Page 71 of Warrior Security
“Little bird. It’s going to be okay.”
I looked at him. His profile was steady in the dashboard light, both hands on the wheel, eyes on the road. He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to. He knew what I was doing—filling the cab with logistics so there wasn’t room for the other thing.
I turned back to the window.
We pulled onto Pawsitive’s drive a short time later. The property sat dark and quiet, the barn’s silhouette black against the tree line. Beyond it, invisible in the darkness, the back acreage stretched toward the south boundary and the shed and the access road where tomorrow night would happen.
Twenty-four hours from now, it wouldn’t be quiet back there.
Logan’s hand found mine when we exited the truck. I held on and didn’t let go until we reached the house.
Chapter 21
Logan
The operation was tonight.
I’d been solid at the three-a.m. planning meeting early this morning, mapping terrain and answering questions. But the closer the countdown got to being real, the more my head kept circling back to what had happened on my last mission with Warrior Security.
A door slamming in a hallway of that hotel in Spokane. Ten seconds when my mind left my body and went somewhere else entirely. Ten seconds when I was useless to the team.
Worse than useless. A liability.
The memory crept in at the edges while I worked stacking hay bales in the barn. That had been six weeks ago. I hadn’t had another full-on PTSD panic episode since.
Tova, the routine, Lark, and the work Pawsitive demanded from me every day had given me more solid ground than I’d had since Reid died.
But solid ground and operational ground were different things. No, I hadn’t had more conscious PTSD episodes. But neither had I done any true tactical work like we’d be doing tonight.
I set the last bale and straightened up. My hands were fine. My breathing was even. The barn was a barn and the floor was concrete and the horse that had kicked the stall board was Duchess, who kicked things because she enjoyed the sound. None of that changed what my head was doing with the hours between now and nightfall.
Lark was in the aisle updating a chart on one of the kennel doors. She capped the pen and turned toward me, and whatever she saw in my face stopped her mid-step.
“Talk to me.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. We’d promised each other no more junk drawers, and I was going to keep that promise, even when every instinct told me to handle this on my own.
“I suffer from PTSD. I lost someone. The nightmares, they’re… I don’t want to go into all of it right now, but I promise I’m not trying to hide it from you.”
She nodded slowly. “I figured about the PTSD.”
“I know you did. That’s why you set me up with Tova.”
She shrugged one shoulder with a soft smile.
“But it’s more than that. Before I came here, I did one active mission with Warrior Security.” I said it straight because there was no other way to say it. “I…had an incident.”
“What kind of incident?”
“I went blind for ten seconds in a hotel corridor and almost got Beckett killed. And tonight, I’m going to be in the dark with weapons in play on your property.”
She set the clipboard on the kennel door.
“I’m thinking about pulling myself out tonight. Hunter, Beckett, Coop…they can handle it without me. I’d rather step back than be the reason something goes sideways out there.”
“Was anyone hurt?”
“No. Beckett covered me. But he shouldn’t have had to.”
