

# Waiting for Shadow

Tracking Jane, a prequel

Thank you for downloading this prequel to the _Tracking Jane_ series. Like many readers before you, I trust you will find this a terrific introduction to Jane's story. Before you get started, I wanted to highlight another story in this series, _Fleeting Shadow_ , which I offer as a _free gift exclusively_ to my mail list subscribers. To get it, join my reader's club.

Now, without further delay, I give you Waiting for Shadow.

_Waiting for Shadow_ **, Copyright © 2014, Eduardo Suastegui**

Published by Eduardo Suastegui, Smashwords edition, revision 1.21

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations in articles or reviews—without the permission in writing from its publisher, Eduardo Suastegui.

All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. The author is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

Published By Eduardo Suastegui

A _Voice of the Mute Tales_ production

http://eduardosuastegui.com

# Table of Contents

Waiting for Shadow

Table of Contents

A Quick Foreword

» Chapter 1 «

» Chapter 2 «

» Chapter 3 «

» Chapter 4 «

» Chapter 5 «

» Chapter 6 «

» Chapter 7 «

» Chapter 8 «

» Chapter 9 «

» Chapter 10 «

» Chapter 11 «

» Chapter 12 «

» Chapter 13 «

» Chapter 14 «

» Chapter 15 «

» Chapter 16 «

Staying in Touch

A Word from the Author

The "Our Cyber World" series

# A Quick Foreword

Before you get started, I wanted to quickly mention another story in this series, _Fleeting Shadow_ , which I offer as a _free gift exclusively_ to my mail list subscribers. To get it,  join my mail list today. Now, without further delay, I give you _Waiting for Shadow_.

## » Chapter 1 «

"Jane McMurtry," a baritone voice says.

I can't pin down why I don't respond. Maybe I'm getting back at them for confiscating my legs and parking me in this crowded waiting room. Here I sit with my pants cinched up at the knee so as to not embarrass me or make anyone uncomfortable at the sight of my chopped off knees.

"Major?" His voice turns sing-songy in that lovely African American way.

Maybe that's why I don't respond now. Not because of the way he's inflecting, but because I don't deserve that rank. Major. I was a Captain when the IED went off, and that's where it should have ended, like it did for the others.

His voice gets louder. "Major Jane McMurtry?"

Now I'm getting miffed. I'm on a chair. A regular chair. Not a wheelchair because they took it away after they rolled me in here. Because this is the VA and God forbid if they have enough wheelchairs to go around or care a darn about how getting left stranded makes you feel. I should have bounced and crawled my way out of here to prove I don't need them, their wheelchairs, their treatment, their prosthetics, none of it.

But without the legs I have no way of driving home. In spite of swinging moods and flashes of insanity, I still got it. Logic, the cruel kind that certifies I'm crippled, constrained, trapped, and most of all and as much as I may hate to admit it, dependent.

"Jane?" He steps into the room, folder under his arm, smile on his face, hands on the handles of a dingy wheelchair. Lionel's his name, I recall now. He's helped me before.

He scans the room and picks me out of the crowd, finally. "Hey, there you are."

"Not like I can go anywhere."

"Oh, you're going places, girl. Them sweet legs we's about to fit you with? You're gonna rock them."

I glare at him, but I can't keep it up for more than a second on account of his bright, wide smile. My lips break into a shallow smile of my own.

He comes closer. "Need some help?"

"I got it."

Except for one guy I reckon is strung out on a deep-hole drug cocktail, all heads and eyes have turned toward me. Let's see it now. How will the big ugly chick get into that wheelchair? Will we get a little show when she splatters on the floor?

"You sure?" Lionel asks.

"I got it."

I readjust my backpack, which I'm wearing backwards on my chest. With the one skill I mastered well and early, I grab onto the chair arm-rests, do a twist and spin, and drop with a flop onto the vinyl seat.

"There you go," Lionel says like I tricked out a slam dunk basket.

He swings me around and starts wheeling me back toward the entrance into the examining rooms.

I catch a glimpse of a gal giving me a thumbs up. "Good job," she tells me as I roll by her. "Thank you for your service."

Family member of someone getting treatment, no doubt. Too clean, too plump, too whole to have served and gotten chewed up in some way or another. All's she can say is _good job_ and _thank you for your service_. Well, what else can she say?

I nod and let her fall out of eye range, thankful when the door closes behind Lionel and me. On my rump I feel the vibration and rattling of the wheelchair. It will keep on rolling for a good while, if I recall where the fitting room sits, clear across the other side of the building.

"How was therapy?" Lionel says.

"A joy, as always."

He laughs. "I remember you."

"I'm sorry about that."

"Yeah, that sunny and dry sense of humor."

"That's me. Here to brighten up your day."

He chuckles. "Tha's all right. That grumpy thing ain't gonna last long. Because when you see these legs, when you walk on 'em, you're going to bust a move, girl."

I want to be angry at him, but I don't have it in me. With all the pain and shame he wheels around this place, probably getting paid barely above minimum wage, guys like him try their best to boost you as best they can. With a smile, with a strong helping hand, with respect, with genuine interest in how you're doing they make you feel like you ain't got it so bad.

"Bust a move, huh?"

"Tha's right."

"Are you asking me out on a dancing date, Lionel?"

"Oh, you wanna go clubbin' now? I get ya. Yeah, but I gotta say it. If you think them therapy sessions are tough, you ain't sweat nothin' until you gone dancing with Lionel."

I smile at that. It feels good to smile. "You give lessons?"

"Oh, yeah. I'll be your hip-hop coach. Hey! How's this for an idea? With all the press you been gettin', you could land yourself on Dancing with the Stars! Won't that be something?"

"Yeah, I bet I'd grab the sympathy vote, no problem."

"Hey, I'm serious, here. You could do it. Give you a goal, too. We all need us some goals and aspirations, right?"

"Right now I'd be happy to walk instead of waddle." I almost stop there, but because he cares, I go on to add, "I want to get back to tracking. Full time. Not just these little jobs I've been doing for my local police department, you know?"

"Hey, baby steps, girl. You doing it right, and you's doing fine."

"Did you see me on TV?"

"You mean 60 minutes?"

"Tick, tock, tick, tock."

"Sure did. Streamed it on the Internet. Nice story. Got you just right. You and your dog. What's her name?"

Shadow, I almost say. "Shady."

"Girl, right? Love that name. Shady. Not your common name. How did you come up with it?"

I sigh. We've turned, and at the end of the long hallway I see the large door that won't come soon enough. "Because Shadow felt like too much of a cliché."

"Hmm. Well, Jane. These legs we's about to give you, they're the sports model. You know what I'm sayin'? I see you and Shady doing your job no problem."

"Sure. Thanks." The way I say that must come across like a cold splash of water. Lionel stops talking.

He keeps rolling me until we get to the entryway, but we don't stop there. We turn right and head down a shorter, narrower corridor. I almost ask where we're going, but it don't much matter so long as we get this over with.

We stop a few feet from a door that seems of a different ilk. Heavier. Reinforced. A cipher lock to its right lights up red from each key. But Lionel doesn't type on it.

I crane my neck to look at him and see he's looking up. Tracing his gaze, I see a domed camera above the door. It blinks green with what looks like a moving laser point. I look back at Lionel to see he's standing real still. The door clicks. A hiss comes from inside, and the door starts swinging outward, its outer edge tracing along the yellow tape semicircle Lionel stayed clear of.

"Fancy," I say.

"Ain't it?"

We walk through. I squint to try and raise a recollection, but no, I'm darn sure I ain't come here before. Still, doubts remain. I've been drugged enough that maybe I came in here and wouldn't remember it even if in exchange for my recollection they promised to grow me some real legs and threw in a svelte fashion model figure for good measure.

"How are you, Jane?" The female voice comes from Dr. Hinckle. She's been treating me ever since I've had enough conscious awareness to notice who's peek-poking me.

I sit a little straighter in my chair. "I'm missing some legs."

"Well, I can assure you that's an extremely short-lived and temporary condition." She comes over with outstretched hand. We shake, and she adds. "They did explain why we needed them, right?"

"Can't say that they did." To tell it true, they might have said something I didn't quite catch in the middle of being peeved about going leg-less. "Just took 'em and slapped me on a chair in the waiting room."

"Oh, I'm sorry about that. How disconcerting for you." She looks down at her clipboard, checks something off before she levels her gaze back at me. "It saves time. We use your old legs to match up against the new ones while you wait your turn, and by the time you come in here, we have less to do."

"Hmm. You know what they say about efficiency?"

She smiles broadly with all the pleasant fakery she can toss my way. "What's that?"

"It's the hobgoblin of uncaring hearts."

Dr. Hinckle frowns at that, takes a few seconds to decode it, and then softens her expression. "Again, I'm sorry. It's just the process that we have to—"

"I waited for near an hour out there. What if nature called?"

"I'm sure someone would have helped." Her eyes open wider. "Do you need to go now?"

I shake my head.

An interior door clicks open with some more pressure differential hissing. Someone that seems familiar and two people I would prefer not to recognize walk in.

"Jane," Lieutenant Colonel Brady says.

I look from him to Dr. Taylor, my shrink, and the other guy I should recognize. I know him. I know I do. I know those wire rim glasses, I know those sharp, small blue eyes, and I've seen that long-ago receded, red-turning-to-white hair line.

"My, my. I get the full posse today," I say.

Behind me, Lionel snickers and stops right quick when Brady shoots him a terse look. While I try to project a casual air about it, I wonder why all the dignitaries have dropped in.

"Everyone's been talking about your great progress," Dr. Taylor says, eyeing Dr. Hinckle. The two of them smile and nod at each other. "We want to see for ourselves."

"See what? Me getting fitted for new legs? That sounds rather boring and below you all's pay grade."

Dr. Hinckle re-aims her perma-smile back at me. "The fitting will be minor. As I explained, by adjusting to your previous set of prosthetics, we'll minimize the tweaks we have to do now."

"Hmm. So everyone wants to see me walk." I look back at Lionel and throw my arms out. "Maybe do a little dancin' for you all."

Lionel lets out another short-lived snicker.

The guy I'm not recalling pulls up a stool and sits in front of me. "How's the pain been?"

"Who are you?"

He turns to glance at Dr. Taylor, then returns his attention to me. "I'm Dr. Sven. You can call me Rich. I'm the guy that operated on you."

"In Germany?" I ask, like I remember being in Germany from anything other than someone told me that's where I got sliced, diced and put back together.

"And here." He points at the floor, like he dropped me on that tiled slab and did me right there.

"Hmm. I'm sure it'll come back to me. Or not." After a moment's hesitation, I extend my hand. "Thank you, and nice to meet you on this side of sobriety."

His lips break into a soft, tentative smile, and he shakes my hand. "How's the pain?"

"I'm overdue for my pills, and it's beginning to poke me something fierce." I eye Brady. "But I've been trained well. Trained to plow through the pain." Which is how I make the two day drive down here from Colorado, I want to add, but I don't want to sound like a whiner.

"Well, let's put on your new prosthetics and see how we do," he says.

Last time, when I came for my now deprecated set of legs, they did the same thing. They told me no pain meds after breakfast, and didn't see me until after lunch. I remember them looking disappointed when they put on the legs, had me walk around the room, and when they asked me about the pain, I told them it was the same if not worse. Never figured out then what putting on new prosthetics has to do with pain. But I ain't no doctor, and besides, I had more important things to worry about, like where are them painkiller pills.

Dr. Sven waves at Lionel, and he goes over to my right. I see them there now, two pairs of legs. At first I surmise they're my old and new legs, but they all look newer and cleaner than what I came in wearing.

"We're going to have you try two sets of prosthetics," Dr. Sven explains. "See how they work. More than likely, we'll have you take both sets home, see how they work out."

I frown at him. "Ain't that a little heavy on the taxpayer's pocket?"

Sven gives me another of his soft smiles and waves at Lionel again. "I'll show you how to put them on."

Without asking for permission, he undoes the knots holding my cargo pants over my knees and rolls them up to expose my truncated knee joints. By now Lionel is handing him one of the legs. For her part, Dr. Taylor has taken a half step to her right. From there she gets a better view. In a second, her face tenses up with what looks like restrained regret. She's never seen my stumpy knees, I realize. Good for her, I guess. Maybe now she's gained another window into my psyche.

"These go on a little different," Dr. Hinckle is saying.

Dr. Sven's already rubbing some gel on my left knee, after which he slides a stretchy rubber sleeve onto it and secures the manmade joint brace. He repeats that for my right leg. When he's done, he feels around, checks everything. Then he stands and slides his stool out of the way.

"That's my cue, I take it?" I ask.

He nods.

I look over at Lionel and it comes back to me. Last time I got a new set of legs, he helped me up. Now he stands a good five feet away, making no effort to come near. He smiles at me.

"Go on," he says. "You can do it."

I look down and close my eyes. Can I? Can I stand up? Can I walk? I reopen my eyes and start unzipping my backpack to take out my walking sticks. Up to now, I've needed them to stay upright. They're the telescoping kind, real compact to carry, and with a certain cool factor a standard cane don't merit.

"Let's try it without those," Sven says.

I glare at him, angry that my eyes are starting to heat up and moisten. "No."

"OK," he says in a lower voice.

I take off my backpack and let it drop to my right. With a click-release, both sticks unfurl. I lean forward, and for a bit of ill-fated levity, I tap the sticks together, like I'm about to jump off the shoot to start a downhill ski race.

The thought jolts me. As I jam both sticks into the tile, a memory of me skiing down a powdered Colorado mountain comes pounding at me. How I'd like to do that again. I mean really do it, and not just on some bunny slope while fitted with some odd contraption.

After one deep breath, I push myself out of the chair and stand.

"How does it feel?" Dr. Hinckle asks. Her pen hand stands at the ready to check something off on that clipboard of hers.

"Wobbly. What else is new?"

"Ease off on the pressure you're putting on the sticks," Dr. Sven says. "Let your core and your legs do the work."

I close my eyes again and notice my breath's gotten shallow, like my lungs don't want to take in any more.

"Just relax," Sven says. "It's going to be OK."

I lean back at the waist to stand straight. The sticks come off the floor, and I feel myself teeter. But then, I self-correct. Without the sticks. It's an odd feeling. I can't tell if comes from the legs or somewhere inside me, my body adjusting to these new contraptions.

Sven's stretching out his hand. He's smiling. "I'll take those now."

"No." My voice sounds hoarse, strained, like a frightened dog that barks once or twice to tell you he ain't comfortable with what you're asking him to do.

"OK," he says, withdrawing his hand to fold his arms across his chest. "Your way then. Take a lap around the room."

My eyes land on Dr. Taylor's. She doesn't much care about my legs. She's here to see how what bobs above my shoulders reacts to this slice of trauma. She wants to see how her patient handles stress, make sure she's not giving up on life.

"Perhaps we should do it on the treadmill," Dr. Hinckle says. I know what she means. The treadmill comes with side handle bars I can use to catch myself from falling. It also pads your fall should you crumble into a heap.

"Here's fine," Dr. Sven says. "Go on, Jane. You can do this."

Lionel comes over to me. "I won't let you fall. Do like the doc says, and I'll be right next to you."

I look into his dark brown face and his gleaming eyes, and somehow that gets me unstuck. "Thanks." I swallow. And I start walking.

I go three steps and I stop. "Whoa."

Dr. Sven is grinning, his soft smile long gone. "Go on. Keep going."

I restart. At first I lean into the walking sticks with each step, but eventually, as I quicken my step, I only tap them more lightly, until eventually they're not doing anything other than keeping my arms moving.

Sven meets me at the end of a full loop around the room. He stretches out his hand again. I hand him the sticks.

With a quick turn, I start walking. It feels odd, not graceful at all, but this represents a big change. Big. I'm walking. Not waddling. Wobbling a bit, for sure, but not waddling. Not sliding my feet. Not grabbing at walls and door frames to hold myself up. It almost feels normal, a strange mix of normal and odd, actually.

I feel myself teeter again, and I put my hands out. Something tells me to keep believing, to not look down and doubt, like Peter before he sank into the waves.

"Nice, nice, nice," Lionel is saying.

I do one more loop around the room. To convince myself, I go around again. As I complete my circuit, everyone is cheering in their own way. Dr. Taylor's clapping, even.

Dr. Sven taps on the stool for me to sit. In another couple of minutes, he's got my legs off and is putting on the other pair. I feel something taking off inside me. Hope. I'm dreaming up all the possibilities, all the things I can do now.

I barely hear Dr. Sven explaining that this next set will work best for strenuous physical activities, like exercise, or hiking, whereas the other ones are slated for everyday use, more comfortable for sitting, driving and such. When he finishes putting them on, he offers me his hands to help me get up. Once I stand, he lets me go.

"These may feel a little stiffer at first," he says. "Like the suspension of a sports car." He smiles at that.

His assessment proves true. Motion doesn't come as smooth with these. At first I wish I had the walking sticks with me, but I adjust. Well, to tell it true, I can't say that I adjust. Something does. And I walk, like a real person. Alright, maybe one with very stiff joints and sore muscles.

"OK, then," Dr. Sven says. "Let's take them for a spin."

"The belt?" I ask.

"The treadmill," Dr. Hinckle says.

We go through the door that ushered Dr. Sven, Brady and Dr. Taylor into the room. I don't recall this next room either, but I do recognize what stands before me. The machine where so many of my torture sessions masquerading as physical therapy took place. The rubber mesh surface where I fell and scraped my elbows time and time again.

The belt, we call it, me and a couple of other vets who've had the pleasure to suffer on it. The belt, short for conveyor belt because long and wide, it resembles that sort of factory apparatus. Ten more of those, I joked once, and they can shoot us right into the crematorium when we fall dead.

"You're going to own that thing this time," Lionel says in a husky, hushed voice. "You're gonna rock it."

"Yeah, maybe," I reply. As I walk toward it, I'm rubbing my elbows.

## » Chapter 2 «

"You did fantastic," Dr. Taylor is telling me inside this office of hers, with its soothing earth tones, ample book cases, and a wall plastered with her degrees and awards.

I'm staring at the window. We're at Lackland Air Force Base now, an hour removed from the hospital after enduring another bout of stumbling and falling on the dreaded belt. The thought of it makes me rub my elbows, even if neither of them suffered much banging or scraping.

"Setbacks are part of moving forward," Taylor says. "You know that, right? It's how we find the way we need to go—"

"By finding the obstacles we need to go around," I interrupt, my voice sounding to me like I'm chanting what she's told me on several occasions. My voice comes out dull, on the edge of droning, probably from all the pills I swallowed before they drove me here.

"That's right," she says, her own voice turning a tad more cheery.

"I'm really tired," I say. "Can we cut this short today?"

"Sure. We won't need to go heavy today."

By that I'm hoping she means none of that regression therapy we've been doing the last two sessions. Maybe today I won't have to relive _the incident_.

"We just need to go through a couple of things," she adds.

"Like?"

"We've been considering what you said last time. How hard it is for you to drive once a week from Ft. Collins. I'm especially concerned about you driving with pain medication in your system, even if your dosage is lighter now, or if you avoid it during the drive itself."

"Uh-huh." I sit up a little straighter, trying to come across nonchalant, but not disengaged. "So you're cutting back my sessions, then?"

"If you agreed to take anti-depressant medication—"

"Ain't going there."

"That's your choice, yes. And you seem to be doing OK, so I'm OK with it, too. With reservations, and so long as we keep an eye on things. Which means we can't cut back on your sessions."

She reaches into her folder and takes out a piece of paper with a business card attached. With a smooth gesture, she slides it across the table.

I scowl at it and take it with a measure of reluctance. "What's this?"

"A recommendation. She's in private practice now, but she and a colleague of mine served together. She's local to you. Has her practice in Ft. Collins."

"Uh-huh."

"You would see her twice per week—"

"Twice a week?"

"That's the proposed arrangement, yes. You see her twice per week, and you only come to see us when you have reservist duty."

I go to object some more. But my mind switches over to calculator mode and cha-chings with all manner of cash and time I will save by not driving from Colorado to Texas once a week. Over the last year, my finances have degraded with a looming property tax bill a couple of months away. Saving on gas won't close the full gap, but it can't hurt. More than that, not having to endure Dr. Taylor except for once every six weeks also smacks me as a winsome improvement.

"What if I have a job?" I ask. "With travel?" I say this mostly as a throw-away objection, one that I know won't stick around for long. To tell it true, I don't get many jobs, much less the kind that requires travel spanning more than two, three hours tops.

She gives me a no-big-deal hand wave. "We can pre-coordinate exceptions and schedule make-up sessions."

The business card trembles in my fingers when I unclip it from the piece of paper. "Martha. I had a friend in elementary school called Martha. That was back in Wyoming, though. I always liked her name. Has a better ring to it than Janet or Jane, don't you think?"

"Good Bible name."

I look up and catch her grinning at me. She's never had much use for my Southern Baptist upbringing, except when convenient to stick it in me like a pacifier to a wailing baby.

"That it is," I say.

Dr. Taylor smiles. "I take it the arrangement seems reasonable to you?"

"I suppose so."

"We will request that you sign a release so that Martha can share your records with us."

I nod. "Sure. I'm an open book."

"You will refrain from discussing classified details with her, of course."

Some more nodding. "My lips won't sink no ships." I look up. "We done?"

