The Redemption Game Read online

  Contents

  Your Free Books

  Copyright

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  All the Blue-Eyed Angels

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Your Free Books

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  More from Jen Blood

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Thank You For

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  Copyright © 2019 by Jen Blood

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

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  THE REDEMPTION GAME

  The Flint K-9 Search and Rescue Mysteries

  Book 3

  Jen Blood

  For my friends and family

  in Midcoast Maine.

  Chapter 1

  IT WAS THE KIND of summer day that makes a body glad to be alive, and even more so to be alive in coastal Maine. Sun shining. Birds singing. All right with the world.

  Except for, of course, the chorus of fifty or more dogs barking nearby and a stench to rival what you might find at a full-fledged, badly funded zoo. Which was, more or less, where we were headed.

  I walked beside Jack Juarez, FBI Special Agent recently turned private investigator, along a deeply rutted dirt road off another deeply rutted dirt road off an infrequently traveled secondary road in Cushing. It was June, the sun reflecting off the deep blue of Muscongus Bay just across the way. On the other side, the barking of the aforementioned fifty or more dogs got impossibly louder the closer we got to our goal.

  Bear, my eighteen-year-old son, walked on my other side, though he’d been quiet since we’d gotten out of the van. My own tension ratcheted higher as we approached our destination: a once-grand Victorian home that had long since gone to seed, set on ten acres of prime coastal real estate and flanked by two equally rundown old barns.

  A surge of mangy-looking dogs of all shape and size rushed a rickety gate that barely looked sturdy enough to hold them back. I registered Jack’s flinch beside me, though to his credit he didn’t turn around and run.

  “I’m going to check around out back,” Bear said to me. “I want to get a look at the farm animals before Nancy comes out and runs us off the property.”

  “Be careful,” I warned him. Nancy Davis was the owner of this ruin of a place, and was definitely not known around town for her hospitality. “If she comes out, tell her you’re with us and don’t engage. Just come find me.”

  He nodded without actually agreeing, but I had to hope he was smart enough by now to know when it was worth arguing with me and when it was better to just do as he was told.

  Bear managed to skirt around the side of the building just as Nancy stepped out her front door and stood on the sagging stoop glaring at us. The dogs’ snarls and yowls got worse as soon as Nancy set foot outside, as though they were drawing on their owner’s ill will.

  “Why are we here, exactly?” Jack asked me under his breath, his tone wary as he eyed the old woman now striding toward us.

  “To evaluate the dogs. See if there are any we can take on at the island and rehabilitate there.”

  “My dogs don’t need rehabilitating,” Nancy shouted at us, still ten yards away. She had to be nearly seventy-five, but clearly her hearing wasn’t suffering for it. Apart from that, though, Nancy wasn’t wearing her years well. She wore a tattered house dress with a bathrobe over it, her white hair stringy and thinning across her scalp. Her right arm was in a cast, and she walked with a limp. The dogs in the yard—I counted twenty of them at first glance—vied for her attention, occasionally snapping at each other in the chaos.

  “You know what’s happening, Nancy,” I said, my own tone softer than hers. There are times when I’m grateful for my Georgian accent, though I haven’t lived in that part of the country for going on twenty years now. My drawl is gentler than the Maine accent, making me seem more compassionate than I necessarily am. This morning, I used that to full effect.

  “You’ve got a choice,” I continued. “Either find a place for the animals or the State will intervene and take them. Wouldn’t you rather know where they’re going?”

  A dog who looked like a mix between a Sheltie and a rat came up to her and took a corner of her robe between his teeth, pulling at it with menacing little yips and growls.

  “Knock it off, Oswald,” she said, though there was tenderness underlying the words. “You wanna play, go find Albie. I ain’t got the time.”

  Albie was Nancy’s youngest son, a quiet, tense man with a number of cognitive challenges that had kept him reliant on his mother into his adult years. Discouraged, Oswald shifted his focus to us, still outside the fence. He nosed through the chicken wire, his attention fixed on Jack. The ex-agent took a step back. Jack Juarez had seen plenty in his day, I knew, but Oswald still seemed a little beyond him. I heard him curse under his breath, and he glanced at me as he bent to clean dog crap from his leather shoes.

  “Have you thought about what we talked about the other day?” I pressed Nancy, ignoring Jack and Oswald for the moment. “If you can find a place for, say, three quarters of the dogs—”

  “They’re special needs,” she said immediately, cutting me off.

  Regardless of her animosity, she opened the gate and ushered us in, hollering and kicking at any dogs who dared try and escape. I glanced at Jack to see if he was still on board, but there was no time for a discussion. Game as always, he followed me through the gate and into territory I was sure was completely foreign to anything he’d ever seen before.

