One
There was a fine line between being exhausted and being comatose, and Adam Connelly had just about found it. He’d been two nights without sleep, half that without food, and his shoulder hurt like hell where his shirt was sticking to his open wound.
It was hard to feel much past the heart-pounding adrenaline surge still making his limbs quiver, but the pain managed to creep through. The freezing burn of the sleet slapping him in the face didn’t help either as he opened his pack and shoved in his gear. Later, he’d have to take it all back out again and carefully repair, clean, and repack everything after the unexpected rescue, but for now he wasn’t particularly inclined toward much besides getting the hell out of there.
Milo stood at his side, still in his search and rescue vest, attentive to their surroundings even though he had to be as done in as Adam. Knowing it, Adam forced a few deep breaths to try and slow his heart rate. “What do you think?” he asked, pretending he wasn’t fighting his still knocking knees to hold him up. “Food, sleep…or a woman?”
Milo nudged the pocket of the daypack where his food was kept.
Adam shook his head, finding some humor in the day, after all. “You always vote for food.”
The ten-month-old yellow Lab seemed to smile at that. He was a search-and-rescue dog now, but not too long ago, he’d been nothing more than a scrappy, unwanted pup. In Milo’s world, food still trumped everything else.
Adam got that. After all, like tended to recognize like. Besides, sleep was overrated, and it wasn’t as if a woman had been on his calendar, anyway. Hell, a woman hadn’t been even a glimmer of a possibility in too long to contemplate.
His own fault. “Food it is, then,” he said, and realized in spite of still shaking and sweating, he was starving, too. That was a good sign, he decided. It meant that the PTSD had been kicked down to a lowly 3 on the scale, when two years ago it would’ve been at a 10.5, not to mention wholly consuming him.
Progress.
Besides, he’d never been able to resist a good adrenaline rush. After all, some of his fondest memories were born of adrenaline rushes—being five years old and running like hell from a pack of Rottweilers that he and his brother Dell had accidentally roused while climbing fences. Or at fourteen, getting caught underage drinking and “borrowing” a ’69 classic GTO—a joyride that had landed him in juvie. Hell, for most of his teenage years, fathers everywhere had feared Adam’s influence on their impressionable sons and mothers had locked up their daughters on Saturday nights. And then it had all caught up with him in one horrifying, tragic evening that had changed the direction of his entire life.
Good times.
Footsteps came up behind him: Kel, the local sheriff and good friend. Hooking his radio back on his hip, he squinted through the wind and freezing rain whipping at them, rippling the surface of Bear Lake into a frenzy in front of them. “Nice job.”
“It wasn’t a job,” Adam reminded him. They’d just happened to be scouting out this area for new rugged terrain to be used in search and rescue training. They’d been doing a complete two-day run-through when they stumbled into a real rescue situation. “It was just sheer dumb luck.”
“Good luck,” Kel corrected. “All those years you spent overseas with the National Guard saving the good guys’ asses left you like a machine. Man, the way you shimmied down that sheer rock to get to the kid before he slipped…” Kel shook his head in marvel. “And how the hell did you hold on to him like that until I got the ropes to you without popping your shoulder out of the socket? You do that Superman shit in the military, too?”
Among other things, Adam thought, but he merely shrugged, a movement that caused the laceration on his shoulder to split further. Some machine.
“Well, however you did it,” Kel said, “it’s damn good to have you back.”
Yeah, well, there was back, and then there was back. Adam couldn’t have gripped a rope right then to save his life. He could no longer hear the thump-thump-thump of the vanishing helicopter airlifting the ten-year-old and his father out of this remote area, which was good. His foster brother, Brady, was behind the chopper’s controls, which alleviated any concern about the increasingly bad weather. Brady, an ex–army ranger who’d retained all of his skills, could fly in and out of the eye of a needle if he had to. From here to Coeur d’Alene would be a picnic, oncoming storm or not.
Kel shouldered his pack. Adam did the same but much more gingerly. Normally, there’d be hours of post-rescue takedown, but everything had happened too fast. As the region’s coordinator and S&R team leader, Adam hadn’t even had time to set up an incident command post or mobilize a search. There weren’t the usual myriad trucks or equipment or people it generally took to run an S&R, and for once, that was a good thing.
