Breaking Creed

19

Creed watched the rearview mirror. His security clearance parking meant he didn’t have to deal with any of the airport checkpoints. Whoever was waiting to pick up this girl and her keeper would never get a glimpse of his Jeep Grand Cherokee leaving.

Maybe if he was lucky — God willing — it would take them a while to figure out who he was. But because of his and Grace’s unwanted celebrity, they certainly would figure it out quickly. And when they did, they would know exactly where to find him. Right now Creed wasn’t sure what would be worse — the drug thugs finding him or having to tell Hannah that he was bringing home one of their mules.

Hannah had brought home quite a few unsavory characters from Segway House: drug addicts, runaways, wounded soldiers like Jason. But this was different. None of them had targets on their backs. Nor did they have thousands of dollars’ worth of cocaine in their gut that belonged to someone else.

He glanced at the girl and wondered if her name was even Amanda. She had curled herself tight into the passenger seat, buckling up only on his insistence. Still, she managed to hike her feet up and hug her knees to her chest. He’d covered her with a jacket when she mumbled that she was cold. She kept the jacket in place, though she turned down his request to flip the seat warmer on. It had to be almost ninety degrees outside. He kept the temperature on her side of the Jeep at seventy-three.

She no longer trembled but her face still glistened with sweat. She was still in pain. She’d taken a bottle of water that he’d offered earlier but it remained in the cup holder on her side, unopened.

Creed had never dealt with drug mules before, but he knew enough to realize that if a balloon with cocaine had burst inside her stomach, she’d already be dead. But there was nothing to stop it from still happening. A few times he had to look hard to make sure she hadn’t died on him. He kept thinking she had fallen asleep because she was so quiet, but each time he glanced over, he noticed that her eyes stayed open. Her head pressed against the seat’s headrest. She stared out the window, almost as if she were expecting to recognize some of the scenery.

She didn’t ask any more questions and neither did Creed. He didn’t want to hear anything else, not right now. There would be plenty of time to decipher her lies. Hannah would help him figure out what to do with her. She’d be madder than hell with him, but she’d still help.

It was about a four-hour drive from the Atlanta airport to his home in the panhandle of Florida. Usually he took Interstate 65, but outside Montgomery, Alabama, he exited and traveled a two-lane until he was convinced that no one had followed him.

Every time he glanced in the rearview mirror to check on Grace, she was staring at him from her perch. The backseat of the SUV lay flat with Grace’s bed in the middle and their equipment squeezed into the far corner. She had her pink elephant beside her but she caught his eyes in the mirror every time he looked at her. Then she’d turn her head and glance in Amanda’s direction.

Under other circumstances he’d probably laugh at her persistence. She didn’t understand why he’d brought the “fish” with them. He’d never brought it inside the car before. In all of her training and in all of her past experiences, he would ask her to “go find fish.” People in a crowded airport looked at Creed funny when he used the word “fish,” but if he used the word “drugs” for the cue, they might scatter and run.

Grace was one of his multitask dogs, which meant she could search for bodies dead or alive as well as particular things, like drugs. But she needed different cues to know what she should search for. Creed put different harnesses or vests on her for certain tasks, but he also used different words for what she was supposed to search out.

So Grace was confused. Today she had completed her task successfully. She had searched out and found what he had asked for. For which she’d been rewarded with her pink elephant. But unlike ever before, her master had brought the “fish” with them, and poor Grace had no idea what she was supposed to do with it. She was looking to him to help her figure it out.

“It’s okay,” he told the dog. “Just lie down, Grace. All done.”

She laid her head down on her front paws but her eyes stayed on Creed. He’d feel them there for the entire trip back home.