Chapter One

That damned dog.

“Gallo! Gallo! Come here, boy!” Chance bellowed into the midnight swirl of wind-driven ice and snow, sleet and hail. Before I wring your stubborn neck!

Of all the times for his mother’s ‘I-know-better-than-you’ gift-from-the-grave to take off for a late night run. Gallo had better plan on sleeping on the porch tonight because Chance’d had enough of the German Shepherd’s air-headed disobedience. Maybe a night spent outdoors in the cold would do the pampered beast good. Might make him think twice before he pulled this stunt again.

“Oh, hell,” Chance cursed. He couldn’t leave the dog outside, not with the first winter storm of the season busting through Northern Montana like a beast on steroids. Gallo wasn’t a year old yet, and he hadn’t a lick of sense. He’d probably freeze to death and—what would Mom say then, huh? Chance didn’t need to be haunted by more ghosts than he already was.

“What were you thinking, Mom? A German Shepherd? You should’ve bought a poodle instead of a big-footed, air-headed moose that likes to run.”

The reading of his famous author/mother’s will five months earlier had left Chance a reluctant multi-millionaire as well as the owner of Gallo. He’d wanted neither. Wealth was an unfamiliar burden he had yet to acknowledge. Admitting it meant she was gone, and he plain wasn’t ready to face that truth.

But damn. The number of digits currently preceding the decimal point in his new bank balance he could ignore until he got around to it. The dog was something else again. He cast a final threat out into the stiffening wind. “This is the last time I hunt your sorry ass down, you mangy mutt!”

Then, because there was no choice, he slammed his cabin door and prepared to go into the cold, cruel world to rescue a four-legged kid. Again.

“This is the second time today. You’re going on a chain from now on,” Chance grumbled as he shoved his feet into an old pair of combat boots, then jerked his Gortex jacket, a midnight requisition from Uncle Sam, off the hook by his door. “A damned short chain.”

A gray wool hat went snug over his head and a thick scarf went around his neck. Flipping the jacket collar upright against the weather, he zipped up. Winters in Northern Montana were wicked, and this sudden storm was delivering one hell of a punch. Old Man Mountain to the north of his cabin would be thick with drifts and avalanche-worthy overhangs by morning—if the storm let up by then. It might not.

Chance had owned this property for three years now, and he’d visited often. Not one of those winters had been the same. The only hard fast rule? Once it settled in, it was here to stay.

Damn that dog. Still grousing, Chance snagged the twenty-foot windup leash from the box of dog toys beside the door before he stepped outside and into the blizzard that came with gale force winds. This was no snowfall, it was Snowmageddon, the sleet and snow coming sideways instead of vertically.

“Gallo!” he called, in hopes the errant animal had grown a brain during the time it took his master to gear up. No such luck.

Chance stomped through the drifts already turning his five steps to ground level into a treacherous slide. The light had turned dim, gray, and deceiving. Pausing at the last step with the enticement of the forest to his right, the granite wall of Old Man Mountain at his left, he debated. Which way did Gallo go?

Would he be chasing after a snowshoe hare into the trees or charging up the mountain just because the idiot loved to run? German Shepherds were working dogs, damn it. Why’d Mom have to have one?

With the wind scouring the countryside clean while it simultaneously frosted it thick with white, there were no tracks to follow. Even the deep, big-footed tracks of what would’ve made a decent Army/Navy/Air Force/Marines—whatever—K-9, were long buried.

“Shit, damn,” Chance cussed when, for some reason he couldn’t name, he turned left to the more formidable of the two choices, the mountain. “A six-foot chain, you mangy mongrel,” he vowed. The wintery bluster seared his eyeballs because he’d left his Oakley goggles, the smart kind with lenses designed specifically for low-light conditions like now, on the hook back at the cabin. Where it was warm!

Ah, who was he kidding? Chance wouldn’t have worn them anyway. The silicone-backed strap of those goggles dug into the recently healed scars on the sides of his head, his reward for an op gone sideways in South America. Besides, this midnight foray wouldn’t take long, simply because it couldn’t. That dunderhead dog would be dead if he didn’t get out of this weather soon. What the hell was in that dog’s head? Mustering an ounce of enthusiasm, Chance gave Gallo one last chance to straighten up. “Gallo! Here, boy! Come here!”

Did it work? He cocked his head, sure he’d heard a groan, but no. It wasn’t Gallo. That would’ve been too easy. Damn your sorry ass.

Chance adjusted the punishment to fit the crime. “Maybe a three-foot chain.” A dog doesn’t need much more room than that, not when he spends most of his days sleeping on my couch!

Truth be known, Gallo wasn’t the bother Chance had first anticipated when he’d been forced to adopt the pup after his mother’s untimely death months earlier. Gallo was still young, and good company most of the time, especially now that days had grown shorter in the high country. He was something to talk to, and he made a decent bedfellow when he wasn’t pushing his rump into Chance, shoving him out of his own bed.

