Prologue

My level of sarcasm has gotten to the point where even I don’t know whether I’m kidding or not.

-T-shirt

Evander

“Evander Lennox?”

I stood up, hating the way my knees creaked and popped.

I’d been in the military for seven years, then had worked for Hail for five more. It took spending four years in the pen, though, for me to start feeling fucking old.

I guess getting jumped in the dark would do that to a person.

“Hurry up, I don’t have all day.”

I gritted my teeth, but kept my pace deliberately slow.

Fuck him.

The parole officer, my parole officer, sent me a glare the moment I got to him.

“I don’t need your bad attitude. I have your file in my office and I’ve spent the morning going over it. There won’t be any ‘accidents’ while you’re under my supervision, got it?”

The accidents he was referring to weren’t accidents. I’d never said they were accidents.

In fact, I made sure to tell the guards exactly what had happened each time I’d had to use my hands to defend myself.

I was just lucky that the guards liked me and lied when they went to write their reports.

“Yes, Sir,” I found myself choking out.

I wanted to call this man ‘Sir’ about as much as I wanted to take a shit in a plastic bag and carry it around in my pocket.

Thirty minutes later, I was leaving his office with a slew of rules that I now had to follow, as well as some regulations I wasn’t aware that would be required of me when I’d started the day.

Needless to say, as I made my way home—walking, might I add—I wasn’t in a good mood.

Not at fucking all.

***

I ripped the sheet off of the couch, and coughed when a cloud of dust filled the still, stagnant air around me.

“Fuck,” I gasped, waving my hand in front of my face to clear the air.

It didn’t work, but at least I’d given it the good old college try.

No one had been in here since I’d gone to prison. Not my friends. Not my dad—not that he even knew I’d gone to prison since I hadn’t seen him in years, and that was before I’d done time. Not even my sister had bothered to come in here and clean up. Though, that didn’t surprise me much. Every single one of my family members were selfish. I doubted cleaning my place up for me had even crossed their mind.

Yet, had they been there, it wouldn’t have mattered. When I walked onto my property less than twenty minutes ago, I’d found not just overgrown weeds, but also trash. Junk. Old fucking tires.

It was as if my entire front yard was being used as the city dump while I was gone, and not one single person had done a damn thing to stop it.

Angry all over again, the next five minutes entailed me ripping sheets off of furniture and opening the windows in order to let the stale air out and the crisp, early October air in.

I threw the last of the sheets that were covering my furniture outside the door, and left the screen door propped open, allowing much needed air to permeate the room behind me.

“You need any help?”

I looked up to find Travis, the co-owner of Hail Auto Recovery, standing at my doorstep.

“Not really,” I admitted. “I’m here now. That was the hard part.”

It was.

I’d expected my sister to pick me up, but she never showed.

Not that that really surprised me, either.

My sister, yet again, was a selfish person. If it didn’t benefit her in some way, she wouldn’t do it.

“You didn’t have a ride?”

I shrugged. “No.”

“Why didn’t you call me?” he asked.

I looked over at him.

“I called Dante. Didn’t answer,” I informed him. “I took that as the universal sign to fuck off.”

He laughed humorlessly under his breath. “There’s a lot of shit going down with Dante,” he admitted. “And I’ll tell you about it when there’s a lot of whiskey to share. Until then, I brought you the keys to the truck.”

My brows went up.

“Isn’t it company policy not to hire men who’ve had a record?”

He looked at me like he wanted to smack me.

I shrugged. “Just sayin’.”

He sighed.

“We both know you were dealt a bad hand,” he said, tossing me a set of keys. “If you need any help, don’t hesitate to ask. Use the truck. Don’t use the truck. I don’t fuckin’ care. Just make sure you log personal and business miles so we can keep a record of them, okay?”

I nodded mutely, suddenly finding it hard to breathe.

They trusted me. They believed in me.

They’d been there the day I went down, and Travis was there the day I got out.

You find out who your friends are.

“Thank you,” I said. “Do you…”

I hesitated, and he filled in the blanks.

“Do I know what happened to the horses?”

I nodded.

“They’re at the old Mills farm off of sixty-nine. Mills knows you’re back. He said he’d bring them back within the next week.” He stepped away. “Your dog, I believe, is still at Civil’s.”