  Two stunted pug mixes had taken up the charge with Oswald, successfully herding Jack back toward the gate before he’d managed more than a couple of steps into the yard.

  “Nobody’s gonna take them dogs,” Nancy continued. “Half the ones in the house have health problems. And nobody’s house trained in the lot. You tell me, who’ll take that on but me? Besides, they’ve only ever known me.”

  Jack manage
d to extricate himself from the dogs, albeit momentarily, and stepped forward with the beguiling smile that was precisely the reason I’d asked him along in the first place.

  “This is quite a setup you have here. If you don’t mind me asking, how many dogs do you have, exactly?”

  Nancy stared at him with dark, withering eyes for a full two seconds before she turned to me. “Who in hell is this?” So much for Jack Juarez’s irresistible charm.

  “Jack Juarez,” I said. “He’s helping me out today.”

  “Well, he doesn’t need to be here.” She stopped speaking altogether, arms folded over her bony chest while she waited.

  “Why don’t you go check in with Bear?” I said to Jack, nodding toward the back of the property. “I’ll let you know when I need you two.”

  “You’re not going to need them at all,” Nancy said. Jack started to protest, but thought better of it when Oswald and his pack approached again.

  “You know where to find me,” he said. I waited until he was out of hearing range before I shifted my focus back to the old woman.

  “What in Hades are you doing here, Nancy?” I said. I tried to infuse some compassion into the question, though that wasn’t easy. “You need help here—you must see that. You’ve got dogs literally busting out the seams of that house, not to mention the state of the farm animals out in the field. Have you looked at those cows? I can count their ribs from here. The llamas’ teeth need filing. The sheep need shearing…”

  The more I went on, the tighter Nancy held herself. I watched the dogs circling around her, their attention shifting to me: the interloper. Someone their person clearly wasn’t happy to see. A Newfoundland the size of a small pony, his coat patchy with mange, worked his way from behind a piece of cardboard and duct tape that patched a broken window in the house. At sight of Nancy, he loped our way with tail waving.

  “Get back in there, Cody,” she told the dog. “Go on, now.”

  The Newfie ignored her and headed for me. He would be magnificent if not for his circumstances, and a fresh surge of rage ran through me as he bumped his massive head into my stomach, nearly taking me down. “Do you know how many people are in line for rescued Newfoundlands?” I demanded. “Someone would take him in a heartbeat.”

  “I don’t need anybody to take him. To hell with all of you,” Nancy said. “You damned bureaucrats forget we’re talking about living creatures here.”

  “Since when have I been a bureaucrat?” I returned. “And I think you’re the one who’s forgotten they’re living creatures. You’ve saved their lives, and I thank you for that, I really do. But what kind of quality of life do they have now, if half of them are sick and all of them are starving?”

  I stroked Cody’s head, noting the ribs clearly defined through his ruin of a coat. A dog like this should be at least a hundred pounds, but I doubted Cody was more than sixty.

  Nancy’s lips tightened. She raised her good arm and pointed toward the gate. “Get out. You’re no better than my son, trying to steal my animals and move me out of here just so he can have my land. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass what happens to these animals. None of them do.”

  “None of whom, Nancy?” I asked wearily. I’d known Nancy for a couple of years now, in some capacity or other. I was well acquainted with her conspiracy theories.

  “Developers,” she said. “Barbara and her fancy-fairy husband’ve got them sniffing at my land. She’s been on me for months now to sell her this plot so she can expand her place. And it’s not for my own good, I’ll tell you that much.”

  I didn’t know Nancy’s neighbors—Barbara and her “fancy-fairy” husband—beyond maybe being able to recognize them in a police line-up, but I was sure this wasn’t the whole story.

  “So, don’t sell,” I said regardless, seizing the moment. “But don’t try to do this alone. I thought Fred was helping you. Didn’t he come back to try and sort this out?”

  Fred was Nancy’s oldest son, a strange, precise little man in his forties.

  “He left,” she said, with a trace of scorn. “Couldn’t take it. Didn’t even say goodbye. Just packed his things and left one night, just like his daddy did years before. Sent me a note from Cleveland, wishing me luck. Then next thing I know, I hear from his lawyer saying he wants to evict me and Albie. From my own damned house!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it. Cody lay down in front of me, directly on my feet. “But maybe this is the only way he knows to help you. If not, there are plenty of other people around here more than willing to lend a hand. I’ve got space on the island to take some of your animals and work on training, and there’s a whole network of others who’ll pitch in. We’ll clean this place up, set you up with a number you can actually handle.”

