At first, Patrick had doubted Mack’s memory, but over the years he’d proven it was just fine—he simply labeled all men under fifty, maybe sixty, with the same moniker.
“Tie her down for me, would you? I don’t bend so easy anymore.”
“Sure thing, Mack.” There were a couple sets of iron rings anchored in concrete pilings that they kept Weed Eatered for fly-in guests. He ran a pair of ropes up from the rings to the loops on the underside of the low wings as Mack unloaded his gear. Just being around Mack made Patrick feel as if he was in a May-December buddy film. He’d asked around and Mack Bryson made everyone feel that way.
“How are the elk running this year?”
“Saw a herd up by the Miller campsite two days back.”
“Lowlanders. No real sport in picking off from a lowland herd. Up into the hills, boy. That’s the ticket.” Then he winked. “Unless them lowlanders need some thinning.”
“All looked fine and healthy to me.”
“Into the Flathead Wilderness it is. Grab the pack for me.” Mack took his rifle case, which was almost as long as he was, and strode off through the tall grass.
Patrick always looked forward to this trip and he wondered who else would be along for the ride. He could always hope…but he wasn’t taking any bets on whether or not Lauren would be along. She’d already been camping one night and he didn’t know if she’d want to go out again so soon. Some guests wanted to spend as much time in the wild as they could, others didn’t like leaving the cozy security of their cabins and the main compound. Except she wasn’t a guest. She was… He didn’t know what.
She was a mystery.
He’d signed up to be the guide with Mack again this year, but that was before he’d met Lauren. Before he’d kissed Lauren. Before he’d spent half the night wondering where she’d been all his life, when he already knew the answer.
Sergeant Lauren Foster had been in the Army: Rangers and Delta.
While she’d been in the military, he’d spent a couple of years doing meaningless jobs before going back for his film degree. Then a couple of years making films and supporting himself with odd jobs in theaters, mostly as a sound or props guy in off-off-Broadway productions. Then he’d come west. He supposed it was possible that he could have gotten further away from a military career path, but he wasn’t sure how.
There was no question about Mack and a cozy cabin. The old man must have been up seriously early to fly in from the Oregon Coast—crossing the Rockies in the dark—but he headed straight for the barn with a spring in his step, raring to get out into the wilderness.
The layout of the entire compound had been clearly mapped inside Lauren’s head since their aerial arrival, though she had yet to scout it out on the ground to align purpose with layout. She told herself that’s why she didn’t quite connect where Michael was leading her until it was too late. It was either that, or she wanted to go there—and she didn’t like that possibility one bit.
They circled around the back of the main house, including past her bedroom window. The place was bigger than it looked. The upstairs, where the family lived, was actually bigger than the main story, by jutting out over the back porch. This would be a good spot to sit and watch the hills on a hot summer’s day. It was oriented northeast and would be warm in the morning and the coolest spot for the rest of the day.
There was a freshness to the air that she hadn’t run into in very many places. Lackland Air Force Base—the main center for military war dog training—lay baking in the semi-arid scrubland of central Texas. She’d spent the most of her time at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, or the Dust Bowl of America’s two wars in southwest Asia. The year she’d spent on Libyan patrols was best not remembered. New York often smelled amazing, and occasionally very nasty—impossibly thick with the richness of people, food, and commerce.
Here, under the everlasting blue bowl of the sky, it tasted as if the air had swept down out of the Canadian Rockies arriving washed, tumbled, and dried straight from the Arctic and the Canadian tundra. It was still cool with the morning, but it felt so good that she kept her jacket in her hand rather than pulling it on. It tasted as if the last one to breathe this air might have been a polar bear. Or maybe—
She yelped in surprise as they stepped up to a fence line just past the garage. They’d broken into the sunshine at the edge of the west pasture. She didn’t need to see the occupants of the corral to know what it was.
