Shielding Instinct, page 22
“The search?” Petra asked.
“The search, okay. I’m at the airport. I see that this elderly woman is agitated. I began to wonder if she might be having an episode of disorientation, Alzheimer’s, or what have you. Cooper is looking worried.” Hawkeye rubbed his thumb between his eyes, “That thing he does with his brows where Cooper squinches them in with concentration then looks at me to tell him how he should interpret the situation.”
“Describe what she was doing,” Petra asked.
“She was up and pacing back and forth in the waiting area, wringing her hands and moaning quietly. I’m not sure if there’s about to be a medical crisis. I’m looking for anyone associated with her. I lock eyes with a different woman. She says that the woman is upset because her husband isn’t there. ‘Where is he?’ I asked. Turns out they got separated when they were coming through security.”
“It happens,” Petra said.
“Then I hear a code over the loudspeaker. I recognize it as a missing person. In my view, I watch as workers pull out their radios and listen in. I always say the more eyes, the better. As a matter of fact, when we have a missing child, we don’t try to protect the child by keeping things quiet. We get loud, and we get loud fast. We call out everything we know about that child.”
“Give me a for instance. What does that mean to you?” she asked.
Hawkeye thought for a minute. “Okay, this isn’t something that happened to me, but once Ash and Hoover got sent up to New York as a K9 team to help with a security contract after the protectee family had their non-verbal autistic child take off running. So, this is a hand-me-down story.”
“Still,” Petra said looking up at him, “what happened?”
Hawkeye noticed that she gripped his hand harder when her eyes weren’t going in the same direction as her feet. That was probably why their hand holding made him think of Bruce. “Knowing the child was at risk for running off, Strike Force practiced what they would say so that they could call the information off in a cadence as they fanned out. Imagine, say, four guys in security uniforms fanning out, calling that there’s a—I’m making this up—boy, four years old, black hair, blue shorts, white tennis shoes, non-verbal. They said everyone had their head on a swivel, looking for the child.”
“By the road.”
“That was the danger, of course,” Hawkeye said. “But this big, burly guy had scooped up the boy.”
“What?” Petra gasped.
“Good guy. Had a neurodivergent child himself. He’s singing all his words and keeping the stress as low as you can imagine. The kid is petting his beard, and when he starts to squirm, the guy tickles him with his beard. He was just an ace guy who would not give the kid over to our team.”
“Wait,” Petra squeezed his hand as her face flashed up to catch Hawkeye’s eyes, “you said good guy.”
“The best. He waited for a police officer to get over there to make a hundred percent sure that he wasn’t handing the boy over to someone with bad intent. He stood there, singing his conversation and waiting for the officer to give the go-ahead.”
“Marvelous. Okay, back at the airport,” Petra said, “you wished they were blasting information about the missing husband?”
“Things might have gone quicker. The wife didn’t have a photo but said her husband had a cane and a green jacket.”
Petra stumbled, and Hawkeye tensed his arm so she could recover her footing.
“So, you went off on your search mission for him?” Petra asked. “Could Cooper get involved?”
“Cooper? Not really. Not unless there was a scent source. What I knew was that the guy was last seen going through security. And unless they arrested him for something, he should only be in one direction. Cooper and I went back to security, and we started there.”
“Not knowing what the guy looked like, were you just walking up to any guy with a cane and saying, ‘Hey, do you know where your wife is?’”
“I wasn’t looking for a guy or a cane. I was looking for a green jacket. That was the thing that would probably be the most different. So, out on a search, there are various techniques. For example, there are no straight lines in nature. If you see a straight line, it’s manmade and might be a clue.”
“A stick.” She bent over to pick one up and examined it.
“Nope.”
She pointed. “Those silk strands of spider webs.”
“Have the semblance of being straight.”
“Okay, I don’t know,” Petra gave in, “so I won’t argue about it. You’re looking for a green jacket, and you found it. Why did you land on that being the thing you’d be looking for?”
“Again, I’ve trained to conduct searches in all kinds of scenarios. We learned that the eye takes in everything all at once, millions of pieces of information, and your brain can’t pay attention to all of it. It has to be selective.”
“This is very true. My eyes see my nose all the time, but since it’s not moving or doing anything of interest, I don’t see my nose.”
“Exactly, good, you’re with me then. So, I label something that I want to look for.”
“I want to look for straight lines.”
‘Which is true in nature. But in an airport, I can tell my brain to seek out the color green. It’s surprising how little green is in the airport.”
“Blue jeans, black shirts so no one sees when you spill stuff down your front. Neutrals. You said, ‘Brain, find me something green,’ and it worked? I’m going to put you back in your search story in just a second.” Petra did a little quick step, “I wanted to tell you that I know this theory. When I woke up and got the call from Tamika that she wasn’t coming to St. Croix with me, I knew my brain would be looking for all the crappy things that would happen that day—the day of the pseudo-stroke. My brain was primed for crappy. That’s the reason why the Romans said they got up on the—”
“Wrong side of the bed.” Hawkeye grinned. “Sinister. Exactly. That’s exactly how it works on a search. So, looking for green, I came upon an elderly gentleman in a wheelchair.”