"One more thing."

"Let's shoot it and skin it, then."

She pauses for a second to decipher my meaning, dropping it off with a shake of the head. "We're a little concerned about how hard you're pushing to bring Shadow home."

"You should be glad. It gives me a purpose, don't it? Like you've told me plenty, something to strive for."

"I suppose that's one way to look at it. But the odds are against it. You know that."

"You mean about them letting him come home?"

She pauses to page through her file, but I know she's not doing it for the sake of extracting useful information. She looks up. "I don't want you to get hurt."

I stop short of saying something clever. More like something strangles my throat. Though I know she's right, I want to believe someone's gonna come to their senses and relent. The hope of seeing Shadow again has given me one of the few bright spots in my glum and gloom life.

With a shrug, I gather myself. "Brady and I are talking about that in an hour."

"The Colonel has been doing all he can."

"I'm sure he has."

"But there's only so much—"

"Got it. We done?"

Dr. Taylor closes her folder and beams out a Colgate smile in my direction. "Take care, Jane. We're all rooting for you."

By the time I reach the kennel where Shady has spent most of her day inside a big cage, she's furious with me. I can tell by the way she whines, all huffy and angry like. I bend down as much as I can with these new legs and do my best to make up with some petting and reassurance.

"From now on, we ain't coming here as often," I tell her. "Once every six weeks."

Whether I make myself believe it, or whether she actually reacts that way, I cannot tell, but she seems to take to the news with some gladness. She calms down, too, so I don't have to grab her collar and wrestle her in place to clip on her leash. But as soon as we leave the pen, something catches her attention, and she lurches forward. I near go tumbling down, catching my balance by the slimmest of margins.

"Shady, _Pfallow,_ " I say, giving her the heel command in Dutch, the language inculcated into her during her training, even if sometimes it seems like she'd rather speak Chinese.

Like now, when she gives me the briefest over the shoulder looks before she starts a'pulling at the leash and lunging toward a nearby runway.

I don't give an inch and stay put. " _Sit._ "

That brings another over the shoulder look, longer and imploring this time, giving me also one of her plaintiff whimpers.

I hear what she heard before me, the rumbling of an airplane in the sky. Shady and I walk up to a chain link fence and watch the approach from there. She sits at attention, like she knows someone inside that plane.

Could it be?

More imaginings, my mind playing cruel tricks on me. And also on Shady's, I suppose. Her ears may hear more than mine, but no way she can scent him in that plane. No way Shadow's coming home today. Yet, here I stand, waiting, hoping, and torturing myself.

The sun's setting in the west as the C-17 parks no more than half a football field away from us. We only catch silhouettes exiting down the lowered ramp. Soldiers come out lugging their long, thick, heavy bags and weapon cases. Shady whimpers some more when two dogs exit with their handlers.

It's funny how the mind wants to force reality into place, how it strains to recognize what ain't there. No, neither of them is Shadow. Wrong size. Wrong shape. Wrong breed. Two Dutch Shepherds, I decide, even though I can only see their slim profiles against the sunset's orange bloom.

Shady pulls on the leash again, gentler this time, but still insistent, like she wants to go meet them. They're heading our way and will walk past us on the way to the pen in a few seconds.

"No one we know, Shady."

She whimpers.

The handlers spot us. One of them, a short woman, gestures to the other one to go on. She and her dog turn to come see us on this side of the fence. She tells me her name. I never register it, paying more attention to her dog, congratulating myself at guessing the breed right. For a few minutes I allow myself to pet his blotchy, almost spotted brown-black coat. Shady and he do the snout-to-tail introductions.

I shake hands with the woman, a Lieutenant, Hispanic from the looks of her. After a couple of awkward comments that suggest she's heard of my exploits, she resumes her walk to the pen.

I watch her walk away. For a moment I wish I were her, whole, walking normal, leading my dog to the pen. Healthy and strong, ready for another mission, and so on, whatever and whichever.

I sniff and blink my eyes before they turn tearful on me.

"Come on." I tug on Shady's leash, and she responds, though as we walk away, she keeps looking back toward the dogs and their handlers.

"We got one more thing to take care of today," I tell her. "Then we head home."

She livens up at that, and I realize she feels as uncomfortable here as I do sometimes. As I do now, having seen those soldiers returning the way I couldn't the last time I came home.

Commanding officers like to keep you waiting. It's one perk they cash in often. Their time is more valuable than yours, so you sit and wait. Lieutenant Colonel Brady seems particularly adept at that. He makes me wait now in the lobby by his office while he takes care of some call, if his exec tells it true. As I check my watch for the fifth time, I imagine him inside his office, smoking one of them cigars he keeps in a Spanish cedar box atop his desk.

I smell no smoke when his exec ushers me into his office. Shady stays outside, on a leash secured around the exec's desk leg because if left untethered, she'll probably go chasing that cute Dutch Shepherd she flirted with a few minutes ago.

"Jane, have a seat."

"You sound chipper."

"Why shouldn't I? Hell of a good day so far, wouldn't you say?"

"Glad you feel that way."

"What? Not excited about the way you're walking?"

His question shames me some. Shouldn't I be glad about my new legs? Shouldn't I express some sort of gratitude about the way I can walk in them?

"They're nice."

"Nice? You kidding? I haven't seen you move like that since—" He cuts himself off and clears his throat. "Just got off the phone with Lieutenant Godinez. Says you two just met."

"Hispanic gal? Yeah. Saw her deplaning and such."

"Rising star that one. Fast burner. Best soldier I've met even if she's Air Force."

"Hmm," I say somewhat ashamed that in addition to not getting her name, I didn't note her uniform either.

"Gals like her could use mentors."

"Hmm." This time I feel no shame, only regret this conversation's headed toward ground Brady and I have already covered and which I much rather not revisit.

He drums on the table with his thick fingers. "Have you given any more thought to what we talked about a couple of weeks ago?"

"Can't say as I have."

"Don't you want to do more than come in every six weeks to brush the dogs, give them baths and run 'em through a couple of drills?"

Here I could tell him I don't have the desire to come back to my old job or some semblance thereof. I don't need the grief, nor the responsibility. I also don't want to do any more around this place than I have to.

Yeah, that's what I could say, but instead I sputter with, "I need more time."

"To think about it, or—"

"To get over being blown apart."

He nods at that. "How's it going back at the ranch?"

By that he means, how's my never-been-started business getting off the ground. By now I'm supposed to have a few dogs, and I'm supposed to be training them for police and security work. That's what the business plan I've never actually written down says. Or wants to say. But it's hard to start a business when most mornings getting out of bed and brewing yourself a pot of coffee strikes you as all the accomplishment you can muster.

"It's going," I reply.

He nods some more. "If you're not going to help us here, you should get going on your business."

"What's the word on Shadow?" I ask.

He reaches into his cedar box and pulls out a cigar. "Paperwork's gone all the way through."

"And?"

"We wait."

He reaches in his desk and pulls out a large manila envelope and a small box.

"Jewelry, for me?" It takes me a few seconds to decipher what kind of box he's handing me.

He pushes it across the desk and sets the envelope by it. "I said I'd make sure you got it."

I make a point to draw my eyes away from it. "So nothing on Shadow yet."

"You should take this." He takes another box, almost identical to the first, and slides it across the desk.

I stand up. "Maybe they're safer with you. In fact, I know they are."

He reaches across and with his forearm and hand sweeps them off the desk. They drop into the top drawer with a thud. He looks down at it before he closes it, then leans back in his tall leather chair, intertwines his fingers and looks up at me.

"Don't go do nothing to make me worry about you, Jane."

"I think you already worry plenty on my account." I stuff down other less kind things I want to say. "And on good days, I appreciate it."

He nods and purses his lips, like he doesn't quite know what to say to that. Finally, he stands, more or less at attention, with fisted hands on his hips.

"Promise me something, Jane."

"Shoot."

"When opportunity comes, grab it."

"I'll keep that under advisement."

"You take care now. Drive safe."

"Will do, sir."

On the way out, Shady and I make it around the long way and come to stop by the runway. I curl my fingers through the chain link fence and stand in silence. The last of the western light has ebbed into a bright darkness, or maybe it's the nearby lights gone bright that fool my eye. The C-17 sits there, its ramp now closed, its shape casting a looming shadow that runs away from me.

"One day you'll get off that plane, boy." I breathe the words out like a whispered prayer I hope Shadow can hear. Though I think it, I leave the rest of the prayer unsaid, the part that hopes I can hold myself together until he comes. I stay there, quiet and reflecting for a couple of minutes before we turn to go.

Back at the car I see I have a voicemail from my friend Allison. I don't check it and call her instead.

"The police chief's been trying to get a hold of you," she tells me.

"Vance?"

"Yeah. Says he's left a bunch of texts on your cell."

"Been busy all day."

"Everything OK?"

"Got some new legs. Been getting acquainted and all."

"Better than the last set? How's your mobility with them?"

"Improved."

"That's great, Jane. Maybe they'll come in handy sooner than you think."

"Meaning?"

"Talk to the chief. I think he has a job for you." She pauses, and though I can't see her, I sense the same sort of hesitation she shows when she wants to say something she's unsure I'll take well. "Search and rescue. A couple of missing teenagers. Down in Louisville."

"Louisville?"

"Just east of Boulder. Next town over, I think."

"It'll take me fourteen to sixteen hours to get there if I punch it non-stop."

"Don't over-push it. They've been at it since noon today without any luck."

"All the more reason to get there on the double." I say that like an expert, when I can only claim having read a few articles about how trails grow cold after the first forty-eight to seventy-two hours.

"Sure, whatever. Just talk to the chief."

We hang up, and I start driving. On the way out I go through a drive-through and feed myself. Before I drive away, I drop a couple of handfuls of kibble for Shady into a bowl on the floor behind the passenger seat.

I call the Ft. Collins police chief once I hit the highway. None too pleased that I've waited all day to call and have caught him in the middle of his Monday night football game, he gives me the rundown. From his explanation, it sounds like the kind of opportunity Brady counseled me to grab.

## » Chapter 3 «

I don't get a warm welcome upon my arrival, a few minutes north of nine in the morning, fifteen hours after I drove out of Lackland. Along the way I've stopped a couple of times, like the doctors instructed, and taken short, quick walks around the car. Shady, all too glad to get out of the back seat, has welcomed the interruptions.

Stops notwithstanding, I've made good time, even if my butt and lower back still smart sore from all the sitting. As I get out of the car, however, and reach in the back to leash Shady and let her out, I note that my pain, hip and lower back included, is more or less gone. I haven't taken a pill since... Since the hospital. I chalk it up to numbness after the long drive and direct my attention to the officer that's approaching me.

"You got here quick," he says. "We talked on the phone?"

"Oh, yeah. Detective Linder, right?"

"You can call me Ron."

A quick scan around as we approach the command center—that's how it looks, one big command and control center, complete with comm dishes—and I admit I'm seeing a lot more than I expected.

"What's with all the FBI jackets?" I ask.

"They're thinking it's a kidnapping." He leans in as we walk and lowers his voice. "Dad of the kids is some mucky-mock executive with defense industry and D.C. connections. He raised the red flag, and all hell broke loose."

"Red flag?"

"He called a friend that called an associate. You know how it goes."

I want to ask more questions, like what grounds they have for thinking this is a kidnapping. But what good would it do? I'm here to do my pal the chief of police from up north a favor, and pick up a check, like he implied I would when we talked on the phone. I ain't got no investigative training, and I'm not law enforcement of any kind whatsoever. So staying in my lane is what I aim on doing. Tell the dog what to do, find the prize, let the smart guys handle the rest.

"You got what I need to start tracking?" I ask him as we approach a line of yellow tape.

He nods and is about to say something when someone shouts, "Great, another dog." I catch the skeptic in time to see him turning to someone else, an older man that stands with a beer belly in full-on third trimester to signify he's in charge.

"Do we really need another dog, chief?" the first guy, a younger muscular type is asking.

"Major McMurtry?" the chief says.

"Yes, sir."

"You come highly recommended. Vance tells me your dog has the most perceptive olfactory skills he's ever seen."

I shrug. "It could be that Vance ain't seen much."

He grins at that. "True enough. Still, he tells me you've assisted him on a couple of cases."

"That I have." I choose to leave it at that, electing not to mention they were simple, around-the-block-walk affairs to find a hidden perp or a gun stash.

"I'm hoping you can help us today."

"Looks like you've lost control of the scene, though."

"Them?" He aims his thumb at the FBI jackets and suits. "They're here to assist." He tries to puff out his chest, but his beer belly breaks the tape first. "I still got point."

"Alrighty, then. Let's have the scent and get after it."

"Well." His chest deflates. His belly not so much, though it droops some. "The FBI is chasing a lead right now. They don't want us out searching just yet. Maybe later this morning, probably early afternoon."

"I see." I look around, taking in more of my surroundings than when I first drove into the park.

"You've been driving all night," the chief says. "Take a load off. We'll call you when we're ready."

I nod. Taking Shady by the leash, I walk us away from the yellow tape. I am tired. I want to sit down, maybe lay down and catch a short nap. But I survey the grounds instead.

More familiar with Boulder, which I've visited a couple of times, I can't say the same about Louisville, a suburb nestled along highway 36, south-east of its bigger sister town. Looking around this park and knowing that neighborhoods bound and surround it, I'm figuratively scratching my head as to how someone can go missing here and why a search party can't find them over the span of almost twenty-four hours. Maybe if we were standing somewhere around the Flatirons area to the south-west then I would have more reason to think someone got lost in the wilderness. This here ain't no wilderness, and as I think more about it, manmade reasons for going missing, like kidnapping, seem a far more likely scenario.

That gets me to start thinking I have little to do here. Maybe track a quarter of a mile or so until we reach the place where those kids got shoved into a car, by now long gone.

"Coffee?" a female voice says behind me.

I turn to find a thin blond gal, tall, though not near my height, dressed in a thick canvas shirt that dances above baggy jeans and low top hiking shoes. Though I try not to fixate on it, my eyes land on the tattooed hand that holds out the cup she's offering me. It portrays a circle of two snakes chomping on each other's tails.

"Cream only," she says. With a grin she adds, "I hear that's how you like it."

I take the cup. "And who, if I may know, has been doing all this research on me?"

"Candice." She stretches out the same hand that a second ago held my cup.

We shake hands, and she adds, "I'm a blogger. Covering this thing and that. Heard you were coming. Decided it might be interesting to see you and your dog showing off all these law enforcement types and their fat dogs." She takes a sip from her own cup. "I saw you on 60 Minutes."

"Hmm. For all of ten seconds."

"The best ten seconds in the whole piece, if you ask me."

"You think so?"

"Heck, yeah."

"Hmm. Do a lot of people ask you? About what makes a network piece good, I mean?"

She shrugs. "That snippet may not seem like much. But it's something solid to build on."

"To build what?"

"Your brand."

"My brand."

"You betcha." She points at a row of news vans parked to the side. "Get yourself known as the one that cracks this case, slap that on top of that 60 Minutes piece, and you'll establish name recognition."

"My brand."

"Heck, yeah, your brand. War veteran, separated from the dog she trained and served with. Now home, rebuilding her life. Doing what she does best. Still serving. Boom."

"Boom. My brand."

"Mm-hmm"

"I ain't a brand, Candice. I'm a person."

"Straight up, yeah, you're a person. A special person. A unique person. Your brand flows directly from that uniqueness no one else can replicate. Identify that, build it, and you got something going."

"OK, great. Thanks for the coffee and all but—"

"You see that RV over there. Big thing? Shiny? Expensive?"

I look in the direction she's pointing and see it for the first time, further confirmation of my deficient observational skills. "Yeah."

"Devon Smith. Father of the missing kids. Came out here last night, wife in tow, parked it, won't go anywhere until his kids are found. Lots of buzz building around that. Know why?"

I almost regurgitate what Linder told me earlier. _Dad of the kids is some mucky-mock executive with defense industry and D.C. connections._ I don't because that may be what Candice is after, confirmation for some story she's running on her blog.

"I'm sure you can tell me," I reply.

"Deeply and heavily connected. High up connections. Do you get what I'm saying?"

I shrug. "Yeah, maybe."

"The press is going to latch on to this. They'll turn it into far more than a local story. Get yourself inside the camera field of view, and boom."

I turn away, not at all troubled at failing to conceal my annoyance. She lets me do that, waiting until I face her again.

I raise the cup, sip from it, and lick my lips for good measure. "Again, much obliged for the coffee."

She reaches into her shirt pocket and takes out a business card. "Cell phone, email and website. All there. Contact me when you decide this is something you'd like to pursue."

"When. You make it sound kind of irresistible."

"Heck yeah, _when_. Your bursting into the scene is inevitable. All you need is a little assist and—"

"Buzz. Boom. Got it."

She grins and winks at me. "Think it over. It's the way things work now in this fast moving social media age." She takes a couple of steps before she turns. "Oh, and it was more than ten seconds."

"Huh?"

"Your 60 Minutes appearance. Counting the voiceover narrative, it clocked at two minutes and forty-six seconds. All of it solid gold, highly positive and dare I say, inspirational. Yeah. Boom waiting to happen."

Shady and I watch her walk away before we find a park bench for me to sit on and her to hop on. Around us the grass is wet, and she much prefers flopping herself down on the cold concrete table top.

I sip from the coffee some and pull out my cellphone. What did Candice say his name was? Right, Devon Smith. I type that in the Google search screen. Boom, the links come back, including a profile on some investment site. Since everyone claims he's rich, I pull that up. Yup, there it is, "prominent investor in Boeing and Raytheon." Numbers and figures follow, and I skip them. Toward the bottom of the page I find a short little paragraph noting he recently launched a start-up "for Pharmaceuticals and Medical application technologies."

Energetix, that's the name of the company. No idea why, but that sounds familiar. I follow the link to it. They do research into spinal injury therapies. They make prosthetics.

I get up. I look around and go to the other side of the table, the one away from the crowd. I pull up my pants. It takes me a second to find it by feeling around along the leg's fake skin. In this new set of prosthetics, the logo has relocated to a new spot, just above the outer ankle. It's subtle, almost brail like, embossed into the skin lookalike surface. I angle my leg so it catches in the morning sunlight.

Energetix.

Growing up my mom drilled into me that there ain't no such thing as coincidence. Everything happens according to a master plan. By which she meant God's master plan, what else. Lately I haven't taken to that concept with too much favor. I ain't seen evidence of much master planning in what's happened to me, the way my life has unraveled, the way it spins me in uncertainty, the way it keeps fraying at the edges with more threads to pull.

Still, her words ring in my head. There ain't no such thing as coincidence.

Glancing down at my ankle again, it starts to make some sense why I got all them VIPs coming to see me test-drive my new legs. As I lower my pant leg, I can't help but wonder whose master plan I'm swirling in at the moment.

## » Chapter 4 «

"Nothing fancy, Allison. Just ask around. Do your doctor research."

"I'm a Veterinary doctor, Jane. I don't have access to—"

"Yes, you do have access to information. Like the time you looked into what drugs they were prescribing for me."

"That's different. Many of the drugs I use share commonalities with FDA approved drugs. That's a shared database. Here you're asking about something quite different."

"You're at the University, right? You use their lab, same lab medical students and professors use." I lower my voice, taking a peek over my shoulder to make sure no one's listening in. Around the area cordoned with yellow tape, much of the same goes on as it did before I called Allison. A lot of gesticulating and finger pointing, and not much else. "All I'm asking is for you to ask around. See what people know."

She lets out a long sigh. "Fine."

"I'll make you dinner?"

"I'm trying to lose weight."

"Are you implying my All American home cookin' ain't conducive to a nice figure and good health?"

"I'm not implying anything. I don't have to."

"Fine, I'll make you a salad. All the lettuce and spinach you can eat."

Another sigh. "I'll see what I can do. See who if anyone knows anything."

"Much appreciated."

"How are you doing?"

"OK." I stop there, before she forgets how she's just a Veterinarian and starts monitoring my health again.

"Still doing good with your new legs?"

"Pretty good."

"You're not on your pills, are you?"

"You know I can't drive with them."

"That's a long drive—"

"It hurt like hell on the way down, but coming up, not so much?"

"Really? Hmm. That's so good to hear, Jane."

"And I think it has something to do with the legs. Maybe they balance me better, you know. Less stress. Not sure how that works out or solves things when I'm sitting for twelve hours straight. But there you have it."

"No, that's great. Everything's connected, you know?"

Yeah, she's told me. Except I stopped being connected from the knees down about a year ago. I've lost a lot of other connections since then, too, the invisible kind.

I look over my shoulder and see Detective Linder coming for me, waving his arms to get my attention.

"Gotta go."

"OK, I'll text you if I have anything."

Devon Smith's RV strikes me as more spacious inside than it seemed outside. As I enter it, I get the impression that here resides the real seat of power for this operation, command central out there notwithstanding.

After some hemming and hawing, they let me bring Shady in with me. I wasn't keen on leaving her outside getting all riled up at the ongoing commotion. In here, I find her a spot under a table, and I command her to go in there and make a den of it. She lays down and looks up at me from a head resting on the floor between her two front paws.