Half of the area was open field, but the other half was the most impressive dog training agility setup she’d ever seen off a military base. Slalom gates for side-to-side work. Long, snaking, eighteen-inch-high tubes that taught a dog how to race low and fast. Staggered hurdles to be cleared clean, and high walls that would require a dog to plant its paws on the top to haul itself up and complete the jump. Ladders led to either end of a narrow ledge fixed high above a splash pool to ease the dog’s fall if it stumbled. There were even old cars and SUVs with the side windows down to teach them how to leap into a car in full attack mode to take down a driver.
Beyond the corral was an old RV, a decrepit bunkhouse, and a few other outbuildings given over to dog training. She’d wager that somewhere in the hills, well away from any skittish horses, would be a crash-and-bang field to inure the animals to the sounds of gunfire and explosives.
At length she managed to focus through her overwhelm and see that the course wasn’t empty. Stan had six dogs leashed to stakes in a line. Two merely watched the seventh dog running the course. Two others looked to be eagerly awaiting their turn. It would take time to determine if they were overly aggressive or had that fine balance of patient-but-also-a-hard-charger that made a good MWD. There was one small scruffy mutt, but he appeared unselfconscious about being half the size of his mates.
The last Malinois was asleep and probably didn’t have what it took to make the grade.
Or so she thought until suddenly its head popped up and twisted in her direction. The dog leapt to its feet and charged. He hit the end of his leash so hard that it yanked the stake right out of the ground and the dog kept coming. She wasn’t wearing a bite suit. This was really going to hurt.
With a quick flip, she spun the jacket she’d been clutching in her hand around her forearm and presented it crosswise at chest height. The dog would naturally go for the raised forearm. She shifted in front of Michael to protect him and braced herself for the impact.
The dog’s racing stride—stretched to its limit—crossed the space in seconds.
In her peripheral vision she saw Stan turn. Assess. Shout.
Too little, too late.
The big, all-black Malinois had already launched. His paws barely touched the top rail as he cleared the four-foot-high fence.
Rather than taking the bait of her raised forearm, he punched into her with all fours, two on her shoulders and two on her thighs. She crashed backward, knocking Michael aside as she did so.
She tucked her chin, hoping against any hope to protect her neck from being torn apart by his powerful canines.
He let out a loud bark that made her ears ring and then licked her face as Stan hustled up to haul him off.
The dog sat on her knees, keeping his forepaws firmly planted on her chest, one quiet painfully on one bruised breast.
“Rip?” Stan snarled—more surprise than anger by the sound. He had his real hand around the leash, but didn’t haul the dog clear.
She reached up to shift the paw aside, which the dog used as an excuse to lie down on her—paws on either shoulder and his head tucked up under her chin hard enough to choke her if she’d been able to breathe with eighty pounds of dog on her chest.
“I think he likes you,” Michael dusted himself off as he rose to stand beside Stan.
“Off!” Lauren managed to grunt by hardening her diaphragm against the weight.
Rip popped to his feet, once more driving his claws painfully into her skin, then moved off to the dirt close beside her and sat.
She pushed
herself up to sitting. She and the dog were face-to-face.
“What?”
Rip merely offered her a goofy grin, then licked her face again.
She scratched the dog’s ear. “Huh!”
“What?” Stan still had a tight hold on the leash.
“First time I’ve touched a dog since…”
Stan nodded. “Know what you mean,” he held up his hooks to say just what had happened between his last dog and the present one. Then he turned and looked at the other Malinois that had followed him over from the obstacle course and now sat at his side.
She could see the hard-faced man soften impossibly. It was a change that absolutely identified him as a born-and-bred dog handler.
“You’ve got something, Lauren Foster. Rip’s got a ton of potential, but I’ve been wondering if he cared enough to really make the grade. Can find the explosives just fine, but not real motivated about it. However, he definitely sees something in you.”
“Rip?” The dog’s ears perked up. “Thought he was going to rip my throat out.”
“Nah,” Stan chuckled. “He’s named for Rip Van Winkle. Even as a puppy he’d do that asleep one moment, at the ready the next moment trick.”
