Brotherhood Protectors: Soldier's Heart Part 2 (Kindle Worlds Novella)

by Ilsa J. Blick

  She shook her head. “Only the last few seconds. I was just so surprised to feel one so soon after the last jolt. That’s three in less than a month, and two within three days, and those are the ones we actually feel. There a lot of avalanches around here?”

  “Depends. Most are caused by new snow on top of what’s already on the ground, or rain, or some fool snowmobilers, usually tourists, out on mountains where they have no business. Last year, a herd of elk started a slide that took out part of a ranch on the west side of town. So, we get them often enough, but this is mountain country. Part of the package. So, what do you say? Okay with you if I train with Soldier?”

  Hell. “Can I think about it?”

  “You worried I’m going to steal your boy?”

  “No, it’s not that.” All military working dogs were relatively flexible and expected to work with multiple handlers and kennel masters. Pete once said even if a person knew a dog’s name, this didn’t translate into the dog either trusting or obeying. The trick was knowing the right commands and how to say them. “I’m not sure Soldier would do well with avalanche rescue.” She was careful to keep her eyes on the snow and where she was going. It helped that she needed to. While heavy, the snow wasn’t so deep that she couldn’t feel the uneven hump and bump of rock. “First off, we agreed on Saturday that he needed time to be a dog. For another, even if I decide”—she couldn’t help the slight emphasis, but, damn it, this was her dog they were talking about—“I want to pursue SAR, as far as I know, avalanche rescue requires that he dig because, by definition, your victim’s buried.”

  His tone stayed light. “How’s that a problem?”

  “I think the reason SAR might work for Soldier is when he finds a person, he has to signal me first and then re-find . . . you know, lead me to the victim. When he was working in the field with Pete, he also signaled when he’d found something.”

  “Sat down, you mean.”

  “Exactly. It’s taken some time to retrain him to change up his signals, but the basic idea is the same. Digging is counter to everything he’s been taught. If he’d done that in Afghanistan—”

  “He would’ve had a very short career.” After a moment’s consideration, Hank nodded. “Okay, I can see it. Shame, though; he’s got a good nose.” They shushed over the snow in silence a few moments before he said, “Why do I have a feeling there’s another reason?”

  She toyed with saying nothing at all. If she and Soldier never showed up at Hank’s ranch, that would be message enough. No matter how pissed she was, Hank had always been there to help when she asked. Too bad there was likely an ulterior motive, but she couldn’t pretend she didn’t know differently now.

  In the end, Hank saved her from having to say it first. “You’ve changed your mind about letting me watch over Soldier.” When she gave only a mute nod, he continued, “Can I ask why? Was it something I did or said?”

  How about something you never said? Heat crawled up her neck, and she was suddenly prickly with sweat. Take it easy. Don’t lose your temper now. He’s almost gone. Pulling her cap off, she scrubbed her hair. She bet her scalp steamed. “I’m just having second thoughts.”

  “About what? I thought we’d been through this. The whole point of me taking Soldier is to take the pressure off you—”

  “I can deal with pressure.”

  Hank rode over her. “And hopefully save your license, your career. I know you’ve got money and don’t really need the job, but you do need to work and feel useful, everyone does. Am I being too pushy? Are you feeling railroaded into something or you’re somehow failing Pete?”

  “Look, I don’t want to talk about it, okay? I haven’t said no,” she hedged. “I’ve only asked for some time to think.”

  He remained quiet, deputy’s hat squared on his head, his sturdy, handsome features set in an expression that would’ve been bland if he didn’t also look every inch a cop. There was nothing in his eyes that said friend now, no warmth, only a measured appraisal. He studied her so long she finally dodged her gaze away.

  “Stop it.” The heat had crawled into her face, and she put a palm to one cheek, embarrassed of how she must look. Little girl lost. “I’m not trying to be the suffering widow. I only want some time. Is that too much to ask?”

  He waited another long moment before replying. “You’re lying. I don’t know about what. I also can’t think of why you’d lie, but you are. Something’s changed, and it hasn’t been just in the last day. I felt it Saturday night but wasn’t sure. I chalked it up to, you know, the fight, you feeling awkward having me around, even though I’ve stayed overnight before with no problem.”