At the moment, Mr. Smith and his wife are speaking to each other in hushed tones within earshot of an FBI suit that does his best to conceal his eavesdropping but whose stealth don't fool me none. I'm reading between the lines here, but I'm connecting this with stories I've read about these tricky kidnapping situations. I'm recalling how law enforcement ends up managing family members as much as they try to handle the perpetrators, especially once a ransom call comes in. Speaking of which, I wonder whether anyone's asked for ransom yet, and if so, with what kind of figure, though I bet dear Dad won't have much trouble raising the required funds.

Husband and wife conclude their kibitzing, and Devon Smith looks right up at me.

"Ms. McMurtry, please—" He cuts himself short, raises an index finger. "My apologies. Major McMurtry."

I go over. "No offense taken. To tell it true, I might as well consider Ms. or Mrs. as the higher rank."

Smith smiles as he stands to extend a hand. I return the gesture and slide over to do the same with his wife. But she's looking out the window, up at the sky, her eyes shimmering with tears and zoned out.

"I understand you have some reservations about me tracking your son and daughter," I say.

"We're in a delicate situation. On the one hand we need to do everything we can. On the other, I fear if we're detected getting too close..." He looks over at his wife and turns back to me with a grimace. "You understand."

"Hmm. I'm afraid that's too much reading between the lines for me."

Now he exchanges a quick glance with Mr. FBI before he replies. "We don't want the perpetrators to know we're getting close."

"You think a chunky gal with a big dog ain't the most subtle way to search for your son and daughter."

"We don't think there will be much payoff. The police already tried their dogs. They didn't find anything. That was before we had..." His Adam's apple bobs up and down. "Before we had reason to believe we're being watched."

"I see."

Up to this point Mr. FBI has stood to the side. He edges closer to say, "We'd like you to do your search discretely."

"Covertly, you mean."

He nods. "Yes."

"I thought you said dogs won't help much."

"That's the story we'll put out when you leave," Smith says.

"When I leave."

Mr. FBI takes over. "Yes, we'll tell the TV crews that we brought you in, but in the end there wasn't much you could do. A cover story. You know about cover stories, don't you Major?"

So he knows about me, I gather. He knows about my past and its array of cover stories. Did I get roped into this because of that? In spite of it? Don't much matter. One way or the other, I'm getting an inkling I don't belong here, or that if I do, I don't want to.

I look around the table and notice Mrs. Smith is looking at me. Our eyes lock. Looking back I'll admit that moment, what I see in her eyes gives me the only reason not to do what every other part of me wants to do. Which is to run out of there. Yeah, don't I wish I could stand up, take Shady, get in my 4Runner and drive the rest of the way home to knock myself out with pain and sleeping pills.

Still looking into Mrs. Smith's watery eyes, I say, "Yeah, I'm afraid I do know all about fancy cover stories." I aim a hard gaze back at Mr. FBI. "You know the thing about covers? You best not share them. Someone always pulls them away from you if you get too warm and comfy under them."

"I'm afraid I don't follow your meaning," Devon Smith says.

I shrug. "It ain't important. We were talking about how you wanted me to leave. Illumine me as to what comes after that."

"It may require a long walk," Mr. FBI says. "Are you up for that?"

"I have reason to believe Major McMurtry has experienced significant improvements in her ability to walk of late," Mr. Smith says.

"Have I, now? And how would you know that, given doctor-patient privilege, patient privacy and all?"

"I watched you walk up to the RV." A faint smile bends his lips. "You seem to be doing quite well."

"Why, thank you."

"No, thank you, Major. Thank you for all you've done for our country. Thank you for enduring the pain that your service required of you." He leans forward to rest his weight on his elbows. "The least your country can do is help you get on with your life, with quality of life, not just quantity of years."

He leaves it there, and as we look into each other's eyes, we each know the other grasps what remains unsaid. Namely how his company is helping further that quality of life for soldiers like me. In my eyes I hope he sees how I appreciate that this lines his pockets and balloons his bank statements just fine, too.

"Thank you for what you're doing now to find my son and my daughter," he adds.

Over the next few minutes, Mr. FBI sheds light on what exactly I must do to deepen Devon Smith's gratitude. They hand me a blouse, highly perfumed.

Mrs. Smith also slides a boy's shirt to me.

With my eyes on her, I sniff at the blouse. "Same one the other dogs scented?"

"Yes," Devon Smith says. The FBI Agent nods at me as well.

"Lotta perfume on here. She usually wear this much?"

The mom gives me three short nods and drops her head.

"Even when going out for a hike?"

She looks up at me again. Doubt clouds her eyes.

I try my best not to make her feel stupid. "Sometimes dogs can confuse perfume with other natural scents. Flowers and such." This is true, though I know for this fragrance bomb, that ain't likely.

On a whim, I ask her, "How old's your daughter?"

She looks down again. Her voice breaks. "Thirteen."

I almost blurt it out, but my manners catch me in time. I turn to Devon Smith. "May I have a word with your wife?"

"Sure." He crosses his arms.

"In private."

"Whatever you have to say to her, you can say with me here."

I eye the FBI Agent before returning my attention to Mr. Smith. "I rather not."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm old fashioned that way." Devon and I have a ten second staring match. "She can tell you after I leave."

Smith and the FBI suit exchange a quick look and nod at each other. "Alright," Smith says, and the two of them step outside.

I take a seat next to Mrs. Smith. "My name's Jane."

"I know." She grimaces, like she's about to lose it. "Elizabeth. My name's Elizabeth."

"Elizabeth, I'm sorry I have to ask this."

"If it helps you find my kids—"

I put my hand on hers. "Lisie, right? That's her name?"

She nods.

"Has she started her period?"

She nods again.

I bite my lip. "Any chance you have some of her under garments with... Spotted?"

"Oh, my God. You want her blood?"

"It's not like that." I squeeze her hand. "It will provide us a more reliable marker."

"Why didn't the police dog handler ask for that?"

I weigh my reply. Shady's special skill in this regard ain't for public consumption. Here I come to one of those uncomfortable points where I don't want to lie to protect sensitive information, but almost have to.

Almost. "I'm betting he didn't think of it."

"So you think it will help, then?"

"A lot better than a clean blouse over-sprayed with perfume."

"I'm sorry. I thought... When they asked for dirty clothes, I didn't have anything with her perfume. It's a distinctive fragrance. From France. I thought that would help."

Only if she wore it on her hike, I almost say, but I've already covered that ground. "You did your best." I bite my lip again. "Any chance of getting some stained panties?"

"Let me call home and talk to my maid." A few seconds later, she gets off her cell and nods at me with a pain-filled smile.

Devon Smith and his FBI suit walk back in once we're done. They bring the chief of police with them. He and Mr. FBI go over the parameters of my assignment. When that's done, the chief springs out my consultant's agreement and terms of employment. He hands me a pen and points where I should sign. I skim the legal print and do my thing, then excuse myself.

Outside I lean down to pet Shady. I scratch her behind the ears, and she shakes in tickled protest. I smile at her, thinking that of all the ways she comes up short in tracking people, she excels in this one skill of hers. Together we wait to get something better than a fabricated scent marker.

## » Chapter 5 «

Allison's call comes a little after twelve o'clock. Shady and I had an early lunch, and now I'm parked under the shade of a tree, windows rolled down halfway, seat reclined, ready to doze off.

"How are things going?" she asks.

"It's nap time."

"Huh?"

"Never mind. Find anything interesting?"

"You could say that."

"Good, because if you called to see how I was doing—"

"Just being polite, Jane. Jeez. Chill out and give people a break."

I close my eyes and take in a deep breath. "I'm sorry. You're right."

My quick apology seems to surprise her. It takes her a couple of seconds before she pushes on. "Well, I did find something, but I don't know how juicy you'll think it is."

"OK."

"Bottom line up front, like you like it, yes, I confirmed that Devon Smith owns Energetix, which at the moment produces prosthetics. I found that on the Internet. I did some asking around the hospital, but no one knew about them. From what I gather, they're fairly small potatoes. Specialized, limited production. They probably sell their stuff to very few hospitals."

I take another deep breath. "Anything else?"

"Kind of. Kind of weird, actually."

"Oh, yeah?"

"I found a little blurb in a financial website, no more than a paragraph. Something about licensing gyroscope technology from Segway? You know them, right?"

"Hmm. Sounds familiar—"

"That two wheeled scooter people ride on. Some cops use them in Denver for patrolling streets."

"Oh, yeah. The kind that balance themselves out?"

"That's them."

"OK." I take that in, not quite knowing how to connect the dots, but sensing I have all the information I need.

"Anyway, the blurb says that Segway denied the license request."

"Huh. OK, so big fish swatting at each other."

"That's one way to look at it. It could have something to do with prosthetics. Maybe an aid to balancing?"

The dots start coming together in my mind. "Doesn't sound like you buy that?"

"I'm no expert, but it would seem legs alone can't balance you. It's a full system thing. Like your ears help you with balancing."

"Alright, OK, then." I say that with little conviction. I ain't walking so great yet, but since I've strapped on my new legs, it's gotten easier. Maybe my reduced pain does have to do with the legs reducing the effort I must put out to stay upright, like I guessed earlier.

"Want me to keep digging?" Allison asks.

"I don't see what else we need to know, except maybe if we could find whether Energetix has a government contract of some sort. Like with the VA. Don't know how one would find out." I also wonder if that might not be public information, but I don't go there.

"I pulled a lot of financial reports and articles on them, Jane. I think they're strictly civilian. No mention of government contracts."

I chew on that for a few. Even contractors doing black work for the government state they have government contracts. They just don't say what they entail. It'd be odd for Energetix to have a contract with the government and leave it in the black. Doing so sure won't help impress investors.

"OK, so let's not worry about this anymore, then," I say.

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

"You sounded really wound up earlier."

"Coincidence. Nothing more. Sorry I bothered you with it, and thanks for asking around for me."

"Sure thing."

We hang up, and I close my eyes. A warm June breeze blows through the passenger side window. Behind me, and to my right, I hear Shady breathing. Snoring, really. I will my body to relax, and soon I join her.

About an hour after I've had dinner, at around 7 PM, I get the call from the FBI. Not from the supposed in-charge chief of police, but from the Agent bird-dogging the Smiths. He says they're ready for me, tells me where to go, and how to start tracking.

"We're rolling, Shady girl."

She lets out a soft growl. I read it as her usual reluctance to do work, especially since she don't much care for tracking in the dark.

I head south-east on the 36, and in a few minutes, take the exit before the one leading to the park I visited this morning.

That's when I notice it the first time, a black SUV, bigger and shinier than mine, pulling out a few car lengths behind me. At first I want to suppose they're FBI, covering my six. But wouldn't they have told me that? Sure they would. But they didn't.

Telling myself there's no reason to panic, I drive on nice and slow. At one point, I reach under my seat and rip off the Velcro holding my gun.

Shady sits up at the sound and whimpers.

"It's all good, Shady girl. Just being cautious, that's all."

I like to think dogs can sense you, read your soul as it were. From all the manuals and articles I've heard on the topic, they mostly catch your body language and smell your chemicals. Those hormones and pheromones you secrete when life gets tight. Whatever the case, she's reading me now. She knows something's up and displays none of her get-me-to-bed-and-forget-this-dumb-job body language.

I set the gun barrel down in the cup holder, wedge it in there so it don't go flying if I end up doing some maneuvers.

A couple of blocks down, I turn into the neighborhood. I pick a block, any block, and make my way around it. At each turn, the black SUV replicates my progress.

Shady lets out a low growl more or less at the time when I feel my full stomach cinching up. Through the rearview mirror I see her turning around, peering over the back seat at the headlights behind us. Somebody tell me which pheromones pointed her to the reason for my concern. When the SUV comes around the corner, she growls again.

"Yup, you got it," I say, proud she's done this without me ever training her to do so. I've always thought she's sharp, but her problem has been she's too much of a free-thinker. Too bright to accept that someone walking on two legs can tell her better. She does her own thing, like she's doing now.

I lower the back windows figuring if I need her to jump out and assist, I probably won't have time to open the door for her.

Soon I realize I've turned down the wrong street, one that dead-ends onto a lawn. I weigh my options. U-turn, gun it for the lawn, pull to the side.

I opt for the latter and stop at the fourth house from the end. My hand rests on the stick. If they come for me, I'll hit reverse.

But it doesn't play out that way. They come around the corner, cut out the lights, and pull over not far from where they turned.

I slide my Bluetooth ear piece in and hit the most recent call entry to call my FBI buddy.

"I got a tail," I tell him. "Yours?"

"Not us, no. How many guys."

"Seeing in the dark ain't my forte. There's at least the one behind the steering wheel."

"Where are you?"

"At the edge of the park, from the looks of it. Dead-end street with a driveway running into grass. I'm pulled over."

"Are they coming for you?"

I look through the side mirror. "Hmm. Nope. Staying put."

"OK, stay on the line. We'll use your phone to locate you and send a team in."

I hear talking in the background, the beeping of comm equipment, and whatever else is going on over there in command central. My eyes stay fixed on the rearview mirror and the black SUV. The street has no lights, and I'm wishing for some night vision googles right about now.

Shady needs none, though, and she lets me know something's up before I hear a car door closing. A few steps away I see a single male figure. In his hand he's holding something, aimed at the ground.

Shady growls, this time like she means it.

I don't wait to ascertain whether it is what I think it is. I shove the shift stick into D and gun it for the grass. In the side mirror I see the guy gesturing at me before he runs back to the SUV.

Shady barks as we hit the first bumps on the grass.

"I'm on the move," I say to whoever is hearing me on the other side. "I repeat. I'm on the move. Armed individual giving chase. I repeat, armed individual giving chase."

I hope I did that right, sounding all official like and such. The SUV is coming for me, not driving as carefully as I am, gaining.

To my left I see another place where the grass and a street meet. I aim for it. Though I have a four wheel drive vehicle, I ain't all that keen to test it. My legs are feeling wobbly, and I fear I will lose control of them at any moment with all the bouncing around.

"Major, you OK?"

"For now." I don't say much more, which probably annoys them, but concentrating on what I'm doing is all I can handle at the moment. I aim for the park exit.

I reach it in short order. In another second the 4-Runner's suspension clanks and bangs. I'm bouncing onto pavement, and under me the world seems to regain its balance.

For good measure, the street dumps onto a major street, and to my left, I see a gas station with one, two, three cars in there getting gas. I aim for it. So does the guy on my six.

I give Shady the ready command, and as we climb up the driveway, I slam on the breaks and shout, " _Hopp,_ " Pointing to my right.

Shady jumps through the passenger side rear window. I come out behind the driver side door, crouching low, gun in hand. I stumble some, my legs unsteady under me as I bend down. Grabbing onto the door and staying there helps me recover my balance.

The guy's stopped the SUV halfway in the street and halfway up an earlier driveway. He's already climbing out of his car, coming straight for me, pointing, not with a gun, but with a bony index finger.

I straighten out, gun leveled at him, hoping I can stay upright. My world wobbles for a moment, like I'm standing on a boat rocked by mild waves.

He never sees Shady coming from his left, leaping out of the shadows that lie beyond the gas station's lights. Here's where independent thinking comes in handy. I haven't given her the command, but she's already biting into that extended arm, yanking him down to the ground.

He screams with that mixture of horror and pain I've heard far too often.

I walk to him, my balance improving with each step, almost like it does as you speed up on a bicycle. My outstretched arm and the gun stabilize as well.

"You best stay put, Mister."

He keeps screaming, crying, really. I'm numb to it. Wishing I could crouch all the way, I pat him down as best I can, riffle through whatever pockets I can get through, then step back and tap Shady on the rump.

"Sit," I tell her. She backs up one step and does as commanded. The white light from the nearest set of lamps back-lights her bloody jowls.

"Jesus, what did you do that for?" the guy asks.

"I didn't do much. It's her that don't care none for ya."

He rolls onto his back, cradling his bloody arm against his chest. I get a better look at him. Thin, short, gaunt features, chaotic blond hair that's trying too hard to look like an Afro.

"Real question is," I say, "what possessed you to come after me?"

"I was trying to warn you."

"About what?"

He shakes his head. "You're with them. I was hoping you weren't, but you are. I should've known."

"I'm with whom?"

"The system, man. You're with the system. And I can see now you're oblivious to it."

I glance behind me where a small crowd of garage patrons and a shotgun wielding owner have gathered. To show them everything's under control, I stick the gun in my pants and raise one hand.

"Alright, let's just everybody settle down," I say.

"Does that make you proud? Going all Abu Ghraib on me?" the guy lying on his back is saying, and I'm about done with this conversation.

Or I should be, but I still ask, "Care to try it again, make a little more sense this time around? Maybe tell me where you stashed those kids?"

"Kids? What kids?"

I place my hands on my knees as I bend down toward him. "In case you're not catching on, I'm the good cop." I thumb at Shady. "This one here, bad cop. Already gave you a _taste_ , didn't she? Now, you gonna level with me, or deal with her? What's your call?"

"Don't you see it? They're using you. Like a pawn in their big game."

I straighten up realizing something's off here, and admitting to myself perhaps I should stop pushing my interrogation before the crowd goes to believing they're getting a stateside version of Abu Ghraib.

"You're going to have to help me with the pawn talk," I say. "I ain't much of a chess player myself."

He shakes his head at me and winces, then lets out a shriek when he squeezes his arm a little too hard. I should lean down and see about the damage Shady did, maybe do my best to bandage it up with some of my first aid kit. But hell if I'm going to get close to a guy without knowing what psychedelic flavors he's tasted.

He's breathing heavy now, and I'm wondering whether he's going into shock. Maybe I should help him. Once more I bend down and prop my hands on my knees.

"Just relax," I tell him.

"Relax. How can you relax? Don't you get it?"

"Get what?"

"That they're using you."

"Using me for what?"

"For their project."

"What project?"

He winces again, not so much at his arm, which he's holding more gingerly now, but at the sound from above.

Shady barks at it. Someone shouts, "Helicopter." A second later white light beams down on us, and we all shield our eyes in unison. Shady barks some more.

Two SUVs, much like my guy drove in, pull up. Black suits hop out of them and rush toward us.

I straighten up and raise my hands. But they don't want me. They don't so much as acknowledge me. Before I know it, the man whose arm Shady turned into a chew toy is gone, only a small swath of his blood shimmering in the white light of the helicopter. Soon that light leaves too, along with all the FBI agents. The guy's SUV and the other two SUVs are no longer there.

In my ear someone's asking if I'm OK. I don't answer. Right now I don't know what I'm doing here or what I need to do next. It's not so much that I'm confused or that I have forgotten. Something inside me has frozen shut, and I don't know that I can or want to move again.

## » Chapter 6 «

I'm sitting on a bench a few feet outside the door of the gas station. A loyal 60 Minutes viewer recognized me. The owner offered me any drink I want, beer included. I've opted for a diet orange soda. He gets me two for good measure, and I sit there, blinking and drinking, hoping the cool of the drink will bring me down.

"You OK, Miss?" the owner asks.

"I think so. Thanks."

The voice in my ear stopped trying to get my attention five minutes ago. It shows up now driving a gray sedan along with a female companion in an olive green flight suit. After she takes a few steps and comes into the light, I recognize her.

"Long way from Lackland, Dr. Taylor. Did you fly here? Didn't take you for the pilot type."

She smiles. "As luck would have it, I had some business in Denver. Flew in three hours ago." She comes closer, and when I go say something, she shakes her head. "Are you OK with driving? We should talk."

"About?"

"Somewhere more private."

I nod. Over the next few seconds I do my best to down the majority of the soda without burping it up. "OK, let's go."

Shady follows me to my 4Runner which some kind soul moved into a parking stall. When I go get in, I see Dr. Taylor standing by the passenger door.

"Shotgun," she says with a playful grin.

"Suit yourself." I glance over at the FBI Agent. "Where to?"

"Just follow me," he says.

Though earlier in the day they told me they didn't want me here, I'm back at the park. Among deep, long shadows cast by a bank of lights in the middle of the command center, I see him. He's as big as I remember him. He stands as erect as ever. His coat shines in spots where the white light hits it just right. But he's not looking in my direction. By now he should. He would always pick up my scent from a hundred yards away, sometimes more.

I want him to look back at me. I want to see his head pop up at attention, his ears pricked, his nose twitching in recognition. But he doesn't. Though my mind strains to force him to recognize me, he won't. Not this time.

Next to me Shady whimpers, not at him. She's looking up at me. If there exist pheromones that we send aloft when we long for someone and when our hearts shrivel at their absence, Shady's latching on to mine right now.

"Beautiful animal," Dr. Taylor says next to me.

"Black Lab," I reply.

"Still, he reminds you of someone."

"You've never seen him."

"You've told me so much about him, I feel like I have."

I take in a deep breath, followed by another. She taught me to do that. Pull it in, let it out when stress grabs hold of you.

"You told me he's nearly solid black." Out of the corner of my eye I see her running tongue across her upper lip, her tell she's about to ask an uncomfortable question. "Is this a trigger for you?"

"Which part?"

"A black dog. Nighttime. An operations center. Lots of activity. Someone's life on the line."

"I see what you mean. Lots of common denominators there. Except for one."

"Oh?"

"No one's shooting at me. No one's sneaking around burying IEDs. No one's hiding behind a pile of rocks or in some bush waiting to press the boom button. And I ain't stinking it up from not having showered in a week."