  She stepped forward silently and grabbed Cody by the collar, jerking the dog to his feet. Cody followed her willingly, then sat beside her and leaned against her hip. Nancy didn’t say anything for a minute or more, still tense, before I noticed the sheen in her tired eyes.

  “Please, Nancy.”

  She shook her head, more against the tears than my words. “If I weren’t so damned old,” she said. “I used to be able to handle it, you know. Could’ve run this place in my sleep.”

  This was actually true, I knew. Nancy had been doing animal rescue in the area for over twenty years, long before I came on the scene. She traveled around the country helping with cruelty cases; up until a couple of years ago, she’d run this place as smoothly as the proverbial Swiss watch. Her stellar track record was the major reason no one had shut her down sooner after it all got away from her.

  “Does that mean you’ll let me help?” I asked.

  She took a deep breath, and looked around. Oswald and his buddies had returned, which made me wonder where Jack and Bear might be. They paced around us with a dozen other barking dogs, watching my every move. Cody ignored them completely.

  “Is your friend gonna help?” Nancy asked.

  “Jack?” I said. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Looks like he’s being tracked by a grizzly bear every time Oswald looks at him sideways, you know.”

  I squelched a smile. “He does a little bit, yes.”

  “Nice to look at, though,” she noted.

  “Don’t start.”

  She looked at me innocently, a trace of mischief in her eyes. “What? You don’t think I notice something like that? I’m old and maybe half nuts, but I’m not dead. I can still appreciate a good-looking man when one comes around.”

  “You know I haven’t forgotten the question,” I said, getting us back on track. “Will you let us help?”

  A few seconds of hesitation followed before she finally nodded. “Come back tomorrow—”

  “We’re here now. You know the police are set to come in tomorrow.”

  “Come back tomorrow,” she repeated firmly. “Give me a few hours to pull myself together, talk this through with Albie and my other babies here.”

  Despite my reservations, I nodded. “We’ll be back first thing,” I said. “And we’ll get this sorted out, all right? This can be a good thing.”

  “Sure it can,” she said grimly.

  #

  Moments later, Nancy and Cody retreated back into her ruined house. I picked my way through rotting dog food, animal crap, and the carcasses of multiple rats—at least I hoped they were rats—toward the back of the property in search of Bear and Jack. I found them in a soggy pasture out behind the house, where Bear was giving an overgrown sheep a once-over while Albie—Nancy’s younger son—looked on, arms crossed over his chest, face dark with anger. He wore a green sweatshirt with a pirate on the front, BUC PRIDE in large white letters across the bottom. It looked as old as the hills, and just as dirty.

  Jack, meanwhile, crouched beside a grizzled black and white tomcat with one missing ear. The dogs that had been pursuing him, I noted, were now keeping a safe distance.

  “I see you met Cash,” I said.

  “Is tha
t his name?” Jack asked. The cat butted his over-large head against the palm of Jack’s hand. “I’m not positive, but I think he saved my life.”

  “Cash keeps everyone in line here. They didn’t mean you any harm, though,” I said, nodding toward the pack of little dogs watching us from the fence line. “But you do give off a vibe. They can sense your fear.”

  “I’m not afraid of them,” he said, a trifle indignant.

  “Of course not.”

  “Now you’re just patronizing me.” He shifted his focus back to the cat. “What’s his story?”

  “Long-time neighborhood stray,” I said. “He got into it with a coyote, though. You should have seen the coyote.” Jack smiled faintly, focus still on Cash. “Nancy raised the money to cover the vet bills, and added him to the menagerie.”

  Jack nodded with apparent approval.

  “So, what are we doing?” Bear interrupted us, returning from the field with one massive black and white sheep tottering along beside him. “Some of these guys are in bad shape. We need to get them out of here, but Albie’s giving me a hard time about it.”

  Albie had followed Bear back toward us, his entire body coiled as tight as a rattlesnake about to strike.

  “We’re coming back tomorrow morning,” I said. Bear started to protest, but I held up my hand. “Nancy needs a few hours to pull herself together. That’s all she’s asking. One more day won’t kill these guys.”

  Bear looked at the ram beside him doubtfully. The wool was so thick I couldn’t imagine what we would find underneath. Unlike wild sheep, which shed their wool naturally the same way a dog sheds its coat, domesticated sheep have been bred so that the wool will continue to grow until someone intercedes. If no one shears them, the coat can become so overgrown that flies lay eggs in the moist folds of their skin. Maggots hatch, and literally eat the animal from the outside in. Based on the smell coming from the poor thing, I was guessing we could well face a situation like that here.