Payback (The Canine Handler Book 1) by Hillegas Maria

Author:Hillegas, Maria [Hillegas, Maria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Year of the Book
Published: 2015-10-08T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

Sarah

Lurching forward, the mule pulled out of the horse trailer parking lot. It groaned and struggled at first from being so weighted down. Sarah sat facing the rear and watched as the incident command unit and base camp disappeared from view. She stared off, deep in thought.

“You okay?” Dave asked.

He touched her shoulder. Sarah jumped. “Did you say something?” Sarah tried to regain her composure. She scrambled for words and tried to make up for flinching at his touch. “Sorry, contemplating today’s search strategy.”

“Just seeing if you were still with us,” he laughed. “You seemed lost in another world. You doing okay? You and the dogs had a long day yesterday and right back at it today.”

“Oh, I’m fine. Wondering what we may encounter, what the dogs may find. That’s all. Isn’t it about time to do a radio check?” Sarah changed the subject to shift his attention.

“Yep, on it.” Dave picked up the microphone. “Base, Team Echo calling in for a radio check.”

Releasing the call button, he waited a few seconds and was rewarded with, “Base copies Team Echo, coming through loud and clear.”

“Team Echo leaving base, heading out to starting point of search sector,” Dave continued with the transmission.

“Base copies. Check in again when you are ready to begin task.” Base repeated back the information Dave had given and asked them to check in every half hour.

“The area we’re headed to has a few hills and ravines. Nothing major as far as steep or too difficult terrain. Radio signal should stay strong throughout the search area,” Dave explained.

Sarah barely listened as Dave went on about the radio. He seemed happy to have something to talk about. It was another responsibility she had delegated and put all thought of it out of her own head.

As the driver headed east, he crossed an open field, followed a horse trail as far as he could and then had to get back on the asphalt road because the mule couldn’t fit along the trail. They crossed a bridge that spanned a small branch of Lake Marburg.

The driver wound through another parking lot by the southeast edge of the lake and headed down to pick up a section of the main trail where it had been theorized the subject might have hiked. This part of the trail consisted of a well-groomed bridle path that would take them to an area of substantially tall, un-timbered soft pines.

The ample stand of pines had originally been planted to be harvested for the local paper mill. But that was years ago, back before the park existed. Once they dammed the creek and turned the area into a park, all the lands surrounding the lake became state property. Any trees within the new boundaries of the park were no longer allowed to be timbered.

The once fertile farmland within park boundaries was now at nature’s whim. What resulted was mainly scrub with a few scattered hardwood trees dotting the landscape here and there. Thirty years later, a forest had grown and there were now several mature trees, but the scrub was still plentiful.

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