"That's good. You're finding handles to differentiate the situation. To keep it clear in your mind." She turns to me and puts a hand on my upper arm. "Very good, Jane."

"What are you doing here, doc?"

"I think you know."

"Watching out for me, making sure I don't get too close to one of them triggers and pull."

"To put it succinctly, yes."

"I'm surprised the rest of the posse didn't show up, too. This has got to be way more interesting than me walking around a room."

She nods and allows herself a faint smile.

I pull her aside. Though we're far enough from the crowd, I want to make sure we ain't overheard. "It's about these legs, ain't it? They got everyone all hot and bothered."

I can tell she's fighting hard to not let her smile grow. "People care about you, Jane. That's all you need to know."

All I need to know, I ponder. I stand there wondering how much I should push for additional information. Do I need to know more? Do I want to?

"Them rumors are true, then," I say.

"What rumors?"

"The kind we can't discuss out in the open. The kind I ain't been read into."

She frowns. "You're right. We shouldn't talk about that here."

I take a minute to rub my eyes. "You mind holding on to Shady? I gotta go use the girl's porta potty."

"OK, but are you sure she'll—"

"Just tell her to sit if she starts moving. Be firm. You'll be alright." Without giving her a chance to object, I stuff the looped end of the leash into her hand and walk away.

The portable latrines stand on the other side of the makeshift encampment. I make it there, go in and do my thing. When I come out, blog-brand-buzz-boom girl is standing a few feet away.

"How's it trending?" I ask her.

"Can we talk for a second?"

"I'm beginning to think you're stalking me, Candice."

"What do you know about that guy you ran into?"

"What guy."

She tilts her head in mock reproach. "Come on. I know what happened."

"Then you don't need me to tell you."

Now her head tilts to the other side. "You're not being fair."

"Didn't know I had to."

"He's an Energetix employee," she says rapid-fire like as I'm walking past her.

I stop. "Oh, yeah?"

"On administrative leave." Candice raises an eyebrow. "Still working on the details behind that, but yeah. They're thinking he did it."

"I can't tell you one way or the other."

"But you can tell me if you talked, what he said when he accosted you."

"Who said anything about him accosting me?"

She grins, like she's got me. "A good reporter doesn't reveal her sources. Which applies to you, too, B-T-W."

"B-T-W?"

"By the way? You really need to start tweeting."

"I text some, in full words. Don't have much use for the social media mess."

"Well, I can get that fixed for you. Social media is key to promoting your brand."

"Right, with lots of boom."

"I can help you with that. I can take care of all your social media interaction. You know, so you can focus your time on the important stuff. Your work." She makes wide circular gestures aimed mostly at the command center behind her. "Like this. You do your tracking, and I do the brand promo stuff."

"In case you haven't noticed, I ain't doing much tracking. They've had me on a holding pattern all day, and quite frankly, I'm pretty close to chucking this and heading home."

"Are you kidding? It all pays the same, right? And from what I hear, you're getting a nice hourly rate. What is it? Around three hundred an hour plus expenses?"

It's more like three seventy-five an hour, part of the agreement we forged inside Devon Smith's RV this morning.

"So is Smith footing the bill, or is it the government?" Candice asks.

To tell it true, I have no idea. Someone stuck a piece of paper in front of me, I skimmed it, saw the dollar signs, and my pen did the rest. My finances ain't doing too hot of late, and this payday will help me take care of some much neglected bills. Where the money comes from don't seem all that material so long as I don't spot any blood on it.

"You ask a lot of questions."

"One of my best traits. Tenacity." Candice grins and points at me. "Doggedness, one might say. Pun intended? Heck, yeah."

I shake my head and start walking again.

Candice takes my left flank wingman position. "What if there's no kidnapping? What if someone else is trying to drum up some buzz for _his_ brand?"

I wave at her like one would at a streaking gnat.

"What if your being here is all part of the act?"

I stop and face her. "Go on."

She gives me another raised eyebrow plus grin combo. "Word on the street is his start-up, _Energetix_ , isn't faring well. Not energetic at all by most performance measures. The manufacturing side, which was supposed to fund his R & D, is, to say it kindly, sputtering. But this..." she waves around again. "You..." Her index finger aims at me. "Put it together, and boom. Synergy."

"Tell it plain."

"You know what Energetix manufactures?"

"Prosthetics."

She takes a step back to grin some more. "Ah, so you do know. Which might make one wonder how much inside track you got on this."

For a moment I find myself fearing that she will reach down, pull up my pant leg and do one big gotcha. "Ain't got no inside track. Been sitting on my butt all day, with lots of time to Google him and his company."

"Ah," Candice says coming closer. "So you're savvier than you let on."

I swallow. A faint picture starts coming together from the few pieces of the puzzle I have to slide around an otherwise empty table. My legs, with their embossed Energetix logo. The nut chasing me to warn me about how they're using me. The same nut that worked for Energetix.

"So you're putting it together, then?" Candice asks. "His kids go missing, bringing out lots of cameras. He doesn't keep it discrete, and that gets him national coverage. He makes and sells prosthetics, and somehow someone wearing her own prosthetic legs comes into the scene, ready to solve the case."

I nod. The way she put that last bit, I can tell she doesn't know I'm wearing the very prosthetics Devon Smith and his company produce. And I rather leave it that way.

"That's a lot of ifs and thens," I say.

"Sure, but take them out, and you end up with a long string of coincidences that line up a tad too conveniently, don't you think?"

I recall my mother's words. There ain't no such thing as coincidence. Everything happens according to a master plan.

Candice starts to say something, but my attention goes across the grass. The chief of police is coming my way, gesturing for me to come near.

"And here we go," Candice whispers. "Looks like they're about to let you do your tracking at long last."

## » Chapter 7 «

Inside my backpack I find the girl's spotted panties I bagged and packed earlier in the day when the plan had me going solo around the backside of the park. Like they did in the morning, the parents try to hand me the boy's shirt they brought.

"Just in case," Mrs. Smith says on the verge of sobbing.

Once again, I could let them know the scent marker I have will suffice. But this time I can't turn the mom away, so I take the shirt, even if I won't use it.

"We're all set then?" Devon Smith says to me. The way he asks the question, I hear the implied "Are you up to this?" Sure enough, like the rest of them who can't help themselves, his eyes slide downward, to my legs, and not for the usual lust-driven reasons.

When he raises his gaze again, I look him up and down. "I'm good."

Detective Linder, same guy that welcomed me this morning, guides me to the spot where the brother and sister were last seen in the park. Once there, I let Shady grab the scent from the girl's panties, and we're off.

Like I instructed, everyone stays behind me, especially that black Lab I want as far away from Shady as possible. So far so good on Shady's part. She's got the scent and is moving ahead with gentle tugging at my leash. For the next forty minutes we wind through trails, sometimes not in the straightest fashion, and I worry that Shady's losing her focus.

From the rear the other dog's handler picks up on that and shouts, "Need an assist?"

I don't answer. By now we're no longer on-trail. Shady's taking us through slight rise in a wide grassy area. We crest it, and on the descent I see where Shady's aiming, an outlet onto one of the neighborhoods that border this park. It looks not much different than the one I faced and took with a black SUV on my tail.

Someone behind me curses, says something about this probably being the end of it, that here's where they got into some car and away they went. As if to punctuate that, at the moment we're about to switch from grass to concrete and asphalt, the black Lab lets out a loud bark.

Shady swings around to bark back. In another moment, the two of them are carrying a heated conversation, the kind where I reckon if dogs use foul language, it's flying back and forth with abandon. It gets hot enough that Shady starts pulling something fierce on her leash. She wants at that jerk back there.

The Lab's handler is shouting at him, pulling all rough and tough on his leash. In other words, doing all the things he ain't supposed to. At a moment when your dog loses it, you can't. Acting violent or loud toward them only mirrors and reinforces their out of control behavior. It's like pumping more current into an amplifier. Best thing you can do is stay calm, use non-verbal cues, like I do now by poking two fingers into the back of her neck. When she flinches at that, I rub and massage her there.

The other dog carries on, but Shady sits down and looks up at me. Still jittery, she's ready to go into pounce mode if I let her.

" _Sook_ ," I tell her, and she responds by looking at the other dog, then back at me. " _Sook_."

She whimpers and turns around with reluctance, but minding me nonetheless. Her nose goes to work at the edge between the concrete of a driveway and the asphalt. She stops there for a second before she raises her head, aiming it down the street.

"Got something?" Linder says behind me.

"Yeah, maybe."

Feeling unsteady on my feet, I let her pull me along. Now her steps seem more determined, more pressing, to the point where she's lurching forward. Keeping my balance gets harder, and I realize I haven't given it much thought in the early, steady excitement of the track.

I stop and say, " _Pfallow_."

She doesn't do it gladly, but she stops.

I count off two seconds, then say, " _Sook._ "

She starts searching again, at first with a calm air about her, and then she starts the heavy pulling again.

" _Pfallow_." We both stop, and I wait for her to settle down while seeking my own balance. I wait longer this time, once more recalling why she washed out of the Shadow program. Too hyper. Too skittish. Too likely to do her own thing. Too bad, because she's smart as they get, and sensitive in ways few of these dogs ever come close to.

" _Sook_ ," I say, and we're off again.

"Having problems up there?" the other dog handler shouts from the back.

I'm really starting to wish I'd insisted on keeping him back at command central. Last thing I need is a back-seat handler that knows enough to cause havoc but can't get his dog to find a truck full of teenagers, like the last twenty-four hours have demonstrated. Like I do with dogs, I don't acknowledge or fuel his energy by responding in kind.

At the corner, Shady hesitates for a moment, meanders a bit to draw zigzags with her nose, and then pulls to the right. I sense something in her now, a determination rather than a drive to defy my direction. As she pulls forward, rather than restrain her, I trot next to her. Tongue hanging out, she looks up at me for a moment, like she's smiling at me. To my relief, she doesn't speed up any further, but rather she matches my pace so we can move side by side.

Focused on her letting me keep pace with her, it takes me a few seconds to realize. Hey, I'm trotting. It ain't fast, and I'm sure it ain't pretty to watch, but I'm trotting. More like shuffling, but faster than walking, and with near solid balance. Even back at the hospital, once fitted with these new active, working set of legs, when they had me try to go faster on the belt, I struggled. Tried to hold on to the handles and fell.

But now I'm trotting, with my dog at my side. And for a few seconds I allow myself to not be here, on hard asphalt, but in another place where your boots and your dog's paws crunch and slide on sandy, rocky trails. For a few moments I'm trotting with Shadow at my side, massive and black and steady as he goes.

A sharp, whistling whimper from Shady brings me back, as does the black Lab's barking.

Up ahead, we approach an intersection washed in yellow, downward light from three street lamps. When we get there, Shady rushes toward a manhole cover. She paws at it, and her nails make a scraping sound on the rusted lid.

"Is this it?" Linder says.

"That's what she's saying." I pull Shady back and tell her to sit. Bending at the waist, I reach down to stroke her on the neck. "Good going, Shady girl."

I stay like that, at her side, both relieved and dreading what comes next. If the kids are under that cover, if more tracking is needed down there, I'm done for. Someone else will have to do the tracking. For a moment I hate myself for that, not being able to complete the mission.

Then I remind myself the mission left me like this.

Linder and another guy go to work on the lid. After a bit of pulling and puffing, Linder says, "It's welded." He takes out a flashlight and uses it to scan the cover's lip. "Yeah, look. There and there." He looks closer, touches it, and adds, "Looks fresh. Not rusted like the rest."

"Are they down there?" someone asks.

Linder goes down to lay an ear on the cover. "Anyone down there?" he yells with his mouth but an inch from the rust-brown surface. He puts his hand up to us. Everyone goes quiet. With eyes closed he listens for a few seconds. His lips break into a smile.

"They're there." He pushes up and stands. "Let's get a crew here and get this thing unwelded."

Several officers push past Shady and me. We take a few steps back and away from the excitement. For a few moments I stand there, unsure what to do next.

The other dog handler comes over to me saying, "Good job."

"Thanks." I assess the two dogs, and they seem to have no desire but to ignore each other. "He's a beautiful Lab. I like 'em like that, all black."

"He's good, but doesn't have the nose yours does."

"She's pretty sharp when she wants to be."

"She also just made you a rich woman."

"Huh?"

"The reward Smith put out, just this morning. Technically you're not law enforcement, so you should be able to collect it."

"I'm on the job, getting paid."

"I'd still angle for it. A hundred K is not something you pass up."

A third of me wants to do the gracious thing and not lay a claim on the money. The other third's thinking about all my unpaid bills and the property tax bill coming in a couple of months, and I can't hope but that the windfall does pan out. The last third, however, is wondering how much I want to take from Devon Smith.

## » Chapter 8 «

Inside the RV, the Smith's son and daughter are washing up, getting a change of clothes even, before the family comes out to give a few remarks to the press. Out here, just short of the 10 o'clock news cycle, the local police and FBI are doing their usual tap dance around questions they can't or won't yet address.

For my part, I stand to the side and around the corner, hiding behind the RV. I don't want any part of that, but in a few minutes I'll have to make my debut appearance.

"You'll do fine." Candice stands next to me, doing her best to peek at the news conference without getting noticed. "The most important thing is be yourself. You seem like a pretty down to earth person. Stay there, within yourself and people will love it."

"Yeah, maybe." A tingling sensation flutters on my lips, the kind that comes on when I'm about to face an uncomfortable situation, especially one that involves social graces I've never mastered.

"Pretty cool about the reward, too. That's going to get you some buzz."

"I ain't getting no reward."

"Sure you are."

"I already told you. I'm on the payroll, getting paid for a job. That won't qualify me."

"Says who? I think he'll give it to you."

"100K? That's too much charity."

"Are you kidding? Do you know how much Devon Smith is worth? One hundred thousand to him is like one hundred dollars to us. We'd like to keep it in our wallet, sure. It may hurt a little to let it go, but in exchange for what we value, we'll hand it over."

I consider what she's told me before about Smith wanting a publicity boost for his fledgling company. "You think the 100K is marketing money."

"Sure it is. And a small budget at that considering the payoff."

"You seem to know a lot about his financials."

"Enough to guess. You on the other hand are much easier to discern."

"Am I, now? You're getting creepy, Candice. In a stalker sort of way."

She giggles at that, covering her mouth to muffle the sound. She's about to say something when we hear the sound of a door's latch releasing. I push Candice aside to peek around the corner of the RV.

"They're coming out," I whisper.

"So they are."

From the way sounds and voices ebb and rise from the news conference, the crowd over there has also noticed. Devon Smith comes out first and all gentleman like helps his wife and daughter down the steps and waits for his son to exit. He's about to follow the three of them when he remembers something. Someone. Oh, yeah. Me. With an outstretched arm he beckons me. I step out leading Shady by her leash.

"Give them hell," Candice whispers behind me.

The walk toward the lights seems long and but an instant all at once. Devon Smith points me to my spot, at one side of the podium, opposite his wife, and he steps between us to start his remarks.

I don't catch much of what comes next. Inside a daze beating to the rhythm of camera strobes, I try to stay collected. Next to me Shady stirs, but to her credit, I think she's handling this a heck of a lot better than me. Devon Smith keeps saying things I don't grasp, and the camera flashes keep pulsing. Only the sound of my name draws me out.

I turn toward Smith and smile what must seem like a feeble effort at appreciation, or a vain attempt to conceal the fact I have no idea what he just said.

"Major McMurtry's efforts today will not go without recognition," he's saying, turning to smile at me. "This morning I offered a reward to anyone who could locate my children, and Major McMurtry through patience and hard work has more than earned it." He reaches inside his sport jacket's pocket.

"With thanks and appreciation from me and my family," he says to me, but loud enough for the microphones to pick up.

He extends the check to me with his left hand while he offers his right for me to shake. It's just like receiving an award in the military, I realize. Hold the award with your left, shake with your right, hold the handshake, turn to face the camera, pause, smile, click, click, and avoid the blinking until afterwards.

Though I restrain it as long as I can, I still blink when the cameras keep shooting and their flashes catch me dead on.

"And now we'll open it up for a few questions," Smith says. "But only a few. I'm sure you all appreciate how my family has been through a harrowing ordeal, and after a very long and hard few days, we need our rest."

"Mr. Smith," one reporter breaks through before the others can jump in. "You have ties to the defense industry and presumably connections with the military. Is that why we have Major McMurtry here?"

"Why no. Jane is here as a consultant to the police force." He looks to me.

I swallow and lean in to the mike. "That's right." I clear my throat, which has gone dry. "I'm not here representing the Army. I'm just in the reserves, anyway. I'm here as a civilian to lend a hand."

"And you got paid for your services, I take it?" the reporter presses on.

"Something wrong with that? You here doing pro bono reporting?"

Fearing that came out a little rough, I glance over at Devon Smith. His lips are breaking into the tiniest of smiles. The cops to the right and left let out a tentative chorus of snickers and chuckles.

"Pretty sweet payday, then," the reporter replies. "Whatever your hourly rate is, plus one hundred thousand dollars."

"Minus taxes," I say. "To make sure your Social Security is taken care of."

Now some of the reporters join in the snickering.

A female voice pokes through the clamor. "On a more serious note, Mr. Smith, your company manufactures prosthetics. Since Major McMurtry is herself a double-amputee, did seeing the way she performed today give you any thoughts about what your company does?"

If that don't sound like a softball lobbed nice and floaty over the plate, I don't know what is. I search the crowd for the source of the voice and find Candice smiling at me.

"Well, we do good work at Energetix," Smith says. "As terrific a job as the Major did today, it didn't take that for me to know that what we do at Energetix helps people." He turns to me. "But it did make me think in a more immediate way about the painful and sometimes horrific sacrifices our men and women make on our behalf, many of them returning with grievous, life-changing injuries." Now back to the crowd. "It did give me fresh inspiration for how we must do whatever it takes to restore them to full and productive lives, quality lives, inasmuch as it rests within our power to do so."

Wow, I'm thinking. If that wasn't written, revised and rehearsed many times over, this guy has the flourish of Shakespeare and the oratory skill of Lincoln. The cops and the FBI agents can't do anything but clap. Even some of the reporters join with some mild applause of their own.

But if I'm bending toward cynicism, it only takes Devon Smith to turn to me again and lock eyes with me. His eyes glisten with moisture, and I have to look away because foolish or not, mine want to do the same thing.

I'm stashing my stuff in the back seat of my 4Runner and telling Shady to climb up, when Dr. Taylor comes over. She stands by me and lets me finish.

"Get some rest tonight," she says. "And I mean in a hotel around here. Don't drive home."

"I hear you, doc. But it's just an hour away, and sleeping in my own bed tonight is sounding really good."

She shows me her smartphone. "I'm staying at a motel not far from here. I took the liberty of reserving you a room." She waits until I look her in the eye. "They accept pets."

"Shady ain't a pet."

"I know. They'll take her all the same."

My shoulders sag as if letting go of something heavy. Though I want to say no, at that moment the will to resist her offer eludes me. "Alright."

"It will be nice to have breakfast together, chat more informally than we usually do."

"Don't make me change my mind."

"They have a free breakfast." She taps on the face of her phone. "Made to order omelets, even."

I nod. "Sounds nice. Haven't had an omelet for some time."

"It's a date, then."

We never have much of a breakfast. After we check out and do a grab and go from the breakfast lounge, with me in the lead, we drive to the police station.

Apparently, the guy we arrested last night won't talk to police. He's saying he'll only talk to me. Though I hemmed and hawed when I first got the call from Linder, after receiving assurance that I'll still be collecting my hourly fee, I have consented to help. Dr. Taylor wants to tag along. Why, I'm not sure, but I figure since the guy didn't seem of stable mind the night before, maybe having a trained psychologist in the premises makes a lot of sense.

Dr. Taylor and I slept in, and mercifully Linder's call didn't come until 8:30 AM. We arrive at the police station an hour later. Linder signs us in, hands us visitor badges and takes us to the interrogation area.

"This guy is strange, Major," he's telling me as we enter the area. "We're not thinking it's a good idea to have you in there by yourself with him."

"I can take care of myself."

He looks up at me and nods at my thick, 6'1" frame. "Still..."

"Besides, Shady's going in with me."

His forehead creases into a deep frown, then it softens to give way to a grin. "That should freak him out."

"We'll keep it subtle. Sit her in the corner and such."

He grins some more. "Interrogation technique you picked up overseas?"

Dr. Taylor clears her throat. "Some things are not up for discussion."

"Sure, sure," Linder says. "Hush-hush, classified, you'll have to shoot me stuff, right?"

Taylor and I exchange a quick look, and now I know why she came. To keep me coloring between the lines. To make sure my lines don't turn into a jumbled swirl.

I look away from her and realize we've arrived. Through a one-way looking glass, I see the suspect, slumped in his seat, handcuffed to a metal table. Broad, thick bandages wrap his injured arm. His head hangs low. His eyes seem fixed on the table.

"Had to take him to the hospital last night," Linder says. "Couldn't bring him in the box until an hour ago."

"Tell me a little about him," I say.

"Name is Wilbur Ernest Chemise. French last name. Canadian descent, naturalized American citizen."

"Wilbur. Can't remember the last time I talked to a Wilbur."

Linder grins. "Wilbur is a research engineer at Energetix. On disability or suspension, can't tell which. Either way, he's been off work for about a month after an incident we can't get any info on. Human resources privacy crap and so on. We're requesting a subpoena."

