Page 26 of Rescued By the Dog Trainer

She has one foot out the door, yet standing here in the cold, she's the most solid presence on this mountain.

"I'm going to check the secondary diesel feed valve at the east shed." Danny buttons his collar to his chin and slides his heavy work gloves on. "The ice locks the threads if we don't bleed the condensation line before twenty-hundred."

"Take Buddy with you." Nadia leans over the aisle gate, resting her elbows on the pine top. "Don't let him eat the snow."

"Buddy eats what he wants." Danny taps his thigh, and the shepherd mix steps into lockstep at his heel as they head down the corridor toward the east shed door. "Back in five."

Outside, the gale picks up to fifty miles an hour, shoving a drift of fine powder under the main door threshold.

A violent blue flash illuminates the transom windows.

The hum of the overhead halogen banks dies instantly. Blackout drops over the barn like a heavy curtain.

In the next breath, the diesel generator in the east shed coughs, roars once, and sputters out.

An acrid cloud of unburned diesel fuel blows down the intake pipe, filling the central aisle with raw exhaust.

My throat closes.

The barn disappears. The freezing air turns into ninety-degree desert heat. The roar of the wind turns into the screaming metallic scrape of an overturned Humvee on a dirt road outside Kandahar.

Pitch darkness.

Fire burning the rubber seals.

The stench of diesel fuel pooling under my body armor while the tactical radio crackles with dead static.

My boots freeze to the cedar shavings. My hands lock inside my vest pockets, my chest tightening until oxygen stops moving.

I can't breathe.

I can't move.

I'm trapped under the crushed frame, waiting for the fuel tank to detonate.

My mind screams at my legs to step forward, to take command, to tell the trainees where the emergency flashlights are stored. But the NCO who survived two tours in the Sandbox is gone, replaced by a ghost paralyzed in the dark.

"Flashlights." Maren's voice cuts through the pitch-black, level and flat as a flight deck command. "Brody, Sarah—grab the Streamlights off the tack room charging rack. Sweep the aisle."

Two bright beams of white light cut through the gloom, bouncing off the timber rafters.

"Nadia, check the wood stove in the bunk room." Her boots crunch on the dry shavings as she steps toward the end of the aisle. "Brody, get the drapes over the south runs."

The trainees move without question, trusting the tone of an officer who has run trauma bays in a blackout.

Maren stops three feet away from me.

She keeps her distance, calling no attention to my locked jaw or the cold sweat breaking across my forehead. She looks directly into my face, her eyes steady in the crossfire of the flashlight beams.

"Pike." She holds out the leather loop of Barnaby's lead, placing the handle directly into my right palm. "Hold Barnaby's line. I need the key to the diesel panel."

The rough grain of the leather presses against my palm. The solid weight of my dog leaning against my calf anchors me to the floorboards.

The desert heat recedes. The smell of cold pine and dry cedar cuts through the diesel fumes.

I draw a long breath into my lungs, my fingers closing tight around Barnaby's lead.

"East wall drawer." My gravel voice comes out low, stripped of the shake. "Red tag."