Page 76 of Serve and Protect
“Here’s the main house,” she says as she circles an area. “And you’ve already searched it and found nothing?” she asks me.
I nod. “Yeah. You can scratch it off.”
She draws a bigXto mark the house as eliminated. She draws in the location of the barns, chicken coop, and other out buildings. “And these have all been searched thoroughly as well?”
“Yes.”
Hannah sets a paper grocery sack on the table, opens it, and withdraws two garments—a pink camisole top and a pair of gray knit sleep shorts. I recognize them as the pajamas she wore to bed last night.
“I took the liberty of stopping at her house and taking these from Jennie’s dirty laundry hamper. We’ll use these to give Scout a scent to work with.”
Scout, the dog in question, is lying underneath the desk, quiet but alert, his dark eyes darting back and forth. When Hannah says his name, the dog’s head shoots up, and his ears perk sharply upright. But when no command follows, he relaxes and lays his head back down on his paws.
Hannah draws an outline around the entire Braggart property. “We’re looking for a needle in a haystack. We need more intel to narrow the search.”
I tell her about Ricky going to look for Clint Tolliver to see if he has any insight as to where Braggart might have gone to hide out.
“There’s no point in sitting around on our asses and doing nothing,” Killian says as he lays his hands on his wife’s shoulders. “I say we start with the obvious trails.”
“Agreed,” Hannah says. “Let’s survey the perimeter of the open space around the house and look for potential entry points into the woods. I imagine there are multiple trails that are passable by ATV. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find fresh tire marks.”
The carefully manicured yard surrounding the house is about two acres of pristinely mowed turf with a few well-placed mature trees. We spread out to examine the perimeter of the expansive yard, looking for breaks in the trees where an ATV might be able to slip through without leaving a lot of evidence behind—snapped branches and trampled undergrowth. We find tire marks at the beginning of two of the trails, so that approach isn’t as helpful as we’d hoped.
“Three,” Hannah says when we reconvene at the makeshift command center. “Three obvious trails wide enough for an ATV to pass through.” She frowns. “I suppose it could be worse. Right now I propose we split into three groups and follow these trails as far as we can. Until we hear something different, this is the best we have to go on.”
Scout is up on his feet now, a bit antsy. I suspect he knows something’s up, that we’re about to ask him to do something. This dog sure loves to be asked to do things.
Everyone splits into teams. I’m going with Hannah, Killian and Scout. Jace is going with Micah, Ruth, and Jack. Owen,John, and the rock climbers will take the last trail. One of my deputies is assigned to each team, so at least one member is armed. Most SAR volunteers aren’t armed, but Hannah prefers at least one person on each team to carry a weapon. In this case, the officers are armed, of course. We’re wearing full tactical outfits, including bulletproof vests. Hannah and Killian are armed, as are Owen and John.
After Scout is given an opportunity to thoroughly sniff Jennie’s items of clothing, we set off.
Scout gets dibs on which trail he wants to explore. We take him to the first trail, but he’s not too excited. Same for the middle trail. But when we take him to the third trail, he finally shows some enthusiasm. Tracking missing people can be a living saving event, but to Scout, it’s all a game. And he loves to win.
“We’ll take this one,” Hannah says as she offers the dog Jennie’s pajamas once more. “Everyone radio in if you find anything.”
“Scout, go find!” Hannah says to her dog. “Go find!”
Scout takes off at a good clip, and Hannah, Killian, and I push ourselves to keep up with him. He stays mostly to the well-defined trail, occasionally veering off into the thick undergrowth. But each time he deviates from the path, he returns to the trail and continues forward, deeper into the woods.
I’m surprised to hear my phone chiming with an incoming text message. It’s from Ricky.
Ricky: Spoke to Tolliver. He says the Braggarts have a rough hunting cabin deep in the woods on their property, near a stream. Dave used to hang out there with friends to smoke weed. That’s the only place he could think of.
Well, at least we have something to focus on now.
“There’s a hunting cabin somewhere on the property, near a stream,” I tell Hannah and Killian. “I think that’s our best option.”
Hannah radios the other two search teams with an update.
Micah radios back to say they have found a stream, and that they’ll follow it in hopes it leads to the cabin.
At least we now have two potentially helpful leads to investigate.
I check the time. It’s been almost ninety minutes since I received the alert from Jennie’s pendant. In the wider scheme of things, that’s not a whole lot of time. But in reality, Braggart could do a lot of damage to her in that amount of time. I figure he spent at least half that time transporting her to their destination, provided our assumptions are correct. That leaves forty-five minutes for him to terrorize her.
I’m trying desperately to keep a cool head, to treat this situation professionally, like I would in any case of a missing person. But this isn’t just any case.It’s Jennie.And my gut is in knots at the thought of her being frightened, or even worse—hurt.
I vow to myself here and now that if he has hurt her, he’s a dead man. I don’t care what it takes. I won’t risk him possibly getting out on a technicality and threatening her again. My job, not as a sheriff, but as her boyfriend, is to ensure her safety, now and in the future.