I chew on that for a moment. I dread the answer I might get to my next question, but I gotta ask it. "What kind of research?"

"Ah, well, your ears must have been burning a second ago."

"Oh, yeah? How's that?"

"It's classified."

"Huh?"

"His research, whatever he's working on. It's classified."

I try to make eye contact with Dr. Taylor, but she's looking straight ahead, her expression in full-on poker face mode. Maybe her being here ain't just to keep me coloring between the lines.

I turn back to the glass and empty my face, too. As I stand there I weigh my options. Ain't no real good reason I need to go in there, to dig around this some more. All I need to do is get in my car and drive back to my ranch after a job well done and let sleeping dogs lie, as it were. And by sleeping dogs I don't mean only whatever mess Energetix and its proud owner may have concocted, or how any of it may relate to me and these two things on which I stand. No, it's about an interrogation room halfway across the world, and about dogs barking, and about naked men crying for that whole thing to please, please stop.

## » Chapter 9 «

Though Shady's lying down in the corner, slumbering, the suspect still asks, "Does she need to be here?" His eyes ping-pong between her and the sweating can of soda I brought him.

"We're a package deal. Inseparable, you might say." I slide the soda closer to him. "OK, if I call you Wilbur?"

With eyes darting back to Shady he says, "I go by Ernest."

"Ernie it is, then." I say that to rile him. I'm not much for calling people by their nick names, not if I don't know them well, and always to avoid them returning the favor. But in this case, I'm pushing that angle to unsettle him. Get a bit of an upper hand from the outset.

He drops his gaze and sniffles.

"Sorry about the arm, Ernie, but you gave us quite the scare last night."

"I didn't mean to. I just wanted to warn you."

I consider whether to pull on that thread, find out about the warning. Instead I go for, "You gave the Smiths quite the scare, too."

Still staring at his lap, he frowns. "I didn't do that. I had nothing to do with those kids going missing."

"To tell it true, that's what I'm hoping, Ernie. For a big misunderstanding. That's why you asked for me, right? To clear the misunderstanding?"

"You don't get it, do you? You're not listening."

"Listening to what, Ernie?"

He looks up and shuts his eyes tight. When he opens them, he's squinting like one who's peering into a bright light.

"You OK, Ernie?"

He shakes his head. "Just another headache. It'll go away. They always go away."

I tap on the table and glance at the sticky note on my lap, the one with my talking points, the things Linder and team want me to get out of him. "Do you do any metal work, Ernie? You know, like around cars and such? Body work, welding, riveting, that sort of stuff?"

"Huh? No, I'm not much for work with my hands." He pauses and swallows. "Except for my lab work."

"What kind of lab work?"

His head drops again. "I can't talk about that." With a grimace, he closes his eyes again. He moves his head side to side, like he's trying to loosen an invisible knot.

"Can I get you an aspirin?"

"It won't help. Nothing helps."

Another glance at the sticky note, and I go down another trail. "What were you doing last night, Ernie? You know, when you saw me."

"I wanted to talk to you." He lifts his chained hands and points at me with both index fingers. "I needed to warn you."

There it is again, the warning. Outside they told me not to push on that delusion, to side-step it. But he keeps going back to it, so I have to at least brush by it, don't I?

"You wanted to warn me about the kids."

"No." He slams one fist on the metal table, then grabs his wounded arm, again squinting in what I figure for pain of a different kind. "I told you I had nothing to do with that."

"How did you know where I was? How did you know to follow me?"

"She told me."

"Who told you?"

His breathing grows shallower, quicker. "Erin. She talks to me, leaves me messages. Warnings."

"Does she do this often? Warn you?"

"Only for the last two months." He looks up. "She has to be careful, you know. She's out there on her own and doesn't want to get caught."

"How does she get a hold of you?"

"Many ways."

"Care to be more specific?"

He closes his eyes, without a grimace this time. "She talks to me."

"She talking to you right now, Ernie?"

Now he grimaces, like I've dug my finger into a raw, oozing wound. "She told me they're using you. To warn you about getting away from them."

"From whom?" A tapping comes through the one-way glass. I ignore it and lean forward. "Get away from whom, Ernie?"

His jaw tightens. With head still tilted down, he glares at me with upturned eyes. "You know. You know it full well."

More tapping on the glass, more urgent this time. It sounds like metal hitting on glass. Neither Ernie nor I give it no mind.

"Did Erin tell you to take those kids?"

"No! I told you. I didn't do that. I had nothing to do with it. Why do you keep going back to that? Is that how you smoke-screen yourself from not seeing what's really happening?"

"You said you want to help me, Ernie. You're going to have to tell me more about this... Erin. Tell me about what she sent you to do."

"To get you away from them, from the establishment."

The tapping grows louder, more insistent. Ernie closes his eyes again, grimacing. He twists his neck around like he's trying to get away from a buzzing bee.

I look over at the glass and raise my hand. Just a moment, I'm telling them. I almost got something. Except I'm not sure I want to hear the something I got.

"Are you off work now, Ernie?"

"Yeah."

"How long?"

"I don't know. A month, I think."

"That's a long vacation."

"It's not a vacation."

"What is it?"

"They kicked me out. Tossed me out is more like it." He cranes his neck this way and that. His eyes remain shut tight.

"Why did they do that?"

"I didn't want to play along anymore."

"Play along how, in what?"

He shakes his head. "I can't talk about that."

The tapping on the glass starts up again.

"You need to talk about things if I'm going to be able to clear up our misunderstanding."

"Not that. I can't talk about that."

"Why?"

"I'm not allowed. And I promised. I signed papers."

"Like a non-disclosure agreement? An NDA?"

"Yeah."

The tapping intensifies. Ernie keeps shaking his head, craning his neck, and to that he now adds sniffing.

"Oh, God," he says, and lowers his head so he can wipe his nose with the back of his cuffed right hand "Oh, God."

"Ernie, take it easy."

"It's happening."

I lower my voice, both in volume and pitch. "What's happening, Ernie?"

"They pushed me out, and now—" He wipes his nose again and sniffs more loudly.

"What can you tell us about why your company put you on leave?"

"Are you listening to me? They didn't put me on leave. They tossed me out."

"Why did they do that?"

He opens his eyes, and I suspect he's kept them shut to conceal what I see now, a wild, crazed look. "Can't you tell? Look at me. They said I was scaring my co-workers."

A trickle of blood dribbles down from his right nostril. Another thin red line starts to form on his left.

Shady stands up and half barks, half whimpers.

Ernie stands up as far as the cuffs and chain will let him and starts rattling and banging on the metal table.

I stand up, too, knocking my chair backwards. From all his pulling, I expect he's going to upturn that table any moment, maybe toss it at me. But its legs bolt into the floor, and pull and bang as he may, Ernie is only succeeding in cutting up his wrists. Blood starts seeping from there, and for good measure, from his bandaged forearm, too.

Taking another step back, I realize he's not willfully pulling on them chains. It looks more like he's having convulsions. His head has the worst of the shaking. Blood covers his upper lip and chin.

The door slams open behind me and several officers rush in and past me. Someone, Linder I realize a second later, grabs me by the arm as I'm taking Shady by her leash. In another second, I'm outside the room, away from the shouting and the banging, out of the room's stifling, warm air and in the coolness of the hallway.

Linder guides me through another door, and we're in the observation room, watching four officers wrestling Ernie down.

Here, on this side of the glass, my eyes land on Dr. Taylor. Next to her stands Devon Smith. He gives me a quick nod, then turns to Linder and asks him something about whether we can use a room to speak in private.

I take Shady by the leash and together we stand at the one-way glass. They're taking Ernie away. In another moment, the room is empty.

Except it's not. Before me the room gets darker, lit by a single overhead incandescent bulb that hangs from the ceiling and draws a short pendulum arc because a minute ago, I knocked into it with my head. But I'm out here now, after they pulled me out, because the real interrogators got tired of my empathetic technique.

"You did the best you could," someone's saying with a hand on my shoulder. "Sometimes they respond to different approaches. Yours didn't work this time."

Right, because the scary chick and dog act don't always pan out. Even when the dog is Shadow.

"You did the best you could," Dr. Taylor says next to me now.

"Were you tapping on the window?" I ask.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I could tell he's not in his right mind. I feared the interrogation was going nowhere—"

"And that it would bring other things to mind," I say.

"We don't want any setbacks, Jane. You've come so far and worked so hard to get here. I don't want that undone by someone who's obviously in need of better help than you can give him."

I turn my head to face Smith. "Is that what happened? He went crazy, did something nutty in your company?"

"I'm not at liberty to discuss that."

"Because it's classified?"

His lips break into an icy smile. "I'm afraid it's more mundane than that. The lawyers won't let me. As I've told the police, Mr. Chemise was placed on leave pursuant to an internal investigation into his work conduct."

"And that work conduct wouldn't have anything to do with things people need to be warned about?"

He comes closer. His eyes lock on mine with a soft, almost fatherly air to them. "Don't let his delusion cloud your judgment."

"Why are you here, anyway?"

"A courtesy from the chief."

"Ain't it a little irregular for the father of the victims to view the interrogation live and in real time?"

"The chief wants to keep me apprised of any findings with regards to Mr. Chemise and what may have possessed him to kidnap my children."

"Is that what your kids are saying?" I ask. "They identified him as the kidnapper?"

"My children are quite distraught and have as of yet been able to assist in the investigation."

I look him in the eye and find him inscrutable. "Hope they get well soon."

"Likewise, Major. As the doctor said, you've done so well, come so far, worked so arduously to regain your life. I recommend you should focus on that." His lips force a smile. "I understand you want to start a dog training business?"

"How would you know that?"

"Something I read this morning, on a blog. An interview with a friend of yours. Allison, I believe? A Veterinarian doctor up where you live?"

I turn to Dr. Taylor. "I think I'm done here."

"Going home?" she asks.

"Yeah."

"Drive safe."

I turn to Devon Smith. "Make sure your check don't bounce because I aim to cash it within the hour."

This time he offers me a more natural smile. "I'm glad to hear that, and I hope you find good use for it. Start-up funding for your business, perhaps. I so love entrepreneurial success stories."

On the drive north to Fort Collins, I do what I seldom do, turn the car radio to the news station. The buzz about heroic Major McMurtry has started, with a few side lines about Devon Smith, his company, and his newly announced pledge to launch a privately funded effort aimed at assisting wounded veterans. Unconfirmed sources predict an impending announcement of Smith's support for the Wounded Warrior Project, and perhaps a special R&D project his company is launching into ground-breaking prosthetic technology.

At Fort Collins, before heading home, I stop at my bank to follow through on my promise. While I stand in line to deposit Smith's check, I use my smart phone to search the Internet. It takes but a quick query to land on Candice's blog. Sure enough, she has a post about me. It comes with an interview of "personal friend" Allison Holtz. In it Allison says what a great gal I am, and how she and I are discussing starting a dog breeding/training business. From the looks of it, Candice's blog is getting lots of hits, lots of atta-girl comments on her post, and lots of shares to various social media outlets.

I leave the bank and give Allison a call, leaving her a terse "call me" message when I reach her voicemail.

On my drive home, I catch a flash news report on the radio. The prime suspect in the Smith kidnapping case has been taken to the hospital. It appears he's suffered a brain hemorrhage. He's now in a coma. Doctors doubt he'll survive.

## » Chapter 10 «

Sometimes you can kill more with kindness than with anger, my mom used to say. After cooling down a bit, I set aside my desire to let Allison have it and invite her to dinner instead. She arrives to find me on the porch, sitting on one of two rockers, with Shady snoozing at my side.

"You look beat," she says.

I get up. "Because I am."

"You didn't have to cook me dinner. I could have brought something."

"Wasn't too much trouble. Salad with cut up pan-cooked chicken." We walk into the house and into the kitchen, where I've already set the small table by the window. "Would you like some wine?"

"White?"

"And chilling."

"You know the answer to that."

"Yeah, people keep telling me that."

"Huh?"

"Never mind."

She helps me bring the food over, and we take the next few minutes to serve ourselves and pour two glasses of wine.

"So you're famous now," I say, getting right to it.

"What? That interview? That wasn't about me. You're the famous one."

"You're right about it being about me."

She stops her fork-full of salad in midair. "You're upset."

"I wish you would have checked with me first." I lower my voice. "At least given me a heads up."

"Did I say anything wrong?"

"That ain't the point."

"What is the point?"

Once more the urge to get angry with her comes up. But the departure of the adrenalin rush has drained any traces of rage out of me.

"I'm a private person, Allison. You know that. We've talked it plenty. I don't like my business, not even whether I'm trying to go _into_ business out there for everyone to read."

"I figured it was good publicity. You, know. The kind of thing you can show to a bank in a business plan?" She pauses to empty the fork into her mouth and wash it down with a gulp from her wine glass. "Though with that check you got, you may not have much need for a bank loan, huh?"

"Yeah, maybe."

"You may not realize it yet, Jane. But what happened to you just now?" She stretches her arms to her side, waves them around in circle. "Big freakin' deal. Turning point kind of stuff, OK?"

"I see you and Candice are of one mind." I give her a soft, noncommittal nod. "Before you get too excited, by the time all the people with hands out and liens on my ranch get through, there won't be much left of that 100K."

"You mean the property tax bill that's coming."

"And the one that came last year, and the year before that. Take out the bite the IRS and State will take from the 100K, then subtract property taxes, and you ought'a get the picture."

She shrugs and looks down at her plate.

"We'll make it work another way," I say.

She looks up. "If you got some steady income, you know, like doing what you did the last couple of days—"

"That ain't steady work, Allison. Onesies and twosies here and there from this and that other department, mostly paying peanuts."

"You're thinking too small. Too local."

"Meaning?"

"Go intrastate."

"Big word. Intrastate."

"Offer your services to other police departments and agencies. Fly, drive if you have to, charge them for it, and you'll be set. To that you add a dog training business here—" She cuts herself short.

Now I'm sure she and Candice went over more than a set of interview questions. "If I'm raising dogs here, how's that going to work with me flying all over the place?"

"Hello. Because you have a partner minding the home front, maybe?"

I smile and lean back in my chair. "You got it all figured, don't ya?"

"You should take Candice up on her offer," Allison replies. "It's a good idea. She's right. It's the way things work now. Name recognition, organic publicity."

I try to keep smiling. "How much did you two talk about?"

"She tells me you're quite mobile, for one thing." Allison raises an eyebrow and grins a tad. "Even did a little _jogging_ with Shady. Jogging, Jane? Really? And we're talking about 100K and taxes and starting a new business and you becoming famous?"

"As I recall, you took us down that skunk trail."

"You seem to be moving pretty well. I've been watching you."

"I reckon you have."

"How's the pain?"

Her question freezes me in place. With all the ongoings and running around, I haven't even thought about it.

That's something, because some days that's all I think about. When pain's bad enough, you don't get used to it. It never becomes background noise. Rather it's why you move a certain way, why you don't bend down to pick something up, why you quit a chore early, or why you don't start the chore at all. It's why you snarl at people when they annoy you, even though their offense don't amount to much. It's why you curl up and stop minding people altogether. It turns your whole existence into you, wound up in a ball trying to avoid it. It ties you up. It drives you. It consumes you. It makes you waste away.

But now the absence of it unsettles me. It rattles me. I miss it like an old friend that's hurt you bad and is no longer in your life, only for you to find out how entwined the two of you have become and how much you've allowed him to define you.

"It's OK," I say.

"You took your medication, then."

I look away, through the window at the ebbing sunset light. "Can't say that I have."

"Well, that's good, I guess. With all the driving you've been doing, you can't be on pills anyway." She pauses. "So not even a half dose. Nothing?"

"Not really."

"When was the last time you had your medication?"

I turn back to face her. "You ask a lot of questions."

"Jeez, Jane. Chill, girl. I just want to see how well you're doing. You know, what friends are supposed to do? Care a little?"

"That's not what I meant."

She gets up and grabs her plate, nearly untouched. "Thanks for dinner."

I grab her by the arm on the way to the sink. "Alright, I'm sorry. I've just had a couple of very long days." I relax my grip on her forearm. "Let's talk about something else."

When I let go of her arm, she uses her free hand to rearrange her red hair. She sweeps it to the side, like she's flirting with a boy. "You're really intense sometimes. Ease off a little."

"I know. I'm sorry."

She turns back, sets the plate down and retakes her seat. "I always give you the space to be cynical. You've had it tough. But don't take it out on the people that—" She pulls up short, the letter L formed between her tongue and her lips, which she rushes to close.

"I know you care about me, Allison. I appreciate your friendship. To tell it true, who else do I know around here?"

"Hmm. A point worth pondering."

I force myself to laugh at that. "Yeah, maybe."

"No maybe about it, all yeah."

We finish dinner over a conversation about a dog she's trying to adopt. He's a Labrador-Golden Retriever mix, 50/50 as she assures me, that went through a working dog program and didn't quite cut it. Allison's third down on a waiting list for him, and has pinned her hopes on her Veterinarian credentials to vault her to top contender. I don't repeat what I've told her before, that she's gotten her hopes up, become too attached to a dog she barely knows.

"If not him," I say, "there are plenty of dogs to choose from, especially in rescue shelters, waiting for a good home."

"I really like this one," she says now as if reading my mind. "There are many dogs out there, but once I looked into his eyes and held his face..."

Her voice trails off, and so does my soul. For an instant I'm looking into Shadow's strong, noble eyes and I'm cupping his face in the palm of my hand.

"You know how it is," she adds in vague reference to conversations we've had about Shadow.

"I sure do."

"Any word on him?" She doesn't have to say his name.

I'm about to tell her about the paperwork Charlie Foxtrot down in Lackland when the phone rings. It's my cellphone, so I have to run into the living room to grab it.

"How may I help you, Officer Linder?" I say, recognizing his number.

"I hope this is a good time?"

"That's very polite of you, but your aim ain't particularly good, smacking right into dinner."

"Wanna call me back?"

"I guess I should."

I look over at Allison, standing at the kitchen's doorway. She nods and gives me a go-ahead wave. Then she crosses her arms and leans against the doorframe, ready to take in the show.

I turn around. "But now's as good a time as ever."

"I may need your help with something."

"Oh, yeah?"

"It doesn't have to be tonight. Maybe tomorrow morning?"

"Why thank you for giving me a breather."

"So you can come down tomorrow, say meet me at 9 AM?"

"Am I still on the clock?"

"Of course. I already worked it out with the chief. Make sure to log your mileage, too, so we can reimburse you."

"OK, you got me mildly interested."

"I'd rather discuss it in person. Short of it is, I've been talking to your friend Candice."

What he's been doing is getting pumped for information by Candice, but it ain't my place to say. "Oh, yeah? How's Candice?"

"She ran a theory of hers by me. Says she's doing a story on it. Researching it."

And he's research target number one, I don't say. "What kind of story?"

"She's got a hunch about Devon Smith, and about how his kids went missing. Again, I don't want to discuss it on the phone. She says she told you about it."

Yeah, she sure did, but until I know what she's told him, I ain't going to share my side of things. "Sounds like you two have it covered. Where do I come in?"

"I need you and your dog to check something out for me."

"I best get a good night's sleep then. I'll tell Shady to do the same."

"We're on then?"

"Tell me time and place."

He does, and when I hang up my face must have lost a gallon of blood because Allison's asking me what's wrong.

## » Chapter 11 «

Linder and I are squatting atop a hill behind Devon Smith's villa. That's what Linder keeps calling it, claiming it features Italian-Tuscan architecture. To me it looks like one big honking place I wouldn't want to live in for all that square footage I'd have to keep clean not to mention pay taxes on.

Why are we on this hill? According to the Smiths, the trail that climbs up from their back gate up to this hill also winds down to the park where their children went missing. Their boy and girl took this very path to their near demise, God bless them, and Linder wants me to double-check whether they really came this way.

"Couple of problems with this," I say a little peeved that I've probably come all this way for nothing. Well, maybe not nothing considering the $375 an hour I'll collect for it, so maybe I should take my time about it, be real methodical like and all.

"OK, like what?" he asks.

"First, it's been a couple of days. If we don't find a trace, it may just mean the scent wore off. It don't linger forever, you know."

"You said a couple of problems."

"Sure. The other one goes something like this. Even if we find a scent, we can't tell _when_ it was laid down. Without that, I don't know you're going to make much hay out of that one way or another."

"So if I were to tell you that before four days ago, the last time the kids went hiking this way was a month ago, what's the likelihood their scent still being here?"

I shake my head. "Hmm. With the rain storms we had a couple of weeks ago. Zero to null and void."

"So that leaves us with one problem."

"OK. It's still a pretty big one."

"And one you let me worry about."

"How exactly do you aim to worry about it?"

"Let's say that based on a couple of interviews I've been conducting around the neighborhood, I have an alternative theory of where the kids entered the park. If we confirm that entry point _and_ rule out this one, we're onto something."

"You think Devon Smith had them taken there."

"Let's not speculate."

"Like he drove them there, let them walk around, then had someone grab 'em and stuff them down a manhole. Please weld the lid while you're at it."

"Like I said, let me worry about that."

