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<\/a>Her first mistake was calling 9-1-1.<\/b><\/p>\nDrones were supposed to make life easier for Jessie and her search and rescue dogs. Instead, they’ve made everything a lot more complicated. Her equipment confiscated, her very freedom threatened, Jessica Anderson finds herself in the crosshairs of both law enforcement and a vicious killer when her drones discover a body on the slopes of Long Peak.<\/p>\n
When evidence points to other victims, though, it’s Jessie and her search dogs who law enforcement needs to find their remains. What nobody suspects, though, is that the killer is watching, waiting, anticipating …ready.<\/p>\n
A novel of a woman and her beloved dogs, a woman who, having fled a career in law enforcement, finds herself the target of, both, the sheriff and a murderer.<\/p>\n
No profanity, no cringe-inducing graphic content, just exciting story.<\/em><\/span><\/h4>\n<\/div>\nREAD AN EXCERPT<\/p>\n
\nChapter 1 \u2013 9-1-1 Call<\/h3>\n
Oso, Jessie\u2019s quiet, very independent Elkhound, watched from a distance, reserving judgment.<\/p>\n
Giant Milo, the Wonder Mutt, lay in a crouched \u2018down\u2019 position, still and sphinx-like, except for his tail, which tentatively brushed back and forth in the grass. \u00a0Like Oso, Milo was reserving judgment, but with his natural optimism.<\/p>\n
Jessica Anderson touched the \u2018on\u2019 icon on the interface open on her laptop.\u00a0 The two little machines sitting on the ground in front of her clicked a couple of times, lights on them blinking.<\/p>\n
All three German Shepherds\u2014Acer, Britta, and Sumi\u2014pricked their ears.\u00a0 The fur on their backs rippled a bit, while Mitch, the Marvelous, Jessie\u2019s young Belgium Malinois, came instantly to his feet.\u00a0 He tipped his head sideways, his attention riveted.<\/p>\n
Predictably, her top ground tracking dog, a deep copper-colored Irish Setter cross named Queenie, bounded up to the little machines, stopped short, backed up, barked, then moved in closer.\u00a0 One sniff, and she took off to race around the field in deliciously happy circles.\u00a0 Queenie thought them some new game or toy \u2026which, in a way, they were.\u00a0 \u2026And weren\u2019t.\u00a0 \u201cGood dogs,\u201d Jessie crooned.<\/p>\n
All the dogs relaxed.\u00a0 Momentarily.\u00a0 Then all of them stood and went to full attention.\u00a0 The German Shepherds, or, as Jessie thought of them, GSDs, raised their hackles.\u00a0 So did Mitch as the drones came alive, the machines unfolding like strange insects as they engaged their tiny rotors to pull themselves aloft.<\/p>\n
Only Oso and Milo were still open to the possibility that these weren\u2019t \u2018danger\u2019.\u00a0 Only Queenie still thought them marvelous fun.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood<\/em> dogs, gute Hunde, brave Hunde<\/em>,\u201d Jessie called again, using both English and German to sooth her pack as the machines moved higher, hovered for a moment, then flew outward, following the path that Jessie had previously programmed into the software\u2019s control interface.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s okay.\u00a0 They\u2019re good guys,\u201d Jessie said to the dogs.\u00a0 \u201cThey\u2019re going to save us a lot of time and effort.\u201d\u00a0 At least, she hoped they would.\u00a0 Today would test that possibility.<\/p>\nAlmost as one, the dogs looked back to her, and she smiled\u2014her pack, The Motley Mutts, as her grandfather called them, and she was their pack leader.\u00a0 \u201cGood dogs.\u00a0 Brave Hunde<\/em>,\u201d she answered them, English for her rescues, Queenie, Milo, Mitch, and Oso, German for the Shepherds, though, because of her constant use, all of them knew both lingos, now.<\/p>\nWatching her new tools circle the field twice, her dogs\u2019 every sense tracking them, Jessie was pleased to see the machines were following her programming exactly.\u00a0 She grinned, then touched in the second part of the program, one that would send the drones out to do a test search.\u00a0 This will save countless search hours for us.\u00a0 If we can just get Idaho to relax their privacy laws a little.<\/em> \u00a0Still, there were other states.\u00a0 Jessie wasn\u2019t limited to state lines, not now.\u00a0 Not with canine search and rescue expert Callen Parker on her side, and, so far, he was.<\/p>\nThe all but silent machines disappeared in the distance, heading toward Long Peak.\u00a0 Jessie hoped she\u2019d gotten all the parameters right.\u00a0 These were a lot better than the toys she\u2019d been practicing with, but this was their first test flight, and, at five grand apiece, she didn\u2019t want them flying into a tree or a cliff, thanks.\u00a0 But, she\u2019d already tested their proximity sensors, and they seemed to be working fine.\u00a0 Still, though, she\u2019d set the program to keep their altitude above the treetops and the Cliffs of Long.<\/p>\n
