by April Hunt
The sound of small feet stampeded toward the door before a feminine voice called out, “Let your father answer the door.”
The man who answered the door was lean and dark, and intimidating. Lyn wondered what it was like living with a father like him, but then the man gave them a ready smile and laugh lines creased the corners of his eyes. “Can I help you?”
“Sean Harris?” David asked, extending his hand. “I’m David Cruz. I’m reaching out to some of the teams who worked in co-op with the Air Force military working dog teams. Wanted to get some feedback if you can spare a couple of minutes.”
The man’s smile quickly disappeared. Perhaps David’s approach was too transparent. Which unsettled Lyn because she’d considered his introduction pretty circumspect.
“Seems unusual.” Harris’s voice maintained a neutral and significantly colder tone.
David spread his hands out at his sides. “I’m retired from active duty, working on consult with the three-forty-first training squadron. Doing some informal research on how we can improve interactions with cooperative teams. Particularly the SEAL teams since you do have dogs of your own.”
“Not every unit, as I’m sure you’re aware.” The ice melted a fraction but Harris didn’t step back to invite them inside. Beyond him, Lyn caught sight of three curious children. None of them could’ve been older than maybe ten years old. “My team has worked with several Air Force pairs.”
David nodded. “Did any of them stick out to you as particularly difficult to work with? Any of the dogs have behaviors incompatible with the primary objectives of your team?”
“Not that I remember.” Harris wasn’t buying it. Lyn noticed he hadn’t done more than glance at her the entire conversation but she got the sense he was keeping an eye on both of them.
“Any of the teams memorable at all?” David asked.
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing digging into things no one should know about.” Harris was done with pretending. “But you both need to walk away. Now.”
David dropped the pretense, too. “There’s a man dead and no one knows the real reason why either.”
Harris’s gaze swept the street to the right and left before filling the door even more, blocking Lyn’s view of his children. “I can’t talk to you. You should know this.”
Which meant there was something to talk about. Lyn couldn’t believe they were in the middle of something so dire that a man as tough as this one obviously was could be frightened into silence.
“I’m trying to do right by my friend,” David said quietly.
Harris didn’t even flinch. “I have a family.”
Then he closed the door in their faces.
Chapter Twelve
It’s hard to hold it against him.” Lyn climbed back into the car.
Atlas sat up from the back seat and touched her cheek with his cool nose. She reached up to give him a scratch on the side of his head and he leaned into her hand.
David finished buckling himself in and started up the car. “You think so?”
He’d been silent on the walk back to the car. His jaw set but otherwise his features were neutral. Blank, almost. Only to her, he could never be a blank, forgettable face.
“Well, family is a reason a lot of people do a lot of things, even things that aren’t exactly the right thing.” If someone had asked her a few years ago if she’d ever request a favor of her stepfather, she’d have ripped their head off and told them where they could shove it and the very thought of asking. She’d been determined to show him she had the intellect, talent, and determination to make it on her own in a field he’d dismissed as unimportant. But here she was, because she’d swallowed her pride and decided the chance to work with Atlas was worth her stepfather’s patronizing oversight. It’d been a compromise of her principles. She wasn’t sure what David would’ve thought of her choice but chances were he’d made difficult choices of his own.
David didn’t respond to her statement, though. Instead, he was looking straight ahead and guiding the car onto the road.
She sighed. So did Atlas. It would be a really long drive back up to Pennsylvania if David stayed withdrawn. On the other hand, she could understand his wanting to be left to his own thoughts. She could imagine—and it wouldn’t be even close to the reality—what he might be thinking about the dangers his friend had faced without the very men he was supposed to call his teammates guarding his back. If everything around you was likely to kill you, having the team you’re with willing to leave you exposed had to have been terrifying.
Only some didn’t show fear, not in the way she or other people might be expecting to see it. Everything they presented to the world was very possibly different from what was actually going on inside their heads. David was hard to read in general and in this instance completely shut down. He might be angry or upset, sad or scared. But there wasn’t much body language for her to go by. All she had was Atlas and the big dog didn’t seem concerned by David at all as the dog leaned into her. She rubbed her forehead with her right hand since Atlas still had a monopoly on her left.
Humans were complicated. It was why she preferred working with dogs.
“Atlas, af.” David gave the command as he pulled onto the main highway. Atlas looked at him for a long moment, then turned and settled down to lay across the back seat. The delay in obeying commands was still there, but it was getting shorter. At least in response to David.
She turned her head as she mentally did a little happy dance. Baby steps with Atlas. Every improvement, however subtle, was worth celebrating.
Lyn continued to look out the windows and watch the world zip by. No need to reinforce the command for Atlas since the dog had obeyed. In fact, if she’d tried it would’ve undermined David’s authority anyway. Besides, she agreed Atlas shouldn’t be standing up between them on the higher speed roadways. If something happened, the big dog would fly right up into the front seat with them or even possibly through the windshield. Technically, they should have him secured in the back and not just free to lay back there.