They could go home right now, and Adam could stop expending all his energy on appearing to be fine, when what he really wanted to do was pass out and pretend today hadn’t happened. Because although he made a living teaching and training search and rescue, and he had more accredited initials after his name than the alphabet was long, he hadn’t actually been active in a rescue in two years. Not since Afghanistan, when he and his unit had been called in to rescue a group of British soldiers stuck on the side of a godforsaken mountain. That day they’d dropped in from helicopters and rappelled down cliffs and into the caves.
And straight into enemy fire.
Most of the time, that memory was buried deep. But today, thirty minutes ago, Adam had faced his nightmares in broad daylight. He’d had to rappel down a cliff to save that kid, and being forced into an active role like that, hanging off those rocks at the mouth of the caves, barely grabbing the boy in time—it had all brought him back to a very dark place.
Milo pushed his wet nose into Adam’s palm and leaned against him, something the dog wasn’t supposed to do on the job. Adam didn’t correct him for it, didn’t have the heart. There hadn’t been much softness in Adam’s life, and even less affection, and though he didn’t yearn for either, something about the damn dog got to him every time. He looked down at Milo, who was panting happily up at him, his brown eyes clearly saying, Dude, concentrate! Food!
And Adam had to laugh. “Right. Food.” Always food. And proof that even a dog had better sense than to hang on to the negative shit.
They all headed back to Adam’s Polaris Ranger, a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle that could get them in and out of just about anywhere—at least until the heavy snows came. “Up,” Adam said to Milo, but the dog leaned on him again. Worried. And Adam realized the dog wasn’t fooled by Adam’s cool exterior but was picking up on his lingering anxiety. With a sigh, he crouched and hugged the dog. “I’m fine. You’re fine. We’re all fine. Now up.”
Milo leapt into the small backseat of the ATV and Adam angled in behind the wheel. With Kel riding rifle, they four-wheeled out of there. By the time Adam dropped Kel off at his station in their small hometown of Sunshine, the adrenaline was definitely wearing off. Pain was a dull ache in his shoulder, right behind his eyes, and in his heart, but he told himself to suck it up because at least this rescue had a happy ending.
A gust of wind brought in more icy rain, and the first few flakes of snow. Yesterday it had been sixty-five degrees. Today, snow. Welcome to early December at the base of the Bitterroot Mountains in Idaho. By the time he off-roaded to the property he owned with his brothers, the snow kicked up a little bit in intensity, the landscape going soft and white and quiet.
He loved quiet.
He pulled into Belle Haven, which spanned thirty acres and was big enough to house their large vet clinic and stable their horses. Having been gone two days, Adam needed to poke his head in the office to pick up his messages and check on things.
And then sleep.
With any luck Dell would’ve treated all his patients for the day and locked up by now so that Adam wouldn’t have to see anyone and talk about what had happened. Unfortunately, he’d run out of luck a long time ago. When he pulled into the lot, Dell’s truck was still there, next to Adam’s in fact, which was freshly washed and shiny clean as always.
Not Dell’s. Dell’s was covered in a fine layer of dust and filled with crap. Work equipment, sporting gear, yesterday’s fast-food lunch wrappings…It boggled Adam’s organized mind. But then again, Dell hadn’t gone into the military and had the discipline drilled into him. Dell, two years younger than Adam, had gone to vet school, and had gotten used to practically living out of his truck while trying to make it through. Old habits died hard.
Adam strode into the animal center, with Milo on his heels. Their reception area was large and airy, with wide planked wood floors lined with comfortable benches for waiting. At one end was a long counter, behind which was the hub of the entire place. Jade’s arena. Jade was their drill sergeant slash office manager and also Dell’s very significant other slash better half.
At the sight of him, she stood up, a strawberry blond pinup girl in eye-popping pink, phone in hand. Adam considered himself tough as hell and street-smart. Jade was both tougher and smarter than he, and most competent at running his world when he needed her to.
