Page 5 of Mountain Hero

Did Thomas hear me?

He couldn’t, could he? Not out there…

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

Oh, shit. He could.

Thomas bursts into the office. His face is contorted in fury. His hands are clenched into fists.

My heart stops.

I’ve never seen him look this angry before.

“YOU FUCKING BITCH!”

He advances on me, but there’s nowhere to go. I’m trapped between him and the desk.

“Please,” I wheeze through a narrowing throat. “Don’t. Just go?—”

His fist snaps out.

I try to duck, but I’m not fast enough.

The pain.

Everything shifts off-balance.

Bursts of light fill my vision.

I’m falling. My muscles won’t work.

Something hits the back of my head.

The lights fade and blackness closes in.

As the darkness beckons, I make one last, silent, desperate plea.

Please get here in time. Please.

CHAPTER 2

ENZO

Maybe I should get a dog.

Back when I moved here as a kid, Uncle Caleb had Rascal—a gentle retriever mix with endless patience and enthusiasm.

In the beginning, the hours of fetch and hide and seek with Rascal helped distract me from the memories my mother and I left behind in Buffalo.

And later, once I found friends and a baseball team and a job mowing lawns for the neighbors, Rascal was still my constant companion. He was there through the nightmares and disappointments and the times when I’d wonder why my father didn’t love me enough to stick around.

Even when his hips were bad and he couldn’t play like he used to, Rascal would still bring me his stash of tennis balls and I’d toss them carefully so he could fetch them without having to run. Uncle Caleb and I built special steps so Rascal could still get onto my bed. And every day when I came home from school, that fuzzy face was right at the front door, waiting for me.

Man. Almost twenty years later and I still miss him.

In the years since, I was never in a position to get a dog. Not as an enlisted soldier, and definitely not as a Green Beret, traveling to some of the most dangerous places in the Middle East as part of the Operational Detachment Team A, or A-Team. Up until ten months ago, I wasn’t home long enough to have any kind of pet.

But now, everything is different.

---