Page 72 of Wayward

I counted and pulled, and she cried out and then screamed, and when I turned, I saw Colby on the landing.

“You should have been running,” I said, but as he seemed about to do so, Gale blocked the doorway.

Turning back to the little girl, I worked the knots of the ropes and got them off, and as soon as she could move, she lunged into my arms.

“You’re safe now, bunny,” I told her, taking off my coat and wrapping it around her. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

She nodded frantically.

“Did he hurt you?”

More nodding.

Shit.

I cleared my throat. “Were you hurt when he pulled off your clothes?” Please God let that be it I prayed.

“Yes,” she answered.

“How about after that?”

She shook her head.

Oh thank God. The relief was overwhelming. “So he hurt you when he pulled off your clothes and then tied you up and put the tape on your mouth?”

Lots of nodding and sudden tears, so I sat, with the dog protecting us, and rocked her in my arms as I heard Gale read Colby his rights.

Mrs. Beasley, who owned Gunther, the dog who’d found Lauren, told us all her dogs had been trained by Mr. Kramer, and she had three because she had needed to feel safe after her husband passed away. The second she heard Lauren was missing, she went to the Snyder house with Gunther, and had Mrs. Snyder give her one of Lauren’s dirty shirts from her hamper. That she gave to her dog and told him to find Lauren. After smelling the shirt, he had gone immediately out the window and vaulted over the fence separating Colby’s house from the Snyders’. When he couldn’t find a way inside, he jumped back over the fence, joined his owner, went around to the front, and charged through the gate, down the path to the steps leading to the porch and into the house. He’d quickly found the little girl’s scent and done what he was trained to do, taking a seat facing the door he needed to get through. Once I kicked it open, he proceeded to reach Lauren.

“He’s a hero,” I told Mrs. Beasley as I carried Lauren back to her house.

“So are you, dear,” she assured me, hand on my arm as she walked along with me. “If you weren’t at his door, Gunther would have signaled, but we would have had to wait until Gale got there to get Colby to open up.”

“It’s all Gunther,” I said pointedly, and she nodded.

“If that’s how you want it.”

“Please.”

She smiled up at me. “I’ve never considered a small dog, but Misha is simply darling.”

He was, at the moment, sitting on top of Lauren, and she was holding him as we walked her back home.

Lauren’s mother collapsed when we walked in the door, and her father, who’d yelled at me earlier, rushed over and took her from me, thanking me the whole time as Lauren explained how Mr. Landau had taken her from her bed, but Gunther and I found her and everything would be okay now.

“Yes, it will be,” her father soothed as her mother joined them.

“Can we get a dog?”

“Yes,” her mother promised. “We’ll go tomorrow to Mr. Kramer’s and get one just like Gunther.”

“Can we get one like Misha too? He’s so cuddly and cute.”

“Yes,” her mother said, reaching up to grab my hand and squeeze tight. “You can stay home from school tomorrow, and we’ll go to the humane society and find one as close as we can get to Misha.”

Lauren was very excited over this news.

I turned to go, and Lauren started to cry. “No. Don’t go yet, okay?”