Free Stranded by Alex Kava

to conserve their excitement and energy.
    Creed wished he could tap into his dogs’ instincts. He’d spent the last seven years of his life training and working with dogs, but what they had taught him made his lessons insignificant by comparison.
    Grace was one of his smallest dogs, a scrappy brown-and-white Jack Russell terrier. Creed had discovered her curled up under one of the double-wide trailers he kept on the property forhired help. When he found her she was literally skin and bones but sagging where she had recently been nursing puppies. What fur hadn’t fallen out from lack of nourishment was thick with an army of fleas. At the time it made him so angry he had wanted to punch something … or someone. It wasn’t the first time he had seen a female dog dumped and punished when the owner was simply too cheap to get her spayed.
    Locals had gotten into the habit of leaving their unwanted dogs at the end of Creed’s driveway. They knew he’d take them in or find homes for them. In some twisted way it was their attempt at compassion. It was either leave them at Creed’s back door or take them to the nearest animal shelter, where they would most certainly be put to death.
    Hannah used to roll her eyes at him every time he’d bring in a half-starved or hobbling, abandoned dog. Then she’d tell him that people were just taking advantage of his soft heart.
    “Good lord,” she’d told him. “We could hire a vet on staff for the money we pay out in canine health services.”
    “You’re absolutely right,” he had agreed, to her surprise. And before Hannah could enjoy her victory, what she believed would be an end to his annoying habit of taking in abandoned dogs, he’d hired a full-time veterinarian.
    The fact was—and this was something he could never get Hannah to appreciate the way he appreciated it—the abandoned dogs that he had rescued made some of his best air-scent dogs. Skill was only a part of the training. Bonding with the trainer was another. His rescued dogs trusted him unconditionally and were loyal beyond measure. They were eager to learn and anxious to please.
    Though Grace had been dumped, she adapted quickly to her new surroundings. She didn’t cower or startle easily. Once shecaught up nutrition-wise, Creed recognized she possessed a drive and an investigative curiosity. She was independent but followed and looked to Creed not only for praise but also for guidance. And most important, she passed his number one test—she was ball crazy.
    It was a trick Creed used to test all his potential work dogs. Did a simple tennis ball get their attention? Did their eyes follow its every movement? Did they dive for it? And last, when they caught it, did they have a good grip on it? For air-scent work, it was all about drive and Grace had passed his ball-crazy test with flying colors.
    Despite all the training and harnessing the independence, Creed was always surprised by how a dog’s mood and behavior could be influenced by the handler. As he started getting fidgety and looking for someplace to stop, he noticed Grace’s head coming up more often.
    “It’s okay, girl,” he told her.
    Even in the dark, Creed knew this stretch of Interstate 55 and knew that in a couple more miles he’d be leaving the state of Mississippi behind and entering Tennessee. He tried to avoid stopping at Mississippi’s rest areas. The state was one of the few that had security guards at their interstate rest areas 24/7. That should have been a plus, but Creed considered them a nuisance and the term “security guard” a joke. The only thing they guarded was where a dog could or couldn’t pee. He liked to have his dogs stretch their legs, walk around, and sniff without a security guard following in his motorized cart telling him to stay in the designated “pet area.” The area that amounted to a fifteen-by-twenty-foot patch of dead grass. So he waited until he passed the blue-and-white sign that read:
TENNESSEE
THE