Big sky dog whisperer, p.8
Big Sky Dog Whisperer, page 8
“A mortar,” Jodie snapped it out. “Dropped right in the middle of the marketplace we were patrolling. Brandy was off-leash—well ahead of me on point. It landed right next to her, blew her through the air nearly ten meters. Killed six civilians and injured another twenty. Single shot, our teams never found the raghead killing his own people.”
“Shit. Ugly. But it wasn’t anything you could have fixed.”
“You think I don’t know that? That’s not why I stayed overseas for two months after they gave me my DD 214 medical discharge. I did that to make sure Brandy came home on her own four feet instead of inside an ash urn.”
“Medical?” Wasn’t a thing wrong with Jodie Jaffe that he could see.
“Eardrum and most of the little shit behind it. The mortar blew out my right ear,” she grumbled it out like it was a stain on her character. “Can’t serve without directional hearing.”
“Thought they had implants for stuff like that.”
“And would you be willing to have the VA carry out a hundred-thousand-dollar operation to dig into your brain and hook electronics straight into your nervous system? Because if you say you are, I’m going to call you a lying asshole. Otherwise you wouldn’t have that old pair of hooks instead of a modern prosthesis. I’m not saying that they can’t do it. I’m just saying that it isn’t my first choice by a long shot. I function just fine. Still have my balance, which surprised the docs.”
Stan mused that it was yet another thing they had in common. Patrick’s mom was all set to wire him up like a goddamn cyborg. What was left of Stan was all him, except for a few titanium plates and a fistful of screws. When he took off his arm at night, all that was left was pure Stan and that let him sleep just fine at night, except when the nightmares used to kick his ass.
He shifted Brandy a little to make sure she stayed comfortable—or as comfortable as possible during a shoulder carry.
Jodie fell silent as they turned into the driveway. It would have been shorter to cut over the bluff—she’d been sitting directly opposite the ranch house, right where he’d first seen her truck arriving. But he’d chosen the flatter route along the road and up the drive because he wasn’t sure Jodie could negotiate the hill in her current condition.
By the faint light that reached this far from the cabins and main house, he could see the look on her face. He knew it well. She was deep in The Grind. It was the place out past the breaking point, except SEALs didn’t break.
Stan knew that he hadn’t been nearly that strong when he’d come home and eventually come here to the ranch. He’d dug in because you didn’t say no to people like Luke Altman or Mac Henderson. Not because he cared for shit in those first months. There’d been days when he hadn’t even crawled out from under the covers.
Not Jodie Jaffe. Pale as the light from a crescent moon, she still placed one boot in front of the other.
Half his size and twice the guts. What would he have done if he’d been like her?
He’d joined the Navy to get the college education that Pa couldn’t afford. Pa had said it was the way out, but Stan had never made it past the first semester. Too damned boring. He’d turned down several “suggestions”—that were closer to orders from multiple commanders—to apply for OCS. Hitting Officer Candidate School would have meant leaving the dogs. He’d never aspired to more and turned them down cold. Pa had been fine with it when Stan told him why.
Jodie had educated parents, but had chosen the Navy and dogs herself. How strong had she been to go against her family’s wishes? Damn strong. She was clearly a driven woman.
At the cages, he eased Brandy down. She drank water and wolfed down about half the dinner he set out before she collapsed onto the dog bed. The dog was asleep before she’d done that characteristic curl up of hers with her nose under her tail.
When he went to guide Bertram down to his cage, the dog looked at him askance.
“You want to keep her company, boy?”
Wouldn’t hurt anything.
“Okay with you?” He turned to Jodie, but she was out on her feet. With how tightly curled up Brandy was, the dog bed was big enough for two. It was also clear that the dog was too far out to care as Bertram settled beside her. He lay downand rested his muzzle on Brandy’s back, looking set for the night.
He swung the gate shut, then wondered if he needed to get Jodie up in a shoulder carry to get her settled too. He put a water bottle in her hand. Some automaton part of her training kicked in and she raised it to her lips. Once she started, she knocked the whole bottle straight down. Still weaving, at least she showed some signs of consciousness.