Chance followed the narrow deer trail that dipped down from the barren field of shale surrounding Old Man Mountain and spilled above his log cabin like a final warning to trespassers. He’d bought this parcel of land just above the tree-line and built his home three years ago. It wasn’t John Donne’s ‘no-man-is-an-island’ perfect, but its isolated location served Chance’s need for solitude and separation from the world. Its exclusivity kept well-wishers, nosy ex-buddies, and non-combatants at bay. The local white supremacists, too.

Sturdy and fit from his years in the Navy, certainly used to marching in worse conditions, he made it through the shale bed to the edge of the now frozen pond in minutes. Nothing more than a hollow depression that filled with seasonal runoff, the pond might make a worrisome distraction to an adventurous pup on a night like this. The warm front that preceded the blizzard had dumped a good three inches of rain before it had turned to driven snow. For the first time, Chance admitted his worry.

After all, Gallo was just a pup, and a decent owner would watch over a young dog like him. He was a child by human standards, could fall into that pond, and… what the hell is that kid doing out here? Cougars frequented this stretch of the shale, though Chance had yet to spot one. Black bears were another story. He’d seen plenty of them last spring with a few cubs. A few gray wolves, too.

His ire transformed into fatherly concern. This night could go so, so bad, and Chance had already had enough bad in his life. Except for his two brothers, Kruze and Pagan, he had no friends left but this dog. The thought of burying a gangly pup so young…

“Where the hell are you, boy?”

Damned if a rowdy “Woof!” didn’t come back to him this time, along with the sounds of a hard crack and a splash. Ice breaking. God, no. My dog fell in!

“Gallo!” Chance stepped one boot to the thin crackly ice at the edge of what he now knew was not a frozen-solid pond. But people weren’t supposed to risk their lives for their dogs. Like hell.

He ran headlong toward Gallo’s rowdy voice, all the while listening for the creak and groan of distressed fractures underfoot. All he heard was the ghoulish wind in his ear roaring that he was already too late. It would’ve helped if he could’ve seen where he was going, but tears ran down Chance’s cheeks, tears from the words in the wind, and terror in his heart that the wind was right.

Too late. Forever too, tooooooooooooooo late…

“I’m coming,” Chance called out, needing this furry buddy to hang on for one more minute. One more breath. Needing his buddy to live.

Hypothermia. Drowning. Run faster, Sinclair, damn it. Run for your dog’s life!

As he knew it eventually would, the ice gave way, and instantly, Chance went belly-deep into gut-wrenching, ice-cold water that sucked the air out of him. Why hadn’t Gallo barked again? Am I too late? The dog had to be hurt or… or…

“No! He’s not dead!” Thrashing against the jagged ice, shoving it aside with his bare hands, Chance elbowed his way forward. “I’m coming, boy. Hold on, damn you. I’ll carry you home if you can’t walk, and I’ll stoke the fire, and I’ll…”

God, I promise I’ll go to back to church if you let my dog live. Then, as quickly as he’d beseeched heaven, he cursed it. “Goddamn it, Gallo. Don’t you dare die!”

At last! The dark blur of his dog’s head broke through the ragged blizzard. There he clung to the edge of a hole in the ice, his claws dug in, and struggling to climb out. Something long and angular hung from his jaws.

Chance ran, a slow-motion effort in freezing, waterlogged clothes, his boots full and the cold, dead weight holding him back. Frigid chills ratcheted up his spine. A bone-numbing burn settled into his legs and arms, but fear drove him forward. Gallo was a blithering idiot to be swimming in this storm, but he was also a youngster without an ounce of fat or bulk to his name. He’d be drenched and freezing to the bone. Or dying.

Minutes counted.

“I’m almost to you,” Chance yelled as he dove for his dog, fast stroking to clear the distance. Ice slapped at his chin and face, instantly resuscitating the still healing nerve endings buried beneath his scars. Despite the pain, he didn’t slow. This was what Navy SEALs were trained for. This was what they did. They fought as hard for their brothers, even the four-legged kind, as they did for themselves.

One stroke. Then another. With a solid kick into the muddy bed under his feet, Chance propelled forward. It took a second to wrangle a decent hold on the scruff of the frantic animal’s neck, but by God, Chance was having none of it. He jerked Gallo off his four feet and into his arms with a heartfelt, “Gotcha. God damn you, hold still.”

The dog had the nerve to growl. “Knock it off,” Chance rasped, his lungs on fire now and his body long past numb. It was all he could do to curl his fingers into a tight enough grip to hang on. “Home,” he growled at his dog. “We’re going home and then I’m chaining you up and you’ll never run free again.” My heart can’t bear it!

Gallo twisted then, something dangling from his grinning mouth. Holy shit. An arm?