Page 45 of Rescued By the Dog Trainer

My heart belongs to him—the quiet NCO who built a sanctuary out of snow and cedar.

The Mercy Flight job in Spokane holds no pull anymore.

The weekly rental room at Mabel's feels like a temporary shell, and the sixty-day exit clock ticking on my phone can run out for all I care.

I want to stay on Angel's Peak.

I want to take a nursing spot at the clinic in town while helping Jason build the new shelter kennels in May and coming home to him at the ridge every night.

Tonight, when I drive the remaining five miles up the mountain to the shelter for our rain check, I'm going to tell him everything.

The truth about Bagram and Flight 402 has to come out tonight. He remembers nothing of that night except the lullaby: no faces, no emergency lights, no C-17 interior.

I search for the right way to tell him that the hands keeping him breathing in that freezing cargo bay belonged to me, and that the voice humming into the dark was mine. He's one of my two hundred and fourteen patients, the one outcome I got to keep.

By six-thirty I'm back in Angel's Peak, stopping at Mabel's Guest House to change before I drive up the ridge. I head straight upstairs to my room.

The blue room smells of pine wax and warm cedar. The radiator ticks in the corner. I set the tamales on the nightstand beside the Bible and unlace my boots by the brass bed frame.

Clean thermal. Dry socks. The blue scarf goes back around my neck. Mrs. Montoya's knitting is the warmest thing I own now.

Then I open the nightstand drawer.

The manifest notebook sits under the Bible where I left it this afternoon. Rubber band around the cover. Two hundred and fourteen names inside, block letters, no endings recorded for any of them.

One of them is his.

I slide the rubber band off and open to the page. PIKE, J. The name reads the same as it did this afternoon. I keep waiting for it to turn back into a stranger's. It doesn't.

Half a day of knowing, and the half-day already feels like lying.

Juno rests her muzzle on my knee. I scratch the flat spot between her ears and read his name until my breathing evens out.

The plan is a checklist. Drive up. Eat the dinner he's pretending is casual. Then put this notebook on his table, open to this page, and say it. The hands were mine. The song was mine.

I zip the notebook into the inside pocket of my coat, over my heart. My hands are steady. My pulse isn't.

Seven days ago I drove up this mountain with an exit strategy in the glove box. Tonight I'm driving up with the truth zipped against my ribs, and I'm more afraid of it than I ever was of turbulence.

And he has no idea what's coming up the mountain.

FOURTEEN

Rain Check

JASON

Five o'clock. The light quits the high ridge first, and frost takes the yard within ten minutes.

I haul the feed cart down the kennel row. Twelve bowls get filled with water from the frost-free spigot, and twelve scoops of kibble go into the pans. The blue heeler gets an extra half-scoop because his ribs show when the temperature drops below zero. In run six, the husky pair pace the chain link until I separate them at the divider. Side by side, they fight over the last mouthful every night. Down on the lodge porch, Atlas sleeps on his folded blanket, deaf to the clatter of the cart.

The dogs settle once the bowls hit the concrete. The mountain goes quiet behind them, just the scrape of pine branches against the tin roof of the barn and a light wind blowing out of the north. The radio at the feed desk promised two clear days before the next system pushes in from Utah. If the pass holds, the roads will stay open through Friday.

I spent the morning working the east fence line. The blizzard dropped an eighty-foot pine across the middle span two nights ago, splintering three cedar posts and tangling wire into the brush. I sawed the trunk into stove lengths, hauled the rounds to the woodpile, and dug two new post holes through frozen topsoil with the iron tamping bar. My right shoulder burned where the scar draws the muscle tight against the collarbone. The tamping bar rang against frozen dirt while words formed and dissolved for what to say to Maren when she got back from the valley.

After lunch, I brought the trainees down to the lower paddock for an hour of handler grounding.

Sarah worked Tank along the east rail, practicing slow stops and turns so the mastiff braces his broad shoulder against her left hip when her prosthetic slips on packed snow. Brody worked Babe on attention cues, keeping the golden retriever sitting between his knees while practicing deep breaths to settle his pulse. Nadia walked Zip on a slack lead, correcting the border collie with a gentle tug every time Zip fixated on the treeline. Griff sat on the mounting block with Chief leaning hard against his shins, keeping the black Lab calm while the four stitches on his shoulder heal.