Ahead of its July 28 release (pre-order now), I will preview Blood Track for my readers as part of my ongoing #SaturdayScenes initiative. Make sure you join my Reader’s Club to get the other free stories I offer to my subscribers, and to get further notifications regarding the release of Blood Track and future stories!

They asked me to arrive at Energetix two hours before the meeting. Though they didn’t tell me why, I can guess: unscheduled checkup. The random kind they like to do in order to have a controlled statistical sample or something or other mumbo jumbo like that. I could’ve complained about it, but as I had to drop off Dan at the airport before sunup, anyway, I really don’t have much room to claim inconvenience. Besides, coming here for routine checkups instead of hauling myself down to Lackland every six weeks? Big win for me, ain’t it?

For that’s what I am now: part of some engineering, medical process of incremental enhancements to whatever technology keeps my body upright and mobile. The gadgetry also helps me stay upright in another way. Even if they’ve never told me formally, I know it, like I know what Allison’s neck device does for her.

As if to confirm those suspicions, Dr. Taylor meets me in the lobby, dressed in her neat white lab coat, ready for another of our psycho-chats. We ain’t had it out, she and I, since I came back from Mexico, so we best get into it now and clear the air.

“He can come,” she says pointing at Tahoe.

“I’m sure he’s looking forward to it.” I set aside the urge to point out Tahoe has joined our little get-togethers for the last couple of months, so why the sudden need to grant permission?

An elevator ride plus a walk along a wide, fluorescent corridor brings us to her office. There I command Tahoe to sit in one corner before I drop into a plush leather chair.

“What can I do you for today?” I ask.

Taylor’s gaze shifts up from her papers. “Initiative. Good to see it.”

“Allison seems to be doing better.”

“Oh?” Head down, she jots something.

“Shady seems to be doing her some good. Her therapy working dog instincts kicking in, I suppose.”

Taylor sets her pen down and leans back in her chair. “I’m glad to hear that. From what Allison tells me, you’ve been instrumental in her… taking her through her mourning period over…” She goes for her papers again.

“Brownie. His name was Brownie.”

“Ah, yes. A tragic loss.” Eyes fixed on me, she leans back in her chair again. “You seem tired.”

“It’s what happens to people when they get up early in the morning.”

“You should have more time on your hands, now that you’re not tending to all those kids.”

I smile, recalling my nickname. Mama Jane. Cooking breakfast for twenty-two, setting them up with sleeping quarters at my barn, them loving it since they could share the space with my dogs.

“Good memories?” Taylor says.

“They loved the puppies.”

She nods. “That was good for you, wasn’t it? Gave you purpose.”

I swallow my smile. “Is that what Martha’s reporting?” I say, referring to my local, in-town therapist.

“Do you miss them?”

I shrug. “I suppose. A little. Glad they’re in good homes, sleeping in beds and not cots.”

She nods some more. “Hmm. How are you sleeping lately?”

To tell it true, it’s been sketchy. Ever since I heard of Joe Brenner’s disappearance and the events leading up to it, I dread letting my head hit the pillow for fear of what dreams sleep will bring. I suppose I could run from it now like I’ve run from it over the past month and a half, but Taylor won’t let me. Why even try?

“Joe and I were close,” I say.

“You mean Joe Brenner.”

“That’s his full given name.” I swallow. “The reason we’re here, ain’t it?”

“We’ve never talked about it,” she says with an even tone, the kind moms use when they don’t want to call you out on something, but they aim to guilt you nonetheless. No doubt she’s stewed for a while on how I’ve never brought up Joe during one of our sessions.

“I discussed it with Martha. A while back.” I search my memory to give her a handle. “After the rodeo incident.”

“Ah, yes. You’ve discussed it with her.”

“What I could. Only the personal stuff.” I turn my head and wink at her. “You ain’t going jealous on me, are you doc?”

She smiles and says nothing.

