Inside, the house smelled like dog and the coffee she’d forgotten to turn off that morning. The living room was sparse: a couch, a TV she rarely watched, and a bookshelf with more service manuals than novels. The kitchen was clean to the point of sterile, everything in its place. Zeus’s dog bed sat in thecorner by the back door, his water bowl perpetually full, his toys scattered in a basket that she replaced monthly.
Maddox went through her evening routine with the same efficiency she brought to everything else. She fed Zeus, checked him over for any injuries or strain from the day, then let him out into the backyard while she changed out of her uniform into worn jeans and a faded Marine Corps t-shirt that should’ve been retired years ago.
The back porch was small, just a few weathered wooden boards and two steps down to the yard. She sat on the top step with a beer she didn’t really want and watched Zeus patrol the fence line, nose to the ground, tail up.
“Zeus,” she called after a few minutes. “Come here.”
He trotted over immediately and settled at her feet, his head resting on her boots. This was her decompression time—no radio chatter, no dispatch calls, no one asking her how she was doing or if she was okay. Just her and Zeus and the solitude that came with spring evenings on the edge of town.
“She keeps asking about you,” Maddox said, running her hand through his fur. His ears twitched as he listened. “About trust, like she already knows.”
Zeus’s brown eyes tracked her face, steady and unblinking.
“Riley thinks she’s getting under my skin.” Maddox took a sip of beer she didn’t taste. “She’s not. It’s just annoying, that’s all. One more thing I have to do because someone decided I can’t handle my job.”
Zeus made a soft sound in his throat, not quite a whine but not an agreement. More like he was calling her out on her bullshit.
“I’m fine,” Maddox insisted, scratching behind his ears in his favorite spot, just the way he liked. “We’re fine, boy.”
The evening air was cooling, carrying the salt-and seaweed smell of the ocean a few miles west. Spring in Phoenix Ridgemeant unpredictable weather—cold mornings that warmed by afternoon, then dropped again as soon as the sun started setting. The temperature shift reminded her of other places, other evenings.
The memory surfaced without warning, overtaking her senses.
Cold air, but different. October, not spring. The smell of rust and rot instead of ocean salt. The creak of unstable flooring under her boots. Zeus was ahead of her, moving into the dark warehouse, and her breath caught because something was wrong, something was off?—
Maddox squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to breathe slowly through her nose.
No, not now, not here.
But the memory pushed harder, insistent, like it had been waiting all day for her defenses to drop. The sound of Zeus’s warning bark. The suspect’s panicked shouts. The floor groaning, then splintering, then giving away?—
Zeus pressed closer, his weight shifting to lean against her leg. He always knew when the flashbacks started and could sense the change in her breathing before she even realized it was happening.
“I’m fine,” she said again, but her voice came out strangled. “I’m fine.”
Except they both knew she was lying.
She opened her eyes and focused on the present: the fence line, the scrub grass, the fading light turning everything soft and golden. Real things, current things, not things from four months ago in a warehouse that smelled like the stench of death and bad decisions.
Zeus whined softly, and she ran both hands through his fur, grounding herself in the texture, the warmth, the reality of him. He was here. She was here. They were both alive.
The flashback receded slightly but didn’t fully dissipate. It never really left these days, just waited at the edges, ready to crash back in when she let her guard down.
“Come on,” Maddox said, standing abruptly. “Let’s go inside.”
Zeus followed her through the back door, his nails clicking on the kitchen linoleum. She made herself go through the motions: pulled leftover chicken from the fridge, heated it in the microwave, ate it standing at the counter without tasting it. She turned on the TV to fill the silence with noise that didn’t require her participation.
But the flashback was still there, lingering and waiting. She could feel it like pressure building behind her eyes, in her chest, in the way her hands wanted to shake but she wouldn’t let them. She’d see it tonight in her sleep when she couldn’t fight it off anymore. The full memory would play out in vivid detail: Zeus in danger, the floor collapsing, her frozen for a split second too long, reaching for him and thinkingnot again, not again, I can’t lose another one.
Zeus settled on his bed in the corner, but his eyes stayed on her, tracking her movements around the kitchen with that unnerving awareness he’d always had. He knew the flashback was coming, probably knew it before she did.
Maddox leaned against the counter and forced herself to finish the beer. She could handle one more night. This was just her brain replaying trauma on an endless loop, and she was functional enough to keep working, keep showing up, keep pretending like everything was fine.
Zeus sighed heavily from his bed, and Maddox looked over to find him watching her with those steady brown eyes that saw through everything she tried to hide.
“I know,” she said quietly. “I know.”
He didn’t look away, and somehow that made it worse and better at the same time. At least someone knew the truth, even if she herself couldn’t say it aloud.