My eyes closed.

“Thanks, man.”

Travis gave me a small salute, and then took off without another word.

I walked to the front door and watched him walk down the driveway and then blinked at the sight of him getting into a truck with a pretty blonde.

She looked cute, really cute. Definitely not his type, but there were a lot of changes that could happen in four years.

Apparently, Travis doing cute, bubbly blondes was one of them.

I watched the truck disappear down the road and then turned my attention back to the tow truck he’d left me.

It was brand-fucking-new.

There was no doubt in my mind that they just got it.

Why had he trusted me with something so fucking new?

I tossed the keys up into the air, took one more look around, and then walked to my bedroom and stepped up to the safe.

Once I entered the six-digit combination, I opened it, retrieved some cash, and then stared.

All my guns were there. The same exact place that they’d been in when I’d last closed it four years ago.

I’d have to get rid of them.

Just like the assholes who’d put me away, I was dealing with a probation officer who was a douche and a half, too. I could tell from the moment I met with him this morning that he wasn’t going to be my favorite person.

Not at all.

I had eighteen more months on probation before I was finally a free man, and until then, I couldn’t have any fuckin’ alcohol, or firearms, within my vicinity.

I wouldn’t sell them, no. I’d just lock them up somewhere and have someone else watch over them for a while.

Lifting my hand, I trailed my fingers down the barrel of my .45 that I used to carry concealed and felt a wave of unease trail over my skin.

How would I work without the ability to protect myself?

The auto recovery business was a dangerous one, and there wasn’t a single time that I repossessed a truck or a car that it didn’t have at least one hitch in the road.

With my brain in a weird sort of haze, I walked out of the house and to the tow truck.

Normally, I wouldn’t have taken it so early but I had to go pick up Gertie.

I missed that dog like crazy, and it was him who I hated leaving behind the most.

I hoped he still remembered me.

Turns out I needn’t have worried.

The minute that I arrived at Civil’s, the one and only vet in town, it was to find a receptionist at the front desk that I’d never seen before.

Along with the town growing while I was away, apparently so did the vet clinic.

No longer was it a small, quaint clinic. Now it was an ungodly huge, likely multi-million-dollar clinic that looked like a fucking office building instead of a vet.

But whatever.

I didn’t care.

As long as they kept Gertie safe.

“Can I help you?” the receptionist, a woman in her twenties who looked like she was way too dressed up to be working in a vet’s office, asked sweetly.

Too sweet, if you asked me.

“I’m here to pick up my dog,” I said. “Can I talk to Civil?”

The woman tilted her head.

“Civil is no longer with us,” she said. “He passed away last fall. His daughter, however, is. She’s in with a patient now, though.”

My stomach tightened. “I’m sorry to hear that. Is that what’s up with the new remodel?”

She nodded. “When Layne took over, she decided that a revamp was needed.”

I looked around the place.

I didn’t see anything wrong with the old one, but apparently, this new vet did.

Pity.

“Do you think when she’s done with the patient that she will talk to me?” I asked. “I won’t take long.”

I just hoped that Civil had held true to his word and had this woman look after my dog just as well as Civil did.

“Yes,” she agreed. “I’ll have her do that when she’s done.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

A deep bark from the other room had me turning to stare at the closed door.

I knew that bark.

Everything inside of me wanted to go to that door and throw it open, but I didn’t.

My guess was that Gertie knew I was there, too.

He’d always been able to tell; I didn’t expect now to be any different.

I took a seat next to the magazine rack and picked up the first thing I saw, which was a magazine about chickens, and wondered idly if they were hard to care for.

I’d always wanted chickens, but I had never gotten around to getting any, thankfully.

I’d made it to the fifth page, which was talking about egg incubation and how to hatch your own eggs at home, when my name was called.

“Mr. Lennox?”

I looked up to find a woman dressed in scrubs, with blonde hair pulled into a tight pony-tail on the top of her head, staring at me expectantly.

I offered her my hand, which she took and leg go almost as if she was scared to touch me.

“How can I help you?”

“I’m here to pick up my dog.”

She frowned. “Which dog?”

“My German Shepherd. He’s been here for a while. I left him with your dad, actually. Gertie.”

Her face completely closed down.

