by Dale Mayer
“Thanks, Butch. I’ll try to remember that. I’ll let you know how this pans out.” He put away his phone, checking his father, seeing the yellowish skin and the cloudy eyes. “I’m not sure what I’m looking at.”
“I’m not a people doctor,” Holly said, “but I’m guessing, from the color of his skin and his eyeballs, that his liver is in serious trouble. I noticed it a while ago but didn’t really recognize what that meant, but the symptoms are prominent now. Then what else could he expect, based on the number of years of alcohol poisoning he has inflicted upon his body?”
“Do you think so?”
“We’ll find out once he’s at the hospital,” she said. “That’s where he needs to go. I don’t think you did any more damage, but you were like the last straw on a body that has already had way-too-much abuse.” She stood and walked out to the front. “I hear the police now.”
He reached down and gently stroked his father’s cheek. “This is not how I wanted it to end.”
“It’s not over yet,” she said. “He’s alive and still breathing. But I think we’ll find he’s dealing with some major chronic conditions, and that’s something he either didn’t want to accept, didn’t want to acknowledge or had no intention of getting tested for.”
“His only goal in life was to die and join our mother—and now Brody,” Zane said, “but Dad was too much of a coward. He told me once he was trying to kill himself the easy way.”
“Drinking yourself to death is not exactly an easy way.” She reached out and squeezed Zane’s shoulder. “Step back.”
He looked up to find the cops and paramedics were here. They checked his father over and loaded him onto a gurney. Within seconds he was gone.
The same detective from before looked at Holly and then at Zane. “I’m not sure I want to know what happened here.”
Instead of Zane having to explain, Holly told him all about it. Zane realized she’d heard basically everything from the moment he’d left her bed.
One of the cops with the detective nodded. He looked over at the dog and said, “Katch, you sure are a pile of trouble.”
He hopped up to his feet and, moving slowly and painfully, came over toward Zane for a bit of a cuddle.
“It’s called misplaced anger,” the other cop said, chuckling. “The dog didn’t do anything. But, once again, he was picked on by somebody who couldn’t deal with his own pain. We’re going to take off. We promise we won’t be back until tomorrow for your statement on the other case. You guys need to rest up and maybe keep all your family away from here for a while.” And they closed the door.
Holly looked at Zane and asked, “Do you want to go to the hospital?”
“No,” he said, “but I’ll call. I think they’ll need to run a bunch of tests.” He put in a phone call, explaining his father was coming by ambulance and to have somebody contact him when they had the test results. He said, “I suggest we take a fresh cup of coffee outside and sit in the sunshine and remember all the good things instead of the bad.”
She smiled. “I haven’t heard a better suggestion, at least in the last hour.” She gave him a cheeky grin, and the three of them strolled outside.
They didn’t have to wait long before the doctor called him back. “We don’t need to run too many tests. It’s all in his file. Your dad’s liver is pretty well done for. He was given a prognosis of less than three months to live, and that was five months ago. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he isn’t gone within a week or two. He is weak. If you want to come in and make peace with him, I suggest you do it now.”
“No,” Zane said. “I already made peace with him. Let me know what his condition is tomorrow, and we’ll see if we can get him back home again.”
“I doubt that’ll happen,” the doctor warned. “I highly suspect he’ll go to a hospice.”
“If that’s the way it is,” Zane said, wrapping his arm around Holly, “then that’s the way it is. Thanks for the call, Doctor.”
She reached up and placed a finger over his lips when he put the phone on the bench. “It’s not your fault.”
He looked at her, and his smile warmed. “No,” he said, “it isn’t. This is his fault entirely. I’m just sad for such a wasted life.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and whispered, “So let’s not waste ours, okay?”
“Okay,” he whispered, kissing her and tugging her gently onto his lap. Together they sat for a long moment, enjoying the sunshine of the afternoon and each other.
Epilogue
Jager walked into the boardroom to fill his cup of coffee. “Who decided the coffeemaker should be in here anyway?”
At the odd silence, he turned around to see Blaze Bingham sitting at the boardroom table, a guilty look on his face.
Jager raised an eyebrow. “The least you could do is answer,” he said jokingly.
Blaze grinned at him, putting photographs together into a stack. “Personally I think it’s a silly place for the coffeemaker, but, when you get a cup of coffee and turn around, you see this big empty table. It does invite all kinds of things.” He motioned at his own cup. “Which is why I haven’t left yet.”
“You’re done for the day anyway, aren’t you?” Jager asked, sitting down at the table, studying the man in front of him. He had a scar across his cheek that twisted his features somewhat, but he was still a good-looking man. The scar gave him a badass look. Jager imagined the women would like it, if they ever got past the initial shock. But then again Blaze, it appeared, deliberately kept himself out of the social scene. Jager wondered at that, but then they all had their own challenges when it came to getting back into the circle of life after recovering from an extreme injury. “What are all those photos?”
Blaze just chuckled, spreading them out before him. “Most people have pictures of babies,” he said. “These are my babies. I volunteer at the local rescue center.”
