Lulah dropped into a chair, propped her feet on the low table, and scrolled through the phone messages that had come in during her last session training the Dog Haven Sanctuary interns. From the office kitchen Marlo called out, offering tea or coffee, but Lulah remained stuck on the first message, her emotions polarized.

Three short words: Help me, pls.

“Crappity-crap, we got us a Vince bomb!” Lulah called out. Geez, here we go again.

Vince was not the guy for her. Not even close. Lulah knew that all the way to the depth of her heart and soul. Still, that hadn’t stopped her spending each spare moment through the morning imagining herself hard-up against totally hot Vince who had promised to stop by this evening and help with her course work.

“What’s up?” Marlo asked.

Lulah tapped out a quick Where r u? message and hit the reply button, muttering at the phone. “Can’t help, buddy, if I don’t know where you are.” She rocked back into the armchair. “SOS from Vince.”

“Uh-huh.”

“In trouble.” She passed Marlo the phone. “But he is asking for help, so breakthrough, maybe?”

“Or a breaking point,” Marlo replied as she read the short message and handed the phone back. “Where is he?”

Today, Lulah had no idea where he was, because despite their friendship, when Vince moved into self-isolation mode, he never told her where he went. He would arrive at her cabin, his usually steady eyes filled with distress as he asked her to take care of his dog, Calliope, for a few days. When he turned up in that state she couldn’t refuse him.

Each time he climbed into his pickup and drove away, he left her as disillusioned as the dog sitting at her feet. Left her to work through an infuriating mix of anger and sympathy, vowing this would be the last freaking time she’d collude with his can’t cope so I’m shipping out stunt.

What really annoyed her was that when he fixed her with that pain-filled gaze, her resolve dissolved into a messy heap that saw her step up to help him out, one last time.

Combat PTSD from his second tour in Afghanistan kept him teetering on the edge of being permanently broken, and if that latest text message was anything to go by, he might have reached his tipping point.

Despite Lulah spending the past few months training Calliope as a service dog to help Vince with his issues, he had yet to agree that he actually wanted a service dog. He said it would define him as a broken person, dependent, when in reality he expected to improve.

Except he wasn’t improving. If anything, he was becoming worse.

Lulah ran her hands through her hair. “You see, that’s the problem. I’m presuming he headed out into the wilderness somewhere, because he looked exhausted when he dropped Calliope to me last night. About crisis-3.”

“Crisis-3, which is…?”

“Oh, a three sits around mid-range, so it isn’t too bad. Elevated stress but recently showered and shaved, wearing clean clothes. Still capable of driving, but couldn’t ride the escalator in a shopping mall.”

“Lulah!”

“Hey, those are Vince’s words, not mine. Anyway, I’m guessing he’s up in the mountains somewhere, but…” She shrugged. “I’m just wondering at what stage we call out a search team. If Vince is in the mountains, he could have fallen, cozied up with a bear, or—” Lulah’s phone rang. She reached for it, and her heart tripped, hoping the caller was Vince. “It’s Dad; I’d better take it. Can you contact Adam and see if he can pin a location on Vince? There’s been no response to my text.”

Adam was Marlo’s boyfriend of almost a year. Recently, to be closer to the woman he couldn’t walk away from, he’d transferred from his position as a New Zealand police officer to a job at Dog Haven. Perhaps his understanding and experience with PTSD could help steady Vince now.

Lulah ducked outside to take her father’s call.

“Hey, Dad, did you find your phone charger?” she joked. Most times she called him his phone went straight to voicemail. Ray rarely called her, and the fact that he was now made her uneasy. Her mind tossed up between health issues and money issues, unable to settle on which would be preferable.

“Lulah-la, how’s my girl?” His voice was gravelly, liked he’d been singing a lot, or cheering at a football game. Or maybe it was age-related from a life spent hunched over a card game in a smoke-filled room.

Lulah-la. Her heart sank. That was the name he used when he either wanted something, or felt guilty. She supposed he thought it would butter her up, take her to the happy place that existed before all the shit came down. Fat chance; if anything, the use of his pet name for her was as alarming as a warning bell.

“All good here, Dad. But I’m guessing you’re not. Hit me with it.”

“What? A dad can’t call to make sure the best daughter in the world is doing okay?”