Watching her laptop intently, she kept an eye on both their audio-visual feeds and their GPS positions on her screen.\u00a0 So far, so good.\u00a0 They were half a mile out already. \u00a0\u201cThey\u2019re fast,\u201d she whispered to herself.<\/p>\n
A dog whined\u2014Britta.\u00a0 \u201cBraves M\u00e4dchen, ganz braves M\u00e4dchen<\/em>,\u201d she said soothingly.\u00a0 Acer touched his nose to his friend, and Britta yawned once, then lay down with a groan, Acer squatting down to sit next to her, hip to hip.<\/p>\nOn her screen, the GPS locators were showing the little flying bots now a mile out and still absolutely locked to their programmed flight path on her test search grid.\u00a0 She turned on the motion sensors just to see what they would do, and if they actually functioned the way the company said they would, sticking to the search grid and avoiding each other, but reporting movement.<\/p>\n
Within moments, one reported in\u2014what looked like maybe a raven taking flight.\u00a0 The camera adjusted its focus, and the bird came crisply into view before disappearing into the trees.\u00a0 The drone stayed true to its programming, maintaining flight path.<\/p>\n
They were amazing, and so was the software that controlled them.\u00a0 Not as amazing as her dogs, but Jessie was glad she\u2019d come across the company responsible for building them\u2014a small firm located in Alaska.\u00a0 They were fast, light, and had twice the flight time of comparably equipped drones.\u00a0 They were also more fragile, but the software helped with the flying.<\/p>\n
At two miles out, some eight minutes into their weaving, criss-cross search pattern, Jessica caught sight of something the wrong shape and color on the mountain\u2019s broken snow floor.\u00a0 Taking manual control of the drone nearest to it, she lowered altitude and set the camera to target the object.<\/p>\n
With sudden recognition of what it was, she zoomed in.\u00a0 A proximity sensor blinked.\u00a0 Her other drone avoided collision all on its own and was now crossing to the east of the one she manually flew.\u00a0 It reported movement.<\/p>\n
Diverted, she let the one she controlled hover on auto-pilot, hoping it caught movement from the body, while she turned her attention to what the other was reporting\u2014another person, she realized.\u00a0 That person disappeared into the woods, but the drone still sensed it.\u00a0 She gave it autonomous control and watched, riveted, as the machine now dodged between trees, self-navigating on proximity sensors and its software\u2019s AI.\u00a0 Be careful<\/em>, she pleaded silently to the little flying robot.<\/p>\nA flash of red\u2026.\u00a0 The camera zoomed and focused.\u00a0 The drone dodged and shifted, changing angles to auto-orient.\u00a0 The flash of red reappeared\u2014the backend of a pickup about fifty yards ahead, part of the vehicle occluded by the trees.\u00a0 What she could see was that its tailgate was up, said \u2018Chevrolet\u2019, and it had no rear license plate.\u00a0 There was the sound of the engine starting.\u00a0 Then, the vehicle disappeared from sight into the trees.<\/p>\n
Jessie touched in a command for the drone to raise altitude to above tree level again.\u00a0 \u201cIn for a dime, in for five grand,\u201d she muttered, hoping the drone\u2019s proximity sensors accurately could sense overhanging branches above itself.\u00a0 A dog whine answered her, but she kept her concentration on the screen, which had gone to a blur.<\/p>\n
Shifting her attention to the other drone\u2019s feed, she saw that, at least as much as she could tell, the body hadn\u2019t moved.\u00a0 Asleep, injured, or dead, she wondered.\u00a0 And, deciding, she dropped the drone down close to investigate and saw what she didn\u2019t want to.<\/p>\n