  She forced her eyes to meet his. “Nothing’s changed.”

  “Bullshit.” But there was no heat in his voice. “I just don’t understand why you’re lying. I think that bothers me more than anything else. I can deal with you changing your mind. You’re allowed, and I might, too. But I wouldn’t lie to you, Sarah,”— a note of hurt mixed with confusion crept in. “I’ve never lied, ever.”

  No, you’ve only omitted. At any other time—say, any of the many minutes before she’d seen those pictures—the guilt would press like an anvil on her chest. But I’m tired of feeling guilty, like I’ve failed. If anything, Pete had failed her, and Hank was nothing but an accomplice. So, she said nothing and only shrugged. Suck on it; see how it feels.

  The silence spun out. The trailhead, a cleft that wound through sparse forest before ducking into heavier growth farther on, was only another fifty or sixty yards after. The dogs were nowhere in sight, though Daisy was letting loose with a loud brawarawarwar. Sarah gave the ruckus only half an ear and almost no attention. Daisy normally channeled her inner beagle when she flushed an animal, and with the storm finally gone, those animals who’d hunkered down were finally on the move, looking for food. She never worried Daisy would ever catch anything. Any self-respecting squirrel would beat Daisy to a pulp.

  “It’s Pete. Again.” This part of the slope tended north, which put them into colder shadow, and Hank looked away into the far trees, his breath staining the air. “It always comes back to him. You won’t let yourself say good-bye and move on. He’s always here.” Hank stirred the space between them. “Your own private little force field. I don’t know if you truly grieve much anymore.”

  “What?” Tears—of anger? Hurt?—sprang. She blinked furiously to keep them from falling because damn him, damn him, this was such shit. He was one to talk about hiding things. “You asshole. Of course, I miss him.”

  “I miss him, too.” He held up a hand. “And before you tell me your missing him is different, get over yourself. I knew him for twenty-three years longer than you. There are things about him only I know.”

  Tell me about it. The words almost slid off her tongue, right then and there. “It’s not a contest, Hank.”

  “You sure about that? Because you sure do act like someone who’s afraid to lose. And here, I used to think you were brave, someone who didn’t put up with bullshit. I guess you only don’t put up with everyone else’s.”

  She flared. “You son of a—”

  From the corner of her left eye came a sudden black blur, and she broke off at the same moment that Hank looked beyond her and said, “What’s going on with—”

  Bursting from the woods, Soldier streaked at a full-out gallop, snow flying in wide white halo as he tore up the hill. Saliva flecked his black coat, and ice clotted his ruff and the underside of his belly and tail. His head was high, thrust forward as he raced for them.

  Her first thought: Daisy was barking. Something got her. But then, peering anxiously down slope, she spotted a bouncing tan and black and white bundle as Daisy struggled to keep up with the much-faster shepherd.

  If Daisy was all right . . . “Soldier?” The dog was still coming on strong, bounding uphill, showing no sign of letting up. There was a wild look in his dark eyes she’d never seen before and couldn’t read. Something’s got him excited. Maybe even spooked
. “Hey, boy. It’s okay.” Shuffling downslope on snowshoes to meet him, she held out both hands as much to calm the dog as ward him off. “What’s the ma—”

  “Look out!” But Hank’s shout came a millisecond too late.

  Tensing his enormous haunches, Soldier launched himself.

  A shepherd is not the fastest dog. That distinction belongs to the greyhound, hands down, a breed that can clock forty-five miles an hour at full speed. A German shepherd might be about ten miles an hour slower, but it is also a much bigger, more powerful animal.

  Soldier hammered her. His paws drilled into her chest, a blow that knocked the breath from her lungs in a sickening whoosh and then sent her stumbling back. The heel of her left snowshoe snagged in the heavy snow, and her left knee twisted. Crying out in surprise and pain, she tumbled in an ungainly sprawl into heavy snow. If she’d been on a narrow switchback or ledge, the dog would’ve knocked her clean off the mountain.