“It’s been in your files all along, I’m sure.” I say that suspecting that it hasn’t. Not if the mission that got Joe’s legs blown off came with a darker shade of black than Taylor’s need to know could access. “You could’ve brought it up any time you wanted.”

“This is a two way street, you know.”

“One that must abide by them security rules.” I know saying this should shut her up. If our higher uppers didn’t think her fit to see that information, I could not take it upon myself to divulge it. Not without landing myself in the brig or some undisclosed location. But that ain’t exactly honest of me, is it? We could’ve talked about Joe the person, like I did with Martha. I could’ve shared what he meant to me, without diving into the murky stuff.

“Well, you can tell me now.”

“Look at you, coming up in the world. Getting into all the dank and stinky compartments.”

Her only reply comes by way of a soft, gotcha smile.

“Joe was part of our handler detail. He outranked me by a notch. I was the new kid in the sandbox, and a girl to boot.”

“He was Special Ops, and you weren’t,” she interjects with a snippy edge to her voice.

“That’s right. Girls weren’t allowed to play that game back then.”

“Things change.”

“They do. Either way I was too green then. Not ready for some whisper quiet op at the Iran border. That’s all I knew when Joe and his buddies headed out.”

She steals a glance at her papers. “But you did get to go out after all.”

“Mm-hmm. For mop-up duty. Did a lot of that when I first got there. Girls can mop all day long.”

Taylor shoots me a hard stare. “Come on, Jane. Do I have to pull it out of you?”

No, I suppose she shouldn’t. I let out a long sigh, and I start regressing it.

It takes about an hour to reach the location for the drop off. We get there as the night drapes a cooling patch of desert. A village stands out there, somewhere, about a click away.

“You got the scent?” one of four commandoes asks me.

“Done,” I reply. A minute before we dropped off, I let Shadow get the whiff of Joe’s blood from a bloody rag saved just for this purpose. Part of me hopes there won’t be any blood to scent in the end, that we’ll bump into him the old fashioned way. Whatever my hopes, Shadow stands at the ready, nose already searching the night.

“He’s got a track already?” another guy asks me.

“Nah. Just trying to find it.”

“Alright. Let’s go.”

“Sook,” I tell Shadow, and we’re off.

Without me having to tell them, though they’d normally lead the way, two of the guys flank me, and the other two follow close behind. From time to time, Shadow looks up at me. I don’t care for his demeanor. Like he’s apprehensive. Unusual for him to act like this. Once on the job, he more or less becomes a seeker missile. Maybe it’s his green, glowing eyes coming through my night vision gear that unsettles me most. Maybe it’s the flutter behind my belly button that tells me none of this will end well. That they wouldn’t have dragged me into this hot zone if Joe weren’t in some real trouble.

We climb a gentle rise and come to a stop once we crest it. Flat on the ground we scan the terrain below. The location for the village shows plain now—enough that we turn off our night vision gear. The ebbing glow of smoldering fires light up what remains of small, now crumbled buildings.

Next to me Shadow tenses up.

“He’s got it,” I whisper, fighting off the urge to let my voice crack.

Shadow lets out one soft whistling whimper.

The guys exchange knowing looks among themselves. “You stay here. We’ll go check it out.”

“You need him to search,” I say.

“I know. But we gotta clear the scene down there, make sure it’s OK for you to come down. Stay here till we give you the signal.”

Without letting me object any further, the four of them drop over the other side of the hill like four shadows in full gallop. Halfway down, two of them go to the right, and the other two sprint left. I resent that they’re leaving me. But it ain’t their fault. They’re following protocol. I’m not Special Ops, and I ain’t supposed to come anywhere near this smoldering mess. My special dispensation notwithstanding, they have to make sure I come back in one piece.

I bite my lip and pet Shadow to still him a bit. He lets out one snort and lays his head down on the ground, eyes still peering over the edge of our perch and fixed on the village.

By my watch, five minutes go by before I hear gunfire. It comes restrained, no more than one or two shots at a time. They found some bogies and are putting them down methodical like.

