Running Wild (Wild 3)

“I called them, called Wildlife, called Fish and Game. I called everybody. Spent the evening on the phone and doing paperwork. I doubt we’ll find the sick bastard who did it. Don’t be shocked if you get a call from the paper once they catch wind of this, though.”

“No doubt. It’s a story.” And more ammo for the anti-trappers. It’s a never-ending battle, between those opposed to all trapping and those who see legal trapping as a right and a way of life. In this case, this trap was illegal, and no one will condone what happened. But still, there will be those who can’t help but point their stubby fingers at Rachel for allowing Beau off his leash, and that will get plenty of dog lovers’ backs up.

“How is he?” Tyler asks.

“Sleeping right now.” I hold up the baby monitor screen on the clinic post-op room. “He’s doing well. His surgery was straightforward.”

Tyler adjusts his position, stretching his legs, setting his boot heels on the edge of the table, inches from my running shoes. “It’s amazing, how you know how to do that.”

“Yeah, it’s amazing what eight years of school, a residency, and a few hundred grand can get you.” Though, in truth, I started learning long before I ever sat down for my first lecture in veterinary school, all my free time spent in the clinic with my dad.

Tyler whistles. “Bet that’s gonna take forever to pay off.”

“And I’ll end up giving this girl a discount because I feel so bad for her.” Cory said Rachel’s face paled when she gave her the estimate for the surgery, but then she nodded and reiterated that she’ll get the money. “At this rate, I should be done paying off my loans by the time I die.” Even with the help my parents provided.

“You won’t need to give her a discount.” He digs his phone out of his pocket, and hitting a few buttons, passes me his phone. His fingers graze mine.

I struggle to ignore the innocuous touch as I study the grid of aesthetic pictures that fill it. “‘Beau the Bear-nese,’” I read out loud, checking the profile. “He has a million followers on Instagram? A million people have followed a dog?”

Tyler smirks. “And that’s growing by the hour. Apparently, her TikTok profile is just as big.”

“How’d you find this?”

“I’m good at getting information out of people. More than I need, usually.”

He certainly got a lot out of me last weekend. It seems all he had to do was bat those long lashes my way, and now the man knows all my dirty laundry, my biggest vulnerabilities.

But I’ve seen another side to him, too, one he works hard to hide from everyone else.

I scroll through the pictures, scanning the quick and quippy captions. I assume Rachel has taken most of these pictures, save for the ones she’s posing in with Beau, looking nothing like the sobbing, frightened kid in my clinic and everything like a confident, sensual woman. “Wow, she even has merchandise.” T-shirts and beanies with caricatures of Beau.

“She’s smart.”

“I don’t understand any of this world.” Sure, I opened accounts, but I’m never on them. I don’t even remember my passwords. “Jonah’s wife is all over this sort of thing. She’d be impressed.” Calla not only manages the plane charter business—all the marketing and administrative paperwork, and a website she designed and built herself—and the cabin rental, which is booked well into next year, but she’s also establishing herself as a marketing expert around the area. What started out as volunteering for the Winter Carnival and local farmers’ market is turning into a marketing side hustle that she’s now charging for.

On top of all that, she still keeps a personal blog alive, posting regularly about her life in Alaska with her yeti. The girl has more balls in the air than I could ever manage, and she hasn’t dropped one yet.

Tyler nods toward the phone. “Did you see Rachel’s latest post?”

“No.” I scroll back up to the top. Huh. “She’s set up a GoFundMe page for him.” That has already earned enough to cover the surgery fees plus recovery appointments and therapy. I curse under my breath. “She wasn’t kidding when she said she’d find the money.”

“I wish I could cover all my vet bills like that.”

“You can. It’s called sponsorship.”

“So I have to answer to someone else about my dogs? No fucking thanks.” He sucks back a gulp of his beer, his gaze drifting over the meadow between my place and my parents’.

I skim through the post to read Rachel’s description of Beau’s tragic accident and her plea for help. “‘Thanks to the heroic efforts of Park Ranger Tyler Brady, who went above and beyond by not only releasing a distressed Beau from the trap but carrying all one hundred pounds of our favorite bear to his truck and driving us to the veterinarian he swears by twenty minutes away. If not for him, I fear Beau might not have survived,’” I read out loud. “‘He is a true hero.’”