  “Hey, hey!” Shuffling down, partially falling forward in the snow, Hank got an arm up, ready to snatch at the dog or knock him back, but Soldier, tongue lolling, his muzzle flecked with saliva, had already plopped into a sit. Squatting awkwardly on his snowshoes, Hank reached a hand to help her up. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you? What’s the matter with him?” Without waiting for her reply, Hank rounded on Soldier. “What’s wrong with you? Bad—”

  “No.” At Soldier’s confused look, she hooked a hand on Hank’s arm. Daisy, she saw, was just cresting the hill, too out of breath to bark, her tongue hanging down around her toenails. “Stop. Don’t scold him. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Didn’t do—”

  “No. I was off-balance, and he miscalculated.”

  “Miscalculated.” Hank said it flatly. “You mean, he didn’t try to eat you, too.”

  “No, Hank, you don’t understand.” Her knee let out a small shout as she staggered to a stand. Hugging the big dog, she scrubbed his ice-clogged ruff. “Good boy, good boy, that’s my good Soldier.”

  “Sarah?”

  She waved away the question and fixed her gaze to her dog.

  “Soldier, show me,” she commanded. “Go find.”

  4

  “You okay?” Hank was behind, keeping a good distance between them as they scuffed their way down a narrow gully scalloped from the north flank of the mountain. The trench was choked with boulders and deadfall. They were also well off the main path and driving deeper into what once had been a densely packed stand of jack pine and whitebark. Many were down, and they’d had to take off their snowshoes to negotiate the fallen trees sprawled in a haphazard scatter like a child’s game of pick-a-stick. “Maybe tuck your hair under your cap.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she muttered, irritated both with the difficulty of the terrain and her stupid hair. At the moment, she was hung up on a dead limb, a hank right behind her right ear snarled in a knot. The gully was littered with broken and brittle limbs jutting from the snow like dark needles in a white pincushion with ends sharp enough to snag clothing, rake a face, or spear an eye.

  Or grab hair. Fuming, she picked at the knot, but the work was slow because her angle was awkward and she was reduced to straining a sidelong glance. Even so, her vision kept doubling, and she was giving herself a headache. Five more seconds, and she would fish out her knife and hack herself free. Probably slice her ear off in the process.

  “Need help?” There was a crackle as Hank maneuvered branches. “Hang on. Let me see if I can . . .”

  “Ow!” Grimacing, she reflexively tried pulling away and only succeeded in making her scalp yammer even harder. “Watch it!”

  “Wow, you’re really kind of tangled, you know?” After a few more seconds of pulling and tugging, Hank said, “How attached are you to this?”

  “Oh, ha-ha.” She would have rounded with a glare, but she could turn no more than a few inches without feeling as if her hair was about to come out by the roots. “You really can’t get it loose? Can’t you just break the branch? Maybe we can loosen it up later.”

  “Sarah, we’re not talking a twig here. This thing is a couple fingers wide. I mean, if you don’t mind wandering around with half a tree tangled in your hair, I’d say go for it.” When she didn’t reply right away, he added, “Hair does grow back, you know.”

  “I know.” Damn. “All right, just go on. Better you do it.” Besides, they had to track down Soldier.

  “Happy to. I’d hate you to go all Vincent van Gogh on me. Hold on.” There was a faint whisk of metal on metal and then more tugs and twinges sharp enough to prick a few tears. A few seconds of sawing. “There you go.”

  “Finally.” A rat’s nest of her hair about as big around as a really fat grape fluttered from a limb. She put a self-conscious hand to her head then felt a burst of annoyance. Next, I’ll worry about chipping a nail. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” Folding a sharp stainless steel blade back into a frame lock handle, Hank clipped the knife to a front pocket while Daisy, bundled into Hank’s jacket, grinned at Sarah and let out a happy yawp. “See?” Hank gave the dog’s head a playful scrub. “Daisy thinks you look cute.”

  “I probably look like I did when I was five and decided to give myself a haircut so I could be just like my Barbie doll.” Turning, she scanned downslope but picked up no sign of her dog. For the first time, she wished Soldier was wearing that silly little bell.

  “Any idea how much farther? It’s been about fifteen, twenty minutes not counting the haircut.”