It felt strangely as if she’d been the one asleep. She climbed to her feet. Patted the dog once firmly on the side to let it know it wasn’t the dog’s fault before she turned and walked away.
“Hey, Lauren. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Patrick had rushed out of the barn when he saw her walking across the yard. He had the distinct impression that if he hadn’t spoken, she’d have run squarely into him without noticing.
“I did,” her voice was soft and dreamy, but not in any way he’d been hoping for after last night. “At least I think so,” she turned and looked about her feet as if expecting to find something there, then looking up at him in confusion when she didn’t find anything.
“You okay?” She looked as fragile as the moment after she’d collapsed on her arrival.
“So not!” That sounded more like her. “Let’s get out of here.”
Us? That sounded awesome to him. “Sure, where?”
“Couldn’t care. Away.”
Then he remembered Mack’s trip. “How about there?” and he pointed toward the mountains.
She followed the direction of his arm like a sleepwalker. “Sure. That works just fine.”
“We leave in twenty minutes. Grab some clothes and foul weather gear just in case. Figure on two or three days. I’ll take care of throwing together a kit for you: bedroll, food, and so on.”
“Uh, sure.” She headed off in the direction of the house. All her sharp edges were gone. He had the impression that if he’d told her to walk straight into a rushing river, she’d have done so with just as little emotion.
But he didn’t care. It wasn’t quite the leap into his arms and drag him into the hay barn he might have been hoping for as a morning-after-the-first-kiss moment. Not even a decent smile. Or one at all, really. But she was going with them and that counted for almost everything.
“She okay?” Michael came up behind him.
“Looks fine.” Who was he kidding, she looked incredible. “But didn’t sound very happy.”
“Huh,” Michael’s grunt was thoughtful. “Overheard the last of it. Where are you going?”
“Hunting up in the Flathead. Room for more if you want to join in.” He wished he’d kept his mouth shut, but it was ranch policy. Always encourage adventure. He didn’t know what their relationship was, father-daughter-but-not in some strange way. He’d rather have Lauren to himself, away from Michael’s watchful eye, but it was too late to take it back.
“Who else?”
“Small party. One guest. Emily said she’d come. Something about leaving Mark with the kids for once. Though they have a nanny too. Normally Mark Sr. and Ama come along, but they’re still on their vacation. Julie, my brother’s fiancée, is just back from leading a trip into the Flathead and wants a few days off before her wedding.”
Michael didn’t look at the Rockies or Patrick. Instead he kept watching Lauren as she reached the house and climbed the front stairs.
Patrick supposed that it was trudging for Lauren, but she was so amazingly graceful.
“Target?”
For a second Patrick wondered if Michael was asking if Lauren was the target. She was definitely his target, but… “Elk. For the freezer. Maybe some bear.”
“Always heard that hunting for bear is just plain dumb.”
“We don’t go looking for them, but up in the Flathead, they aren’t shy about looking in on us.”
Michael nodded. “Let’s see what you have for weapons.”
“Don’t you want to get some gear?”
Michael looked down at his clothes—boots, pants, t-shirt, and jacket—then back up at Patrick. He offered a shrug. “Have a rain slick I can borrow?”
That’s when he figured out who the guy was. He’d imagined Lauren walking into the wilderness with nothing but a dog. The scars on her skin said she could survive anything. This “old guy” must be another one like her. He didn’t look like much, but Stan said he was Colonel Gibson, which sounded pretty high up. If he was also Delta Force, it would explain a lot about him.
Maybe he was Lauren’s commanding officer, which explained even more. Now their odd relationship made sense.
As he led Michael into the barn to review Chelsea’s arms locker, Patrick tried to imagine what their relationship would look like if that was the case. Part father. Part guardian. Part judge. Are you good enough, Sergeant Foster? Protective, yet a harsh taskmaster. The father figure to the soldier woman who’d lost her dog.
