Bonnie and Harry were right to come to me. If Tyler Brady is treating his sled dogs like this, he shouldn’t be allowed near them.
The guy’s furtive gaze darts to me. “So, you said you have her?”
I take a calming breath. “We do. She’s in the truck, where it’s warm.”
“Oh. Okay.” He rubs the back of his neck and then, after a moment, says, “So … I can take her back now, then?”
Over my dead body.
“You have a way of getting hold of Tyler?” Howie smiles easily. “I just have a few questions about the dog—”
“Nymeria. That’s her name.”
“Game of Thrones fans?”
The guy offers a toothy grin that transforms his face. “Yes, sir. I am. Tyler said it’s unoriginal, but he let me name her, anyway.”
Howie chuckles. “I think it’s a great name. And sorry, I didn’t catch yours?”
“Reed, sir,” he falters. “My name’s Reed.”
“Well, Reed, I think it’d be a good idea for us to have that conversation with Tyler before we bring Nymeria over. The truck’s warm. She should be nice and comfortable in there while we wait.”
Reed scratches his chin with a gloved hand. “What kinds of questions?”
“Just want to know a bit more about her. Like how old she is, where you keep her, what she’s been eating, things like that.”
“Oh.” The guy shifts on his feet. “Is Tyler gonna be in trouble?”
“For what?” I blurt out, earning a warning glance from Howie.
Reed swallows hard. “He just figured he might be, if anyone ever found her here.”
This kid is giving us all the information we need, I think with grim satisfaction. The asshole knows what he’s been doing to that dog is wrong, and he’s trying to hide it.
“We just want to talk to him for now. Learn a little more about this dog.” Howie nods toward the barn, where a cacophony of high-pitched barks carry. “Say, how many puppies you got in there?”
“None.”
Howie frowns with doubt. “None?”
“I mean, yeah, we got two, but we’re not sellin’ them, if that’s what you’re askin’。 People keep comin’ here, looking for puppies to buy, but we’re not breedin’ them for sale.”
“Are you breeding them to race?”
“Yes, sir. We will. Those that wanna race, anyway.”
My stomach tightens. “And what about the ones that don’t want to race?”
My ears catch a familiar whir.
Reed’s head jerks to the right, toward the growing sound. A figure on a snowmachine appears from the thicket of trees, moving at a slower pace, presumably to keep stride with the eight dogs running alongside him, tether-free. They move in unison, two by two, as if harnessed, their powerful legs charging through the snow.
“Damn.” There’s no missing the admiration in the single word as Howie watches the dogs. “Is that Tyler?”
Reed’s head bobs.
“Okay, then. We’ll just wait here until he gets home, and then we’ll have ourselves a little chat.” Howie rubs his gloves together, his gaze darting to mine, his eyebrow arching in a let me do the talking way.
They round the bend and the clearing. A male voice shouts something and then the snowmachine speeds up. Suddenly, it’s racing toward us, the dogs chasing after, never breaking formation.
I straighten my back and ignore the urge to huddle within my heavy coat as the man pulls up and cuts the engine. His face is hidden behind a black balaclava and goggles. No helmet. There’s no law requiring one in Alaska, but it tells me that on top of everything else, this guy has no common sense.
He throws a leg over the seat and climbs off his snowmachine. Meanwhile, Reed drops to his knees, calling the dogs to him by name with an ease he didn’t have for us. They rush straight for his open arms, tongues lolling from their panting mouths.
Tyler Brady has beautiful sled dogs, I’ll admit. Not the fluffy purebred Disney dogs that are great for tourism photo ops and leisure mushing. These are the typical leaner version of huskies that uneducated people mistake for underfed when they’re consuming upward of ten thousand calories a day during training. I can already see that malnourishment is not the case here, the dogs’ winter coats thick and full, and marked in every shade of black, brown, and gray. There are a couple unusual ones in the mix, too—one has a curled tail and a wolflike appearance, its fur a mottled mix of silver and ash. A Siberian Laika, possibly.