K-9 Defense

by Elizabeth Heiter

  “Thanks,” she whispered in that same soft, slightly husky voice.

  It would have been a voice for his dreams, back when he had dreams. These days it was nothing but nightmares.

  “Come on, girl,” he told Rebel as he planted his hands in the snow and pushed himself clumsily to his feet.

  “Are you okay?” the woman asked, her eyes even wider than they’d been a minute ago.

  “Yeah, fine.” It felt like his knee was on fire, but experience told him it didn’t warrant a trip to the doctor. He’d just twisted it wrong and the rod and screws holding together his right thigh didn’t appreciate it.

  He had a few nights of ice and elevation in his future, but he’d been through worse. Much worse.

  “I’m so sorry.” Her voice wobbled, like she was on the verge of tears.

  He prayed she’d keep them in check. “It’s not your fault. It’s a war injury.” He held out a hand to help her up, but she frowned at it, climbing slowly to her feet on her own.

  Colter felt his face redden. At six foot two and 180 pounds of mostly muscle—even after his injury—people had always looked to him for help physically. The snub now hurt more than the hit to his knee had.

  Once they were safely on the sidewalk, she shuffled her feet. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her too-thin coat, another dead giveaway she wasn’t from around here. It looked warm enough, but it wasn’t cut out for Desparre’s coming winter.

  Her gaze darted from him to Rebel and then off into the distance, as if she was afraid he was going to yell at her again.

  Colter held in a sigh. Beautiful or not, he didn’t have the energy to coddle her. But she was starting to tremble, and he figured it was as much the realization of her near miss setting in as the cold. So he tried for a smile.

  It felt unnatural, as if those muscles had forgotten how to work, but she seemed to relax a little. “I’m Colter Hayes. And this is Rebel.”

  She held out her hand. “Kensie Morgan.”

  He had her hand in a firm grip before the last name sank in. It had been all over the news a few weeks ago. “Morgan. As in—”

  “Yes. I’m Alanna Morgan’s sister. I came here to find her.”

  Although he could feel the tremble in her hand, her voice was strong, almost daring him to challenge her ability. Not that he’d dare. If there was one thing he understood, it was loyalty to a sibling, blood related or not.

  And hope. He understood how hope could keep you going, when everything inside you screamed it was time to give up. “I hope you do find her.”

  “Thanks,” she replied as he reluctantly let go of her hand. “Rebel is amazing. I froze and then she just—she saved my life.”

  “She was a military dog. A Gunnery Sergeant, in fact.” One rank higher than his own, because the military taught soldiers to respect their K-9 partners.

  “Really?” Kensie’s gaze dipped to Rebel, whose tail wagged as they talked about her.

  “Yeah.” He didn’t know why he’d shared that. Now that Kensie was looking less shaken up, he needed to get out of there. Away from the intensity in her eyes and the fullness of her lips. Away from the sudden physical attraction that took him by surprise.

  “What did she do in the military?”

  “Combat Tracker Dog,” Colter said quickly, knowing that, like most people, she’d probably have no idea what that meant. “You should get out of the cold. You’re not dressed for Desparre.”

  Even though her lips were taking on the slightest tinge of blue, she didn’t seem to notice the cold—or his suggestion—as she stared at Rebel. “Tracker?”

  There was too much hope in her voice. A dozen swear words lodged in Colter’s brain. “Not that kind of tracker.”

  “But what—”

  “She tracked back to perpetrators from explosion sites.” Just saying the words filled his mind up with images of a military convoy, blown to bits. Bomb fragments lodged in everything. Limbs not attached to people. Friends, gone in an instant.

  An L-shaped ambush that had come in two waves, one for the people he’d come to help and one for the responders. His chest started to compress again, the edges of his vision dulling.

  “But couldn’t she—”

  “No,” Colter snapped, more harshly than he’d intended.

  Even if he and Rebel did the kind of tracking she wanted, she had no idea what she was asking. If he tried to help her, he knew what would happen. He’d have a mission again. A reason to reconnect with the world.

  And connections meant pain.

  “I’m sorry,” he added over his shoulder as he spun away from her, whistling for Rebel to follow.

  Chapter Two

  Kensie Morgan was trouble.

  Colter watched her image shrink in his rearview mirror and tried to tell himself he’d done the right thing. The truth was, he longed to turn around and promise to help her, even though he really wasn’t that kind of tracker. And neither was Rebel.

  From the back seat, she let out a short howl, as if she disagreed with his choice to leave.

  “She’s no good for us, girl.”

  His conversation with Kensie felt like the longest sustained chat he’d had with anyone in a year. He knew it wasn’t, but maybe she was just the first person he’d felt connected to in all that time. The first person he’d actually wanted to stay and talk to longer. And that was dangerous territory.

  Cowardly or not, he was finished with human connection. He had Rebel; he had the sheer, uncomplicated beauty of Alaska. That was enough for him.

  Rebel didn’t mind the nightmares. She probably had them too, poor girl. And now that they’d both been cut loose from the service, she wasn’t going to go and die on him anytime soon. As long as she stopped saving people’s lives.

