He bent at the waist, gasping greedily for all the oxygen his lungs could wring from the thin air. His quads trembled. His calves burned. Sweat evaporated right out of his pores. He’d be dangerously depleted soon.
He stood up, arms thrown wide, staring out across the natural cauldron where the Afghani town below lay sprawled like lumpy brown fungus. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. He had achieved his goal.
Top of the world, Ma.
One second, silence in the narrow but familiar street of an Afghan village, interrupted only by his partner’s excited bark. The next, a consuming white-hot brilliance. Then the searing pain of a body on fire.
Someone was screaming. Echoing in his head the sounds he could no longer make. Where was his K-9 Scud?
Rifle fire and then a canine yelp of pain came from just above him. Scud! Scud was hurt! He tried to turn his head but the effort was too great.
He was shaking uncontrollably. Shock was setting in. He was trained to resist it. Must control that. But …
Can’t breathe. Can’t—
Lauray “Law” Battise jerked awake to the wettest kiss of his life. There was plenty of tongue and heated breathing and—um, she might have brushed first. Her breath was two Tic Tacs short of yummy. Well, hell. It was wartime. He needed release, anything to block out the memories. Resigned, he reached for his bed partner, already hoping his nightmare hadn’t preempted the possibility of a morning hard-on.
Instead of an armful of warm naked woman, he embraced a heavy muscular body encased in curly dense fur.
“What the fuck?”
Law opened his eyes and frowned down the length of his nose at his unwelcome bed companion. Sixty-five pounds of dog the color of a rusted-out car lay stretched out on top of him, her muzzle just touching his chin.
Even through the haze of his flashback, he knew the dog was evaluating his odor, teasing apart the cocktail of chemicals called pheromones, to test whether he was still in the throes of a full-blown episode.
Calm but alert, she licked at the sweat running from his chin whiskers down onto his throat then paused to gaze at him with golden-brown eyes of concern.
He pointed at the floor. “Heruntersteigen.”
She merely stared at him.
“Heruntersteig—” Oh, right. Civilian dog. She didn’t know German commands, the language of most military and civil law enforcement K-9s. This docile pooch only knew words like fetch, sit, heel, and go potty.
“Get down.”
She immediately did as he asked. But moved no farther away than the side of his bed, where she stared at him with soft doggy eyes.
Law sat up and stripped a hand down his face, wiping away the sweat of anxiety. The acrid smell of rocket propellant had yet to evaporate from his imagination. He flicked on the nightstand light as his gaze tracked the small perimeter of the hotel room for intruders. The action was so ingrained in his psyche that he wasn’t fully aware of it.
The room was empty. Even so, he was about to rise and double-check the door lock when the cell phone tucked under his pillow began to vibrate. He grabbed for it.
“Got yourself a dog?” His half sister Yardley’s voice was unmistakable.
Law’s eyes narrowed on the mix of golden retriever and poodle with a rusted-red coat, coal-black nose, floppy ears, and enormous curling tail. “What I’ve got here is a giant Cheez Doodle. Jesus. Who names a working dog Sa-man-tha!”
“Still having flashbacks?” Yardley Summers always cut to the heart of a matter.
Law didn’t lie. And he never backed down. His go-to response for any question he didn’t want to answer was silence.
“I’ll take that as a yes. We had a deal.”
“More like extortion.”
He grunted at the memory of his half sister arriving without warning at his door six months earlier. He’d just failed his law enforcement physical, for the second time. His prosthetic leg was good, but not hard-charging pursuit-and-apprehension-reliable enough to put him back on patrol with the Arkansas State Police. So he’d handed in his resignation. Instead of accepting it, his trooper sergeant had put him on extended leave and called Yardley, the only kin Law listed in his personal file.
“I didn’t ask for your help.”
“You were in no condition. I’ve never seen anything more pathetic than you drunk and drowning in self-pity.”
Law ground his teeth to keep silent.
After showing up on his doorstep, Yardley had cussed a blue streak as she’d bullied him into the shower then all but spoon-fed him her “special” homemade soup. She didn’t mention it contained a cocktail of all the meds he had been avoiding until he was cross-eyed and sliding out of his chair.
Three days later, when she was certain he was wide-awake and could function, she’d left behind a filled-out copy of an application for Warriors Wolf Pack. Attached was a note that said: Do this and I will do what you asked. That was six months ago. She hadn’t been in touch until now.
“You called at the ass crack of dawn for a reason, Yard?”
“I need to know that you’re taking this PTSD dog idea seriously.”