“I should consider getting an SUV with one of those cargo nets to partition off the back for dog transportation.” Thinking out loud wasn’t a bad thing. Hopefully.
“Huh?” David didn’t turn to look at her but his response was louder than expected.
“Well, this probably won’t be the last time I need to transport a dog in my career. I should provide a good example. Maybe be ready to make recommendations to dog owners.” Made sense to her. It’d take more saving, though, and a couple of good clients.
“Oh.” David nodded. “I was worried there for a minute.”
She blinked. “Why?”
There was a hesitation. “Well, you know Atlas needs to go back to Lackland. Even if he’s retiring, there’s a process for adoption and applicants are considered in a specific order.”
“Oh.” She’d read about it in her research. “Yeah, I know. Usually handlers or their families have priority, right?”
Another nod.
“But…” She bit down on what she was going to say next.
“Calhoun doesn’t have family. At least no one in a position to take Atlas.” David addressed the difficult topic anyway. She admired his ability to take things head on. ’Course, she liked a lot of things about him. Too many.
“So who would be next in line?”
“Other military or families. There are several variables under consideration.”
“I figured.” She didn’t look back at Atlas but she was tempted to pull down the vanity mirror so she could see him in the reflection. “Things have been moving so fast with him. I hadn’t thought about where he’d go next. Hard to imagine what it’ll be like to see him go.”
She felt a sinking feeling in her belly. She wouldn’t just be saying good-bye to Atlas.
“You might be able to visit him,” David offered. “Depends on who gets him. I plan to try to stay in touch.”
With her, too? She didn�
�t ask. Maybe later, but things were too…new. She wasn’t sure where they stood yet.
“Maybe. I think he’d like a new forever home with a family. It might be awkward for me to pop in, though.” She struggled to put the empty feeling into words then gave up and tried for a different direction. “Did you ever want one?”
“Want what? A dog? I have all the dogs I can fit into my life back at Hope’s Crossing.” There was happiness in his voice. Pride. It made her smile.
“I meant a family.” Now that she’d said it, she sort of wanted to take it back. The good humor left his face.
Damn. Just when he’d started to come back to a cheerful mood.
“No. Not in a conventional sense.” He said it slowly. Carefully. “While I was active duty, I had my own demons. Every deployment was another chance to work through them. Only I picked up new ones every time I went out there. I figured it’d be the worst idea in the world to have a wife and kids waiting for me at home, wondering and never knowing if I was going to make it back. And depending on the wife, my kids might never understand why I was always away. She might not understand it either. I’ve seen too many marriages filled with constant fighting over that. I didn’t want that for anyone.”
Had her stepfather? She tried to remember. But her perception of him from her childhood had been of a stoic man. Stern. Immovable. She’d spent a long time thinking he hadn’t cared at all.
This was the first time David had said so much about his past, though, and she wanted to know more about him. “What did you do in between deployments? Go home?”
He snorted. “Nah. Not because it was bad or anything. I just didn’t fit in.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know what to say. “That’s hard.”
“Well, my parents divorced while I was a teenager. High school angst doesn’t get much worse than what I had. I was angry. At my dad. My mom. Myself. Just always angry.” He opened and closed his hands on the steering wheel. “Mom left. Dad remarried. I got angrier.”
She reached out, touched his thigh with her fingertips. Not sure if it’d be welcome but it seemed more than trying to come up with words. He dropped his right hand from the steering wheel and took hers in his. Warmth enveloped her hand and tingles ran up her arms and along her skin.
Wow, it didn’t take much. His touch had her so finely tuned to him. Aware.
“I enlisted right out of high school. Basically took my diploma in hand and went straight into the Air Force. Some of my other friends went Army or Navy, but I knew what I wanted to be.”
She cocked her head to the side. “And you’ve always gone to do what you set out to do?”
He squeezed her hand. “Basically. It took a while, but becoming a PJ was worth every second of hell to get there.”
“A PJ?” Her favorite pajamas popped into her mind. And then she wondered what he tended to wear to bed.
Bad Lyn. Bad.
“Para rescue jumper.”
That made more sense. “Ah. Must’ve taken a while.”
He lifted one shoulder and dropped it in a half-shrug. “Longer than I wanted, not as long as most.”
Not too prideful, not too humble either. She smiled.
“Any time I did go home, the house was full of half-brothers and -sisters. All way younger than me. Dad had rebooted his family life. He didn’t make me feel unwanted, but it was awkward.” He paused. “His new wife was nice enough but we never clicked.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not even a thing.” He lifted her hand and kissed the back before placing it back down on top of his thigh. “Mostly, the kids like me just fine while I’m buying them video games or whatever is on their online wish lists for birthdays and Christmas.”
But he didn’t have a home to go back to. “Didn’t they even think about it, though? Sure, you made it comfortable, easy for them. But they left you outside their world.”
That made her furious.
“My choice to leave,” he reminded her. “And I don’t need to be angry with them. Plenty of other things to work through all on my own.”