“Wait.” Petra stopped and squeezed his arm. “I thought you said cane, not wheelchair.”
“They said cane. It’s funny how people describe things to searchers. Stress is a part of the reason, but let’s take your friend, the one who couldn’t come along on this adventure.”
“Tamika.”
“Describe Tamika to me.”
“She has long natural hair that forms a cloud of curls. She’s about three inches taller than me. She runs, so she still has her track and field body type even though she’s in her mid-thirties, like me. She’s always put together—makeup, hair. Very vibrant with a big smile and friendly eyes.”
“She’s sick?” Hawkeye asked.
“Ah, I see what you’re saying. If you went looking for the Tamika I described, you’d walk by. And that man’s wife described how she knew him, up and using a cane. She would omit the wheelchair because it’s temporary. Which is exactly what I did in the hospital when the doctor asked if I was taking medication. In general, I do not. The patch never occurred to me. Continue.”
“It’s a thing when we look for kids. Under the biggest stress imaginable, can a caregiver remember what their kid was wearing? When we’re doing close protection, and the numbers are off, say one protection professional to a family, we take pictures front and back to show people and ask them if they saw that particular person.”
“Front and back. I can see why that would be important. Yeah. Only certain kinds of brains have the ability to imagine what the opposite side might look like. And clothes would be easiest to remember, especially when something stands out—a color or design. Like the families you see wearing the same color shirt at the amusement park. If one gets separated, you know where they belong. Brains like that—categorization, recognizable systems.”
“They explained to us that it would engage creativity to imagine what the other side of the clothing looked like. And we want the brain engaged in seeing what we’re looking for, not draining energy.”
“I agree with that. It would cut down on distractibility, false positives, and things like that. The guy who was missing, it sure would have helped find him quicker if someone had said ‘wheelchair.’”
“I approached him because he had a green jacket folded on his lap. I introduced myself and asked if his name was Tom. He said yes. I told him his wife was worried because he wasn’t at his gate, and he said they just parked him there in the corner.”
“Corner?” Petra drew her face into a scowl.
“He was tucked away in a corner—away from the chairs—and in a shadow. It reminded me of someone leaning a broom on the wall out of the way.”
“Wow,” she whispered. “That’s so sad. Thank you for finding Tom. You brought him back?”
“Not quite. I unlocked the brake and started wheeling him toward his wife. Then these two security guards show up. ‘Tom, there you are. We found you!’ They made it sound like Tom was a naughty child who had run away.”
“That’s nuts. Why would—ah, for liability. They didn’t announce it over the loudspeaker so that it was only their people looking. Acting counter to that gentleman’s best interest,” Petra’s scowl never left her face. “And if some rando in camo shows up with Tom and returns him to his wife, the family could make a stink. Rightly so, I think.”
“Rando in camo.’” Hawkeye pronounced the words slowly with a bemused smile. “Is that how you think of me?”
“Until I got to know you better, yes. I don’t usually let randos hang out on my bed with camo or without.”
“Noted.” Hawkeye stopped and grinned at her. They held the gaze for a long, comfortable moment.
When Petra started to look self-conscious, she started walking again. “You let them off the hook?”
“I made a bit of noise because I wanted people to know a civilian found him, not an airport worker. I didn’t want to aid and abet their subterfuge. I thought the whole thing was poorly handled. Like you said, they handled it for corporate liability, not for that passenger’s safety. Now, I make it a mission to make sure people know that if they have someone they care about in the airport and rely on airport transportation, a wheelchair or cart, they should have a tracker tucked onto a piece of clothing that they wouldn’t take off.”
“They could have gotten right over to him, and no one needed to suffer. His poor wife.”
“My thoughts. Yeah, that kind of sits in my chest sometimes.” Hawkeye took a couple of steps. “I have a question for you since we’re out wandering through the woods.”
“Following a well-worn path,” Petra countered. “There’s a stove pipe. I think we’re—”
Her sentence was cut off when a Rottweiler charged forward.
His energy was coming for Cooper.
While he was doing a lot of barking, he headed toward them at an angle. Hawkeye read that as just wanting to warn Cooper and the strangers off.
“No one mentioned a dog up here,” Petra said, moving closer to a tree.
“Problematic,” Hawkeye said under his breath.
Even more problematic was that Cooper was out in front of them and lunged forward, his lips pulled back, growling deep in his chest in full grizzly posture.
The dynamic had suddenly changed.
Cooper was the aggressor, going after the other dog.
Hawkeye and Cooper trained for situations like this, but this had escalated too fast to get the right commands out—the Rotti jumped out of nowhere with no warning.
Hawkeye moved his attention momentarily toward Petra to make sure she wasn’t going to run in for a rescue. He’d seen crazier things happen.
And now he got it.
While the Rotti had been doing a territorial charge at an angle as a warning, he had been angled toward Petra.
And that was not allowed.
As long as the Rotti wasn’t backing away, Cooper would defend Petra.
Crouched and foaming at the mouth, scruff raised, focus unswerving, dog fights were dangerous as hell.