  She nudged her head between the front seats, resting her chin on his arm as he maneuvered up the winding, unpaved road toward his cabin. It was up high, which made the trek tricky during the worst of winter, but the view was worth it.

  Staring out over miles of nothing but snow-topped trees and breathing in the crisp, cold air, so unlike the deserts where he’d served, brought him as close to peace as he figured he’d ever get. And once a military man, always a military man. There was just something about having the high ground that helped him relax.

  His closest neighbor was miles away, down in the valley. He rarely saw other vehicles on his ride out of town, and never in the last few miles. A vehicle coming up the final hill meant someone was coming to see him. And no one came to see him.

  His parents still called him regularly, certain he had to be lonely. But they’d been afraid of the trip to Desparre, of the wild animals they were certain roamed everywhere and the thick, heavy winters that sometimes prevented travel in or out until spring came around again. They couldn’t understand why he’d come here. But then, they’d never really understood him. Not when he’d joined the military right out of high school and not a decade later when he’d been forced to leave it.

  They loved him, but they didn’t realize what he’d been looking for or what he’d lost. Brotherhood. A bond he shared with no one but Rebel these days, because she’d been in the thick of it with him.

  As he slowed the truck to a stop in front of his cabin, his breathing evened out. All the open space did that for him. Beside him, Rebel seemed to relax, too.

  He opened the driver’s side door, telling Rebel to stay as he hobbled around to the back. Normally she hopped into the front and climbed out after him, but he knew her injury almost as well as he knew his own. She might not be showing it, but she was in pain, too.

  “Come on, girl,” he urged, watching as she stepped gingerly to the ground. She led the way up to the cabin, favoring her back left leg.

  “We’ll sit by the fire and take it easy tonight,” he promised her, earning a half-hearted tail wag.

/>   As soon as he opened the door, she walked straight over and claimed a spot in front of the fireplace.

  “Greedy,” he teased her, and she gave him a look as if to say, Get a move on. It’s cold in here.

  He’d had the heat set too low, not expecting the cold to come so soon, although he should have been used to it. By the time he’d moved out here last October, the snow had been so high the real estate agent had needed his help clearing it away so they could even open the door.

  He cranked the heat up now, then got to work building a fire. He poured Rebel some dog food and dragged it over to her. He was hungry, too, now that dinnertime was approaching, but his leg was more demanding than his stomach. So, instead of cooking, he settled in his recliner, gingerly lifting his right leg and wishing he’d grabbed some ice for it first. But now that he was settled, he didn’t plan to move for a few hours.

  Between the heater kicking on and the fireplace warming the cabin even more, Colter’s stiff muscles slowly started to relax. An hour later, his leg was still throbbing unhappily, but the pain was a lot more manageable.

  With the fire roaring away on one side of him, the view of the valley covered in snow through a thick-paned window on the other and Rebel at his side, Colter felt complete. This was why he’d come to Alaska. Yes, his parents’ claim was true—he was hiding here. But he was hiding from all the well-meaning but clueless people—them included—who wanted to fix him. Who had no idea what it meant to survive an ambush when all of his brothers had died.

  Rebel whimpered and when Colter glanced at her, he could swear she knew what he was thinking. “It’s okay, girl.”

  But instead of calming down, she stood, went to the window and started barking.

  Someone was here. And since there was no one in Alaska he knew well enough to visit his house, it wasn’t a guest.

  He’d come to Alaska to hide from what was left of his life. Yeah, he could admit that. But there were plenty of other people who saw Alaska as the final frontier: a place to hide away from something they’d done, to run from the law.

  Colter winced as he swung his injured leg to the ground, then hobbled over to the cabinet against the far wall and grabbed his pistol. He’d stopped carrying it into town, but right now he was happy he hadn’t given it up altogether.

  “Rebel, quiet,” he commanded. In her three years as a Military Working Dog, never once had she disobeyed a command from him.

  But today she just barked louder.

  Colter released the safety on his pistol and eased toward the door, preparing himself for trouble.

  * * *

  KENSIE GRIPPED THE steering wheel until her knuckles hurt, stomping her foot on the brake. But it didn’t help. Her rental truck still slid backward, angling toward the edge of the road, toward the drop-off beside the steep hill she was trying to climb.

  Why did Colter Hayes have to live in the middle of nowhere?

  According to the few locals who would talk to her, he was an ex-Marine hiding from the world after being badly injured. No one seemed to know how he’d been injured or why exactly he wanted to hide. In fact, none of them seemed to know much more about him than the few details he’d shared with her on the street. And yet he’d lived in Desparre for almost a year.

  “People come this far into the Alaskan wilderness for three reasons, honey,” the grocery store owner had told her, then ticked off those reasons on gnarled fingers. “Either they love a good adventure, the kind that’s as likely to get them killed as not. Or they want the entire world to leave them the heck alone. Or they’ve done something they don’t want anyone to know about—probably something illegal—and they figure no one will ever track them down here.”