“You can’t have him,” she said plainly.

I tilted my head. “What do you mean I can’t have him?”

“He’s been here for four years,” she replied. “He’s my dog now.”

The bones in my jaw started to creak.

“I paid for four and a half years of boarding before I left. That’s over ten grand. I know that it’s been four years. I didn’t have any choice about going away, unfortunately. Civil said he’d take care of him for me. He wasn’t boarded. He was taken to his home. And he also took care of my horses at my friend’s place.”

She sniffed at me. “I know. I was the one taking care of him.”

I crossed my arms over my chest.

“I appreciate everything that you did, but now that I’m back, I’d like to take him home.”

I could see by the stubborn set of her jaw that she wasn’t going to give him to me.

“No.”

My stomach started to tighten as anger started to swirl through my veins.

“How about you bring Gertie out here, and we see who exactly he wants to go to?” I semi-snapped.

I knew who Gertie would choose.

The dog was barking up a storm now, and I could tell that if he were let out, he wouldn’t want anything to do with the woman.

I didn’t care who she was, or what she’d done for me the last four years. I’d paid her father, and in turn, the vet. I had a fucking contract in my back pocket. Which I gave her next.

She took it with a look of disgust on her face.

“What is this supposed to be?”

A guarantee that this very thing wouldn’t happen.

“A contract between this clinic and me,” I explained. “That they would watch my dog for four years, while I was in prison, and that when I got out, he’d be given back to me.”

“We don’t do this,” she snapped.

I laughed. “Your father did it. And it was signed by both him and me. Him for his business, Civil Veterinary, and me, the dog’s owner. Trust me when I say, you won’t win this one.”

She hissed out a breath.

“How about you let him choose,” she snapped.

I laughed.

“There’s loyalty, and then there’s destiny, ma’am. Gertie was mine from when he was a year old, until we both retired from the Marines together when he was five years old,” I informed her. “We saved each others’ lives countless times, and I’ve never spent a day away from him, intentionally, since he was given to me.”

She pursed her lips.

“I’ve fed him for the last four years. He’s slept in my house,” she countered back. “I’ve cared for him, and ownership is nine tenths of the law.”

I laughed at her.

“Ma’am, with all due respect, ownership ain’t shit,” I countered. “You can refuse to give him to me now, but I can guarantee that the first chance he gets, he’ll leave your house and come straight to mine now that he knows I’m back.”

She looked at me like she didn’t believe me.

“He’s a dog. He won’t know better,” she informed me.

“You hear him goin’ crazy?” I asked.

We both did.

The moment that he’d heard my voice, he’d started going fucking nuts. Scratching, throwing himself against the wall. Anything that would help him get out there, he’d do, until he was back with me.

That was the kind of friendship we had.

I’d pulled him out of a pile of rubble when a building had collapsed on him. He’d saved me from taking a sniper’s bullet to the eye.

And those were only two examples of the many times we’d been there for each other.

Time and distance were nothing compared to the bond we shared.

I didn’t care if it’d been eight years.

You didn’t forget a bond like that.

“Go get him,” I ordered her.

She shook her head. “I’m not giving him back to a criminal. You can call your lawyer…”

But she forgot about her staff who were in the same building as her, and when they heard the commotion, they came out of the very door that Gertie was practically tearing down, just to see what was wrong.

The moment he was set free, he vaulted over the counter and sped toward me like a speeding bullet.

Gertie was a huge German Shepherd. He was nearly a hundred and twenty pounds, and he was also the size of a small Great Dane.

The moment he got to me, he launched himself at me, and I could do nothing but catch him and wrap my arms around him like he was a person.

His whimpering, as well as his excitement, was enough to cause tears to spring to my eyes.

“God, Gert,” I groaned. “I’ve missed you so much.”

He was literally shaking with excitement in my arms, and I closed my eyes, burying my face into the scruff of his neck like I’d done so many times before.

“Gertie, heel.”

Gertie didn’t even react to the woman’s voice, and I chose to leave without saying another thing to her.

“This isn’t over!”

I ignored that, too.

It was over, whether she wanted to admit it or not.

Not only was Gertie obviously saying that he was mine, but I also now had possession of him.

There was not a damn thing in the world she could do about it.