Lulah sighed and waited. When Ray’s life ran okay, he seemed to forget the ‘best daughter in the world’ even existed.

She listened to him clear his throat. “I’m in a bit of bother, Lulah.” All the cheer had left him.

“Go on.” Lulah’s chest tightened.

“I lent some money to a mate who needed to get his car fixed, and he can’t pay me back. Now I’m short; can’t make rent this month.”

She knew it was bullshit, and for once she was going to call him out on it. “Tell me the truth.”

“It’s the truth, honey.”

“How much do you need?” Thing was, Ray would give his last dime away, he was that generous. But that defensive edge to his voice meant one thing.

“It seems like a lot, but I’ll get it back to you by the end of the month. I can pay you interest. Just fifteen-hundred…two thousand if you can manage it. Ha. My friend’s car—I don’t know if you’ve met Jack—well, his car just blew up on the backroads behind Pahrump. The engine, kaput. You should have seen him after he spent the night trying to catch a lift back to town. He was on a dirt road…”

Lulah waited as the story gathered speed, her silence encouraging Ray to embellish his lies, until she couldn’t listen any more. “Stop there. You’re gambling again, aren’t you? Be honest?”

“Lulah, honey, I gave that up.”

“You know what I’m hearing right now? The sound of a liar and a gambler. Convince me I’m wrong.”

His breath was coming in short excited bursts over the phone. She could picture the lines on his forehead deepening, his left eye screwing up that way it did when he was thinking up a story. She didn’t want to catch him out, hoped he wouldn’t confess to the lie, and that the story about the car was true. But the longer it took for words to replace the sound of his breath, the faster her hope drained away.

“I’m in trouble.” His voice had deepened, softened.

“Uh-huh.” Lulah’s heart felt caught in her throat.

“I got debts. Big ones.”

“Gambling ones?” God, she could all but see him nodding. He had an addiction and so long as she paid his debts, she enabled him to continue with it. But since the last time, she’d hardened up. He wasn’t going to wreck her life again.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, it was just one game. I was doing great but I couldn’t stay in without—”

“I can’t help you, Dad. You know that. I’ll call you later in the week.”

“Just like your mother,” he said, his tone hard and accusing.

“No, Dad, don’t do this. I’m at work, I have to go. Like I said, I’ll call you.”

She switched off her phone and thumped her forehead. Jesus wept.

She re-entered the office just as Marlo finished talking to Adam.

“Don’t worry about Vince. I’ve just spoken with Adam, and he’s going to try and locate him. What’s up with that father of yours? Sounded to me like he’s gambling again.” Marlo said.

Lulah dropped into the chair and dragged the fingers of both hands upwards through her short hair, so that it stood on end. She pointed to her head. “Ta-da, Nutty Professor.”

“Lulah!”

She smoothed her hair back down, twirling one end. “You see, here’s the thing about men. They drive me freakin’ nuts. They’re unreliable, they break promises, they tell lies, and when their boat starts sinking, they don’t even have the common sense to carry a life jacket. I’m expected to drop everything and turn up with the lifeboat. It’s not enough to be their lighthouse, pointing out the rocks and hazards for them, because they sail about with their heads up their asses, thinking everything is going to be just fine. And even if it’s not, good old Lulah will make it right for them.”

“I’m so sorry Ray’s slipped again.”

“He broke his promise to me, again. I’m not helping him out, and I should feel good about standing up to him, so why do I feel like such a cow?”

“Because being the strong one is so difficult. You did the right thing, Lulah. He’ll thank you one day.”

“He hates me right now.” She was probably last on his list to phone for money. In fact, she was probably the only person on that list.

“That won’t last.”

Lulah sighed. “Dad and Vince—double-whammy Wednesday.” She checked her phone again then slapped it against her thigh. “Why won’t Vince respond to my text? Hell, he reaches out for help, then nothing! If whatever crisis he found himself in has improved, surely he’d have let me know.”

“I know this waiting is difficult...”

“I can’t just sit here. Maybe I should go to his house.”

“Adam’s on his way there now, and if Vince isn’t there, he’ll phone.”

“If he’s not at home, how will he find Vince?”

“Oh, you know Adam, super-powers, secret contacts, and all that. I don’t know how he does it, he just does.”

