Chapter 3

Kurt’s skin was crawling, and the tightness in his jaw had migrated to his temples. His shoulders and spine tensed as he scanned the parameters of the long, open warehouse like he was on patrol. The rear of the building was blocked off by accordion-style dividers. It bothered him that he couldn’t see past them.

It was the smell setting him on edge, he finally realized. Not the obvious smell—the smell of hot, unbathed dog multiplied by 150. That smacked you in the face when you stepped through the doors. Unnerving him was the underlying scent of fear radiating from the expansive rows of crates that were dwarfed by the thirty-foot ceiling and five-thousand-square-foot floor.

Dogs didn’t have sweat glands, so it wasn’t as if the smell was coming out of their pores. But he’d been in the service long enough to know fear when he smelled it—his own, another human’s, a dog’s. Metallic and salty—like blood, only subtler.

The gushy blond accompanying him on the tour wasn’t setting him at ease either, as she squatted down and talked to every crated dog. The bumper sticker on the back of her Corolla—the bright-yellow car he’d parked by had to be hers; he’d seen her keys—was a telltale enough sign she wasn’t right for this job. I BRAKE FOR TURTLES. He didn’t know what Rob was thinking, sending a bunch of trained fighters off to be in this girl’s care.

The bumper sticker wasn’t the only thing he noticed. She was tall and strikingly pretty in an understated, natural way, and she had an hourglass figure.

Not that her looks mattered.

What mattered was that Rob didn’t make the ludicrous decision of sending a bunch of dogs off to end up hammering her. Dogs treated the way most of these had likely been treated—stuck in crates or tied to chains and freed only to fight—needed much more than soft words and treats passed through the bars of their crates. The blond’s Hispanic coworker seemed to know a thing or two about how to handle fighting dogs, but from what Kurt understood, he wouldn’t be working at the site where the dogs would be kept.

“What do you think of her, Fidel?” Her voice was easy and calm like the slow pour of honey. “She seems sweet enough,” she said of the mastiff mix displaying submission along with a good deal of stress while being stared down through the door.

Fidel squatted to inspect the info sheet in the plastic sleeve attached to the side of the crate. There must have been something on it that the man didn’t like because his forehead knotted into a V and he mumbled something Kurt couldn’t hear.

Kurt gritted his teeth as she pulled free a yellow sticky and pressed it on top of the crate. Yellow. Seriously? Her and her stickies. He’d stifled a laugh earlier when he figured out her system. Pink for definitely, yellow for maybe, blue for pass. She’d only used one blue sticky so far, and the way that Rott had attacked the cage door, Kurt wouldn’t have been surprised if he was rabid.

The next dog they came to was a giant. Rather than being crammed into one of the crates, he was in an oversized kennel. He stood when they approached, making it easier to inspect him. The long hair around his neck and along his upper back pricked straight up, declaring the animal’s unease.

His fluffy brown-and-black coat bore markings similar to a German shepherd, but he was much bigger and fuzzier than any shepherd Kurt had ever seen. He’d place him at a hundred and fifty pounds easy. With the dog’s massive size and powerful build, Kurt figured he must be part Neapolitan mastiff or Great Dane, or both. And unlike most of the gigantic dogs Kurt had come across at one time or another, this one seemed anything but easygoing.

With his tail stuck straight out, the massive animal looked at each one in the group alternately, fixing them with a striking stare that in Kurt’s mind was akin to a dare.

“He’s so beautiful. Definitely a yes, don’t you think?” the blond asked her coworker. “Look how calm he is.”

Kurt was opening his mouth in protest when Rob unexpectedly pulled him in for a second hug.

“Boy, you feel like a tree trunk.” Rob let go and ruffled his hair. “With you extending your service like that, heading off to hell and back again, I was starting to think you had a death wish.”