He leaves it there, trying to be coy, I suppose, or in charge, or some of both. Part of me wants to get offended at him keeping key information away from me. Then again, maybe this is the way it works. In this dance, I'm the help. I don't need to get smart on anything that don't directly have to do with my job. So I let it rest there. Even if I don't like his smugness about it, I go ahead and let him have his upper hand, play his part as man in the know while I do my thing. Like Taylor said, it all pays the same, even if that bit of consolation don't quite appease me.

I shrug. "Alrighty, then. Let's get rolling."

From a small messenger bag he carries at his side, he takes out an evidence bag. He unzips it and takes out the girl's panties, same ones we used two nights ago. By now the fragrance of it has grown foul. As I show it to Shady, I know she should have no problem latching on to it, but wonder if she'll be able to make the match.

As we agreed upon our arrival, we won't climb down to the house. No sense in letting dear Devon know we're taking a whiff around his house. It's not a big distance between the hill and the back gate, and if there's a scent to be picked up, we should find it here the same as we'd pick it up down there.

I let Shady sniff around the trail and even some of the surrounding grass and bushes.

"Nothing," I tell Linder.

I pull on Shady's leash and lead her along the winding trail. From time to time I let her explore the surroundings. On a couple of occasions I think she's found something, only to realize she's poking her nose into some hole in search of an underground critter. It goes like this for the next thirty minutes, until we finally arrive at the edge of the park.

"Nothing," I say again.

"OK, now for door number two." He points to another entrance into the park. This one adjoins a parking lot. Before we head over there he takes out a map and shows me how if you drive from Devon Smith's home, that entrance gives you the most direct driving route. Then he traces from the parking lot to the point where the kids were allegedly last spotted, same place I started my track two nights before.

I nod, and we start off for the parking lot. Once there, I let Shady do her thing. I take her off leash and let her roam and scan freely.

"Bingo," I say when she stops and sits. " _Sook,_ " I tell her, and she starts trotting off into the park.

Linder and I jog after her. Soon we traverse familiar ground, going from where we started the track two nights ago, following Shady toward the other park exit.

"We got it, then?" Linder says, out of breath.

"Let's keep going to make sure."

Now in a moderate jog, we chase after Shady, going into the neighborhood. As the ground beneath me switches from uneven grass terrain to hard asphalt, my ability to balance improves. She stops at the manhole, looking confused, her prize no longer there.

I grab her by the collar and put her back on leash. "Good job, Shady girl." I pet her, my chest swelling with pride, allowing myself to imagine Shadow just did this. I realize how unfair that is to Shady. She did this on her own. She showed her skill well enough, even if more often than not she lets me down.

Linder's standing, hands on his hips, elbows out to the side, refilling his lungs. "I wanted to be wrong," he says in a breathy voice. "I really did."

"You sure?"

"Candice is a sharp girl, but she comes up with a lot of stories, and she sure likes her conspiracies."

"Loves her buzz and boom," I say. "I reckon conspiracies satisfy her plenty on both counts."

"Yeah." He's looking around the neighborhood, like he's looking for next steps in one of them cookie-cutter homes. "Thing is, all these houses, and no one saw them stuffing two kids into that hole and welding it shut."

"That's pretty much the same problem, whether Devon Smith is involved or not."

He lowers his voice. "It's more of a problem for someone else. Dear Devon can pay off people, send them on all expense-paid vacations if he has to."

"Want to knock on a few doors?"

He smiles. "Look at you, thinking all cop like already."

He makes a phone call for one of his colleagues to come meet us here. When he arrives, the two of them start going door to door while Shady and I wait in the car. A few minutes later they return with downcast faces.

"All those houses are either empty or have mailboxes stuffed with several days' worth of mail," Linder says.

His partner calls in an information request and reads off nine addresses. An hour later, back at the station, we'll learn all these homes are leased to Energetix employees. Further digging reveals a single shell corporation owns and manages the leases, and that shell corporation links back to an investment and venture capital firm that provided seed money to launch Energetix.

Other than collecting my check for the prior two days' work, my stay at the police station soon turns into a waste of time. Linder agrees he doesn't see much use in me hanging around, and I head out. As I cross the lobby, however, Shady spots and growls at a now familiar female face.

"Candice," I say under my breath.

"Yeah, nice to see you two, as always."

"Linder said you were flying back to L.A."

"Flight got cancelled. Had to rebook for this evening."

Shady and I keep walking, and Candice follows.

"So I have some free time."

"Can't say that I do."

"Not even for lunch?" She lets me go a few steps before adding, "My treat."

We stop by my car, where I open the back door to let Shady jump in. I toss my backpack into the trunk and turn to face Candice.

"What do you want now?"

"I thought we could follow up on the conversation we had the other day."

"I think you followed up plenty with your blog posting. For someone who knows how to create the right buzz, that pretty much makes you a buzzard as far as I'm concerned."

"I didn't say anything wrong or untruthful, did I? I sure didn't say anything that painted you in a bad light."

"No, what you did is go around me and behind my back to pump my friend for information so you could blind-side me with your fancy reportage. You think that's supposed to impress me, Miss Candice?"

"It's enhancing your image—"

"You know. Some of us are discrete. We don't go farting through every digital pipe to spew whether we're brushing our teeth, clipping our ingrown toenails, or bathing our puppy. We don't do no selfie an hour, neither."

"I get that, but—"

"We don't want the noise. We want to lead quiet lives, minding our business." I point at her, my index finger coming within an inch of her nose. "We want other people out of our business. It's called being private, modest, reserved. Maybe you've heard of them words."

"It's about being real, Jane."

"You ain't listening. The real me don't hang herself out there for everyone to see."

"Well, I hate to break it to you, but that's not where life's brought you, Jane. Hiding under a rock is no longer a viable option for you."

"Says who? You?"

"You have an opportunity to really break-through. To—"

"I don't want no opportunity. Not if it means everyone's gotta know my intimates."

Candice takes a step back and raises her hands. "OK. Let's dial it down a bit. Sorry I wanted to take you out to lunch. Consider yourself rain-checked."

"I don't need no rain check from you."

"Sure, whatever. I'm just going to say one more thing, and you really should hear me out."

"Make it snappy."

"Coming right up. Short, sweet and tweetable. If you want a life of obscurity, short of achieving it inside a coffin and six feet under, good luck with that."

She turns and walks away. Inside the SUV, Shady's whimpering. As I drive off, I suspect Candice stands more correct and accurate regarding my predicament than I care for.

## » Chapter 12 «

At nightfall, I'm sitting on my porch with a view of the black eastern horizon. With all lights out inside and outside the house, I aim to show myself and Candice, even if she can't see me, that yeah, you can reach obscurity no problem, even if my obscurity is of a different kind. Shady's lying next to me, slumbering. From time to time she raises her head, and when a critter comes too close, scurrying through the prairie grass, she stands up to bark.

"It's all good, Shady girl." My caress across her neck and taut back relaxes her, and she plumps down again onto the piece of old bathroom rug I've spread for her atop the wooden deck.

With a hand resting on my closed laptop, I ask myself whether I really want to do this.

I do.

I've been over this already, haven't I? I don't want to relive the pain each time I go through one of my psycho-therapy sessions. Though they make me recount it all, _the_ event, _the_ moment, I have to find a way to deaden the pain their little exercise causes me. Thing is, doing this, flipping the laptop lid, typing it all up once and for all... Will it hurt more? Will it make it more real to write it all down?

"We'll have to see."

Shady raises her head to look up at me. I don't know whether it's my whisper or the way the laptop screen's blue glow breaks the darkness that bids her attention. She holds her head up for a few more seconds before she lies down flat again.

The blank page on my word processor and its solitary blinking cursor stare back at me. They taunt me. Can you do this? Do you dare? Can you turn memory into words, and words into sentences, and sentences to paragraphs, and paragraphs into this twisted essay no one but you will want to read or recount?

Yeah, I can.

My hands hover over the keyboard for a moment, and I start tapping. At first the words come out wrong, awkward. The backspace key gets most of the action. But as my head clears I write it. I tell it all.

How Shadow and I go into that village with an Army platoon.

How we find the place in an uproar, a near all out riot, courtesy of the Marines that got there ahead of us.

How they've shot that family, mother, father, their oldest teenage son, the prime suspect in planting IEDs, the ones Shadow and I were supposed to find.

How a little boy comes over and through an interpreter tells me that the little girl and boy from that same family have run away into them mountains up yonder.

I stop there. Do I really want to write what comes next? I've never shared it. I've always changed this part of the story, just enough to protect the guilty and to shield myself, which might amount to the same thing. Alright, so I'll write it the way I've told it up to now, keep the script consistent with what the therapists and counselors have heard. That's the point, anyway, to spit out what they expect without having to recall it in full. So I tell it like that.

How the little boy went back to the shot-up family's hut, returning with a teddy bear.

How this teddy bear is the kind we'd been passing out to build good will.

How I let Shadow smell it, and how he takes us straight to the goat trail that points up to the mountains.

How I tell my CO that finding those kids might restore a smidgeon of good will among the villagers now that we've shot up their town.

How the Marines drag their feet with a decision on whether to go out on a search and rescue excursion.

How as nightfall comes, Shadow and I stare up at the mountains knowing we won't make it up there. Not tonight, not tomorrow. Probably never and not in time for those kids.

How I leave Shadow with my interpreter, and on my way to give them Marines a piece of my mind an IED goes off.

How when I wake up, peering through a haze of drugs and the pain they're supposed to mask, I learn I've lost my two legs.

There it is: 892 words, three pages double-spaced. There they are, the tears that burn through my eyes.

Next to me Shady whimpers, much like Shadow whimpered when he saw and smelled his torn asunder handler for the first time. I should probably write that down too, and I do. I add it to my narrative as a heart-string-puller of a finish.

How he wanted to stay by my side to comfort me.

How I would have welcomed his company.

How the powers that be couldn't see past their regulations to let him come home with me.

That brings it to 978 words altogether. I press the Save button and close the lid. Darkness swallows me whole again. Over the next few minutes I even out my breath. Once I think I can start again, I reopen the laptop's lid and start memorizing the text, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph.

It takes me two hours to convince myself I have it. Toward the end reading and saying the words don't hurt as much. I'd like to say it don't hurt at all, but I can only claim the pain turns into a dull ache, like an ever-present soreness of the soul. And that's the point. That's what I hoped to achieve. Being able to say the words without them hurting. Regurgitating what happened without having to relive it.

Morning arrives. I don't make it out of bed until 8:30, which deviates from the usual routine that gets me out of bed by 5:30, and out and about, breakfast and all, an hour later. Detective Linder shows off his great aim once more when he calls not five minutes after I've sat down to eat my breakfast. I listen to him stammer as I down a few bites of toast, and get to the point where I need some fresh air. Coffee cup in hand, I head out to the front porch.

"So that's it," I say. "Case closed."

"Reassigned. The FBI will take it from here."

"Did they give a reason?"

"They only talked to the chief. All we got was, National Security."

"Hmm."

I could say more, but don't see the point in it. I don't have much use for conjecture, though the possibility that someone got their feathers ruffled when arrows started pointing at Devon Smith as the author of his own children's kidnapping seems the most likely reason. A small fraction of me wants to get indignant about the case going to the FBI, but the rest of me shrugs it off. If you can't fight city hall, you ain't seen futility until you take a swing at the Feds. Best to get on with my life and let Devon Smith get on with his.

"He didn't do it," Linder adds.

"Who?"

He takes a few seconds to answer. "The guy we checked out."

His avoidance of names makes me mull things over. I figure he's either got someone lingering over his shoulder, or he's not deeming his phone a secure comm channel.

"First or second guy?" I ask.

"First guy."

"The one we checked into yesterday?" I ask wanting to make sure he means Devon Smith.

"Yup."

"You sure?"

"Positive."

"I take it you don't think it wise to discuss that over the phone."

"You got it," he says.

"Any word on the other guy?"

"He's a dead end, too. Literally."

"Huh?"

"He died a couple of hours ago."

We both stay quiet for a few more seconds, each of us grappling for what else we can or should say.

"Well, I guess that's that, then," I say.

He seems to hesitate, like he's expecting me to object. "Yeah."

"Good working with you."

"Maybe we'll work together again."

I grapple with whether I want to look forward to that possibility. "Yeah. I'll have to see what Shady thinks about that."

He laughs, but only for a moment. "You have a nice day, OK?"

"Will do."

We hang up, and I stay there on the porch sipping my coffee.

I spend the rest of the morning like that, getting myself more cups of coffee, making another full pot, and drinking it slow and for the most part tepid to cold. I don't mind the time nor my cellphone, which buzzes several times until I turn it off.

The time passes unoccupied, with my mind drifting to this and that with no particular purpose or direction. I think of Shadow. I question why I don't care more about the way Linder's case got pulled from him. I dare imagine how starting a dog breeding and training business might work out for me and Allison. I wonder whether I should stay in the Army Reserves, whether I should continue to accept the use of these fancy legs of mine, and how interconnected I want to remain to Devon Smith and his Energetix. But I dwell on none of these things for very long and never carry any of them to resolution.

When lunch time comes, I head inside to first drink some water and dilute the acidic coffee taste from my tongue, and second to open the fridge and decide whether I want to bother with making myself lunch. I stare in there for a long time. I bend down at the waist and close my eyes to enjoy the cool, near frozen air, only to close the door when the thought of having to cobble up a meal seems like too much to consider.

I do the same in front of the pantry, and finally opt for a jar of peanut butter and a banana. At the table, with Shady watching on, I dip slices of the banana in a dollop of the paste and slide them over my tongue to chew, slow and unfulfilling. Hunger will come again within an hour or two. But I'm sure I'll be too numb to it.

I feed Shady next, realizing I forgot to do so during breakfast. It takes her but half a minute to empty her bowl. By then I've grabbed a book I've pretended to read over the last few weeks, and take that outside, where I once more sit on a rocker on the porch, the other one, to bring some variety into the situation.

I read a few paragraphs, none of the words registering in my mind. My eyes grow heavy, and I give in. I drift in and out of sleep over the next hour. Twice or thrice I question whether I should find something more useful to do. Maybe I should go for a walk, get some exercise. But it all seems so beside the point, pointless, to tell it true. And I give in to sleep again, over and over, my mood never brightening or awakening even at the sound of the bird that sings into the cool breeze that caresses my face.

I awake on last time at around 3 PM. Shady's barking. She stands at the top of the porch's steps, directing her warning and complaint at the gate. It takes me a second to clear my eyes so I can see two black SUVs parked there.

Back when Dad bought the ranch, when he dreamed of making it his second cattle raising location, the gate featured an intercom and a connection to open the gate remotely. That went out years ago, and lacking the funds to replace it, I yanked it all out in a moment of frustration. Only a sign warning prospective visitors remains, stating something to the effect that trespassers will get a good chewing and a sharp shooting.

I reach inside the door to grab the binoculars that hang from a coat rack. With them, I scan the gate. Two men stand there, dressed in black suits, hands crossed at the crotch, staring in my direction behind gold rimmed sunglasses.

With a quick ruffling pat on the head, I assure Shady all's well. We walk off the porch together and go to the garage from which I come out driving a beat up golf cart I keep for this purpose. Shady runs ahead along the path out to the gate while I follow her at none too fast a clip for fear my transportation will not make the return trip should I push it too hard.

Two more men have exited the SUVs by the time I get there. But for slight differences in build and hair color, they look like clones of the other two.

Feet from the gate, I swing the golf cart around so it's pointing toward the house, and I step out.

"Gentlemen, to what do I owe the pleasure?"

One of them, closest to the gate shows me his badge. FBI.

"Use your words," I tell him.

"I am Special Agent Ramirez, ma'am."

"Interesting, but non-informative."

"We're here to ask you a few questions about the Devon Smith case."

I eye the four men and the two SUVs. "Big posse for a few questions."

"May we come in? We'd prefer to have this conversation in more private surroundings."

My first impulse has me telling them no, they can ask me all their questions right here, with them on that side of the fence, me on the other. Next to me Shady growls with a similar sentiment, or so I like to imagine. But I don't see the point of coming across rude and inhospitable. It certainly won't gain me no good will to act uncooperative.

I unlock the two padlocks on the gate and unchain it. Agent Ramirez helps me push it open. Shady leads the way again, though this time she keeps looking back, sometimes looping around to come trot a few steps next to my golf cart.

We arrive at the house in short order, where I gesture for them to park under a large elm tree. As I get out of my golf cart and face my visitors, the reason for two SUVs becomes clear when Devon Smith climbs out of the back seat of the one parked closest to the house.

## » Chapter 13 «

It turns out Devon Smith likes to drink tea. As luck would have it, though I usually don't have any in the house, I recently bought some at the market, enabling me to make some for my unwanted benefactor.

"Cream? Sugar?" I ask.

"Please, have a seat." He takes a sip and raises an eyebrow. "Earl Grey?"

"Yes."

"Good. I like it plain. Sometimes with a squeeze of lemon." He waves me to remain seated when I go get up again. "It's fine like this. Please. You've been kind enough."

I nod and glance over at Agent Ramirez. "Well? You said you had some questions?"

"We've talked to your partner," Ramirez says.

"I ain't got a partner."

"Sorry. Detective Linder. We thought—"

"First case we've ever worked, and most likely our last. I'm just a consultant."

Ramirez looks over at Smith, who is sipping from his tea.

"Sorry," Ramirez said. "A misunderstanding on my part. I joined the case just this morning."

"What case? Linder tells me it's closed."

"It's been reassigned," Ramirez replies.

"Hmm. Reassigned for what, exactly? The kids are safe at home, the perp's on his way to the cemetery. What else is there to investigate? Seems to me we ought'a move on to the next big thing and save the taxpayer some grief."

Ramirez exchanges another look with Devon Smith, whose lips have parted from the tea cup to form a soft, knowing smile.

"Were you and Detective Linder of the same mind with regards to the case being closed?" Ramirez asks.

I shrug. "I'm just a tracker. But not being a criminal expert, I might have misunderstood his meaning? I thought that's what he said."

"Didn't you come down to Louisville yesterday to meet with Detective Linder?"

I glance over at Smith again. He still wears that clever smile, and I give him one of my own. Two can fish, I try to tell him with my eyes, and I've done the real thing more often than him.

"Yeah, wanted me to check in on a couple of things. Dot his I's and cross his T's, as it were. Called me this morning to confirm we're done." I lock eyes with Ramirez, see how much his poker face flinches. "Said nice working with ya, hope to work with you again sometime, or something like it, etcetera, etcetera." I smile when I see him flinch. "Nice and cordial. You don't have the same impression, Agent Ramirez?"

He looks over at Smith again, and I've had enough of the charade. "How's about you and your fake FBI badge, make yourself comfortable outside with the rest of your buddies, while Mr. Smith and I have us a private chat?"

Another exchanged look with Smith, and the billionaire nods. Ramirez springs up like a man all too glad to escape a seat of thorns. I watch him go through the door. When I turn back to Smith, he's regarding me with a coy smile.

"I'd heard you're sharp. Now I know it."

"You're too easily impressed, Mr. Smith."

"Please, call me Devon."

"Alrighty, _Devon_. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I hope you mean that."

"The pleasure part? I'm afraid that's entirely rhetorical flare on my part. To tell it true, pleasure don't visit me often."

He furrows his brow a bit, like he's considering my plight. Oh, so empathetic of him. "I know you've lived in a house of pain for far too long."

"How would you know about that?"

"It only takes but a bit of imagination."

"How grand and kind for you. To sit there sipping your tea and _imagine_."

"I didn't mean to diminish your situation."

I glare at him for a bit, the way a dog would. "What game are you playing, Devon, coming to my house with a team of FBI impersonators, breaking all kinds of Federal laws so you can what? Impress me? Sweep me off my feet? Careful, there. It turns out I ain't got no feet."

He laughs. At first I think he's mocking me, but he says, "You are a true original, aren't you? God, I love the way you put things."

"You got no idea how I put things, Mr. Devon. Not the slightest. Now, let's get to it, shall we? What's your game and how do I figure in it?"

Still smiling, he leans back in his chair. He crosses one leg over the other and intertwines his fingers together as he cups his hands over his knee. "Fair enough," he says. "No sense in wasting your time."

I don't reply. Time for him to come to it or get out.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out with, "I want to propose a partnership."

As much as I want to reply with something clever, I leave it unsaid.

"How are your prosthetics working out?" He lets his gaze glide down to my legs before it shoots back up to meet my eyes.

"I ain't complaining."

"I'm going to assume you know."

"I can read logos."

"We do a lot of good at Energetix, Major. We intend to do a great deal more."

"I appreciate that."

"Do you? You're a smart woman. You might even imagine a great deal, but I don't think you have a complete picture. Partner with me, and you'll be part of something of transcendent impact."

"Whoa. Transcendent?"

"Yes."

"Can we get a little more specific and less rhetorical?"

"I'm afraid there's only so much we can say in an open forum."

_An open forum_. There it is, that nifty phrase clever folks like him like to use when referring to venues where a complete discussion about sensitive, classified information can't happen.

This is my moment. I sense it. I dread it. I fear I don't know enough to decide whether I should cross this one-way bridge. Yet, it takes me but a second to know how I want to proceed.

"If it can't be said here, Devon, I don't have much use for it."

"You sure about that?"

"Positive."

