The helicopter ride was surprisingly bumpy on the way to the site. Kyle looked around at his teammates, some sound asleep, others like him feeling edgy. Maybe it was the unexpected turbulence. Maybe it was just that something about this mission seemed off. Camo nudged at Kyle and when he reached out to reassure his partner, someone grabbed his hand.
“Hey, buddy, do you mind?”
Kyle was instantly awake and ready to fight. The waking world flooded back in, leaving him on a domestic flight years later, sitting next to a disgruntled man gripping his wrist and looking like he was ready to punch Kyle.
The plane hit another pocket of turbulence then smoothed out again. Realizing he must have reached out in his sleep, Kyle took a deep breath and swallowed the smartass remark on his tongue. “Hey, sorry. Bad dream.”
The guy glanced down at Kyle’s wrist, then let it go. The man relaxed as he said, “It’s all good. No harm done.” Kyle figured he must have spotted and recognized the tattoo on his wrist. “Military?”
“Retired.” Kyle tugged his sleeve back down over the ink.
The guy dipped his head. “Thanks for your service, man.”
Those words. Always meant well. Always hurt. “Yeah, sure.”
A bell chimed and the fasten seatbelts icon lit up. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the pilot spoke over the sound system, “It’s going to be a little bumpy as we make our final descent into Denver, Colorado. We should be touching down in twenty minutes. Local time will be one-thirty.” The pilot paused in that calm, infuriating pilot-way that meant bad news, “Local weather calls for strong winds, continuing snow flurries getting heavier all points north to Wyoming. Temperature is currently twenty-eight degrees and falling. Folks, I hope you don’t have to go far today, and if you do, I hope it’s south toward the Springs.”
Of course I’m going north. Kyle double-checked the map he’d saved on his phone. The address his buddy had given him was about fifty-five miles from Denver International Airport, straight up I-25 north and then a hard left, west toward the mountains. Right into the face of the oncoming storm. With any luck—which certainly wasn’t on his side, today or any day—renting a car wouldn’t be a hassle and he’d make it by four, maybe four-thirty, ahead of the heaviest snow.
The sound system crackled again. “Folks, it’s your captain again. Looks like we’re going to have to divert to Colorado Springs.”
Groans filled the cabin, the loudest coming from Kyle.
Two hours later, Kyle stood waiting in line at a rental car desk at the Colorado Springs airport, his knuckles white as he gripped the handles of his duffel bag. After the plane had landed and sat for over an hour, passengers had been given the choice to deplane or take their chances that the weather around DIA would clear enough that grounded flights could depart and they’d have a gate open and waiting. Estimated wait time—another three hours. Which meant more like five. It was a no-brainer choice for Kyle.
Or, so he’d thought, before he saw the dozens of people queuing up for cars in the small airport, all with the same idea of driving to Denver instead.
While waiting, he’d recalculated the drive time to Longmont—over two hours on a good day, but with the storm strengthening to the north, the drive time kept inching up from two hours to three.
Fuck it, Kyle thought.It doesn’t matter what time I get there.Camo’s already waited three weeks since getting Stateside. Another couple hours won’t matter.
Really, it had been two years since he’d seen his partner. Two years of doubt and disillusionment and shame. Watchdog Security had been the best thing to happen to Kyle, giving him a purpose again—training the dogs he loved. Ironic that he was one of the only people there who didn’t have a dog of his own.
But not for long. Not anymore.
“Next!”
Kyle stepped up to the counter. “I need something that’ll get me to Longmont.”
* * *
The roads weren’t bad—they were nightmarish. One minute, the snow was gently falling, barely obscuring the mountains just to the west of the Springs, giving the darkening skyline a snow globe feel as he drove by the Air Force Academy on I-25. The next, he passed a sign saying Monument Hill, Elevation 7,352 and everything turned to white-out. The road became a sheet of ice—it had rained earlier in the day because this was Colorado, home of schizo weather—and traffic on the highway slowed to twenty miles an hour. It crept along through the rest of the afternoon into the evening, the snow letting up before Castle Rock in time for the sky to grow full-black when the sun slipped behind the Rockies. He hit Denver’s rush hour. Stop and go with plenty of cars off to the side and tow trucks weaving through the lanes to the next accident. North of Denver, the prairie spread out before him and the snow kicked in again along with brutal winds that threatened to blow him sideways off the road, like it had done to several semis. He’d gone five miles in the dark and the blowing snow before realizing he’d missed the turnoff to Highway 66 West to Longmont.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Kyle banged on the dashboard. He’d never get to the ranch.
Deep breaths. In, hold, and out.
He did the breathing exercises he’d learned in the service. Like then, they calmed him now. He took the next exit and doubled back. By now, it was almost nine o’clock, there were few lights along the road, and the snow was coming at him sideways.I should do the smart thing, find a hotel room in Longmont, and start out for the ranch in the morning. But Camo was so close and Kyle had waited so long. He’d been cheated out of so much. He wasn’t going to let Camo be the next, worst thing he’d lost. He’d made a promise to the dog. To himself.
Kyle watched the third and final exit to Longmont roll past. 66 West just got darker from there. But the ranch was only another five miles.I can make it, I have to.
Kyle turned onto what looked more like a trail than an actual road. The snow here was deep, at least a foot and a half of undisturbed powder. Surrounded by black night punctured by his headlights, poles along either side of the road were the only things keeping him from going off it as he climbed a hill. He made a hairpin turn and the back wheels fishtailed. Kyle slid into a ditch and, with just under a mile to the ranch, the vehicle refused to go any farther.
Three
Arden Volker had just thrown another log on the fire and settled down with an oversized mug of hot chocolate—though to her mind, ‘oversized’ and ‘chocolate’ never belonged in the same sentence—when the pounding began at the door.
“God, now what?” She’d had an exhausting day, making sure the animals were taken care of, as much as the people who depended on them. She’d fielded worried calls between rounding up the horses, goats, and alpacas, making sure the chickens were secure from the weather and from opportunistic raccoons and foxes. She’d taken calls from horse owners making sure their animal was sheltered and fed—as if she’d let any of those beautiful creatures starve or freeze to death.