Jager looked down and saw dogs, more dogs and even more dogs. He smiled as he picked up one of a French bulldog, his grin wide and happy. “These are all at the shelter?” he questioned. “I hope not because that would mean the shelter is incredibly full of unwanted animals.”
“No,” Blaze said. “These are the ones we’ve helped place. Rescuing animals is good for the soul.”
“Do you have much dog training?” He studied Blaze’s face intently. They still needed more men for the K9 files. They had three down, all successful, and he didn’t want to slow the momentum now. But every one of the men had gone out, and not one of them had come back. Personally Jager thought that made it a double success, but he wasn’t so sure the commander who’d placed his trust in the Titanium Corp and the rest of the guys here would agree.
“I grew up raising them,” Blaze said. “My dad is crazy for Newfies and Saint Bernards. We had purebreds. My mom used to show them, and Dad raised and trained them.”
“So you have some training experience?”
“Some,” he said. “My dad is a wicked hand at that though.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t go into the K9 unit in the military then.”
“I tried,” Blaze said, giving him a lopsided grin. “But I failed.”
At that, Jager’s eyebrows shot up. “It doesn’t look to me like you failed at much in life.”
“I’d like to think I failed at this one for the right reasons.”
Jager waited.
Blaze reached down, picked up a photo, then slowly brought it to him, then stacking them all together again. “Part of the reason those particular dogs were in the military is for the grueling training they go through. But trainers and handlers are warned that we’re not allowed to get too attached. We’re told these dogs could move out, not become part of the group and that we wouldn’t have any say in the matter. We’d be handlers, not owners. Now, if we retired and the dog was retiring at the same time, maybe. But …”
“You figured you couldn’t go into it without your heart getting engaged.”
“Absolute
ly,” he said.
“Interesting. How do you like working here?”
“To be honest,” he said, “it’s just a stopgap measure. I was thinking about going home to my dad, maybe taking over the family business.”
“Training Saint Bernards and Newfies?”
“Maybe other dogs,” Blaze said. “The old man keeps telling me to come back. We lost Mom two years back, and he’s lonely. There’s just him and me now.”
“Where’s home?”
“Kentucky,” he said.
“You’re here in New Mexico. Why?”
“Because I was still wandering my way back there. It seems like I was doing everything I could to avoid going home. Going home triumphant after a promotion or willingly retiring from a long and illustrious career is one thing. Going home broken and not quite yourself is a completely different thing.”
“How serious were the injuries?”
He shrugged. “Compared to you guys? I’m probably not too bad. I have a prosthetic foot, missing a rib on the right, lost a little off the liver, and my spleen is gone.”
“All survivable injuries,” Jager said, knowing just how tough those recoveries would have been.
“Absolutely,” Blaze said. “Which is why I’m sitting here now. I want to go home, but I haven’t quite adjusted myself to going home as less than I was.”
“I don’t think you’re less,” Jager said. “In fact, after all the shit we’ve been through, I think of us as more. But your focus is on the wrong element. I think it’s more about life. We make plans, then life takes you out, blows you up and says, Okay, so now what are you going to do?”
Blaze chuckled. “God, isn’t that the truth? It’s been good for me here—to see everybody’s issues, not just my own. The rehab center didn’t seem real. Everybody had such major traumas that I could almost disassociate from it, believe I was doing better. That, as long as I ignored it, I was still better off than everybody around me, and so I could return to a normal life. But, of course, the reality is, this is a normal life, but it’s not the same one I left.”
“You have to be adaptable,” Jager said.
“And you’re not the first one to tell me that,” Blaze said. “You see? Each of you guys, you’ve all found partners. You’ve all got prosthetics of one kind or another, injuries that I’m sure go well beneath the skin, and yet, you’ve all done very well for yourselves.”
“I think a large part of that,” Jager said in all seriousness, “is the support group we have around us. I had these guys with me. They’re the ones who helped me pull through. And even though I went … I’ll use the word dark for the sake of understanding at the moment … I walked away from everything and everyone. When it was time to come back to the light, I came back to these guys because I knew they understood. I knew they were where I needed to be. And I knew if I had any way at all to make it happen, I needed to stay close.”
“That’s because you were all in the same unit,” Blaze said. “And I understand that. I wish I had that, but I don’t.”
“No,” Jager said, “but you have something else many of us don’t have, and I think many of us would almost take over what we do have. I say almost because the bonds between us are very, very tight. But you have a father—a father who loves you, a father who’s willing to give you some training, a second chance, his time and energy. You don’t know how much longer you have him around to volunteer that.”
“Exactly why I’m sitting here going over these photos,” he said. “These are successes in the sense that these are rescues that came in, were rehabilitated and moved on.”
Jager waited, knowing that Blaze’s next line was the one that really counted.
Blaze lifted his gaze, stared at Jager, and once again that crooked smile peeked out. “I came here broken, not connected to who I really was. I feel like I’m rehabilitated and that it’s time to move on.”
