Upholding the Paw Read Free Page B

the main room of the bank, praying all the while that my gun would not accidentally discharge, especially since the barrel was now shoved up under my left boob.
    When I stopped rolling, I sat where I’d landed on my ass, pulled my gun up to sight, and scanned the room over it. Everyone I could see had bewildered expressions on their faces and their hands in the air. None wore pantyhose over their heads or held a weapon.
    â€œWhere are the robbers?” I hollered as Brigit trotted up next to me.
    â€œThey left,” said the old man, backing up with a beep-beep-beep and pulling his scooter up next to me with a zzzzzip. “They ran out the door right after they caught a teller on her phone with 9-1-1. They slapped the phone out of her hand and took off.”
    He pointed across the space. I followed his gnarled finger to a young, fair-haired teller who’d gone hysterical, shrieking and crying despite her coworkers’ best attempts to quiet her down.
    I looked back to the man. “Did you see which way they went?”
    â€œSure did.” This time he pointed out the door and to the right. “They ran off that way.”
    â€œHow many were there?”
    â€œThree.”
    â€œWere all of them armed?”
    â€œI’m not sure. One of the men stood outside the front doors so I didn’t get a good look at him. The man who waited inside the doors had a rifle. The one who gave the note to the teller never pulled out a weapon as far as I could tell. He had his hand in his pocket, though, and there was something in the shape of a pistol in it.”
    I pulled myself off the floor and addressed the startled crowd. “Everyone stay put for now. We’ll need to get your statements.”
    Giving Brigit the command to follow me once more, I headed back outside and told Spalding what was going on. “I’m going to see if my partner can track the robbers.”
    Spalding nodded. As he walked toward the building, I instructed Brigit to follow the robbers’ trail. She put her nose to the ground and began to sniff and snuffle her way across the lot in the direction the man had pointed. While Brigit was not trained to track a particular person, she was trained to detect where an area had been recently disturbed and to follow that path to the culprits.
    Snuffle-snuffle. Snuffle-snuffle.
    While she advanced across the lot and onto the sidewalk with her head down, I trailed along directly behind her, acting as her eyes, watching for cars or people who might get in her way or pose a risk. I ordered her to halt at a corner, raised my hand to stop an approaching minivan, then gave my partner the signal to continue tracking.
    A block down, the large group of people I’d noticed on my drive to the bank milled about at the bus stop. One of them, a short, skinny thirtyish man, wore a city of Fort Worth bus driver uniform. When he spotted me and Brigit approaching, he waved to get our attention and hollered, “Three men with a rifle just done hijacked my bus!”

Chapter Five
    Gone with the Wind
    Brigit
    When the trail on the ground ran cold, Brigit stopped and raised her snout in the air.
    Sniff-sniff.
    She’d been following three male scents, each with a distinctive aroma. One smelled like some type of adhesive. The second smelled of mentholated shaving cream. The third reeked of gasoline and bananas and marijuana. All of the scents dissipated at this spot. Either the men had climbed into a vehicle or Scotty had beamed them up to the starship Enterprise . Regardless, there was nothing more the dog could do.
    She plopped her butt down on the ground and stared straight ahead, giving her passive alert as she’d been trained to do. She also curled her tail tightly against her body. With all these people milling about willy-nilly, there was a good chance one of them might step on her tail if she wasn’t careful. Brigit knew from experience that people often didn’t look where