Читать книгу A Shot of Trouble: A Cassidy Adventure Novel - Kelly Rysten - Страница 12

Chapter 6

Rusty and I had the sexiest shower this side of the Mississippi. It was large, with glass walls and had a bench positioned right in the middle. There were two shower heads: one normal one and one on a long hose that could be used almost anywhere in the shower. It had been made for a disabled man and we put it to good use. The widow who had sold us the house was moving to senior living apartments and wanted her home to go to someone who would liven the place up again. Rusty and I definitely livened up the shower. Any time the bathroom door was left open it was an invitation for shower play. Sometimes it was play. Other times it got hot, steamy and sweaty and we ended up in the bedroom in a tangle of bed sheets and limbs.

I awoke with my hair sticking out in all directions. So much for my shower. Now I needed another one. Instead I rolled over and snuggled closer to Rusty’s side.

“Look what you did to me. I’ll never get my hair to stay down. I’ll have to shower again. We’re in a never ending cycle. We’re going to make love and shower for the rest of our lives and it’s all your fault.”

He lazily turned over and wrapped his arms around me. My hair tickled his nose.

“Sounds good to me. But it’s not all my fault. You lured me into the shower.”

“I lured you? You were the one who said I needed help showering.”

“You lured me all the way from the den to the shower to the bed.”

“I led you into a trap.”

“The most wonderful trap. How did I live without you for so long?”

“Patiently.”

Landon had only spent one day at home in his cast and he already had cabin fever. Rusty and I stopped by for a visit on our way to dinner and ended up taking him along. He already had a stack of pizza boxes by his chair in the living room although it didn’t make any sense how he could eat more than one pizza in a day. Rusty offered to take him to Zeke’s but he quickly turned down more pizza. We settled on Trujillo’s, an old standby frequented by most of the members of the police force.

“Hey Landon!” Benny Trujillo called in greeting. “What did you do to your leg?”

“I fell on it rock climbing,” Landon answered.

“Can I sign your cast?” Benny asked.

“Sure, why not?” Landon said.

Benny disappeared then returned, not with a marker, but instead carrying a business card covered in clear package tape which he stuck to the back of Landon’s cast.

“There. It’s like a bumper sticker.”

I read the card aloud, “Trujillo’s Bar and Grill serving lunch and dinner daily 11AM-11PM.”

“Great, I get to be a walking advertisement,” Landon said.

“You’re not even walking. You’re a crutching advertisement.”

“Yeah,” Benny said, “but Landon knows lots of people. I can count on him getting around, you see, so everybody will wonder, what’s that thing on the back of your cast? And so they’ll read it.”

“Yeah,” I said, “he knows the whole police force, the ambulance company and ER at the hospital, but they are already your most faithful customers.”

“You’ll see, he’ll reach more than you think. You just watch, he’ll run out of clean clothes and he’ll go out and buy shorts that fit over his cast. He’ll get around.”

“Oh shoot,” Landon said, “that reminds me, I have uniforms at the cleaners.”

“You see?”

“How bad do you want to get out of the house?” I asked Landon.

“I’d hitchhike.”

“Do you want to get out bad enough to go talk to a class of kindergarteners?”

“After what happened last time I’m surprised you’re ready to go back.”

“Yeah, but this is Alisondra’s class. She was rather disappointed to be rescued by me. I thought she might like to meet the other half of the team. I think this talk is going to be a little different than usual. I expect it to be more storytelling and tracking demonstration than the usual safety lecture.”

The next day I dropped off the groceries at Landon’s apartment and we drove to the school. Ally’s class was still out for recess so we were able to find her on the playground easily.

“Oh! I’m so glad you came!” she said enthusiastically. “And this must be the other half of my search party.”

“Ally, this is Landon Wilson.”

“It’s too bad about your leg,” she sympathized.

When recess was over she gave two sharp blasts with her whistle and the kids all lined up.

“Boys and girls we aren’t going back inside to do math today. Instead my friend is here to tell you about her job so we’ll stay outside a little while longer. Follow me. We are going to find a place where she can show you what she does.”

Ally led the way to a large sandy area of the playground and had the kids all sit cross-legged on the ground. She sat down too and began addressing her class, “Last weekend my husband Peter and I went up to the mountains. You know how I get curious about things. Well, I found out my last name means deer meadow and I was so excited to know my last name had a meaning that I wanted to actually find a deer meadow. I was looking on a map and I saw that up in the nearby mountains there was a campground called Elk Meadows! Peter and I decided to go camping there so we could see if there really were elk in the meadow. We didn’t see any but we did some hiking around and guess what I did.” She waited a short time for a response. Several hands shot into the air. “Devon?”

“What did you see instead?”

“I saw lots and lots of countryside because…I got lost! I know I’ve told you before, how to be careful and never get lost, but I did it anyway. I just kept seeing interesting things until I didn’t know where I was anymore! Then I tried finding my way back. I did that until night came and I had to stop.”

“What did you do, Mrs. Rawleigh?”

“I found a place to sleep and the next day I did what I always tell you to do. I waited for help. And do you know who my help turned out to be?”

“Him and her!” the kids said, making the connection.

“Yes, Cassidy found me. She followed my tracks all the way from Elk Meadows through the mountains. She knew exactly where to look for me because she followed my tracks on the ground. As we were walking back to Elk Meadows we got to talking and I found out she is a very interesting person so I thought you might like to meet her!”

“Good afternoon boys and girls, I’m Cassidy and this is my tracking partner, Landon Wilson. Landon is an EMT. Does anybody know what an EMT is?”

“He’s like a fireman except he doesn’t put out fires.”

Landon smiled at that. “It stands for Emergency Medical Technician. I go with Cassidy on search and rescue calls in case somebody gets hurt. I patch them up and get them the help they need. If they need to go to the hospital I call an ambulance or a helicopter and I go with them to the hospital.”

A hand shot up. “Yes?” I asked.

“What if you get hurt? Then what do you do?” a little girl asked, eyeing Landon’s cast.

“Then Cassidy patches me up and sends me to the hospital.”

“Did you get to ride in an ambulance?”

“No, but I got to ride in a helicopter. I ride in an ambulance every day for my normal job and I ride in helicopters a lot for our search and rescue job.”

“Lucky!” exclaimed several boys at once.

“Cassidy, tell us how you became a tracker,” Ally said.

“Well, when I was five or six years old, about the same age that all you kids are, I was very curious about everything and one of the things that fascinated me was tracks. I would study them and try and figure out what made them and I would follow them to see where they went. I grew up on a quarter horse ranch and there were lots of people on the ranch. I got so used to following tracks that pretty soon I could tell you who on the ranch had made each track. I knew which dog had walked where and I recognized each workhorse’s track by the angle of their horseshoes. When I got a little older my parents let me explore the hills near the ranch too. There I got to track deer, coyotes, foxes and rabbits. When I went to school I tracked the kids on the playground and even animals that had crossed the playground. A time or two I got into big