Cool! He really was living out a film role in real life.
Patrick glanced up at the casting director in the sky, sending aloft a silent request. Please give me better casting today than being the sidekick.
Chapter 6
Lauren eased herself out of her saddle and wondered if the insides of her legs were ever going to recover. They’d ridden straight through the morning, crossing the full breadth of the ranch.
The character of the ground had changed as they neared the mountains, but Patrick led the way with the surety of someone who’d come this way many times before. What had started as cantering across the broad grasslands of the lower ranch had turned into carefully picked out routes along the base of scree slopes and following winding deer paths through deep forests.
Bypassing a quaint fishing cabin that already had a riding party in residence, they finally stopped for lunch at the base of a powerful waterfall. What would it be like to have your own private waterfall that cascaded in tumbling cataracts over fifty feet of combined drops? Closest thing to that in the Big Apple was the Lincoln Center fountain, which wasn’t on quite the same scale. Or the same solitude.
“Morning,” Patrick strolled up to her showing none of the effects of the long ride.
Lauren glanced up at the sun, “Afternoon.”
Patrick checked his watch, then shrugged easily. He took her thoughtless insensitivity in stride rather than throwing it back at her. He had left much of New York behind. More than she was ready to do.
“Nice waterfall,” she tried to make it up to him as he lashed her mount’s reins to a log hitching post clearly placed for just such moments. Collette was a dog’s name in her experience, maybe for a French poodle. But the tall Montana Traveler—nearly pure black with just a hint of dark red that caught the sunlight—was so even-tempered and surefooted that it was easy to imagine her indeed having French blood. Chelsea had made a big deal in the barn of choosing this particular horse for her. Lauren didn’t know why it mattered, as she’d be gone soon enough, but the herd manager had said it was important and delayed the whole party while she’d considered the options and finally selected Colette.
Lauren did like that the horse’s ambling gait was quick enough that others had to occasionally trot to keep up, except for Emily’s tall Chesapeake. She’d l
ooked forward to riding beside Emily, and she had—before the trails narrowed to single file. There hadn’t been anything to say, but Lauren enjoyed the companionship nonetheless.
“It is a nice waterfall,” Patrick tipped back his cowboy hat to survey its full height. He tucked his thumbs in his belt as if he’d been personally responsible for it. “Only one more than a few feet high on the whole property. Nice big lake up above with plenty of fish in it.”
“You told me a story about a waterfall…” Then she remembered what it was and wished she’d kept her mouth shut.
Patrick was still looking up at the falls, so he missed her grimace of pain. “Up there past the top,” he pointed. “Stan was out hiking in the spring and, trust me, the falls are truly amazing when the spring runoff is slamming out of the wilderness. Got caught in a t-shirt during a white-out blizzard. Apparently he fell part way down the falls, but managed to crawl off to the side, about there, I guess.”
Lauren surveyed the steep rocky slopes to either side. Today was warm and sunny, and she wouldn’t be comfortable climbing to that point without a rope and some gear. Stan had done it while freezing to death in a white-out.
“Said he was ready to give up right there, but Bertram latched on to his false arm and wouldn’t let go. Half gone with hypothermia, he barely knew where he was, but Bertram led him all the way back to that fishing cabin, if that ain’t the darnedest thing.”
Lauren looked back down the valley but couldn’t see the cabin they’d left far behind. It must have been beyond awful. No wonder Stan credited the dog with saving his life—there was no doubt that Bertram had.
How many times had the dogs saved her life? Max and Rex? Max she’d left behind because he was a regular Army asset, not trained to Special Ops standards when she’d started scouting for the 75th Rangers. Rex when she’d made the cut for Delta and he’d retired into old age. And Jupiter. Jupiter, who she’d left behind in a shallow grave in the Afghan desert. Her dogs had warned her of IEDs, hunted down hostiles, even leaped to the attack to protect her.
Big Sky, Loyal Heart Page 10