Kurt nearly sent him sailing over a crate for the unanticipated hug. Had Rob forgotten his service years completely? Then he remembered that Rob had never left the States. His entire military career had been as a dog trainer and instructor. He didn’t know how impossible it felt to let go of the hypersensitivity it took to stay alive in a war zone.

“No death wish, just a larger than necessary sense of duty.” Kurt forced a smile as the blond pressed a pink sticky on the front of the giant dog’s kennel. So, she’d be throwing a man-sized dog with a heavily alpha demeanor into the mix, wherever she was taking them.

“Well, I’m glad you’re back. And still in one piece. So many of them boys…” Rob shook his head and seemed to realize they had the girl’s full attention. “I’m really glad you’re back. To stay this time?”

“Stateside for certain. I’ll be looking for work. I was thinking somewhere cool. Maybe Alaska.”

Rob laughed heartily as if the Alaska comment had been a joke. He waved toward the crates. “Son, I’ve got work.”

“Thanks. But like I said, I’m finished working with dogs.”

Rob chuckled some more. “The question you should be answering is whether they’re finished with you. However bad it went in Afghanistan and Honduras, I suspect they’re not.”

That was Rob for you. Taking things where you didn’t want them to go. Kurt forced his gaze not to stray to the blond, not to give in to the part of him that wanted to see her reaction.

Not liking the turn the conversation was taking, he nodded to the partitions blocking off the back of the warehouse. “What’s behind door number three?”

Rob’s lips pursed almost imperceptibly. “Long shots and TLCs. None these guys need to see. For the long shots, it’ll be a bit before we have a sense of whether or not they can be rehabbed into traditional homes. The others will stay until they need less intensive care.”

Maybe the dogs in those cages would shake some sense into the girl. “She should know what she’s getting into. Know how bad it can be.” He gave himself permission to look at her. Her eyebrows furrowed as she listened. She closed one arm over her stomach, wrapping her hand around her other elbow, drawing his attention to her chest, though he knew not intentionally. She reminded him of one of those ancient hand-carved fertility statues. No makeup that he could see, light-brown eyes with flecks of gold, and hips in perfect proportion to her chest. And he had the distinct feeling she had no idea of the heads she turned every day.

She was dressed for a day on the job in faded jeans and a V-neck tee that was the color of orange sherbet. It read ADOPT, except that there was an impression of a dog paw in the middle instead of an O.

“I wouldn’t mind seeing everything,” she said, watching two young guys Rob had introduced at the start of the tour rolling a crate behind the blocked-from-view partition after bringing it in through a side door. “You’re getting more dogs this morning? Do they all start back there, and once you evaluate them, you bring the ones you’re ready to send out up here?”

One side of Rob’s mouth pulled up into a half smile, half grimace. “That was a string of questions. Let’s see. No new animals are coming in until this evening. The pit my guys are rolling back was in surgery yesterday. A couple local vets have volunteered their services. And right now, it’s triage. They’re helping the ones that can benefit most from the immediacy of surgery. Some of the guys back there were injured a while ago, and any surgery they end up getting will be more reconstructive in nature.” He tapped his fingers against his temple and gave a light shake of his head. “Come on, if you want. I’ll let you see.”

Kurt fell to the back as they headed toward the partitions, a wave of guilt passing over him. After seeing Rob’s hesitation, he knew it wasn’t going to be good. He could stomach it, and he suspected Fidel could too, but he was fairly certain Kelsey was going to end up crying, throwing up, or both.

* * *

When Kelsey was little, Chaz and Brian, her brothers, were always confiscating the TV to watch horror movies. Because horror movies kept her awake at night, she’d get grounded if she was caught in the family room while they were on. But when her mom was out shopping or busy with yard work, there were still opportunities to catch a few minutes. Kelsey’d watch the gore until her stomach started to roll and bounce, and she knew it was time to leave the room.

This morning her stomach did neither. She made it past the first three crates—the malamute with a missing front leg, the mastiff pocked with more old scars than brindles, and a Great Dane mix missing most of an ear. She was trying so hard not to cry that she wasn’t even thinking about her stomach.

