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One

There was a fine line between being exhausted and being comatose, and Adahts without sleep, half that without food, and his shoulder hurt like hell where his shirt was sticking to his open wound

It was hard to feelhis lih The freezing burn of the sleet slapping him in the face didn’t help either as he opened his pack and shoved in his gear Later, he’d have to take it all back out again and carefully repair, clean, and repack everything after the unexpected rescue, but for noasn’t particularly inclined towardthe hell out of there

Milo stood at his side, still in his search and rescue vest, attentive to their surroundings even though he had to be as done in as Ada it, Adam forced a few deep breaths to try and slow his heart rate “What do you think?” he asked, pretending he wasn’t fighting his still knocking knees to hold him up “Food, sleep…or a woman?”

Milo nudged the pocket of the daypack where his food was kept

Ada some humor in the day, after all “You always vote for food”

The ten-month-old yellow Lab see now, but not too long ago, he’d been nothing more than a scrappy, unwanted pup In Milo’s world, food still tru else

Adanize like Besides, sleep was overrated, and it wasn’t as if a woman had been on his calendar, anyway Hell, a wo to contemplate

His own fault “Food it is, then,” he said, and realized in spite of still shaking and sweating, he was starving, too That was a good sign, he decided It meant that the PTSD had been kicked down to a lowly 3 on the scale, when two years ago it would’ve been at a 105, not tohim

Progress

Besides, he’d never been able to resist a good adrenaline rush After all, some of his fondestfive years old and running like hell from a pack of Rottweilers that he and his brother Dell had accidentally roused while cli and “borrowing” a ’69 classic GTO—a joyride that had landed hie years, fathers everywhere had feared Adam’s influence on their ihters on Saturday nights And then it had all caught up with hied the direction of his entire life

Good times

Footsteps caood friend Hooking his radio back on his hip, he squinted through the wind and freezing rain whipping at the the surface of Bear Lake into a frenzy in front of them “Nice job”

“It wasn’t a job,” Ada out this area for new rugged terrain to be used in search and rescue training They’d been doing a coh when they stumbled into a real rescue situation “It was just sheer dumb luck”

“Good luck,” Kel corrected “All those years you spent overseas with the National Guard saving the good guys’ asses left you like a et to the kid before he slipped…” Kel shook his head in marvel “And how the hell did you hold on to hi your shoulder out of the socket? You do that Superman shit in the military, too?”

Aed, a movement that caused the laceration on his shoulder to split further Some machine

“Well, however you did it,” Kel said, “it’s daood to have you back”

Yeah, well, there was back, and then there was back Adaht then to save his life He could no longer hear the thu the ten-year-old and his father out of this reood His foster brother, Brady, was behind the chopper’s controls, which alleviated any concern about the increasingly bad weather Brady, an ex–arer who’d retained all of his skills, could fly in and out of the eye of a needle if he had to Fro storm or not

Kel shouldered his pack Adaerly Normally, there’d be hours of post-rescue takedown, but everything had happened too fast As the region’s coordinator and S&R team leader, Adam hadn’t even had time to set up an incident command post or mobilize a search There weren’t the usual enerally took to run an S&R, and for once, that was a good thing

They could go hoy on appearing to be fine, hat he really wanted to do was pass out and pretend today hadn’t happened Because although hesearch and rescue, and he had more accredited initials after his na, he hadn’t actually been active in a rescue in two years Not since Afghanistan, when he and his unit had been called in to rescue a group of British soldiers stuck on the side of a godforsaken mountain That day they’d dropped in from helicopters and rappelled down cliffs and into the caves

And straight into enemy fire

Most of the tio, Adaht He’d had to rappel down a cliff to save that kid, and being forced into an active role like that, hanging off those rocks at thethe boy in tiht him back to a very dark place

Milo pushed his wet nose into Ada wasn’t supposed to do on the job Adam didn’t correct him for it, didn’t have the heart There hadn’t been much softness in Adah he didn’t yearn for either, soot to hi happily up at hi, Dude, concentrate! Food!

And Adaht Food” Always food And proof that even a dog had better sense than to hang on to the negative shit

They all headed back to Adaer, a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle that could get them in and out of just about anywhere—at least until the heavy snows caain Worried And Ada wasn’t fooled by Ada anxiety With a sigh, he crouched and hugged the dog “I’m fine You’re fine We’re all fine Now up”

Milo leapt into the sled in behind the wheel With Kel riding rifle, they four-wheeled out of there By the time Adam dropped Kel off at his station in their small ho off Pain was a dull ache in his shoulder, right behind his eyes, and in his heart, but he told himself to suck it up because at least this rescue had a happy ending

A gust of wind brought in more icy rain, and the first few flakes of snow Yesterday it had been sixty-five degrees Today, snow Welcome to early December at the base of the Bitterroot Mountains in Idaho By the time he off-roaded to the property he oith his brothers, the snow kicked up a little bit in intensity, the landscape going soft and white and quiet

He loved quiet

He pulled into Belle Haven, which spanned thirty acres and was big enough to house their large vet clinic and stable their horses Having been gone two days, Adaes and check on things

And then sleep

With any luck Dell would’ve treated all his patients for the day and locked up by now so that Adam wouldn’t have to see anyone and talk about what had happened Unfortunately, he’d run out of luck a long tio When he pulled into the lot, Dell’s truck was still there, next to Adam’s in fact, which was freshly washed and shiny clean as always

Not Dell’s Dell’s was covered in a fine layer of dust and filled with crap Work equips…It boggled Adaone into the military and had the discipline drilled into hione to vet school, and had gotten used to practically living out of his truck while trying to h Old habits died hard