“He’s back,” she said into the receiver, no doubt reporting to Dell. Dropping the phone, she came around the counter, eyes on Milo, whom she crouched low to hug. “Hi there, handsome.”
“Right back atcha, beautiful,” Adam said.
This earned him a smile as Jade slipped Milo a dog cookie.
Milo snarfed it down and licked his chops, eyeing her hopefully for a second, even though he knew the rules. One cookie at a time.
A young cat sat on the counter next to the cookie jar. Beans ruled the place with the same fierceness Jade did.
Milo whined up at her. The pup wanted to be friends so bad he could taste it. But Beans eyed the dog with the same general disdain she held for the rest of the world before lifting a leg to wash her Lady Town with quiet dignity.
With a sigh for the lost cause, Milo plopped to the floor, head on his front paws, eyes soulful.
“So,” Jade said to Adam. “You look like hell. You need a cookie, too?”
“Need something.”
Her expression softened. “I have leftover chicken in the kitchen. I’ll make you a plate.” She grabbed his messages. “The IDRA called. They want to publish your latest article on S&R dog training.”
Adam was a certified instructor and evaluator for the Idaho Dog Rescue Association, both for handlers and dogs, and had provided much of the site’s public education content. “Tell them that’s fine.”
“Oh, and that reporter from the Coeur d’Alene Chronicle called—Cynthia Withers. She wants to know if you’ll pose in their annual Hot Outdoorsmen calendar this year. She said she asked you last year and you said—”
“Fuck no.”
Jade grinned. “Yeah, that. Shame, though. You could totally make the cover, especially with that two-day scruffy, smoldering glower you’ve got going on right now.”
Adam didn’t react to this. Reacting only gave Jade ammunition. But he did feel an eye twitch coming on to go with his headache.
“Damn, you’re no fun today.” Jade tossed that message to the trash and read the next one. “Oh, yeah. Liza Molan enjoyed your puppy training class so much that she wants private lessons this time. For herself, not her puppy,” Jade clarified, looking like she was thoroughly enjoying herself. “She said, and I quote, ‘You’re a most excellent master, and she’s most eager to be…mastered.’”
Yeah. A definite eye twitch. He gave Jade a long look, which didn’t bother her in the slightest.
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger,” she said. “You know damn well that you look like a fallen dark angel. The price for that, you poor, poor baby, is women wanting you. You ought to try dating some of them—that would scare them off in no time.”
Yeah, yeah, message received. But he wasn’t big on socializing and hadn’t been in a while. Watching half his unit be blown away in a war zone tended to do that to a person, he’d been assured. He’d get back on the bike soon. Things would get better. Time would heal all his wounds. Blah, blah, blah, he’d heard it all. Some of those old adages might actually be true, but most of the time it all felt like a load of bullshit to him.
Dell stepped out from the back, tailed by Gertie, his one-year-old, happy-go-lucky St. Bernard. “You tell him about the calendar offer?” Dell asked Jade.
“Uh-huh,” she said. “He says he can’t wait to pose.”
Adam shook his head at his brother. “Your woman thinks she’s funny.”
“Hey, I’m my own woman,” Jade said.
Gertie made a beeline for Adam, his welcome-home committee in a one-hundred-pound package of joy, exuberance, and slobber.
Adam held up a hand. Gertie, eager to obey him, skidded in her efforts to stop. She failed, and ran into Adam’s legs, nearly taking him out. Panting, Gertie regrouped and sat obediently, looking up at him in adoration.
Milo hadn’t left his position at Adam’s other side, his training too strong to break posture, but he stared at Gertie with the same love that Gertie lavished on Adam.
With a soft laugh, Adam crouched low and gave Gert a full body rub that had her falling bonelessly to the floor in ecstasy. “Come on, then,” he said to Milo, who happily joined the lovefest.
Beans looked unimpressed.
Dell extracted Adam’s messages from Jade, leaning in to nuzzle and then kiss her jaw as he did. She cupped his face and kissed him softly before heading to the back, her heels clicking as she left Dell and Adam alone.