“What if I’m not asking for Free?” I bent down and greeted Pad, who’d been sitting patiently at Cady’s side. Saskia wasn’t pleased to be sharing my attention, but she tolerated Pad the way a person might tolerate a coworker with particularly bad breath.

“If you’re the one asking,” Cady replied, “then my answer is that it depends.”

“On what?” I straightened. Cady had about eight inches on me. Jude might have gotten some of his height from his mystery father, but at least part of it had come from her.

“On you,” Cady replied. She held Pad’s lead loosely in her left hand. The golden retriever sat with her haunches on the ground, ready and alert. “You’ll be seventeen next month, Kira. Only one more year until you can get certified. Pad would be a good partner for that. For you.”

A lump rose in my throat. With the price the military had offered for Pad, we were talking about a substantial sum of money. As much as it meant to me that Cady was willing to make the offer, it hurt, too.

“I already have a partner,” I said.

“Don’t take this personally. I have no doubt that Saskia will be able to blow through most of the exam,” Cady said carefully.

Saskia’s not sociable enough. She’ll never be sociable enough. That was what Cady was saying. No matter how good my girl was at finding lost people, if she couldn’t play well with others—other handlers, other dogs—it wouldn’t matter.

How could I not take that personally?

“Saskia will be ready,” I replied, my voice lower in pitch than it had been a moment before.

Cady knew better than to argue. “In that case, then yes, I intend to accept the military’s offer for Pad. I know the team she’ll be working with. They’ll take good care of our little prodigy.”

Fully aware that we were talking about her, Pad began wagging her tail.

“You want to take her out, one last time?” Cady asked me. “I can finish up with Saskia.”

That wasn’t really a question—or a request. Saskia needed to be able to work with other handlers, and Cady knew that if I was left to my own devices, I wouldn’t take Pad out again.

I’d never excelled at good-bye.

* * *

There were two basic methods for directly following a scent path. A tracking dog worked with its nose to the ground. A trailing dog worked with her nose in the air. In addition to air-scenting to cover large areas, Pad was trained for the latter. She could follow a scent wherever she found it, take shortcuts, track a person from one environment to the next.

She blew through every challenge I laid out for her.