  “Trust the dog.” Josie’s mantra, although she was beginning to wonder. As soon as she’d given the command, the dog had wheeled around and plunged back into the forest the way he’d come, vanishing within seconds. He also hadn’t returned to check and see if she followed, and what was up with that? Josie said shepherds liked to keep track of their humans. So, either the dog had faith she would follow, or this really was a fool’s errand.

  “What are the chances he’s found a dead deer or something?”

  “Not high. He was trained to ignore that even before I started him in search and rescue.” A light puff of wind fluttered past her face. The movement of air was good for the dog, but bad for them if the breeze picked up and the trees started to sway. When the wind got going, trees decimated by pine-beetle toppled and crashed to the forest floor without warning. She threw a worried glance toward the sky. The canopy was spotty and moth-eaten, snow-laden pine boughs alternating with gray, denuded trunks leaning precariously against their still-standing neighbors. As in much of Colorado, Idaho, and Wyoming, the pine-beetles had been busy, chewing their way through the bark to deposit larvae. These burrowed through pith and eventually killed the trees. With the early snow and dip in temperature, many larvae would die this season, but the damage was done.

  Be just my luck to wind up with a broken leg or get crushed. The gully was deeper, a steeply sided couloir, as if an axe had bitten deep into the earth. The sides were above their heads, and the earth was eroded down to bare rock in places. Thick roots, large around as pythons, emerged only to dive back into rocky soil.

  “Is it weird that he hasn’t come back?” Hank asked. “What about barking to at least let us know where he is?”

  “Not the way he’s trained.” She shook her head. “You don’t want the dog to scare a victim.”

  “You can call him, though, right?”

  She could but didn’t want to, afraid she would only confuse the dog. “Come on, it’s not as if he hasn’t left tracks. Let’s just go. He can’t be that far away. Unless you think you need to go. I know you have to report in. I’ll be all right, and it’s not that far back to the cabin. Drop off Daisy there and go.”

  “No way.” Skirting an enormous root ball, glazed with snow and ice, ballooning from his right, Hank said, “Besides, if there really is someone, might take two of us to get him back up the mountain. If we even should try moving him. I just don’t get what anyone would be doing out here on this side of the mountain. There are no fee
der . . . Hey, Sarah, up ahead. Is that Soldier?”

  She’d been so intent on watching where she put her boots, she’d forgotten to keep an eye out for her dog. Now, down this wide trough scoured by glaciers and further deepened by runoff and erosion, she spotted Soldier’s silhouette. Against all this white, the ebony shepherd seemed even starker than ever, like a cutout scissored from black paper. He stood on all fours, ears erect, patiently waiting by a pile of snow-covered deadfall that nearly blocked the couloir. From the washed-out gray of the trunks and the mountain of debris jammed against and upstream of the trees, the deadfall looked to have been there awhile. When Soldier saw her looking, his tail swished several times. He still didn’t bark or utter a sound, though his head bent to something in the snow that he anxiously pawed.

  “Wait, Sarah, wait.” Hank dropped a hand on her right shoulder. “It’s deadfall.”

  “I know. So?” Then she remembered what they’d talked about a few nights back. Bears, particularly grizzlies, liked to den up in deadfall. And we’re on the north side of the mountain where it will stay colder longer. “I don’t think he would alert to a bear, Hank.” If anything, she thought the dog would probably either bark its head off or run. Bears and dogs didn’t mix. “I’ve seen him do this before. The little girl on a farm I used to visit had a litter of kittens. Soldier was fascinated, especially with this one little white female. He kept flipping her over with a paw and licking her. He’s doing the same thing now.”

  “I think we can safely rule out he’s found a kitten, Sarah.”

  “But I also don’t think he’s found a bear. For one thing, they can arouse from hibernation faster than you think, and if there is one denned up, it hasn’t been there for long.” She pointed at Daisy, who still looked relaxed and happy, though her beagle-sized ears had pricked forward at the sight of Soldier. “Second, Daisy isn’t scared, and she would be.”

  “Okay, only”—Hank’s head moved in a slow negative—“whatever or whoever that is, it’s not moving, Sarah.”