moment to get a wild hair up his ass and take off on me. I’m so far off the beaten path, I couldn’t even find my location on my GPS. I guess my dog decided it was a great time to explore the area.

“Tater! Tater Tot! We need to get on the road!”

Grabbing my keys, I slide the lanyard over my head, lock the trailer and car doors—although I doubt there’s anyone within a ten-mile radius of this place, much less someone who might want to steal my stuff—and walk in the direction where I last glimpsed my Australian cattle dog.

“That asshole at the café back in Thompson Junction must have been pulling my leg when he told me there was something I should check out down this road,” I quietly grumble to myself as I tramp through crunchy fallen leaves in search of my wayward companion.

I should have listened to my intuition. That bushy-bearded, oversized guy did not give me a warm, fuzzy feeling. His size XXXL, filthy military uniform had to have been purchased from an Army-Navy store. I’d bet my life savings he never spent a day in any branch of the military.

“I love my job. I love my job,” I mutter, scanning the brush lining the dirt road for any sign of Tater. All it took was one squirrel dashing by for him to race off to parts unknown the moment he finished peeing.

It’s fine, I tell myself. This certainly isn’t the first wild goose chase I’ve been on, and royalty checks don’t last forever. My readers are clamoring for the next Calliope Quinn glimpse into the unusual and bizarre. Even if this dirt road dead-ends, it’s sure to spark inspiration.

But first, I need to find my four-legged muse.

“Tater!” I call, eager to hear the sound of scampering paws and panting breath emerge from the brush. Wherever he’s run off to, I know the perfect title for this misadventure: Hot on the Trail with Tater, Formerly Known as America’s Goodest Dog.

When Tater barks, I break into a jog despite the uneven, leaf-strewn terrain. What’s up with him today? He seldom leaves my side and almost never refuses to return when I call him with this amount of urgency. What the heck is he barking at?

I stop abruptly when I see the fence. This isn’t one of those ancient, crumbling split-rail fences I’ve passed for thousands of miles in my travels, nor is it a garden-variety four-foot-high barbed wire fence.

Here, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, is a new fence that’s fifteen feet tall if it’s an inch. At the top is razor wire. Is that for keeping things in or keeping people out? It screams only one thing: prison.

My stomach tightens in warning as my minor irritation at Tater and that jerk in the café is replaced with concern. No. That’s too tame a word. I’m more than concerned. I’m worried. This fence gives me the heebie-jeebies because it doesn’t belong here.

“Tator?” No longer is my voice laced with annoyance at my dog. Now I’m worried about him.

I’m relieved when he starts barking again. It allows me to follow the sound. Although I don’t see him, my anxiety calms a little when I see the hole under the fence that he crawled through to get into the restricted area.

If I had any doubts that this is where Tater went, a tatter of the sky-blue bandana I keep tied around his neck is clinging to a small spike at the exposed bottom of the fence, right above the hole.

“I’m going to punish you.” My voice is low. There’s no way he can hear my threat, which is good, because if he heard me, he’s almost smart enough to contact the ASPCA to report me. “Half rations for a week to reimburse me for the effort and sheer humiliation of making me crawl under the fence like I’m starring in a jailbreak movie.”

A small scrap of my Hu T-shirt joins the torn piece of Tater’s blue bandana. Crap. I love that T-shirt. Maybe the tear is in a place that will make it look cool rather than ruined. I don’t have time to inspect the damage, though. Instead, I stand up and then run toward Tater’s increasingly alarmed barking.

It strikes me that I’m only armed with a lanyard that holds my car and Airstream trailer keys. If my dog, who can be ferocious when he wants to be, is in full-on aggressive mode, perhaps I shouldn’t be running toward him and whatever threat he’s facing.

I round the bend of a stand of pines to be greeted by a sight that simply does not compute: one Australian cattle dog, also known as a blue heeler, and one… monster.

He’s only wearing shorts, which allows me to see almost all of his monstery-ness. The salient part of what I see isn’t his alarmingly perfect set of masculine abs, but the furry legs and short, bushy tail below his waist. And, last but not least, the rack of horns, surrounded by flowing dark-chocolate hair on his handsome human head. That’s when I realize his fiery brown gaze is locked on me.

I should run. My heart is pounding, my fists are curled, and I’ve passed from scared to terrified into fight-or-flight mode. Sadly, my brain has quit working and I’m not fleeing or fighting. I’m frozen. Except for my mouth.

“What the fuck?”