Especially with two alpha dogs, each protecting something important to them.
The shrill of a hurricane whistle split the air, and both dogs drew attention toward Petra.
Hawkeye crouched, ready to leap between her and either dog if they decided to charge the noise.
The sound was enough of a break for Cooper to see that Petra was safe and for Hawkeye to catch his attention and get him back to his side.
The Rotti had shied back into the bushes where he watched.
Now, they needed to figure out what to do about the Rotti.
“With all the commotion, if someone was here, you’d think they’d come out and check on this,” Hawkeye said.
“If this is the woman’s dog and the woman isn’t here, I bet he’s hungry. Do you have any food or treats in your pack?”
Hawkeye put some food in his hand and started tossing it out, kibble by kibble, praising the Rotti each time he approached the food. Hawkeye stopped praising when he skittered away.
“We may be here for a bit. Our assignment is to make contact with the woman or get into her house and find out if there’s a float plan.”
“This guy isn’t going to allow that.” Petra found a stump and sat there. “You don’t carry some kind of dog tranquilizer?”
Hawkeye laughed. “I’m sure you’re imagining something.”
“It would be cool if you had a tranquilizer and a blow gun, and you could just shoot a dart into his thigh. We wait a few minutes until he goes night night.”
“Book? Movie?” Hawkeye asked. He hadn’t looked her way. He had his eye on that Rotti.
“I’m vaguely thinking of something fedora, whip, jungles.”
Hawkeye kept tossing out the food one “good boy” at a time.
It didn’t take long. Pangs from an empty stomach and a sense of calm from the intruders meant the Rotti was soon approaching.
When Hawkeye was finally allowed to give the Rotti belly rubs, he asked, “Shall we venture in?”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Hawkeye
While Hawkeye put the Rotti in his crate, filled the food bowl inside, and ensured the bottle of water was full and fresh, Petra was looking at the map Reaper had given him with the assignment.
“When I get back, I’ll make sure someone is coming up to take custody of this guy.”
“Yes,” she said absently.
Next, Hawkeye checked for signs that anyone had been there lately and took a picture of the notes left on the table, which were exactly as expected.
When he was done, Hawkeye checked in. “Okay?”
“This is a path.” She pointed at the map.
“Yes.”
She drew her finger along the path away from their vehicle. “At the bottom of the path, you choose to go to the tidepool, where I was yesterday, or over here to the boats.”
“Your mind is on hypersonic,” Hawkeye teased. “Little curlicues of smoke are coming out of your ears.” But she was sending up vibes that honestly sent a crackle of electricity across his scalp.
“The boats – plural – are here.” She put her finger just to the south of the tidepool.
He stood silently.
“The tidepool to the boats.” She stared at the wall. “Lots of bags. Too many bags for going to a tidal pool. Too many bags. I saw all the bags at the car. But I saw one at the tidepool with sunscreen and towels. And Herb was here on this ridge,” she pointed to the land between the tidepool and the boat wharf, “away from the family. From this ridge, he could see the boats. Signal them with his bright orange hat? Could that…”
She looked at Hawkeye, who had no clue what she was talking about.
Petra focused back on the map. “And then, right there, the boats. Beans and Lucky were with me, helping Terry. They would have assumed the Johnsons got home some other way. This all could make sense.” She turned to find Hawkeye’s curious gaze on her. “Hawkeye, can we take a walk down to the boats, please?”
“Are you going to tell me why?” he asked quietly.
“No.”
“Is this a case?” He kept his voice very soft. He didn’t want to clang around and break her concentration. She was on to some discovery.
“I’m a brain researcher.” But she blushed when she said it.
It was evident that with or without him, she’d be walking down that path.
“I guess we’re walking to the beach,” he said.
Off they went. Single file here where the path was so narrow. Silent.
Petra kept shaking her head. And squinting her eyes. “Colombia?” she murmured.
She reached up to squeeze her temples.
“You doing okay?” he asked.
“Headache.”
“I have some pain meds.” Hawkeye peeled his ruck off his shoulders. “What helps? Do you want to come back and take the path at a later time?”
“No. I think maybe a distraction.” She held out her hand, and he tapped two pain pills onto her palm, still cut and scratched from yesterday. “Thinking other thoughts.”
After sliding the meds back into his pack, Hawkeye pulled out a water bottle and handed it to her. “Okay, do you want to pick the topic, or should I?”
“I will,” she said, handing the bottle back. “If we were lost in this jungle, could you keep us alive, Cooper, me?”
“Depends on your definition—heart beating, air going in and out? Very likely, yes. If we were in this kind of environment, we’d have to get less choosy about our food source. I’d bring in a snake on a good day.”
“And a bad day?” She tried to offer a smile, but it felt weak to him.
“Worms, larvae, some tasty slugs.”
“I can imagine getting to a level of hunger where all that would be gourmet.”
“On the plane, you said that neurodivergence is highly esteemed in primitive hunter-gatherers,” Hawkeye said. “And I’ve been thinking about why that might be the case. Hunting and gathering are different skills. Did the research explain why neurodivergent people excel at both?”