Lulah knew Vince had his own super-powers, because occasionally she caught a glimpse. Like magically arriving at the Sanctuary on a day he wasn’t scheduled to be there, bringing a sandwich and some fruit for her, and somehow knowing she’d rushed out that morning and missed packing a lunch. He loved to tease her until she laughed. When he joined in, lighting up a room in a way that drew her like a moth to his very unreliable flame, she could scarcely keep her breathing calm or contain herself to the perimeter of the fourteen inches of physical distance that made them friends. But his darker side, his inconsistency, meant that flame could flare, burn, and hell...

“Vince, he’s a no-go guy, isn’t he?” Her feelings for him were such that sometimes she needed the reassurance of a friend she trusted to keep her on her stated track.

Marlo handed her a mug of tea. “Using your analogy, he’s probably going to need a lifeboat and crew for a long time yet—maybe forever. Judging by what you just said, I don’t think that’s what you’re after.”

The others at the sanctuary had been wary of Vince—dark, brooding, and blazing hot—but Lulah and he had struck up a friendship that went deep and close in no time. They regularly explored the trails in the parks that bordered the Sanctuary, and she loved the easy way they teased and competed with each other; Vince’s strength countered her agility and knowledge of the area.

Recently, a dramatic landscape or something like a small, hidden lake on the trail would pull them to a halt, fueling a new kind of connection between them. On those occasions, her heart rate increased as she studied the bow of his mouth and the heat in his eyes, but right when something threatened to snap, one of them would make a joke or a challenge and the moment vanished.

“He is hot, though. You have to give him that.” Lulah grinned.

“He’s hurt, is what he is.”

“Hurt, hot, tempting.” Lulah faked a shiver.

“Go there at your peril.”

That’s what she loved about Marlo. That’s why she was a friend rather than a boss, because she never lectured. Instead she threw out a few words that reminded you what you’d vowed in more sane moments. And sometimes her clear thinking made her as annoying as Adam. “You know your problem? You’ve lived with that Kiwi guy for too long. You’re starting to soak up some of his common sense. It’s…icky.”

Marlo laughed. “Icky? Is that your new word this week?”

“This week’s word is ‘disconsolate’.”

“Oh, save me. Drink your tea.”

Lulah took a sip. “I’m not staying long; I want to be away early today if I can. That assignment’s giving me the usual troubles.”

“How’s the course going?”

“Fantastic.” Lulah tried for a look that brimmed with confidence. The coursework was a freakin’ nightmare, if she was honest.

“Liar.”

She grinned. Unlike her father, she hadn’t mastered the art of the poker face. “I know the theory. And you know how well I’m doing with training Calliope. What’s a degree, huh? Who really needs one?”

“You do, within the next two months, if you want to apply for the promotion.”

Lulah raced the dogs up the steps to her cabin porch. As usual, they beat her and blocked the door so that she wouldn’t enter without them, showering her with wet kisses as she bent to remove her shoes.

Home. Her home…almost. It would be hers once she saved the final ten grand to buy it. The promotion at the Sanctuary would give her a better chance of reaching that target before another buyer turned up.

She grabbed a cold drink from inside and returned to the porch, settling into her favorite hickory rocker. For much of the year she virtually lived on the porch. Out here, she had a small table with a couple of chairs, her bed, armchairs, and the biggest view of one of Washington State’s finest national parks. Why, she’d often thought, would one want to live inside? The porch was great until the snow came.

She drained her glass and thought about her assignment, but her father and Vince crowded her mind, killing her enthusiasm to open her laptop. Damn her father and his lying. There she was, believing that he hadn’t gambled for the past two years, and now he was back in debt. Lost everything.

Not my problem, Dad. This is your mess, and you have to crawl out of it.

He told her the debt collectors were threatening him. She thought of his grey eyes, so like hers. How they could look like two inanimate stones perched on his poker face and how they could light up, glittering with joy at treating her to something special, something he’d promised, that on a rare occasion he was actually capable of delivering.

She moved over to the porch table and opened her laptop. The night was still light-sweater-warm, and she was not taking calls. Not from her father and not from Vince, who sent an SOS message that left her hanging. She opened her essay and stared at the jumble of letters. Hell, this better be worth it, because what took others only minutes took her an age to decipher. Sure, she knew what she intended to write, but she wasn’t confident that what she actually wrote said the same thing.