"I must say I'm surprised. Someone with your background should have no problem taking part in—"

"I've had my fill, thank you. Don't you think I've done enough, sacrificed enough, given enough, lost enough?" I aim to say more, but a pain strangles my neck. If I keep going, I know I'll be crying in front of this man that don't deserve to see my tears.

"I have no misconceptions regarding your sacrifice, Major. And I have nothing but deep admiration for you and those like you who have given so unselfishly." He releases his hands and uncrosses his legs. Resting both elbows on his knees, he leans forward and looks up at me. "Yet, are we to believe that is the end for you, the grand total of your contributions?"

"People do it every day, Mr. Devon. Contribute without having to go the spooky way. Plumbers, teachers, florists, car mechanics, cooks, accountants. All the people that keep your nice Tuscan home running."

"Yes, great people all of them. But I don't think you're one of them. You're different."

"I've done different. Now I wanna live a normal life."

He looks at my legs again. "And now you can, can't you? Now you can aspire to more than pain medication, physical therapy and wheelchairs. You can go out on a search and rescue operation with your dog. You can run alongside it."

"You meant to say, _her_."

"Yes, her, of course."

"And you'd like to roll the cameras so I can become your poster girl, so you can sell a few more legs, right before an IPO, if we can help it. Make all them prospective stockholders real happy."

"You make it sound hollow, but think of the influence you can have, and how that influence can help others like you. And many more, even civilians."

"To tell it true, Devon, I rather train dogs."

"And you can do that as part of your reclaimed, restored life. You can show people through your life that they too can achieve a strong measure of normalcy. Not perfect normalcy, but a worthwhile facsimile, and one that holds the potential of going beyond that facsimile to perhaps even transcend, one day, in the future, mind you, the capabilities of a frail body."

"Sounds like science fiction."

He nods and smiles. "I would hope it sounds like hope based on sound science. I wish I could tell you more."

I could keep dancing with him a tad more, maybe push against the edges and talk around whatever classified information he can't share. Instead, I hold my ground and stare him down while in my own head I put the pieces together.

Energetix has come up with some secret sauce technology to put prosthetics on returning wounded soldiers. These guys and gals would strap them on to have a chance at the American dream without physical constraints and without pain. How wonderful for the politicians, too. They can now send boys and girls into harm's way and not have to stare or ignore them once they come back with mangled bodies and ruined lives. How great for the military to recycle the previously discarded by patching them up so they can go back as capable as they were before an IED or similar enemy cruelty shred them apart.

But I rather only imagine all that. I prefer to leave it as a rumor in my own mind, nothing more than a string of smart guesses. I don't want Devon to confirm it. I don't want anyone to read me in on this grand project, whether it is as I imagine it or a variation thereof. Yeah, leave it there and pull back, my instincts tell me, or else I'll get sucked into a situation my conscience can't stand.

"Well, I'm thankful for the work your company does," I say.

"I'm glad to hear that. I'll be even happier if you can help us move the ball forward."

To mimic someone struggling with a mighty choice, I look down. I rub my hands on my thighs. One thing I've learned in life, when approached by someone powerful with an offer they can't afford for you to refuse, don't spit in his face. Don't tell him no straight away, even if your conscience demands it. Dodge and deflect, especially if you fear for your safety, which at the moment, with four goons willing to pass themselves off as FBI agents, I have every reason to believe is very much the case.

"I'd like some time to consider your offer," I say. "And I may need additional information to make a final decision."

"That's fair. I'll see what I can do to answer your questions without getting read in all the way."

"Thank you."

He stands up and extends his hand. "No, thank you for hearing me out. I'm honored by your kindness and hospitality."

"Don't spread it on too thick now." I stand up, doing my best to shoot him a playful grin.

He smiles back. "Duly noted. Still, I _am_ honored."

We shake hands. It seems like only a second passes before both SUVs grow small while leaving a tan dust cloud in their wake.

Shady barks at them as they cross the gate.

"That's right, Shady girl." I wave my fist in the air. "And stay the hell off my property."

She barks again, and I love her for it. With a leap she goes from her position to a sprint that takes her to the elm tree and the spot where the two SUVs parked. Several sniffing loops later, Shady squats and pees. Though I'm not entirely sure, I want to think she picked the spot Devon Smith's SUV covered but a minute ago.

I should get on my golf cart again to go lock the gate. But as I forgot to plug it in, its lousy batteries have probably drained by now. I'll have to walk. So I don't. I don't see much point in it, or to frame it in more accurate terms, the motivation floats out of my grasp.

So I sit on the porch again, counting off the minutes that I hope turn into hours and darkness, until I can go hide my head in a pillow and through sleep, shallow as it may come, stop counting off minutes that lead nowhere.

But I don't count for long. A small white sedan catches Shady's attention first. She barks at it, runs at it when it dares cross the gate, jumps at its driver side door as it rolls toward the house. Once there, its occupant stays inside for fear of the big mean dog.

"Shady, _hierr_ ," I say. I have to repeat it twice more before she heeds me and comes to stand by me at the top of the steps.

Candice exits the car. In her left hand she's holding a white plastic bag. She lifts it up like a peace offering, points at it with her other hand.

"Thought I'd bring dinner. Hope you like Mexican. And some company, perhaps?"

"What gave you that idea?"

"A whole day rocking on your porch, followed by a visit you will not soon forget? Girl to girl, I thought you'd need a little relief. And I sure didn't want to invite myself over to dinner and make you cook."

"What happened to your flight back to sunny L.A.? Cancelled again?"

"Yeah. I cancelled it."

"I take it you had good reason."

"I'm looking at her."

I shove my fists into my hips. "Who do you work for, Candice? And don't give me the blogger, entrepreneur crap."

"I'd like to work for you." She shrugs. "OK, I'd like to work with you."

"Who do you work for, Candice?"

She smiles, lifts the bag again. "How about dinner?"

"Only if you're gonna get serious with me."

"That shouldn't be a problem."

I turn for the door and hold it open. " _Mi casa es su casa_."

## » Chapter 14 «

By non-spoken mutual agreement, we eat our Burritos, chips and guacamole without touching on the main topic of interest. We make idle chitchat about my dogs, how I train them, and about Shady in particular.

"So she was a military dog at one point," Candice says as she lays aside one third of her burrito. "I didn't realize that."

"I guess your sources didn't tell you everything."

She pushes out her cheek with her tongue. "Or I had too much to read and missed that detail."

"You best plug up that hole. Wouldn't wanna have any blind spots in your scouting report."

"No, I wouldn't. Now I see how they got you to accept not having Shadow come home with you. Shadow-7, right? That is his full man-given name?"

I clench my jaw. "It is. And I didn't accept nothing. Certainly, not on account of Shady."

"You miss him?"

"What do your sources say?"

"That you've been filing papers to try to speed up his discharge."

"Not his discharge. Just his homecoming."

"You mean his release to you. An adoption."

I exhale my answer. "Yeah."

"It'd be nice if someone could help you with that."

I don't know whether to read a faint offer for assistance or a veiled threat in her words.

"Can you?" I ask.

"Hmm. Above my pay grade, I'm afraid. That doesn't mean I couldn't ask a few questions."

Great, I think. Dangling her own bone in front of me, when in all likelihood none of her alleged help and looking into it will amount to anything over what I have now: tail-chasing, delay of game, and disappointment.

"What's your game, Candice?"

"I don't play games. Neither should you."

"Alright. What's your business here?"

"To stop you from making a deal with the Devil."

After expressing initial reluctance, Candice accepts a bowl of ice cream. But only after I tell her it's homemade, with locally grown peaches, no less. Armed with bowls and spoons, we sit on the porch.

"From where I'm sitting, it looks more like you want me to trade one devil for another," I say.

"The lesser of two devils?" She snickers at the cleverness of her turn of phrase, or at the way I foreshadowed it, I can't tell.

For a moment I allow myself the luxury of expanding on the thought. Choosing the lesser of two evils may prove difficult, but selecting between two devils will likely turn into a much darker affair.

"It's not that way, Jane."

"And I should believe that, why? Because I trust you?"

"Trust yourself. Trust your instincts. They're telling you to run away from dear Devon. Are they telling you the same thing about me?"

"That jury's still out."

"Look at it this way. Go with him and you have to follow his direction. My way you stay independent. You get to lead your life the way you choose. And you get to keep the benefits Devon Smith is waving in front of you."

"I'm sure it's not you. But this whole thing lacks the right fragrance."

"Nice way of saying it smells rancid. I appreciate the soft candor and the creative wording."

"Well? You've tap danced very cleverly, but you still ain't telling me who you work for."

"Is it that important to you?"

"I like my situational awareness accurate and complete."

"Sometimes knowing comes at a price. In this case, you may have to sign on to things and get deeper than you might want. Are you sure you want to go that route?"

"So I should just stay dumb and happy."

"The happy part is up to you, but I don't think there's an ounce of dumb in your bone marrow. All I'm offering you is a chance to lead a normal life."

"Heard that before."

"From the Devil himself, I take it."

I take in a big spoonful and let it melt on my tongue before I swallow. "You think it can work, this elevating of my public persona and popularity so Devon and company won't dare come after me."

"You got it. You want them to have to live with you. It's more like once you reach a certain threshold, they get some benefit from you, without your full cooperation."

"Just like that."

"No, not just like that. I'll have to help you. You'll have to work at it, but like a normal person working hard to get ahead without having to place your principles or your personal freedom at risk."

"So long as I don't know the why."

"Not to its full extent."

"I'd still love to know what's in it for you."

"Me? Hmm. Thanks for asking. I'll take that as evidence you care, if you don't mind. Please resist the urge to burst my bubble."

Until now I've been looking into the blue-black eastern horizon. Now I turn to glare at her. "What's in it for you?"

"You're intense, you know that?"

"Same question."

"I want the same as you, I suppose. Freedom. I want to lead the life of an entrepreneur, helping people, being sociable in the digital sense."

"You make it sound down right altruistic."

"It turns me on, to be honest. Way better than the desk job they saddled me with after graduation. I set my own hours, do interesting work on the good ol' Internet, file my report once a week, and go surfing in the Pacific as often as I want."

"Sounds fabulous. What job title goes with that, exactly?"

"Hmm. It won't impress you much."

"At this point I'd be impressed with something specific."

She nods and looks away with a smile. "I'm a triple-I manager. Information, Image, and Intelligence. I take people or situations and I manage them into the best or the worst light possible, depending on what the situation may call for."

"You mean your orders."

"I mean depending on the mission."

"So you're like one of them spin doctors, or them campaign managers. You do PR, basically. But the clandestine kind."

"Hmm. You can look at it that way." Candice turns back to face me, grinning now. Again, she does that thing with her tongue and her cheek.

"But it wouldn't be a complete look."

More grinning, this time with a bit less tongue and cheek action. "Not exactly. It's a little more complex, and with a few more goodies in the toolbox. And that's as close as we can inch up to the ledge without needing to drop you deeper into the rabbit hole."

I don't like melted ice cream, and half of mine has already crossed that point, so I work to finish it off while Candice dithers with hers, taking the occasional small bite here and there.

"So how does this look?" I ask once I set my bowl aside. "You and me, working together. Walk me through the logistics."

"Well, the first thing we do is elevate your profile. We set up a website, link it up to social media, get you some interviews, and blast your brand out there. Alongside with that, we get you more jobs. Regular stuff, here and there, around the country."

"What kind of jobs?"

"Specialized tracking, when incidents come up around the country. And that's important. It can't just be Colorado, nice as the one to two hour drive may seem. You need to go national."

I take that in, recalling how Allison more or less said the same thing. For a second I'm wondering whether Candice is mirroring Allison's vision for the joint venture she wants to have with me, or whether Allison got some ideas from Candice. Before I abandon that line of thinking, I find myself pondering how long Candice and Allison have been talking to each other.

"National, huh."

Candice grins. "Heck, yeah, national."

"Alright," I reply. "Not looking forward to plane rides with a large dog. And those jobs don't come up often."

"You'd be surprised how many opportunities you'd have when you extend your reach nationally. Still, a lot of local folks think they have their K-9 services covered. We'd need to sell what you can offer that they don't have. Your most recent adventure proved your dogs are better, more sensitive, more capable, and so on. Get that across and your prospects improve."

"Still—"

"There's gotta be more," she says. "You train folks, agencies, etc. You bring your skills and insights to them. I think that has a lot of upside. My research shows there's a lot of halfway training out there. But again, this will depend on branding you as the preeminent national expert."

"Long shot. A lot of qualified folks out there."

She grows serious. "Yeah, but none like you." Unlike other people taking a sideways glance at the elephant I carry on my back, she doesn't look down. She doesn't have to.

"We play the cripple card, then."

She shakes her head. "The hero card. The overcomer card. A lot of handlers out there with military and law enforcement experience." She points at me. "But none. Like. You."

I go to repeat the cripple card quip, but I can't. I whip myself enough over it, and right now I don't want to keep dwelling on it.

"You don't need to be ashamed of it, Jane. Embrace it. And get a boost from it? Heck, yeah, girl. You earned it. With your blood. With your suffering." Her playful expression gives way to one of almost snarling tenacity. "It's yours, so yeah, wave it around, ride it for all it's got."

"You're sounding like a demented version of my therapist."

"I'm serious, Jane. If your disability opens doors, you march right on through, head held high. You didn't ask for it. It isn't some personal flaw you brought on yourself. So yeah, you use it."

I look away into the cooling darkness. "Nice speech, but it still don't feel right."

"So tell me this, honestly. Would you want to give those legs away, right now? Go back to a wheelchair or walking on two sticks?"

I don't answer, but truly, she's boiled the whole matter to its core essence. For a moment I recall how when they put those first legs on me, and when I rose to fall in a heap, I wanted to give up right then. I wanted to say, life over, cash me out right now. Just roll me out, fold me under the bed covers, put a big pain pill bottle on my nightstand, and let me fade away right there.

I don't know why I didn't go that way, except that maybe the image of Shadow and the hope of seeing him again made me try again. Or maybe Shady with her own capricious temperament kept me going. I reckon it was a little bit of both. A lot of both to tell it true, plus that Baptist upbringing of mine that says you can't give up on life. Hope will rise upon you if you endure and punch through the pain.

Now, as I contemplate my choice, it hinges on that one question again: do I want legs that can give me the life I want to live, or do I want to dissolve into depressed nothingness? Maybe another day, one of gloom and failure, might yield a different answer. But at this instant it don't seem like much of a choice.

I look back at Candice, unashamed that tears have formed in my eyes.

She puts her hand on mine. "That's right. You want to keep them. Why? Because those legs let you do what you love: training and tracking with your dogs. Between those two things, you can get a nice, steady income."

"What about breeding dogs here?" I say.

"Sure. That's an extension of your training effort. Maybe with some time you can be a supplier of highly trained dogs." She pauses. "We even build a brand for that, kind of like the Shadow program you used to work. Different name, same concept. All the dogs that come through that program adhere to the same standards. Boom."

I shake my head and feel my lips part into a bitter smile. "Yeah, boom."

"Oh, and you can go out, bring them their dogs, or they can come here to your ranch, and you show them how to partner with their dog. Boom-boom."

I nod. Whether she's wearing me down, or whether I want to desperately believe the promise of impending success, I don't know, but the sound of it all seems to improve with every sentence out of her mouth.

"But I see all of that as the foundation," Candice adds. "If you really want to capitalize on your brand, you have to take up one more notch."

"Like what?"

"Speaking engagements."

"Huh."

"Yeah, I know. We'll need to work on that." She grins. "You could have stood to have a bit more polish at that news conference. Still, overall, people liked you. You came across as real. Straighten out a few corners, gather up some of the fraying threads, and you'll be cooking."

"Whatever." I grab her ice cream bowl and set it on top of mine. "I still don't get what's in it for you," I say.

She shrugs. "My job. Just let me do it."

I breathe in and let it out nice and slow.

Candice stands, tells me she best get going, it being late and she having to find a hotel room in town and all. Really, she didn't have a reservation? I ask that, and in the next sentence, without much thinking about it I'm offering to spiff up the guest bedroom for her.

She shoots me a broad smile, like she planned that all along.

With her raving about what "wonderfully mothering" I'm giving her, she eats my breakfast—egg whites omelet and wheat toast, per her request—and runs off to Denver to catch her 8:30 AM flight. This all happens by 6 AM, in large part at my insistence to make sure she gets to the airport in plenty of time.

That leaves me standing on the porch with a lot of day left to kill. Next to me Shady barks as the last trace of Candice's white rental car vanishes beyond my gate.

"We should probably do more than hang around and mope all day," I tell Shady.

She barks at that. Twice.

I've been meaning to sort through the garage, so I head in there and search for a good attack point. A wood crate catches my eye. It sits underneath two other boxes due to its weight. After a moment's hesitation, I move the top boxes aside and get to it. I can't quite kneel or squat, and I don't want to splay myself all over the floor for lack of a good way to get up. So I bend at the waist. From that position, I peel back the lid and examine the contents.

Like I need to. There they are, the two pairs of shoes I wore when I did college track and field, and next to them, a stack of shot put balls, all of them testifying to the passage of time through a healthy layer of red-brown rust.

A quick look around, and I find the wheelbarrow. Dad's wheelbarrow, that is. As I walk to it, I picture him pushing it around the front of the house and recall why I haven't come in here to clean up. Too many memories. Too much to handle.

But I plow through it, looming tears and all. I roll the wheelbarrow over to the box, and one by one, I stack the shot put balls in it. Why am I doing this? Bottom line, silliness, but this morning over breakfast Candice suggested I think of something unusual about me that can add some color. My homework assignment, she called it. And as she finished stuffing her carryon suitcase to head out, my mind landed on this box and its contents. What if I resurrected my shot put career? Maybe compete at some level? Heck, maybe even try out for the Olympic team?

Yeah, silliness.

I finish stacking the balls and cart them over to the side before I return to the box. The running shoes are looking something awful, not the kind of footwear I'd put on. If I had real feet, that is. Which I don't. As luck would have it, I don't think my prosthetic feet will much care what quality of shoes cover them or cushion them from God's hard earth.

Though more or less a tossup, I grab the pair of shoes I estimate to retain the best condition. Shady whimpers at me, as if demanding an explanation.

"Just going for a walk." I say, and she barks back.

"Maybe with a few short jogs in between."

She barks twice more.

Together we walk back to the porch. At its ledge, I sit and swap out my shoes. I'm already wearing sweat pants and a T-shirt. Though I'd prefer something lighter, the early morning air remains cool enough that I don't think I'll overheat too much. Besides, I'm not going to push hard. Nothing more than a test jog, I promise myself.

Thirty minutes and two miles later I return winded, but unable to ease off the pace. The landline phone in my kitchen is ringing, and Shady, already at the backdoor, is barking to urge me on before I miss the call.

Once inside, I huff more than answer it.

"Major McMurtry, it's me, Dr. Hinckle."

"Oh. OK."

"You seem out of breath."

"Just came back from a... went for a walk, and did a little running, too."

"That's great! Really good to hear. I was calling to find out how you are doing. I guess I have part of my answer." Her voice sounds cheery, encouraging, but I detect something darker in it too.

"It's working out so far," I reply. "No complaints, but I'll keep monitoring and jotting down my impressions, like you asked."

"Super." She pauses long enough that the "super" don't feel so. "I hate to have to tell you this, but we're going to need you to come back."

"When?"

"Monday at the latest. Today if you can make it."

I don't know why, but something, an instinct perhaps, tells me I need to delay as much as possible. "I got a lot going. Even Monday's going to be a stretch."

"I'm afraid it has to be Monday, then. We really need to see you by then."

"Why's that?"

She pauses. I can hear her letting out a sigh. It sounds forced, but maybe I'm imagining that. "We need to check on something. It's kind of important."

"What is it?"

Another sigh, more delay of game. "Your prosthetics... The manufacturer has issued an advisory. It's not quite a recall, but we're required to run a check, see whether yours fall in the affected lot."

"And if they are?"

"We'll need to replace them."

I swallow. "With the same kind?"

"Since there's an issue, probably not. Not until the advisory and the concerns behind it are cleared."

Here I could push for more information. What exactly is the issue? What happens if I don't come in? Could I be hurt by wearing these things? Do I have an option? But I need to ask none of that. By paranoia or through insight, should there be a difference, I know the jig is up. I know who's pulling the strings, or tightening the tourniquet on me, is more like it.

"I see," I say.

"So we'll see you on Monday?"

"I reckon you will."

We hang up, and I sit at the kitchen table, my sweat dripping off my forehead warm and heavy onto the wood tabletop. Even while I tell myself I don't need these legs, which after all I made do without no more than a handful of days ago, the thought of losing them, of going back to awkward walking and the painful life that went with it crushes me. I find this interesting, since I haven't allowed myself to show any sort of gratitude over my new prosthetics. But now that I face the prospect of losing them, only now do I appreciate them like I should have from the moment I walked onto Lackland Air Force Base with them a few days ago.

I react the usual way I meet perceived injustice, especially of the poor, pity me kind. I let my anger expand inside my gut and rise up my chest. At first I let that anger point in every direction, up at heaven and all around at the curses of earth and hell. But eventually it lands on a single point, a single person. Devon Smith.

As if to confirm this refocusing, not fifteen minutes after the prior call, my phone rings again. This time I speak with Devon Smith's assistant. Mr. Smith, you see, would like to know my answer. When I say I need a little bit more time to consider Mr. Smith's generous offer, I learn I have until Monday at the latest to convey my decision. Yes, Monday. Definitely no later than Monday.