Every dog came to full alert, their eyes riveted on her.<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Death Scent: A Jessica Anderson K-9 Mystery (The Jessica Anderson K-9 Mysteries Book 1) Her first mistake was calling 9-1-1. Drones were supposed to make life easier for Jessie and her search and rescue dogs. Instead, they’ve made everything a lot more complicated. Her equipment confiscated, her very freedom threatened, Jessica Anderson finds herself in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[123],"tags":[441,442,443],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3187"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3187"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3370,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3187\/revisions\/3370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
READ AN EXCERPT<\/p>\n
Chapter 1 \u2013 9-1-1 Call<\/h3>\n
Oso, Jessie\u2019s quiet, very independent Elkhound, watched from a distance, reserving judgment.<\/p>\n
Giant Milo, the Wonder Mutt, lay in a crouched \u2018down\u2019 position, still and sphinx-like, except for his tail, which tentatively brushed back and forth in the grass. \u00a0Like Oso, Milo was reserving judgment, but with his natural optimism.<\/p>\n
Jessica Anderson touched the \u2018on\u2019 icon on the interface open on her laptop.\u00a0 The two little machines sitting on the ground in front of her clicked a couple of times, lights on them blinking.<\/p>\n
All three German Shepherds\u2014Acer, Britta, and Sumi\u2014pricked their ears.\u00a0 The fur on their backs rippled a bit, while Mitch, the Marvelous, Jessie\u2019s young Belgium Malinois, came instantly to his feet.\u00a0 He tipped his head sideways, his attention riveted.<\/p>\n
Predictably, her top ground tracking dog, a deep copper-colored Irish Setter cross named Queenie, bounded up to the little machines, stopped short, backed up, barked, then moved in closer.\u00a0 One sniff, and she took off to race around the field in deliciously happy circles.\u00a0 Queenie thought them some new game or toy \u2026which, in a way, they were.\u00a0 \u2026And weren\u2019t.\u00a0 \u201cGood dogs,\u201d Jessie crooned.<\/p>\n
All the dogs relaxed.\u00a0 Momentarily.\u00a0 Then all of them stood and went to full attention.\u00a0 The German Shepherds, or, as Jessie thought of them, GSDs, raised their hackles.\u00a0 So did Mitch as the drones came alive, the machines unfolding like strange insects as they engaged their tiny rotors to pull themselves aloft.<\/p>\n
Only Oso and Milo were still open to the possibility that these weren\u2019t \u2018danger\u2019.\u00a0 Only Queenie still thought them marvelous fun.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood<\/em> dogs, gute Hunde, brave Hunde<\/em>,\u201d Jessie called again, using both English and German to sooth her pack as the machines moved higher, hovered for a moment, then flew outward, following the path that Jessie had previously programmed into the software\u2019s control interface.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s okay.\u00a0 They\u2019re good guys,\u201d Jessie said to the dogs.\u00a0 \u201cThey\u2019re going to save us a lot of time and effort.\u201d\u00a0 At least, she hoped they would.\u00a0 Today would test that possibility.<\/p>\n Almost as one, the dogs looked back to her, and she smiled\u2014her pack, The Motley Mutts, as her grandfather called them, and she was their pack leader.\u00a0 \u201cGood dogs.\u00a0 Brave Hunde<\/em>,\u201d she answered them, English for her rescues, Queenie, Milo, Mitch, and Oso, German for the Shepherds, though, because of her constant use, all of them knew both lingos, now.<\/p>\n Watching her new tools circle the field twice, her dogs\u2019 every sense tracking them, Jessie was pleased to see the machines were following her programming exactly.\u00a0 She grinned, then touched in the second part of the program, one that would send the drones out to do a test search.\u00a0 This will save countless search hours for us.\u00a0 If we can just get Idaho to relax their privacy laws a little.<\/em> \u00a0Still, there were other states.\u00a0 Jessie wasn\u2019t limited to state lines, not now.\u00a0 Not with canine search and rescue expert Callen Parker on her side, and, so far, he was.<\/p>\n The all but silent machines disappeared in the distance, heading toward Long Peak.\u00a0 Jessie hoped she\u2019d gotten all the parameters right.\u00a0 These were a lot better than the toys she\u2019d been practicing with, but this was their first test flight, and, at five grand apiece, she didn\u2019t want them flying into a tree or a cliff, thanks.\u00a0 But, she\u2019d already tested their proximity sensors, and they seemed to be working fine.\u00a0 Still, though, she\u2019d set the program to keep their altitude above the treetops and the Cliffs of Long.<\/p>\n Watching her laptop intently, she kept an eye on both their audio-visual feeds and their GPS positions on her screen.