The transient lifestyle of a gambler’s daughter had caused Lulah to fall behind in basic reading and writing skills until, by age eight, she attended school only sporadically. The lack of resources in small town, USA, meant she’d been placed, educationally, in the too-much-work box and passed along to the next teacher. Even now, writing essays was a nightmare of mammoth proportions.

With Vince’s help, her reading ability improved dramatically, but getting words in the right order, from her head to the keyboard, continued to flummox her.

At the sound of Adam’s car in her drive, she closed her laptop. He greeted the dogs—a chest rub for Joker, reducing the dog to jelly, and a gentle ear massage for Calliope—before covering the porch steps in one big stride. Marlo was lucky to have him. Gentle hands, protective without suffocating her, strong, supportive, hot…not in the UHT, Ultra Heat-Treated way that Vince was, but Adam had casual-sexy down pat.

“Beer?” she offered.

He sank into one of her old armchairs. “Love one.”

Inside, Lulah took a beer from the fridge and poured a glass of wine for herself. What the heck, she could probably read better if she relaxed a bit. Back on the porch the dogs were mugging Adam for more rubs, and she sent them after a ball before handing Adam his drink, and settling in the chair opposite him.

“Don’t tell me…Marlo sent you here to make sure I finished my assignment.” They liked to remind her that without an animal behavior degree she couldn’t apply to be the director of service dog training at the Sanctuary. The position was new in a branch of work they would do: training rescue dogs to become service dogs for those with combat PTSD.

“You wouldn’t let me near your assignment.”

“Damn right I wouldn’t, buddy. So this must be about Vince. Any contact with him, yet?”

Adam set his beer beside him on the porch. “Yeah, I found him. He was in a bad way. I’ve settled him back at his house in town, now, and he’ll be out to pick up Calliope tomorrow. If he can’t make that, he’s promised he will phone.”

“So ‘in a bad way’…what does that mean, exactly?” She watched Adam pick at the label on his beer bottle. “Hello, Adam, Lulah here. Big girl, remember? Don’t sit there sorting your words out to make them all sugar-coated shiny and easy to swallow. I want the truth. What did you see?”

“You really want to know, huh?”

“Hit me, hot guy.”

Adam laughed. “One day, Lulah, your turn of phrase is going to bring you trouble.”

“Stalling much?”

“Marlo’s going to kill me.”

“Actually, I’m going to kill you if you don’t spit it out.”

He raised his hands. “Okay, Vince was in a bad way. He’d had a flashback and he couldn’t pull himself out of it.”

“Where was he? Hiking? On the trails?” She looked at Adam, watched him try and fail to slip on that mask that gave nothing away. Then came the strange ticking in her chest that she hadn’t experienced in years; a forewarning that she was about to be let down. Daddy’s started gambling again. Mommy’s angry with Daddy, so she left. Vince…

“Vince wasn’t in the forest, Lulah. He was taking care of his daughter. Vince is a father, and he’s married.”

Hell, doesn’t friendly fire sting? She never saw that bullet heading her direction but the way the news winded her made her suck air to speak. “Right, okay. So every time I thought Vince was heading to the forest he’s been visiting his family?” Why did she feel so betrayed?

“From what I saw, the marriage isn’t in good shape.”

Lulah looked out at Halo Peak, the summit encased in clouds tinged with red and violet by the setting sun. So often she’d looked out there, wondering where Vince was. Was he warm, dry, hungry?

“I don’t think he’s seen his family for months. These other times he really has been in the wilderness. But Vince is pretty damaged. He may continue to improve with the help he’s receiving, if the drive is there to actually make his life better, but right now he is totally controlled and debilitated by his PTSD. As I’ve said before, be his friend. Help him out if he asks for it, listen to him, but try not to involve yourself beyond that.”

“You became involved with Marlo.”

“Ah shit, Lulah.” Adam sighed. “Even at the start, Marlo was more stable than Vince.”

Lulah flashed him a smile. “So what can we do to help him?”

“I can’t speak for Vince. He’s coming over tomorrow to pick up Calliope, and he wants to explain some things to you. Just listen to him, as his friend, and don’t be sucked into his need.”

Yeah, because she was right at the front of the line to catch another needy guy in her life.