## » Chapter 15 «

After I get off the phone, I check the clock and figure Candice is at her gate, waiting to board. I text her, and she calls me back.

"Guess who just called?" I say when she answers, the projected bravado aiming to camouflage my inner angst.

She giggles. "A bratty boy who's threatening to take back his toys?"

"Dead on straight."

"So what options do you think you have?"

"I can call my CO, Lieutenant Colonel Brady, see what he can do. I can call Linder or someone in the press and blow the lid on Devon Smith. But Brady don't have the kind of pull I need, and Linder and I have nothing but innuendo by the way of evidence."

"But there is a third option," Candice says.

"Yes there is. And you're going to walk me through it."

"Do you want me to stay local?"

"Don't think that's necessary. What about you?"

"I think I can fly back to L.A., and by the time I get there, I should have a concrete plan."

I gnaw on my lower lip for a bit. "Anything you can preview?"

"I'm seeing you in New York, giving an interview on one of the network morning shows."

"Never been to New York. Can't say that I've lost anything over there I need to go searching for."

"Oh, yeah? What do you wanna bet that by the time I land in L.A. I'll have that fixed up for you?"

I take in her words, not knowing whether to grin or grimace.

The Rockefeller Plaza crowd cheers. A couple of minutes ago Shady demonstrated how to spot a suspicious backpack the producers planted among the crowd, and a few minutes before that she was leaping over six foot walls and crawling through tight, barbwire lined spaces as her live and TV audience looked on. Right now, she's taken down one of the big guys that does security for the studio. We're all very glad we dressed him up in generous padding and had him stand by a thick blue mat because Shady tackles him hard.

All this took some setup. No way the TV network could line it all up by Monday, so here we are, Tuesday, which means I won't make it down to San Antonio's VA Center hospital until the following morning. During a telecon I got some heavy pushback on that, but in the end I prevailed thanks to Dr. Taylor. She supported my argument that I'm trying to get on with my life, and that this is a huge opportunity for me. Oh, and I'll make sure I plug all the great work military dogs and their trainers are doing out there, even if that seemed to appease Lieutenant Colonel Brady none.

" _Hierr_ ," I shout over the crowd's cheering which is starting to show horrified hints, so we best not carry on too much. Carrying on, however, is all Shady wants to do, and it takes another " _Hierr_ " to get her to release and come to me.

The crowd's clapping now as I put Shady on leash, make her turn around and sit so the two of us can face the cameras and smile. I do it the way Candice told me. Find the camera with the red light, look into it straight on, smile, and "make eye contact with America," as she put it.

"Very impressive," the male anchor is saying to me. "And I'm sure that's just a glimpse of what these dogs can do."

"We were told to keep it snappy," I reply.

He smiles. "So like we said at the top of the segment, you're a trainer as well."

"Yes, sir." Here I go for another angle Candice told me to pursue. Dressed in an outfit that resembles but doesn't imitate BDUs, I act relaxed, without representing the military, civilian all the way and so on, but still with a respectful attitude.

"How many dogs have you trained?"

"That depends on what we mean by training. I've exercised many dogs, taken them through their paces and such. But for me training is a cradle to grave thing. It's about forging a relationship with my dog. You know what I mean?"

"Yes, totally. I take it the number of dogs you've trained that way is much smaller."

I nod. "Yes, sir. Two. Shady here, and—"

"And Shadow, who's still serving overseas."

I nod again. Candice told me to get real if his name comes up, to not fear getting emotional. At first I thought her "real" would amount to me putting on an act. But it don't feel that way now.

"You miss him, don't you?" He asks that question with the air of someone who's been having coffee with me for months, us talking about Shadow. Of course, I know Candice fed him the whole story. For all I know they spent an hour on the phone with her impressing upon him the "human element" of this part of the story.

"Yes, sir," I say finally after a long pause during which I've been nodding like a fool while I swallow my tears.

Around us the crowd has gone silent. The few voices that do speak don't rise above the level of a reverential murmur.

The reporter lowers his voice. "You two were separated when an IED caused you some serious injuries."

"Yes, sir." I nod, feeling like a fool again. "You know, it's hard to talk about." Candice also told me to answer this way. Talk around it. Veil the horror and pain of it. _Let them imagine it_. That's enough. To tell it true I wouldn't want to go through regression therapy in front of three cameras and a TV audience.

"Well, I have to say you're doing very well." He puts his arm around me.

The gesture sickens me a bit, more of this circus act I've dropped myself into. But I think he means it, or at least has convinced himself he means it, and I suppose when it comes to staying "real" sometimes that has to be enough.

"For a double-amputee, you are doing some amazing things," he adds, probably because his script says to make sure to toss that in, "double-amputee." Can't leave out that human element.

"Thank you," I manage to say.

"You are walking very well. Tell us a little bit about how you've gotten to this point."

"Well, a lot of pain and a lot of therapy." Look up at the camera again, I can almost hear Candice saying. "And a lot of great help and support from the folks at the VA Hospital down in San Antonio. Some of the best in the world." I stop, taking a breath to shove down my pride and unease at having done more than a bit of fibbing there. "I'm sure with their continued support, I'll continue to get better so I can get on with my life."

"That's awesome." His arm is still around me, and he gives me another sideways shoulder squeeze. "No, you are awesome." He waits for the crowd's applause to subside. "We'll all be watching to see what comes next for you."

With that he thanks me, the cameras turn off, and off to commercial they go. He tells me what a great job I did, and before I can do much more than say "thank you," he's running into the studio for his next thing.

I catch Candice's tongue-in-cheek grin across the quad. With a wave, I start to head toward her. But she waves back at me, like she wants me to stay. She mouths something I don't quite make out. A second later as the crowd closes in on me with pens and pieces of paper, I get it.

"Autographs," she was telling me. Now she makes a heart sign with her hands and mouths, "Love your fans."

For the next few minutes as cellphone cameras go off and hands stretch out toward me, I walk the short fence in the quad and love on my fans. After all, they're the ones that are going to keep me standing and walking on these legs, if Candice has calculated her media blitz just right.

"Boom!" Candice is telling me twenty minutes later. We're now standing around the corner, the crowd having dissipated or gone on to the next tourist attraction, some of them still looking and pointing in our direction, but giving us a bit of space. "Boom, boom, boom!"

"I take it you're pretty pleased with yourself."

"With myself? Are you kidding? Do you have any idea what just happened here?"

"To tell it true, it came and went in a blur."

"Jesus, Jane! We couldn't have planned it any better. Did you hear what he said at the end? _We'll all be watching to see what comes next for you_? That's golden!" She shows me her phone. "And tweeted as a quote against his handle. Boom, girl. Big boom."

I squint at the tweet. "#TrackingJane?"

"That's your hashtag."

"Sounds goofy."

"Goofy, genius, whatever." Her tongue and cheek do that thing again. "It's already trending. We got some work to do, but we already have a hit. Now we need to amplify and solidify it."

I look around and force myself to smile at the handful of onlookers. Some of them are starting to approach, trading looks between me and Shady, who's looking as apprehensive as I feel, except she's showing her displeasure with dark eyes and tense, low grumbling.

I lean down and pet her. "It's alright, Shady girl."

Still, she barks at a guy that's getting too close for comfort.

"She's just nervous," I say when a few folks flinch back.

Candice takes the guy's pen and notepad, and I autograph it. That's good for a few more cellphone pictures. It looks like someone is also shooting some video. As I finish tracing out my chicken-scratch John Hancock, I notice two guys get out of a cab. They're each sporting a big digital camera mounted on some contraption rig. In another second they're pointing their cameras at me, crossing the street as they shoot.

"What's this?" I ask Candice.

"America." She shrugs. "Where anyone can shoot a video and YouTube it."

"You set this up."

"Don't you get it? We don't have to set up anything else anymore. It's all happening organically."

"How about we organically head back to our hotel and pack for our flight."

"We don't have to be at the airport for another six hours." She goes tongue-in-cheek again. "And I feel like stretching my legs a bit, and where better to do it than right here, in the Big Apple?"

With photographer/videographers in tow, we wind our way toward Time Square. For good measure, when we get there, we see a news van from a local NBC affiliate.

"More coincidences?" I say under my breath.

"More buzz. Just flow with it."

"Puke flows, too, you know."

"You're welcome."

In short order, we have the freelancers and an official TV crew following us around. Crouching and sliding around, I can tell they're trying to frame me and my dogs against the iconic features of this landmark.

Shady and I put up with it for a few minutes. But soon, as the crowd thickens and the lights and huge screens flash all around us, I start feeling claustrophobic. I need to get out of here.

"How much longer?" I ask.

"A few minutes," Candice whispers with a smile. "Just relax. Be in the moment. Don't let it bother you."

"Uh-huh."

We walk a ways, cameras rolling, people shoving autograph sheets at me, others thanking me for my service. Soon I'm turning autograph requests away. Shady is growing tense, and I'm having to use both hands to control her. With each step and passing moment I grow convinced we need to get out of here.

Shouting to my right startles me. Shady barks.

"Probably nothing," Candice says. "A lot of life going on here."

"Yeah, maybe." A cold sweat is dripping down my neck. I'm having to focus on breathing right.

Shady barks again.

A police officer breaks through the crowd, reaching out toward me. He waves at me to approach, and I do.

"Jane McMurtry, right?" he says.

"Yeah."

"We got a suspicious abandoned car across the way. Your dog sniffs out explosives, right?"

"Yeah."

"Would you mind?"

What do you say at a moment like that? Yeah, I mind? Hell, no, get me the hell out of here? Sorry, I'm retired now? My dog ain't the best at this? The last thing I want to do is run to a bomb?

The officer doesn't let me. "It's that cab over there. See it?"

Yeah, I see it. And pulling Shady along, we go up to it. A few steps beyond it, the cop stops walking with me. A few other officers have set up a circular perimeter around the car, shoving the crowd back.

I stop to stare at the yellow cab, a large sedan that could fit enough explosives to blow up half a city block. I swallow. After giving her the signal to search for explosives, I tell her, "Shady, _sook_."

Shady stands straighter and waits for me to take the first step. We walk in unison. I start at the front of the car and we circle around it.

Shady stops at the trunk. She sniffs it good, then sits.

I look up at the officer that brought me and give him a slight nod. He gestures at me to get away from the car. Something holds me there for a few moments. I'd like to believe it's defiance, refusing to react the way they want us to. I'd like to believe it's courage, not wanting to run in fear. Some might think I'm frozen by some PTSD-induced flashback. Maybe that's part of it. But more than anything, at that moment I wouldn't mind if another blast took the rest of me and finished the job.

If it weren't for Shady pulling on my leash, I'd stay there. She lets out a sharp bark that finishes with a piercing whistling sound, and she barks again. There's that independence of hers again, tugging on the leash.

I let her lead me out of the blast radius, out of my self-defeat.

## » Chapter 16 «

We're back at the hotel suite the network got for us. Candice is sitting on her upright carryon suitcase. I'm about to zip mine up. Except for her asking how I'm doing and me grunting back, we haven't said much.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that," she says now.

I wipe at my brow. I'm still sweating. "Except I didn't have to, did I?"

She doesn't say anything. When I look up at her, she's staring at her sandaled toes.

I sit on the corner of the bed and face her. "If you can look up how to build a bomb on the Internet, you sure can find how to make a car smell like it's got one. Apparently someone did just that. Cruel joke, huh?"

She looks up. "No one got hurt."

"I suppose I shouldn't worry about this blowing back on me?"

"You didn't know anything about it."

"But I do now."

"No. All you know is you have some guesses." Her face hardens a bit. "You have no evidence, and you certainly don't know of anyone who's admitted involvement."

I stare her down. So this is how it goes. Plausible deniability and all that. "I suppose I can pretend and even claim with half a straight face that I don't know who did it. Wish I did, though. Then I could tell him or her, whichever the case may be, not to ever do that again."

"All's well that ends well."

"And more than once."

She tilts her head to the side, daring me to go into what I figured out during our walk back to the hotel.

Linder called, and along with telling me he was off the case, he let me know Devon Smith—the _first guy_ in our crude code—didn't do the kidnapping. If not Smith, then who? Hmm, maybe the same crew that arranged for a taxi cab loaded with explosives to land in Time Square at the exact moment when I waltz in with my bomb sniffing dog? I'm betting that same crew holds a controlling interest in that shell corporation that leased all them houses to Energetix employees so they could disappear or become unavailable before they could tell anyone how two teenagers dropped into a man hole.

I keep staring her down, sensing that deep down she's busting to tell me how she pulled it all off, with her _goodies in the toolbox_ and all. I can also see she wants to wax poetic some more about how this little incident just cemented me as a full-blown national hero. A fully branded one. To her credit she keeps all the buzz and boom talk to herself.

To my credit, I hold my mouth, too. One thing I've learned? Once you know the Devil's position, you never let him know it, and you sure don't tease him out of it.

Candice's predictions about my upgraded celebrity turn out true enough. An hour later, at the airport, the TV screens loop coverage of the Times Square incident. There I am, walking tall on these magical legs of mine that are letting me save the day. Between-the-lines message? Who in their right mind wants to take them away now? There we are, Shady and I sniffing out a bright yellow cab to certify that yes, that trunk contains a load of explosives. Two C4 bricks found, the voiceover reports. Not connected to a detonator, thank God. Let the whole country breathe a sanitized sigh of relief.

"Splash," I tell Candice.

She smiles. "Yeah, quite a splash, I'd say. I guess we should go with that instead of the B word from now on." Just to make sure I get her meaning she mouths, "boom."

Over the intercom, the announcement sounds out telling us to board our San Antonio flight.

As we board, we get more than a few looks. Shady counts as a service dog, the flight attendant has to explain to more than one concerned flier. We give her a window, bulkhead seat, while Candice and I take the middle and aisle seats.

As soon as we've reached cruising altitude, Candice asks me to get her laptop from the overhead compartment. During the rest of the flight, we go over next steps. Candice anticipates at least one local news crew will welcome us. How has she come to this expectation? I don't have to ask. Candice has primed their pump. No doubt she's told them I have a big announcement to make.

Why do I think that? Here, on the plane, she tells me all about the big news I will share. The VA is taking away my legs for reasons they've yet to explain in full. "No doubt a bureaucratic mix-up," she insists I say, which according to her should provide enough fodder while allowing the powers that be a face-saving way out. A little fib, but true enough, so I tell myself I can live with it.

She's also arranged for the airport to provide me with a wheelchair. We will carry my legs in my lap—our bit of protest at the injustice of it all.

"I must say I ain't too keen on the freak show aspect of your little scheme," I tell her.

"I get that. But think of the optic it will present." She raises an eyebrow. "The bad ol', incompetent VA taking your legs away. You, a hero that saved two kids days ago, and helped the NYPD clear a potential bomb site less than twenty-four hours ago. Not to mention, of course, how you came to need those legs in the first place."

"It smells."

"Think of how it will reek for them."

I read the little script she's typed up for me in her laptop, committing it to memory, all the while not sure I will go through with the charade.

"Why not have them interview me after I come out of the VA?"

"Two reasons. The press will have lost interest by then, and secondly, you'll probably have no reason to come out in a wheelchair. The VA will give you your old legs back, so you can waddle out."

"Alright, I'll think about it." I lean back in my seat and close my eyes, and thankfully, she lets me.

By the time we land in San Antonio, night has fallen. My cellphone contains a single text from Dr. Hinckle. She'd still like to see me in the morning, just to check on things. But—good news!—that advisory recall on my legs? Lifted.

I show the text to Candice.

She grins. "Guess I should see about getting a red eye to L.A., then."

"What's your rush? San Antonio ain't so bad. Best stick to the plan. Grab some Tex-Mex, and I can show you around the base, like we talked about."

She smiles. "OK. Why not?"

In short order Candice devises an alternative announcement. She whispers it in my ear, and I commit it to memory as best I can. The reporters meet us at baggage claim. They come from two competing stations, so we endure lots of jockeying for best camera angles and questions.

With a poster of San Antonio as my backdrop and Shady sitting at my side, I stand in front of the cameras. "I'm here to meet with my doctors," I say. "They're checking out my prosthetic legs, just to make sure everything's working well. If so, they'll green light me to get more physically active."

Questions about what this means for me come my way, and answers fly in the other direction about me now having the freedom to carry on a fulltime career tracking with Shady, maybe even start a breeding and training business back at my ranch. We let things run for a few minutes. Once Candice gets to feeling it's time, we thank them and excuse ourselves, long day and late night and all, you know.

"It can't be this easy," I tell Candice on the way out.

"Don't get cocky, now. You had a couple of rough patches in there."

"No, I mean about my legs. They're going to let me keep them."

"Are you ever going to trust me? I told you. They have no choice now. You're too hot to mess with. And Devon will figure out a backdoor way to use your growing celeb to push his own brand. Just watch."

After getting our car rental, we find a favorite dive of mine and we have dinner. Though my plan originally called for showing her around Lackland the following morning, I had the forethought of getting her visitor papers processed for the whole week. I tell her I want to drop by the base tonight.

Where most people might say, no thanks, let's go crash at the hotel, she perks up and says, "Heck, yeah."

By the time we arrive at the base, the Visitor Center is closed. I fear Candice's paperwork may be tied up in there, but hope that special arrangements were made. Sure enough, at the gate, the MP dude checks a clipboard, goes inside, taps a keyboard, and boom, Candice is in.

"You're escort-only," I tell Candice as I hand her a visitor badge. "That means we stay attached at the hip. You don't as much as go to the little girl's room without me."

She grins. "Wouldn't have it any other way."

We park the car and walk the rest of the way. At night I won't be able to show her as much. I promise to bring her back the following day, after we visit the hospital.

I point to the kennel as we walk past it. One dog barks at us—at Shady, probably—and to her credit, though her head snaps in that direction, she doesn't return the greeting.

A few minutes later we arrive at a chain link fence that looks out onto the runway. I point up at the sky. Tiny lights, some flashing, some solid, come into view.

"That's what I was hoping to show you."

A minute later we hear it, the rumbling of an approaching large aircraft.

"Awesome," Candice says.

"C-17." I don't say much more than that, and I suspect she don't need to ask me more about it, like what's a cargo plane bringing in. For a second I toy with asking her whether she's ever ridden one of those. I decide to enjoy the moment instead.

We watch it land in the distance. We follow it as it winds its way among runways and approaches us. A couple of floodlights go on around us, and only now, in its beams do I see that a light mist is falling.

"I always make a point to see at least one landing when I'm down here," I say.

"Boys coming home?"

"Boys _and_ girls, Ms. Candice."

"True. Sorry."

My legs wobble a bit under me, and I grab onto the chain link fence.

The engine's rumble comes closer. In another minute the C-17 taxis up to us and stops. From our position we can hear the hydraulic whining of its ramp swinging down.

Candice checks her watch. "Kind of late. Their families won't have much of a homecoming party."

"These folks ain't doing any homecomings tonight."

A small group of soldiers descend. Two handlers and their dogs follow last. Once more my senses heighten at the prospect that one of them might be Shadow. I close my eyes and open them again. In the dark, handlers and dogs alike seem like nothing but void shapes, silhouettes sliding in the night.

Next to me, Shady whimpers. I reach down to settle her down. Last thing we need is her ruining the moment with a bunch of barking.

"Special Forces," Candice says.

"Thought you'd like to see them when they're not in a movie or some dossier someone's handed you."

I hear her sniff. "That used to be you, huh? Coming home with your team."

"Yeah, maybe."

We stand in silence for a few minutes, until the lights go out. I grasp the chain link mesh, and it shakes from my weight.

"You OK?" Candice asks.

I shrug.

"Maybe we should head out, find our hotel and get some rest."

I think about confronting her. Right here, right now, on my turf, I should let her have it for manipulating me and everything that's been going on. The faked kidnapping. The bomb in Time Square. And God knows what else.

"I'm thinking you should go on ahead," I say.

"Huh? How will you get to the hotel?"

We start walking back to the car. "I'll just get my stuff, bunk it here with the guys. You can come by and pick me up in the morning."

"You miss this, huh?"

"I get enough of it during my reservist duty."

"Maybe you've had enough of me, then?"

"Yeah. Maybe."

We leave it there, arriving at the rental car a few minutes later. In silence I retrieve my two bags, and in silence Candice climbs into the driver side. She waves as she drives off. I don't wave back.

A heavier mist starts to fall as Shady and I watch the devil I've chosen drive off into the night.

# Staying in Touch

I hope you have enjoyed reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you would like to stay in touch with me and learn about future releases, join my reader's club. From time to time, my newsletter will contain free downloads that I make available to my readers.

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You can learn more about writing at my Author Website. Once there, I encourage you to learn more about the Our Cyber World and  Tracking Jane series.

Stories in this series...

 Dead Beef

 Pink Ballerina

 Active Shooter

 Decisive Moment

 Beisbol Libre

 Ghost Writer

 Feral**

 Semi*

 Recombinant**

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** In work, to be released soon

Stories in this series...

 Waiting for Shadow

 Shadow-7

 Rover

 Fleeting Shadow *

 Tahoe-1

 Brownie

 Blood Track **

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** In work, to be released soon

