Shelter Me by Catherine Mann Read Free Book Online

guy, in a normal motel room. Granted, it was a normal, cheap motel room. He peered through the nice normal peephole and saw . . . nothing.
    Scratch. Scratch.
    Okay, alarms were seriously buzzing in his war-fogged brain. He pushed back the curtain on the window next to the door and—
    Thud!
    He screamed like a damn five-year-old, leaping back before he realized a dog skidded down the glass, then jumped up again. Recognition hit him like a blow to the chest. Trooper. The stunned feeling eased, replaced by something else entirely. Was Sierra outside?
    Mike slid the chain, flipped the bolt and flung the door wide. No Sierra. No people period. His gaze slid down. Sure as hell, Trooper sat in front of his door with a battered tennis ball in his mouth and tail wagging, brown eyes doing that talking thing again.
    Wanna play?
    *   *   *
    SIERRA CURSED THAT damn missing mutt as she sagged against the porch post. Exhausted. Defeated.
    She scraped her wrist under her eyes, then her nose, crying like a baby over a dog she didn’t even really like. Of course she hadn’t gotten a chance to know the ornery beast beyond feeling jealous Trooper got to spend time with her dad during his last days on earth.
    Hiccupping, she stared at the empty gravel road leading out to the highway. Woods sprawled to the left. On the right, their distant, cranky neighbors lived in a brick ranch house. They hadn’t seen Trooper, either, and if they had, they damn straight would have called Animal Control first rather than let Lacey know.
    Sierra had helped her mom search the neighborhood and woods for five hours with no luck. To make matters worse, Trooper had ditched his collar before he’d left their property. They’d found the bright red collar with tags lying in the dirt. The dog was scheduled to be neutered and microchipped tomorrow, which didn’t help them today. They’d finally agreed to take a break and regroup at home.
    Her mom was calling every shelter in a hundred-mile radius. Lacey had them all on speed dial since she worked rescues with all of them. If Trooper landed anywhere else, she would be notified.
    If.
    Of course, thanks to her mom’s rescue work Sierra knew the thousand other “ifs” that could have happened to Trooper. If he hadn’t been hit by a car. If he wasn’t starving on the streets. If he hadn’t eaten mushrooms or a zillion other toxic things that lurked in the woods.
    And then there were all the horrible people in the world who did terrible things to stray animals. She’d seen the fallout from those neglect and cruelty cases every time her mother drove home from the shelters with her latest residents joining the Second Chance Rescue. These dogs, cats—not to mention a miniature pony, snake, goat and other critters—came with sad-sack histories that even a shelter couldn’t rehab and rehome.
    How could Trooper have survived life as a feral pup in Iraq and a trip across the ocean, only to run away on his first day with a real family? Somehow, she felt like this was her fault, that she’d let her dad down on the very last thing he’d needed from her. Her breath hitched on a hysterical sob, one far beyond plain old tears, a gut-deep sobbing session she hadn’t allowed herself in four months. She clenched her teeth together to hold it back.
    She would not, could not lose control.
    Longfellow. She needed some one-on-one time with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow right now, something like “The Day is Done.” She sucked in deep breaths of barley-scented air, grateful for the post behind her. Come, read to me some poem, Some simple and heartfelt lay, That shall soothe this restless feeling, And banish the thoughts of day . . .
    The final lines were drowned out by Grandpa turning on his cassette player. “Amazing Grace” on the bagpipes rattled through the windows. He couldn’t work the CD player anymore, but he still knew how to operate a cassette player to make use of his collection, which remained in