21. Chapter 21

Chapter 21

Sidnee was excited to see me. ‘How was it?’ she asked, bouncing on the bed. I smirked. She threw a pillow at my head. ‘That’s not what I meant!’ She grinned. ‘Though I’m sure that part was good because you look exhausted. I meant finding out about you and Fluffy teaching the classes.’

‘You knew?’

‘Of course, I knew! Connor needed me to get in touch with Sergeant Marks and arrange it.’ She cackled a shade maliciously. ‘I cannot wait to see Thorsen’s face when he realises he has to take a class from you!’

I hadn’t thought of that. I was almost hopeful that he would try to disrupt my lessons. Would I get away with ordering him to run laps if he disrespected me?

‘Did anything happen while I was gone?’ I asked. ‘Any – you know…’ I fluttered my fingers ‘…activity?’ I looked around as though I could see the poltergeist.

‘No, nothing as far as I know. It’s been quiet since we did the prayer and the cleansing.’

‘Were many people still around?’

She shook her head. ‘No, only a handful of us recruits with nothing else to do.’

I sat cross-legged on her bed and faced her. ‘So, what did you do? After Stan dropped you back, I mean.’

The bouncing resumed. ‘Do you know what? It was great. I slept in, caught up on the reading for next week and watched a lot of stupid cat videos on my phone.’ She giggled. ‘It was actually a real winner of a weekend. And I ventured out to see Sitka, too. I bet I saw more of it then you did.’ She waggled her eyebrows.

I laughed. ‘I’m sure you did. All my spare time was spent preparing to do those three K-9 classes.’

She did the eyebrow thing again. ‘Not all of your spare time, I’m sure.’ She laughed, then sobered. ‘I’m not worried about the class. Fluffy knows what he’s doing, and you two have worked together for months. You’ve got this.’

I nodded. ‘I feel better about it now, but that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t have any formal training. I don't even know the terms real K-9 handlers use, and neither Fluffy nor I speak German.’

‘German?’ She shot me a perplexed glance.

‘Yeah, apparently it’s a thing. But it doesn’t matter – we’ll be doing this in English.’

‘English is good. I doubt a single person here speaks German.’

‘I know, but it’s supposed to be a command language for a lot of K-9s.’

She shoved my shoulder. ‘Don’t fret! You’ll be fine.’

‘Thanks.’ I shot her a grateful smile.

It was almost time for lights-out and I was really excited about having some actual honest-to-goodness sleep. I put my things away and got ready for bed. I thought I’d fall asleep instantly, but my first K-9 demonstration was the next day and it was playing on my mind. I spent a lot of time rehearsing what I would say, and by the time I finally fell asleep it was already into the witching hours.

I slept fitfully and kept waking up to check the time. It sucked, and I knew I’d struggle in the morning, but my stupid brain would not shush.

When the alarm went off, I got up sluggishly, dressed by rote and followed Sidnee to PT. I was so exhausted that I almost didn’t make it through the physical training, mats and the obstacle course. I yawned my way through breakfast, too.

The only thing going for me was that Connor would arrive after breakfast with Fluffy, but even so I was a bundle of nerves. I looked around the cafeteria at my fellow recruits and wondered if they’d accept me teaching them or if they’d laugh me out of the academy. Then I squared my shoulders. I was a Nomo officer and a K-9 handler. I was not going to embarrass Gunnar or Fluffy, and I was absolutely going to smash this. They would respect my authority. I snickered in my head as I heard South Park in my head. They would respect my authority – what little shred of it I had.

Besides, I could absolutely depend on Thorsen to be a twat and that would give me the opportunity to put him down – hard. I was really looking forward to that. There had been a time in my life when I’d toed the line and kept my head down, trying my darndest to please my parents and so many other people, but I’d kissed that attitude goodbye the day I’d kissed Franklin, my sire. Portlock had been the making of me; maybe Sitka could be the making of Thorsen if he pulled his head out of his arse long enough to actually learn.

As I got up to leave, Sidnee grabbed my arm and whispered an encouraging, ‘You got this.’ As always, I had at least one person on my side.

I put my tray away, then went to meet Connor and collect Fluffy. Connor was leaning against his beat-up truck in front of the main doors looking like my own personal wet dream. Next to him, Fluffy was ready to rock and roll in his Nomo vest. He looked freshly brushed and sharp. Nice.

‘Thank you for doing this,’ I said to Connor for the hundredth time. ‘I know it’s keeping you from home and work.’

‘Exactly.’ He grinned. ‘Any excuse.’ He shot me a wink before pulling me in for a slow kiss that got every cell in my body dancing the cha-cha-cha. ‘It’s worth it for that,’ he breathed huskily, then released me and gave me a light swat on the bottom. ‘Now, go get ’em, tiger.’

I blew him another kiss, grabbed Fluffy’s lead and sauntered inside as if I actually knew what I was doing. I walked to the doors with my head held high; I was ready to educate, to show these guys and gals what a difference a good police dog could make.

I made my way to the front of the class with Fluffy trotting to heel, then gave him the hand signal to sit. He sat immediately and watched me intently, ready for his next instruction. I turned to take in the class, which had fallen totally silent.

All eyes were on me, most of them surprised, though Thorsen and his gang were looking at me with total disbelief. I could almost hear ‘you gotta be kidding me!’ rolling around inside their heads.

Fluffy remained sitting, his eyes fixed on me, a perfect K-9 specimen. Marks came to the front of the class and everyone switched their attention to him. ‘We’re pleased to have a K-9 handler here today to demonstrate some of their skills and abilities. This is one of your fellow recruits, Elizabeth “Bunny” Barrington from Nanwalek…’

I blinked a bit at hearing Nanwalek and not Portlock, but we’d agreed beforehand that if anyone asked, Sidnee and I couldn’t say we were from a place that the peds knew was a notorious ghost town. Nanwalek was a native village of around three hundred people, and it was unlikely anyone here would know it. Sidnee was claiming to be from Seldovia, another village on the Kenai Peninsula. Marks had checked beforehand to make sure none of the other recruits were from our fake villages; this clearly wasn’t his first rodeo.

I turned back to him as he gestured at my German Shepherd. ‘And this is her K-9, Fluffy,’ he said.

There were a few titters in the crowd at Fluffy’s name and a full-on snort of derision from Thorsen. Marks fixed him with a hard look and he settled down. I ignored them all. Once they’d seen what Fluffy could do, they wouldn’t give a fuck about his name. I plastered on my best fake smile.

Marks continued, ‘Barrington is going to do demos over the next three days. I’ll have her introduce what those will be.’ He turned expectantly to me.

‘Thank you, sir.’ I swallowed. ‘Erm…’ My throat felt tight: a coughing fit was not what I needed right now. I breathed deeply. ‘Right. So, the three classes we’ll perform will be tracking, search and rescue, and drug identification. We’ll start with tracking. I’ve asked Sergeant Marks to bury three items for this demonstration, and I don’t have any idea where they are. We’ll start out back by the obstacle course, so if everyone will follow me?’

I hated that it came out as a question rather than an order, but everyone rose dutifully to their feet and followed me – even Thorsen and his crew.

Maybe I could do this after all.