By then, Rob’s two workers had coaxed dog number four, a pit bull, out of his crate and were offering him a bit of water now that the sedation from yesterday’s surgery was worn off. She saw the dog first from behind. He was leashed and wearing a bright-blue collar. He had a fairly lithe build for a pit bull, was very muscular, and the guy holding his leash was talking in low, easy words.

Their small group walked around the dog in a wide, respectful arc while Rob reminded them how these dogs gave everything that was asked of them, especially the pit bulls. How they never stopped fighting until they absolutely couldn’t.

And then the dog turned to face them. For a couple of seconds, Kelsey could only blink, waiting for her trick vision to clear. It didn’t. The vanilla latte she savored on the way over became a hazard as her stomach pitched wickedly.

It was impossible. No animal could have been hurt like that and still be walking around. Still be interested in drinking water. She had to blink to realize it wasn’t a fuzzy rose tattoo on his left shoulder, but a thick circle of stitches. There were other, smaller patches on his neck. But the hardest to see was his face. The right side was fine, but the left side was a bustling city road map of stitches. From where she stood, it looked as if the eye was stitched shut. His left jowl was a jagged mess, almost as if he was giving their group a mocking smile. As the dog studied them, a wet, pink tongue flicked out, brushing over his nose, over the stitches perforating his jowl.

Kelsey’s blood raced into her stomach, leaving her dangerously light-headed. With an odd sense of disconnection, she felt her body sway in a circle, as if she were warming up in yoga class. A strong hand closed underneath her arm, keeping her upright.

It was thoughtful of Fidel to help her. To understand.

Only he’s on the other side of Rob.

Thoughts circled slowly, as though they were trapped in fuzzy cotton. Racing fast ahead of them was her unsettled stomach. All she had time to do was double over as her latte reintroduced itself. Her vision was too pinpricked to be sure, but the liquid was probably splashing atop her shoes. And, she feared, the boots of the hot soldier with the accusing stare.

The one keeping her upright.

Later, when she was home buried under the covers, she’d probably be humiliated. Right now, she was too distressed to give it much thought. She stayed doubled over until she was certain the nausea had passed.

The guy—curt Kurt, she’d thought earlier from the clipped way he carried out his end of the conversation—neither cussed nor backed away. He stood beside her, holding her arm. The fuzzy cotton in her head cleared, and her knees strengthened. She stood up, wiping her mouth, and waving him off with a “thanks.”

She shot Fidel a pleading glance. Even under his brown skin, it was obvious he was blushing. Her first thought was that he was embarrassed by her. Then, knowing Fidel, she understood it was more likely because he hadn’t been the one who’d noticed she was about to faint and stepped in to help her.

“I’m sorry,” she managed, hardly daring a glance Kurt’s way. “I’m fine now.”

Fidel stepped forward. “If you have a mop, I’ll clean it up.”

“No, it’s fine,” Rob said. “I should’ve known better. These things take getting used to. We’ve got hoses for this. Let’s go up front. There’s a break room with a couch by the office. And we have Gatorade if you think it’ll help.”

Kelsey nodded. “Yes, please.” The pit bull was staring straight at her with his good eye, and she couldn’t look away. He was a beautiful silver blue with a white patch on his chest running up his chin, only it was stained yellow-red in patches. Kelsey hoped from disinfectants used in surgery. He released what sounded like a sigh and turned back to the dish of water, tentatively lapping up some more.

The others started to move, but Kelsey stayed and fumbled through her purse. Kurt stopped and waited, like he’d been assigned Kelsey duty. After a few feet, Fidel and Rob stopped too. Finally, her weak fingers clasped hold of the pink stickies, and she pulled one off the top.

She headed over to the pit’s empty crate and pressed it on top. “When he’s ready,” she said. “I’ll take him as soon as he’s ready.”