Vroom-room-room-room-room.
“Oh. My God,” Marla said as she raced to the front door. “Is that what I think it is?”
Vroom-room-room-room-room!
Louder and louder the sound became until a row of bikes burst through the treeline. The black leather jackets and the gleaming helmets told us everything that we needed to know. Smoke heard them before any of us did. He’d been lying near the door all morning like a draft stopper, but the second the distant rumble started up, his head snapped up and his tail began to move. By the time the bikes broke through the treeline, he was on his feet, doing this tight little circle that was just about the most undignified thing I’d ever seen from an animal who carried himself like a general.
“Gee!” Jasmine squealed as she raced out the front door.
“Holy fuck,” Anna said breathlessly.
I’d never seen her move so fast.
“Range!” Em exclaimed as she darted out with the girls.
Amanda and Ariel were hot on their heels. Smoke blew past all of them. The dog hit the door at a dead sprint, all that military composure gone the second Ranger swung his leg off the bike. He didn’t jump up, didn’t bowl him over. He just planted himself against Ranger’s leg and pressed there, solid and shaking, tail going like a propeller, and made this sound. Low and broken, somewhere between a whine and a groan. The kind of sound that came from somewhere deep in a chest that had been holding things in for too long. Ranger crouched down. He got all the way down to the dog’s level, both hands going into the fur on either side of Smoke’s face, and he just held him there for a moment. Smoke licked him once, right across the nose, and Ranger huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh if it wasn’t so rough around the edges. He pressed his forehead to the top of the dog’s head and stayed there. I watched Marla stop running. She stood a few feet away with her hand over her mouth, watching the two of them, and I saw the moment it broke her open a little. She had been with that dog for weeks. She knew what he was. She knew what it cost Ranger to leave him behind, and she knew what Smoke did with that time. When Ranger finally lifted his head and looked up at her, she closed the distance between them at a dead run and threw herself into his arms. He caught her without standing up, the dog tucking himself against both of them like he was completing some kind of circuit.
But I just kept watching at the window.
Jasmine tackled her man to the ground. Ariel couldn’t get Cap’s helmet off quickly enough. There were kisses and hugs all around.
My feet were filled with lead, however. To be honest, I wasn’t sure which one was Doc. On their bikes with their helmets and their jackets, especially with the sun only just starting to rise, it was hard to get a read on who was underneath everything. Fora moment, I questioned things. How could I not know which one Doc was? What did that mean? Was I not paying attention enough? Would he be upset that I wasn’t out there, tackling him with all of his gear on?
I must’ve been in my head for much too long, because when I finally came to, I found someone standing in my field of vision. In front of the window I was staring at. And when I tilted my head back, I found him smiling down at me.
Waving at me, through the window.
But the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.
Something happened.
The instant I moved for the front door, he moved swiftly as the wind. The door was open, his arms were around me, and the shotgun dropped from my hands as he gathered me into his arms.
“I gotcha,” he whispered as he kicked the shotgun away from us.
“Daniel,” I whimpered as I wrapped my legs around him.
“I gotcha. I’m back. We’re all back,” he said as he rubbed my back.
“Don’t ever leave for that long again, okay?” I whispered.
He pressed a kiss to my temple as he walked us back toward our bedroom that we hadn’t shared with one another in days.
“We have much to discuss,” he muttered in my ear. “But first, I wish to hold you, my Liz.”
I sure as hell didn’t need to be told twice, either.
29
DOC
Mine.
It was the only thing I thought to myself as I scooped her into my arms. Feeling her against me made every single day I just spent away from her worth it. She was safe, we had eyes on the enemy, and all we had to do was sit back and wait for the information to roll in.
I couldn’t get those eyes out of my head, though.
I tore through the threshold of the bedroom. I kicked the door closed, only to toss her to the bed. Her squeal of delight was music to my ears, and a small flick of my fingers locked the door so that no one could get to us.
