My Forever Home by Debbie Burns

Author:Debbie Burns
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2018-10-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Every time Mason felt certain he’d lost sight of the dog as the tenacious animal seemed to be swallowed up by the night, he’d catch a glimpse of a now-familiar pattern of black and white in the darkness ahead. The dog seemed to sense when, with his quicker stride, he’d pressed too far ahead. He’d turn and wait in the darkness, watching but rarely barking.

John Ronald was leading Mason deeper into a section of the city that was riddled with long-abandoned warehouses. It was an area most people did their damnedest to avoid while in cars in full daylight. The only inhabitants of this dilapidated burrow were either homeless or meth heads or troubled youth hoping to stir up even more trouble. Thank God he hadn’t allowed Tess to convince him to send her in pursuit of the dog instead of him.

Mason had been sending Tess back upstairs for some blankets, jackets, and the keys to his truck when John Ronald had begun to trot off. The dog had paused a few hundred feet away, barking and prancing in a zigzagged circle, as if beckoning them to follow.

“We’re going to lose him, Tess,” he’d said. Rushing out as they did, Mason hadn’t even thought about grabbing his keys. And with the puppy in the shape it was in, it needed immediate care. “I’ll follow John Ronald on foot. You can get that puppy warmed up and use my truck to catch up with us. The keys are on the counter. Call me. I’ll pin you my location.”

“Mason, I can’t drive your truck. It’s a tank. And I don’t have a phone, remember?”

They’d gone back and forth a full minute before Mason had closed his hands over her shoulders. “Tess, you can do this. You need to do this. You’re more capable of helping the puppy anyway.”

His words having sunk in, Tess had reluctantly agreed. To get her back upstairs, Mason rang Georges on the video intercom. “Hey, let Tess up, will you? And she needs to borrow your phone. Meet her in the hall, and you’ll see why.”

Fearing he’d lose sight of John Ronald if he let him get any farther ahead, Mason had taken off after him. Tess’s “Good luck” just reached his ears.

The farther away from the familiar downtown sights they drew, the harder it was to tell, but Mason suspected he’d been following the dog at a brisk jog for nearly two miles. After trailing John Ronald blindly for a few minutes down a deserted street with no streetlights and only the moon and stars for light, Mason stopped to catch his breath. He’d lost sight of John Ronald completely. He was closed in by two abandoned redbrick warehouses that spanned a full block on each side of the street. In the darkness, they seemed heavily boarded up, but Mason still felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. It’d likely be safer to walk through the Alaskan wilderness at night than to pass through here.

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