Primal Force (K-9 Rescue #3)
D. D. Ayres
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I took some liberties in this novel. The dog training program set in Arkansas that includes a component in a women’s correctional center is fictional. My inspiration for such a program came from Patriot Paws located in Rockwall, Texas. Patriot Paws is a not-for-profit agency that trains service dogs for vets. Their mission says it all: “… to train and provide service dogs of the highest quality at no cost to disabled American veterans and others with mobile disabilities and PTSD in order to help restore their physical and emotional independence.” Patriot Paws, and many other organizations like it, are providing a vital service to our veterans.
Thank you, Patriot Paws, for allowing me to ask a hundred questions, observe classes, and meet the wonderful staff: Lori, April, Jay, and all the others. You run a first-class operation with skill, heart, and generosity.
Thanks to my K-9 law enforcement expert for the entire series, Brad Thompson. A former senior handler and instructor/trainer of the Fort Worth PD K9 Unit, he’s currently assigned to the Special Investigations Unit, where he’s responsible for public integrity investigations, executive and dignitary protection and surveillance, and counter-surveillance activities.
As always, my editor Rose Hilliard. She sees no obstacles, only opportunities to make it better.
And my agent Denise Marcil. You’re the best!
PROLOGUE
“What the hell do you mean by calling me on this line?”
“Sorry, sir. I couldn’t get through on the other.”
“Hang up, dammit.”
“What’s wrong, dear?”
Harold Tice smiled at his wife, who had rolled over in bed to look at him. “Business. Always business.” He patted her thigh. “You go back to sleep. I’ll take this into my study.”
He checked to make certain he was on a secure line before returning the call from his desk phone. “Yeah?”
“There’s been an inquiry into one of those files you asked us to keep an eye on, sir. The military file on former U.S. Army Military Police criminal investigations 31D Special Agent Lauray Battise was pulled this week.”
“Who pulled it and why?”
“I didn’t get that information. Would you like me to look into it?”
“Don’t bother.”
After he hung up, Tice remained seated, drumming his fingers on his desktop. In Arkansas, the name Tice was synonymous with wealth and influence. If there was big money to be made, Tice Industries, a trucking and transportation company, usually had a cut of it. He wasn’t a sentimental man, or an idealist. He was hard-nosed and pragmatic. It was his job to keep the family company going, by whatever means necessary. Only two incidents, both occurring four years earlier, had threatened his turn at the helm. One was local, and had been resolved. The other had taken place half a world away.
Tice’s fingers paused in mid-drumming. The problem of MP Battise had been the more dangerous. Yet that incident had seemingly gone away after Battise was wounded in the field in Afghanistan. Lucky coincidence?
He’d never asked for the details. Even so, he had continued to keep an eye on mistakes that carried the potential for harm, however remote. The fact that someone was looking into Battise’s file could be nothing. More than likely was nothing. Better to do nothing. A man in his position couldn’t afford to be too curious.
“Are you coming back to bed?”
Tice looked up to find his wife in the doorway. “Will it be worth it?”
She smiled and whipped back her robe to flash him a leggy length of bare skin.
“In that case.” He stood up. “You warm up the sheets while I make one last call.”
When she had gone, he picked up the phone and dialed another number.
“I hear we have a wounded vet, a former U.S. Army criminal investigator named Lauray Battise, living in my son’s district. Might make for good PR. Find out where he is and what he does for a living.”
Enemies kept close. A man in his position couldn’t afford to be too careful, either.
CHAPTER ONE
He was running.
The best part of any day. Straight up a steep mountain incline. Knee lifts as important as footfalls. The jackhammer explosion of quads and calves propelled him off the ground and up the terrain in a zigzag pattern. One after the other, his boots hit the rocky earth, springing him forward, taking him higher.
His heart was pumping like a motor with a hemi attached. The sky above a pale-yellow dome of heat. The earth beneath him hard, desert dry, unforgiving.
It didn’t matter. He was almost there. Almost at the summit. The scraping of air in and out of his lungs was the end-all, be-all of the moment.
Finally, there was no more ground in front of him.