“Food first,” Stan decided.
He tried to take her elbow to guide her, but misjudged. He’d reached for her with his left hand and the hooks closed on thin air rather than his fingers coming to rest lightly. That was twice in two days he’d forgotten his arm was mechanical. Very weird. He was always conscious of the hooks that had made him half a man.
Apparently his motion was enough and Jodie headed out of the cage under her own impetus.
He led her past the bunkhouse and up to the main kitchen. Dinner would have been done long since, but Nathan always had enough leftovers around that he could scrounge up something. It was one of their first weeks with full staff and full guest cabins, so everyone should have dispersed by now. He often waited until after everyone else had gone off to relax or bed down before coming up here.
The kitchen was quiet except for Ama standing at one of the counters. She’d turned over the bulk of the ranch cooking to Nathan, who was assisted by Ama’s daughter-in-law Emily, but she still kept a hand in.
“Hey, Ama.”
His simple comment evoked a whirlwind of responses. Chelsea popped up from one of the big armchairs by the fireplace like a Jill-in-a-Box. Emily emerged close behind her. In moments all three women had surrounded Jodie, herding her to the big Doug fir table more effectively than a whole pack of sheepdogs. Once a full meal was placed in front of her and Jodie had started eating, Chelsea came to plant herself in front of him.
“What did you do to her, Stan?” She actually looked pissed, a very rare expression on her face.
“Nothing. I—”
“She’s more skittish than her dog. And you drove her until she’s like that?” Chelsea stabbed a finger in Jodie’s direction.
“But—”
“Get out of here, Stan. Before someone hurts you.”
Jodie could hear Chelsea getting it all wrong, but couldn’t find the energy to stop her. It took keeping her elbows firmly planted on the table—her mother would be horrified—to keep from falling sideways.
All that had kept her from putting her head down on the table and going to sleep had been Ama setting the dinner plate squarely in the target zone before she was even fully seated. A fresh grilled burger with mashed potatoes smothered in a gravy so rich and thick she could use it as skin cream. There was something green too. Roasted Brussels sprouts still crispy around the edges. She slathered on some butter to hide the flavor, then wished she hadn’t—they tasted surprisingly good.
All the food did.
Maybe it was just her body’s hunger. She was halfway through the meal before she became aware of the women grouped around her. Once again she’d landed to Ama’s left, with Chelsea to her other side and Emily across from her at Ama’s right.
“Where’s Stan?”
“I sent him to bed without supper,” Chelsea proclaimed defiantly.
“He—”
“Don’t worry. We won’t let him near you again. Do you want to talk about it? I mean if you don’t, I understand. But you really should because—”
“Chelsea,” was all Ama had to say.
It still took Jodie a conscious effort to batter her way through the barrage of words even after they’d stopped. “He didn’t do anything. He carried Brandy for me.” After I totally screwed up.
“He shouldn’t— Wait. What?” Chelsea cut herself off. “Then who kicked your ass? ’Cause you sure look ragged, girlfriend. Who do I have to kill?”
“Me, I guess. Did it to myself,” she was able to slow down enough to taste the last bite of the burger. Top quality beef—maybe from the ranch. Light pink in the middle, crunchy on the outside. Salt, pepper, and just the perfect dash of barbeque sauce. Just perfect. She regretted not tasting the rest of it.
“You did this to yourself? Are you crazy?”
Thankfully Chelsea didn’t wait for an answer because Jodie knew where her own vote would land.
“Oh no! Really? Oh, man! I’ll go fix a plate and take it to him. Do you think some chocolate or something for an apology? I’m always putting my foot in it. You think I’d learn someday but no-o, not me. Crumbs!” Apparently Chelsea’s idea of a foul curse. She rushed away to the stove.
At her soft exclamation of surprise, Jodie turned to see Chelsea peeking into a box lunch container sitting on the counter.
