Page 27 of Wolf Bound

“Let’s do it. I’ll be your German shepherd companion, a search and rescue dog.”

“Hell, I would rather be running as a wolf too.”

“Yep, but you can’t because of your shoulder.” She got on the phone and called Heath and put it on the speakerphone. “Hey, Doc, I want to get your approval to allow Fisher to go with me on a missing-child search. I plan to turn wolf and he can be my handler.”

Fisher smiled.

“Just for this mission,” she said to Fisher.

“As long as he doesn’t run as a wolf and if he’s in pain, he sits it out,” Heath said.

“Thanks, Heath. He will.”

Fisher didn’t have any plans to sit this one out. If Kira was going to be a wolf, he had to stay with her at all times as her handler. She might be able to run faster and locate the girl more quickly, but he needed to be there to alert the others that they had found her.

“Do you need more volunteers?” Heath asked.

“Sure. I’ll call Devlyn and if he has got anyone available, we can all go out and help to find the little girl.” Then she ended the call with Heath and called Devlyn and put it on speakerphone.

“Yeah, I’ll contact our emergency list and send people out there. Did Heath approve Fisher’s going or do we need to have someone stay with him at home?” Devlyn asked.

“I’m going,” Fisher said. “Heath okayed it.”

“Okay, good luck and I’ll get to work on gathering folks at this end,” Devlyn said.

Then they ended the call, and Fisher and Kira grabbed a first aid pack, bottles of water, and snacks and headed out to her car.

“Do you have a leash and a collar?” Fisher asked.

She gave him a get-real look.

He laughed. “Okay, I take that as a no.” He just hoped the coordinators of the search teams didn’t have an issue with her not being on a leash.

When they arrived at the location where people were searching a large area of woods, they parked a distance away from everyone else. She stripped out of her clothes in the back seat of her Kia and then shifted.

She was a beautiful red wolf—her fur was a shiny copper color, her tall, pointed ears twisting back and forth listening to everything that was going on. She had long, slender legs with big feet, like any wolf, and a bushy tail tipped with black like it had been dipped in an ink well, twisting back and forth in happy anticipation of finding the girl. Glad to be doing something important, he led her to the location where they were coordinating the search efforts. The family’s sheepdog was waiting with the mother and Fisher and Kira smelled the dog.

“The dog returned to their campsite without the girl,” one of the search coordinators told Fisher. “She is seven and had been walking the dog, Shep, until he ran off, the leash still attached to his collar.”

Kira and Fisher also smelled the scent of the girl on the dog’s leash and then they hurried off.

He hoped they could find the little girl quickly. They hadn’t seen anyone else yet from the wolf pack, but he suspected they were on their way. The girl had been missing for six hours and he just hoped that they would find her before she ended up with hypothermia.

Even though searchers were doing a planned grid search to make sure they didn’t miss her, Fisher and Kira followed their noses and tore off in another direction. She had done this a few times with her parents in Loveland, Colorado when she was younger so she knew just what she needed to do.

She was running one way, then another, but at least she wasn’t losing Fisher because he could smell the scents as well as she could. She just didn’t want his wound to begin to hurt. Loving that he was with her, she had mixed feelings because she wanted him to heal and not feel any pain. And she wanted him to be in good shape to help her find the kidnappers. She really wanted to work with him. If he did, she knew it would be another way to impress Martin.

In the direction she was currently running, she found the girl’s scent was stronger this way. Tammy had sure run a long way for being a seven-year-old. But she could understand how come Tammy had gotten so lost. She must not have been taught about hugging a tree so that search teams could find her. Kira didn’t smell any sign of the kidnappers or any other people in this area, so that meant the girl was on her own, that no one had grabbed her—as in a kidnapping scenario—and Kira was grateful for that.

Fisher hollered, “Tammy! We found Shep, your sheepdog, and everyone’s searching for you. My dog and I are coming for you, and we will get you to your mom and dad, who are waiting to see you.”

Well, that was one good thing about having a “dog handler” with Kira! And then she saw the little girl stand up in the brush ahead, her cheeks streaked with tears. Now this was the part that Kira didn’t like when she was running as a wolf. She couldn’t hug the little girl and wipe away her tears. She woofed and wagged her tail, to show Tammy she was a good dog and loved kids. Tammy reached her hand out and Kira approached her. She licked her hand and her cheek, and the girl laughed. It was music to Kira’s ears.

Fisher was only a short distance behind her, having lagged behind as a human. She hadn’t realized she had left him way back there. But as soon as she saw him, he was smiling.

“Hi, Tammy. I’m Fisher. This is my beautiful search dog, Kira. She loves little kids.”

Kira howled to let anyone know she had found the girl. Another howl rent the air, but she knew it was a human howling—most likely someone from Devlyn and Bella’s wolf pack.

---