  Then she’d narrowed her eyes at Kensie. “We all assume Colter is the middle one. But you’ve got to be careful who you trust.”

  Her words echoed in Kensie’s brain as her truck finally stopped its dangerous backward descent. She kept her foot wedged down hard on the brake, her hands locked tight on the wheel, afraid to move. Should she keep pushing forward or turn back?

  She leaned forward, craning her head up at the hill in front of her. Snow was still falling on it, obscuring what was little more than a dirt trail. She had one more crest to go and she wasn’t sure if her truck would make it. But she wasn’t sure she could turn it around, either.

  Now it was her brother Flynn’s voice she heard in her head. “You’re going to Alaska, Kens? Are you crazy? People venture out into the woods there and never come out again. You could die up there and we’d never even know where to start looking.”

  At the time, she’d thought he was overreacting. He always had when it came to her, even now that they were both adults. He’d already lost his little sister and she knew, somewhere deep down that he’d never admit, he was afraid of losing his big sister, too.

  She realized now how ill-prepared she’d been for this trip. Desparre was insular. People here already distrusted each other, but they distrusted her double for being an outsider. Some of them had been nice but ultimately dismissive. Others had just eyed her suspiciously and refused to talk. Questioning as many people in town as she could had told her that either no one knew anything about Alanna other than what they’d read in the news, or they just weren’t going to tell her.

  But Colter understood this place. And regardless of what he’d said about his tracking skills, she knew one thing. Trackers found people. Whether it was someone who’d set a bomb or someone who’d been kidnapped, she had to believe he could help her.

  And she might not be prepared, but she was determined. If Alanna was really here, Kensie wasn’t leaving without her.

  Assuming she could get up this mountain.

  Gritting her teeth, Kensie switched her foot from the brake to the gas as fast as she could, not wanting to lose traction. The truck’s wheels spun, spraying snow at a crazy angle, and then it shot forward, up the hill.

  Kensie grappled to keep control of the wheel, her muscles aching. The truck veered left, then right, but it kept moving upward until she could see the top of the hill. She was going to make it.

  As if thinking those words had been bad luck, the truck veered right again, straight off the side of the road. It sank down several feet, jolting her forward as the front end planted itself in a snowbank.

  Kensie swore, tears of frustration pricking her eyes. For fourteen years, leads on Alanna had come and gone like rabbits in a magician’s disappearing act. One minute promising and solid and right in front of them. The next minute poof! Like they’d never even existed.

  This time might be no different. Her family didn’t think it was. But they’d come to accept years ago what statistics said was a near certainty: Alanna was gone. She was never coming home.

  Kensie had never been able to do that. And she didn’t think it was guilt eating at her gut this time, telling her something was here. She had to believe that this time, if she looked hard enough, maybe the magic trick would become real.

  Colter could help her. She knew he could. If she could find him. If she could convince him.

  Was she even close to where he lived? She had no idea. She assumed she’d followed the directions properly, but what if there’d been a turnoff she’d missed? She could be miles from his cabin.

  She peered through the windshield at the snowflakes, falling faster and thicker from the sky. It had been cold when she’d arrived, but temperatures had dropped to near zero in the hours since. And that was down in the main part of town, not up in the mountains where Colter lived.

  Fear settled low in her belly as she zipped her coat up to her chin and slid her hood over her head, fastening it tightly. She didn’t need to gun the engine to know there was no way she was getting her truck out of this snowbank.

  She was walking from here. She just had to pray Colter’s cabin was nearby and she wouldn’t walk right by it in this snowstorm and
then freeze to death.

  Chapter Three

  The moment she stepped out of the truck, Kensie wondered if she’d made a mistake. Her whole body seemed to ice over as her feet sank into a pile of snow, rising over the tops of her boots. The cold seeped through them, too, soaking her up to midcalf. She had to hold the tops of her boots to make sure they came with her as she climbed out of the snowbank and then her hands were soaked through her gloves.

  Enormous snowflakes plopped on her head, sliding down the side of her hood, where some dropped off. The wind sent others flying into her face, where they left a watery trail down her neck and then slipped inside her coat.

  She was going to die out here. She could already feel the icy cold in her lungs with every breath. What had she read about extreme cold bursting your lungs?

  Calm down, she told herself. Colter’s place had to be close. The grocery store owner had said the top of the final hill. There were no more hills to climb. And yet, no cabin.

  There were a lot of trees, though, more than she’d expected this high up. She thought she could see a road marker ahead, leading a winding path through them. Colter’s cabin could be behind the trees somewhere. But so could bears. Or she could get lost and not be able to find her way back to the truck. Every few steps, she glanced backward.

  Soon she could no longer see the truck. Panic built inside her and she paused. Keep moving forward or turn back?

  Then she heard it. Or maybe hypothermia had already started to set in and she was imagining the barking.

  Kensie started to run. Her lungs protested every breath, painful from the cold, but as she rounded another copse of trees, there it was. A beautiful little cabin with a clear, perfect view of the valley below. She could even see a glacier from here. In other circumstances, she would have paused and soaked in the amazing vista.