“Oh, thanks, Ama. I’ll just deliver this. Don’t anyone go anywhere before I get back. No, wait. It’s almost Cristopher’s beddy-bye time. Gotta scoot. Bye. Stop doing things like this to yourself, girlfriend.” And the whirlwind that was Chelsea headed out the door so fast that her long red hair was fluttering behind her.
Girlfriend. Jodie hadn’t had a lot of those in high school. Bedford Academy had been academically demanding and brand new—she’d been in the first class through. The girls who weren’t husband hunting had all been brainiacs who were out to become overachievers. She’d fit in with none of them.
Being one of the few female jocks, the coach had made her volleyball setter and softball first base. That had made her even more of a stranger there than she’d been in her own family. The other girls didn’t like being outperformed by one of the few white kids in the entire school. Her “Princess” nickname—short for “the fucking bitch Jewish Princess we wish was dead”—had stuck like glue through all four years. Of course the Jewish Princesses of her neighborhood wanted nothing to do with the girl going to school in Bed-Sty. She still had no idea how she’d ended up way over there. Bedford Academy was over twenty blocks from Frontiers High where all the local Jews went.
There’d been no girlfriends once she joined the SEALs either—because there weren’t any other women in her squad. That had been fine with her. Nikita had been more acquaintance than friend before making it into ST6.
Emily laughed softly. “That’s our Chelsea. She’s right. I better go check on Tessa and Belle. Mark will give in to their begging for more stories all night if I let him.”
Jodie was startled when Emily rested a hand on her shoulder, making her look up to where Emily had circled to stand beside her.
“The transition back is never easy. It’s a long road.” Then she was gone.
Jodie didn’t know whether to scoff or…what? She couldn’t seem to connect the majestic blonde Night Stalker with a husband and two children to anything that could possibly be relevant in her own situation.
Now the peace of the kitchen settled over them like a warm blanket, only she and Ama remained.
“Way better than the cold and foodless prairie I thought I’d be sleeping in,” she said to break the ice.
Ama didn’t make her nervous, but her silence was of staggering dimensions.
“I took my dog for a walk. Forgot how weak she is. How weak,” Jodie swallowed it like a bitter pill, “we both are.” After all, she deserved it. “I walked out until we had nothing in us to come back with.”
“Yet you came back anyway.”
“Most of the way, but I didn’t know that.”
Ama nodded. She’d sat the whole time with her hands folded on the table, her stillness so deep that it drew attention to the soft crackling of the dying fire as the only sound aside from Jodie’s own heart.
“Yet you kept walking.”
Jodie shrugged, unsure how to answer.
Ama’s dark eyes finally shifted to look at the ceiling, but not as if she was actually seeing it. When she finally spoke, it was very softly.
“For twenty years I kept walking. I loved a man who loved being a SEAL. For twenty years I walked mostly alone, wondering each day if he’d come back to me. He did. And now we walk together. But I know about the hardship of the long walk.”
Then all of Ama’s focus shifted to her, and Jodie couldn’t have moved or spoken if her life had depended on it.
“My daughter-in-law is wiser than she knows. It is a long road. But I see you have the strength to walk it.”
Jodie managed not to laugh, poking her fork into the last Brussels sprout roasted to crunchy sweetness.
“You don’t believe it. For now,” Ama opened her hands palm upward, “I will hold that belief safe for you until you are ready to take it back.” Then she curled her hands closed before holding them tightly against her chest.
Jodie closed her eyes against the image.
The only people who had ever believed in her were her fellow SEALs—and being female in a male world, that acceptance had taken years.
Even her family didn’t. They loved her, she didn’t doubt that. But it was love without understanding. Their daughter was as much of an enigma to them as an Al-Shabab terrorist would be.
“Why—” But when she opened her eyes, her empty plate was gone, as was Ama.
Chapter Seven
Stan was squatting over Brandy when he felt Jodie come up behind him. Midmorning, so she must have finally gotten some sleep. He’d already run all of the other dogs through the obstacle course for a couple of hours. She’d stopped behind him and didn’t come any closer.
“What? No knife in the back?”
At the continued silence, he turned to look up at her. She was biting her lower lip.
