Page 56 of Rescued By the Dog Trainer

Then she walked down the steps into the dark, climbed into her truck, and drove down to Mabel's to put the mountain between us for the night.

Now tomorrow is climbing the timber walkway.

A car door latches shut in the lower yard, metal sealing against frozen rubber. Lug soles pace up the planks in a measured cadence. There's a slight drag when she compensates for the limp.

I set the wooden paddle on the rim of the feed bin and dry my palms on a cotton rag.

The iron latch lifts with a heavy click. A blast of mountain air sweeps across the floorboards, cutting through the warm cedar scent with the bite of split pine and ozone.

Maren crosses the threshold.

The wool collar of her blue winter coat stays zipped to her throat, the dark knit cap pulled down to her eyebrows. Frost dusts her shoulder seams, melting under the overhead heat lamps. She turns to seat the iron bolt into its keeper; the metal sliding home with a solid snap.

No travel mug sits in her grip. Her hands remain outside her pockets.

Her left forearm presses tight against her ribs, guarding the bulk of a rectangular shape inside the heavy canvas of her jacket.

"You're early." The words stay level. "Muster starts at eight."

"That gives us forty minutes." She holds my gaze, her breath clouding white in the sub-zero draft.

Barnaby tests the air between us. He holds heel, his tail giving a tentative sweep across the concrete before settling flat.

She paces across the center aisle, boots leaving damp oval marks on the dry dust. She halts two feet from the grain bin, near enough that her warm breath touches my collar. Mabel's laundry soap and spruce boughs drift off the damp wool.

She reaches for the brass slider of her coat.

The teeth part four inches down. Her bare hand slips deep into the breast pocket, emerging with a thick ledger bound in worn black vinyl. Rounded corners show years of friction against body armor. White stress lines mark the creased spine where sweat and desert dust worked into the binding.

She lays the volume flat on the pine planks of my workbench beside the feed scale and the coiled leads. The dull slap of the vinyl against raw wood echoes like an ammo crate dropping on concrete.

"Look at the last page."

The order stays low, carrying the weight of rank.

Heavy ledger paper fills the frame. Faint blue grid lines fill the leaf. Printed headers mark the columns: SORTIE | REGISTRATION | ORIGIN | DESTINATION | CASUALTY GRADE | SURNAME | DISPOSITION.

Black ballpoint entries run down the columns. Eleven years of CCAT records, penned by hand inside cargo hulls between the desert and Germany.

Fresh ink takes over halfway down the page:

SORTIE 402 | C-17 GLOBEMASTER III | BAGRAM AB TO LANDSTUHL AMC OCTOBER 14 | CASUALTY: SGT PIKE, J. | 75TH RANGER REGT TRIAGE: CAT 1 CRITICAL | TRAUMA: PENETRATING BLAST FRAGMENTATION VASCULAR: RIGHT FEMORAL ARTERY RUPTURE / PARTIAL TRANSECTION DISPOSITION: HANDOFF TO LANDSTUHL SURGICAL ICU — VITALS STABLE AT WHEELS-DOWN

Air empties from my lungs in one cold draft.

The scent of cedar shavings vanishes from the alleyway. The barn fades into dead silence, drowned under the roar of four turbofan engines clawing for altitude over the Hindu Kush.

Raw JP-8 exhaust hits the back of my throat, mixed with the stench of fresh blood and scorched Kevlar.

A sharp jolt fires down my right leg. The surgical line burns through the denim as if wire were heating against bone.

October 14. Sortie 402.

That flight remained a void in my skull for five years.

The ambush outside the compound stayed clear: the flash of red dirt, the axle snapping off the chassis, the sudden drop before gravel struck my helmet. Then the slick flood soaking my right trouser leg in dark pulses.

Darkness took over after that.