“You mentioned demons.” She said it quietly. Not sure he wanted to talk about it. Her father had always sent her to her room if she asked about his deployments, what he did.
“Yeah.” David fell silent for a while. His hand was a comforting weight on hers, though. A sign he wasn’t pushing her away. “It’s a weird thing, being over there. You become…institutionalized. And when you come home, you feel out of step. Hard to back down from the level of hyperawareness you need to maintain overseas. People want you to be a hero. But they want you to be the perfect citizen, too. The problem is, to be out there and survive, you become a rough man…ready to do violence.”
It was a part of a saying. It swam up from her memory as one of the things her stepfather had repeated often at the dinner table.
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
The line was attributed to George Orwell. Her mind brought up the source she’d researched. The words had always stuck with her but some of her Internet research had said it wasn’t a direct quote, more an interpretation of what the man had said. She’d looked it up in the hopes of impressing her stepfather. But he’d pinned her with a stare and asked her if she truly appreciated what the words meant or the men who stood ready to defend her sleep.
Until now, listening to David, she hadn’t.
“It’s not fair to expect you to switch gears when you come back.” It was hard to know what to say so she went with what she thought, felt. Honest.
He barked out a laugh. “True. I try not to think about fair. Life’s generally not.”
“But some people try to make it that way.” She would, moving forward. No matter where tomorrow took them. Mostly because she’d always been told life wasn’t. And seriously, it wouldn’t ever be if no one ever tried.
“Yeah.” David shook his head. “I thought Forte was crazy when he said he was going back to his hometown to open up a kennel. But he’d saved every penny from the day he enlisted. And it added up. Then he got me and Rojas to come out to look at the place. It was huge. Right in the middle of a decent-sized town and close to a couple of different cities, but still private.”
“Perfect?” She could imagine. All the different environments to fit a wandering soul. They could go to whatever surroundings their mood needed in a day trip. Or night.
“Absolutely.”
“I can see the draw.” They’d even come several states away and were still going to make it back in one day. She wondered if he’d even considered stopping for the night.
“Besides. Working with the dogs helped.” David lifted his chin to indicate the rearview mirror. Looking up, she could see Atlas in the mirror too. “Look at him. He loved unconditionally.”
Hearing the word come from David, easily, tugged at her. Too many men wouldn’t say the word even about somebody else. Like the word was somehow a worse curse than any other four-letter word in existence.
“Dogs do.” And she loved them back. Every one she’d ever met. Because they were so worth it.
“A dog like him—one with a heart that big—he loves without question once he decides to give it,” David continued. “He laid his life on the line for his handler, because to him, it was worth it. But sometimes half the team doesn’t make it back.”
David paused.
“It wasn’t his fault.” Never. Not even knowing what had truly happened, she wouldn’t believe Atlas had failed his handler.
Sometimes, no matter how hard anyone tries, lives are lost.
“No. And I thought maybe he’d pine away. Some of them do. And it would’ve hurt Calhoun worse than dying all over again if his dog had died of heartbreak. Calhoun would’ve wanted somebody to help Atlas through this. And someday, maybe Atlas will choose somebody new to look to.” David glanced over at Lyn.
Her heart leaped. And then she squashed the happy dance. Atlas wasn
’t hers. None of the dogs she worked with were actually hers.
Atlas stirred in the back, having heard his name. He gave a quiet whine.
Her own bladder decided to alert her to the amount of time they’d been moving. Glancing at the clock, she couldn’t believe how much time had already gone by over the course of their conversation. “So how close is the next rest stop?”
“Not far.” David released her hand and picked up his phone. A quiet command and the phone’s GPS kicked in. “There’re stops all up and down this highway. If not actual rest stops, then exits to get food or gas.”
No sooner had he said so than a sign came up for a rest stop in a couple of miles. They sat in companionable silence as they approached and he pulled into a parking spot to one side, closer to a patch of grass and some trees.
“You go on ahead and I’ll let Atlas take care of his business.” David gathered up Atlas’s leash from the console between them.
“Okay.” She popped out of the car, the call of nature too urgent to even care about dignity. Atlas, apparently, was feeling the same way, considering how fast he hopped out of the back of the car and sat to have the leash attached to his collar.
She hurried to the building and took care of business. On the way out, she bought three bottles of water and some beef jerky.
David and Atlas were standing next to the car as she returned, both looking in her direction but not actually watching her. Or at least it didn’t seem like it, because David didn’t return her smile or even react to the bag of beef jerky she waved at him.
As she approached, David put a hand to the small of her back and rushed her back to her side of the car. “See anything odd inside?”
“No.” She got in quickly and didn’t protest when Atlas hopped in after her and scrambled over her lap to get in the back seat.
As David closed her door, headlights turned on suddenly from the row ahead of them and blinded her. Tires screeched. David rolled across the top of the car’s hood. She got the impression of a dark car screeching past them, so close they clipped the side-view mirror.