“You’ve got something stuck in your craw. Any chance of you spitting it out?”
She shook her head, then offered him a half smile of chagrin. Even that partial change was transformative. The SEAL-fit woman, who was somewhat off on her conditioning, had shifted aside. In her place stood a lovely woman with a sharp intelligence and a sense of the ridiculous. “If I do, will you be throwing it back in my face?”
“Chances are good. You know it’s SEAL rule 543, never let a straight line go by untrammeled.”
“Figures,” she took a breath to steel herself.
He wished she was wearing a jacket so that his attention wasn’t struggling quite so desperately to travel downward. Jodie’s tight t-shirt offered a lot of nice shapes to look at and it had been a damn long time. Stan hadn’t really missed it much until Jodie Jaffe rolled onto the ranch, but now…
“Thanks for last night.” She kicked a boot at the kennel’s concrete floor.
“Oh, was it good for you too?”
“Oh, yeah, sailor. You sure know how to show a girl a good time. Carry her dog and everything,” then her smile went out like a light switch, but he wasn’t going to forget about it so easily. “Sorry Chelsea went after you.”
He shrugged, then grinned.
“You made her grovel,” Jodie didn’t make it a question.
“Not too much. The dinner smelled too good and I was hungry.” Time for a subject change. “Your dog is sore, but not as bad as I feared. You did good carrying her back last night. Need to go easy today.”
“Easier than yesterday anyway.” He could hear Jodie beating herself up for it. She was a dog handler who’d overstepped her dog’s resources, so no surprise there. He’d be deep in self-recrimination too.
“Couple of local walks and another swim. There’s a small swimming lake back behind the cabins over the ridge. Gets campers in the afternoon, but mornings are pretty quiet what with classes and trail rides. Go up the main path and you’ll see a sign just after the cabin named Aspen.”
“You fed her?”
At his nod, Jodie slapped her left thigh.
Brandy rose to her feet and did more of a shuffle than a trot over to Jodie.
“Oh girl,” Jodie knelt to greet her in squeaky dog voice. “My poor girl with the crazy handler. I’ll make it up to you. Yes I will. I will. I will.” She went higher with each repetition.
Brandy was wagging her tail happily at her handler’s obvious excitement. At least obvious to a dog.
Stan did his best to keep his smile to himself.
First, Jodie the seriously tough warrior. Then, Jodie the majorly contrite dog handler. Now, just too damn cute for words.
What next? The moaning lover?
He blinked hard at the thought. Where the hell had that image come from? Though it was hard to deny it was a good one. Then he started wondering what that reality might actually look like and decided he was in deep shit. So wasn’t going to happen with a half-man like him.
“You want to join us?” Jodie’s soft question surprised him. And made it worse. Picturing that t-shirt soaked from a swim so that it clung—
He opened his mouth to say yes, but the dogs’ graduation was less than a week away. That’s when he’d find out if everything he’d done for almost three years was for nothing. Mac Henderson had taken him on when he was a seriously bad bet. Stan needed this to work. Needed to prove to Mac that his faith hadn’t been in vain. At $40,000 and up for a dog trained to Special Operations’ standards, these dogs would also go a long way to paying back all Mac had invested in Stan and his dream.
“Gonna have to pass. I want to work these guys hard today.”
She simply turned to go.
“Jodie?”
“Yeah?” She looked back at him over her shoulder.
“Thanks for asking.” Damn but he wouldn’t mind spending a little more time with her. His body was definitely giving signals that it was thinking about it in other ways, too.
“Okay.”
“Maybe a run later?”
For the briefest instant her glance slid over to his artificial arm.
Normally he’d be pissed. He’d certainly taken some of the ranch hands down a few rungs for just as little. But Jodie didn’t slam his anger switch.
“It weighs about half of my meat arm. Caused me some balance issues early on, but those went away fast.” If anything could be said to be fast about the healing process followed by learning to use the prosthetic. “I actually had to wait for the amputation by IED to heal before I added the arm, so the half-original weight felt more natural than none at all.”
