Chapter 1 - The Dog Went Back
The Golden Retriever was already halfway out of the broken rear window when she twisted out of my arms and shoved herself back into the flooded SUV.
For one second, I thought panic had made her turn the wrong way.
The water was moving fast enough to make a grown man respect it. Brown floodwater hammered the side of the vehicle, rocking it against the damaged guardrail with a grinding sound that traveled through my flotation vest and into my ribs. Six members of Iron Harbor Riders stood on the muddy bank behind me, braced in red life vests and helmets, gripping the tether line clipped to my harness.
“Hold the line!” I shouted.
My name is Raymond Dawson, though most people who knew me from the firehouse still called me Hammer. I was fifty-one, retired from Nashville Fire, and spending most of my free time volunteering with our motorcycle club’s storm-response team. We were not heroes. We were men with rope training, strong backs, and enough bad memories to show up when water started taking things.
The SUV had been pinned sideways near Mill Creek after the road washed out. We had no idea how long it had been there. The front seats were empty. The rear compartment had been dark, waterlogged, and nearly impossible to see through until I broke the window with a spring-loaded punch.
That was when the dog appeared.
She was a large female Golden Retriever, dark honey fur plastered to her body, one folded ear stuck against her head, a blue collar around her neck. Her amber eyes were wide with exhaustion. I reached in, got both arms around her chest, and pulled her toward daylight.
She should have let me take her.
Instead, she drove both rear paws against my vest, pushed away from me, and vanished back into the SUV.
“Dog’s refusing extraction!” I called toward shore.
One of the bikers, Mateo, shouted back, “Hammer, get her out before that thing turns!”
I reached through the window again.
The dog surfaced with something in her mouth.
A stuffed rabbit.
For half a heartbeat, I thought that was what she had gone back for. Animals do that sometimes. Fear makes them hold on to familiar things.
Then she dropped the toy into the water, barked once at me, and dove toward the rear floor.
That was when the air changed.
May you like
Not because I saw the baby.
Because the dog did.