\u00a0 So far, so good.\u00a0 They were half a mile out already. \u00a0\u201cThey\u2019re fast,\u201d she whispered to herself.<\/p>\n A dog whined\u2014Britta.\u00a0 \u201cBraves M\u00e4dchen, ganz braves M\u00e4dchen<\/em>,\u201d she said soothingly.\u00a0 Acer touched his nose to his friend, and Britta yawned once, then lay down with a groan, Acer squatting down to sit next to her, hip to hip.<\/p>\n On her screen, the GPS locators were showing the little flying bots now a mile out and still absolutely locked to their programmed flight path on her test search grid.\u00a0 She turned on the motion sensors just to see what they would do, and if they actually functioned the way the company said they would, sticking to the search grid and avoiding each other, but reporting movement.<\/p>\n Within moments, one reported in\u2014what looked like maybe a raven taking flight.\u00a0 The camera adjusted its focus, and the bird came crisply into view before disappearing into the trees.\u00a0 The drone stayed true to its programming, maintaining flight path.<\/p>\n They were amazing, and so was the software that controlled them.\u00a0 Not as amazing as her dogs, but Jessie was glad she\u2019d come across the company responsible for building them\u2014a small firm located in Alaska.\u00a0 They were fast, light, and had twice the flight time of comparably equipped drones.\u00a0 They were also more fragile, but the software helped with the flying.<\/p>\n At two miles out, some eight minutes into their weaving, criss-cross search pattern, Jessica caught sight of something the wrong shape and color on the mountain\u2019s broken snow floor.\u00a0 Taking manual control of the drone nearest to it, she lowered altitude and set the camera to target the object.<\/p>\n With sudden recognition of what it was, she zoomed in.\u00a0 A proximity sensor blinked.\u00a0 Her other drone avoided collision all on its own and was now crossing to the east of the one she manually flew.\u00a0 It reported movement.<\/p>\n Diverted, she let the one she controlled hover on auto-pilot, hoping it caught movement from the body, while she turned her attention to what the other was reporting\u2014another person, she realized.\u00a0 That person disappeared into the woods, but the drone still sensed it.\u00a0 She gave it autonomous control and watched, riveted, as the machine now dodged between trees, self-navigating on proximity sensors and its software\u2019s AI.\u00a0 Be careful<\/em>, she pleaded silently to the little flying robot.<\/p>\n A flash of red\u2026.\u00a0 The camera zoomed and focused.\u00a0 The drone dodged and shifted, changing angles to auto-orient.\u00a0 The flash of red reappeared\u2014the backend of a pickup about fifty yards ahead, part of the vehicle occluded by the trees.\u00a0 What she could see was that its tailgate was up, said \u2018Chevrolet\u2019, and it had no rear license plate.\u00a0 There was the sound of the engine starting.\u00a0 Then, the vehicle disappeared from sight into the trees.<\/p>\n Jessie touched in a command for the drone to raise altitude to above tree level again.\u00a0 \u201cIn for a dime, in for five grand,\u201d she muttered, hoping the drone\u2019s proximity sensors accurately could sense overhanging branches above itself.\u00a0 A dog whine answered her, but she kept her concentration on the screen, which had gone to a blur.<\/p>\n Shifting her attention to the other drone\u2019s feed, she saw that, at least as much as she could tell, the body hadn\u2019t moved.\u00a0 Asleep, injured, or dead, she wondered.\u00a0 And, deciding, she dropped the drone down close to investigate and saw what she didn\u2019t want to.<\/p>\n Every dog came to full alert, their eyes riveted on her.<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Death Scent: A Jessica Anderson K-9 Mystery (The Jessica Anderson K-9 Mysteries Book 1) Her first mistake was calling 9-1-1. Drones were supposed to make life easier for Jessie and her search and rescue dogs. Instead, they’ve made everything a lot more complicated. Her equipment confiscated, her very freedom threatened, Jessica Anderson finds herself in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[123],"tags":[441,442,443],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3187"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3187"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3370,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3187\/revisions\/3370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}