“If you’re interested,” Jager said, “I have a way for you to go home that maybe won’t feel like you’re returning with your tail between your legs.”
Blaze studied him, an eyebrow raising. “You’re offering me a job back home? I don’t know how that would work.”
“It’s not so much a job as a mission from Commander Cross.”
At that, Blaze sat back and said, “Wow. That’s not a name I’ve heard very often.”
“No. He requested our assistance with a program that got shut down, and of course, typical of all programs, the chances of it being reopened are pretty nonexistent. He asked us to finish what the department had been working on when they lost their budget funding and their staff.”
“Okay. I’m confused,” Blaze said. He reached forward, grabbed his cup of coffee and took a big sip, his gaze never leaving Jager’s. “Tell me more. I’m not exactly sure what you’re talking about.”
Jager explained as much as he could. “I can’t guarantee that the dog,” Jager continued, “is still in Kentucky, but I do recall one of them was last seen there.”
“Not only might it not be there,” Blaze warned, “it could be anywhere by now.”
“Exactly. However, our intel so far has been spot-on with the last three War Dogs.”
“Interesting, and what am I supposed to do when I find this missing female shepherd?”
“Consider this a welfare check,” Jager said. “Make sure she’s okay, in good hands and living a decent life.”
“Easy to do, if she is in a good situation. But what if she’s not?”
“Which is why we’re even more concerned about following up on these animals as soon as we can,” Jaeger admitted. “The first three were not in ideal situations. In each case though, they ended up in the very best scenario.”
“What?” Blaze said. “The men adopted them themselves?”
Jager chuckled. “In two cases, yes. Ethan has Sentry, but he also gained three more with a fourth on the way. I believe he is now doing training workshops, training the animals to be taken out in various situations.”
“Wow, good for him. But then Ethan was a K9 handler, wasn’t he?”
“K9 handler and trainer,” Jager confirmed. “Pierce, … well, he helped reunite his lost dog with her owner before she was shot.”
“That’s just wrong,” Blaze said stoutly. “These dogs have served their country many times over. Why would anybody want to do that to them?”
“It’s a tough thing to understand. The third one was Zane back to his hometown in Maine. He found his dog, called Katch, literally being hunted. He caught up to him at a vet clinic, and, meanwhile, Zane went back to an ex-girlfriend, and the two of them are together again, and he has adopted Katch.”
“I’m not going home to an ex-girlfriend,” Blaze said, “so that won’t work.”
“You might be surprised,” Jager said. “Consider this. We don’t know who or what or why we’re directed to certain places, but, if we leave ourselves open to what may come,” he spoke with a big grin, “just look at us. We all arrived here without partners. And we’re now seven married men who couldn’t be happier.”
“I could hope for something like that,” Blaze said, unconsciously stroking the scar on his cheek, “but I highly doubt that’ll happen.”
“We thought the same thing,” Jager said with a nod. “Don’t listen to that voice. That’s fear talking. Fear that you’ll be alone, fear that nobody will see past the scars. And it’s not true. You’ve got seven prime examples right here in front of you. We found unbelievably wonderful women who could see so much more than what we saw in ourselves.”
“Sure. But now you’re adding a dog to the package.”
Jager stood and grinned. “Dogs are supposed to be chick magnets. Remember?”
“Ah, so that’s what you’re doing. You’re throwing me a bone, literally, to help me get a partner.” Blaze shook his head. “There’s got to be somebody better for this job.”
“Maybe,” Jager said. “In which case, we’ll offer him one of the other missing dog files.” Th
en he added, “Besides, how many of us have families who train animals? How many of us have families and properties that can handle a K9 animal that just wants to come home and rest? Remember she has her own scars, and she’s just looking for love too.”
And, with that, Jager walked out, leaving Blaze wondering what he’d just signed up for.
This concludes Book 3 of The K9 Files: Zane.
Read about Blaze: The K9 Files, Book 4
The K9 Files: Blaze (Book #4)
Blaze had planned to go home to Rockfield, Kentucky, some day. He just hadn’t expected it to be this soon …
Until Badger offers a reason to head in that direction. As a longtime animal-rescue volunteer, hearing about the plight of Simmi, a shepherd with severe dissociative issues from her military days, Blaze knows he has to see this through.
Camilla, on her way to an event she’s planning, tries to avoid hitting a dog as it runs across the road. Blaze witnesses the accident and stops to help, realizing this could be the shepherd he’s looking for. Even better, Camilla is a hoot, and it’s been so long since Blaze has had anything to smile about.
But memories run long and insults cut deep, and someone isn’t happy about their blossoming friendship. Or maybe even several someones … How far will they go to stop it? And who will still be standing when this all ends?
Book 4 is available now!
To find out more visit Dale Mayer’s website.
Author’s Note
Thank you for reading Zane: The K9 Files, Book 3! If you enjoyed the book, please take a moment and leave a short review here.
Dear reader,
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