As if sensing it a half second before it goes off, Shadow sits up. I’m reaching for his collar to pull him back down, when a large orange bloom followed by a deep boom breaks the night.

I go through my options. I don’t have a radio, so I can’t call for help or instructions. At any rate, our two helos, the one that dropped us off and the one with the backup team should’ve seen that, no problem. I could stay put. It was my last order, and playing it by the book says I don’t move.

But Shadow’s taut, wound up body says otherwise.

I whisper, “Sook,” and we break over the ridge and down the incline at full sprint. Like I used to move when I had real legs.

With my free hand I get my submachine gun ready. Fumbling too much with that, I let go of Shadow’s leash. At the release of pressure, he speeds up, and I do my best to keep up.

We enter the town in a blur, and in a blur we run through it. A good thing, or else I might have to stop and admire all the torn, mangled body parts. I don’t know how long we run, and I’ve lost all notion of our whereabouts when Shadow takes a sharp left turn down a dark alley.

By the time I reach the entrance, nothing but darkness lies before me. I flip on my night vision gear again. I see them then. Shadow sits, looking my way with an air of impatience. Next to him a body lies flat on the ground. As I approach I hear him moaning. Fine dust debris flies in my field of vision in flecks of green. The acrid smell of a recent explosion hits me next.

I step slow. I scan the ground and nearby surroundings. Unnecessary caution, Shadow’s face tells me. He would have alerted me to any explosives.

I focus on the body. I’m thinking it’s one of the four guys that came with me. His shoulder’s shot. When I feel for it, the blood is caked dry. The scent of fresher blood hits me next, and then I see them. His legs. Or what remain of them.

As I work to cinch up his thighs to stem the bleeding, I see his hand reach out to touch Shadow. “Black as the night below,” I hear him hiss. “Close, always to follow.” He gasps for his next breath. “Strength runs in his marrow, my guardian, my friend, my shadow.”

I tell myself that was a good sign. That he remembered the little poem he wrote about Shadow.

I cut it off there. Taylor don’t need to know about it, how I leaned down and begged him to hang on. How, as his eyes rolled back in his head, I whispered that I loved him.

“You saved his life,” Taylor says.

“Or us going in is what cost him his legs. He spooked, ran, boom.”

“The fog of war.”

Yeah, the fog of war. Like she knows anything about it. I’ve beaten her up enough over the past year or so about her lack of firsthand knowledge about war or anything related to it, though. No sense in plowing that rocky field again.

“That must have really shaken you,” Taylor adds.

“I suppose it did.”

“Wish we could have talked about it sooner. In light of what happened to you, it is significant. Wouldn’t you say?”

“I suppose it is.”

“Do you think about it often?”

Her question stops me two ways. First, if I answer it the wrong way—as in tell her, yes, I do—she may pull me out of whatever mission they plan to ask me to support. By my reckoning that would mean I would get excluded from helping to bring Joe Brenner back into the fold. But if I tell her the truth, namely that I haven’t given Joe a second thought since my own two legs went bye-bye, what does that say about me?

“Hard not to think about it when that’s all you hear in the news,” I reply.

“Yes, the last month or so must have been tough for you.”

“Tough enough to pull me off this mission?”

“What mission?”

“I ain’t here for a boring brief, doc. I know I’m here for Joe Brenner.”

“Someone said that? Over the phone?”

“Didn’t have to.” And she just about confirmed it with the deep-dive into my past with Joe. I check my watch, surprised at how much time has transpired. Did I talk that much?

“The briefing starts in fifteen,” I say. “I’d like to visit the little girl’s room before death by PowerPoint starts.”

“I need to know you’re going to be OK with this, Jane.”

“All this time, and you still treat me like an egg about to crack.”

“You know what I’m worried about.”

I nod. She knows. When my guys found me and Joe, they heard me say what I said into his ear. Over and over again. Kept him alive. Ain’t no shame in that, so why hide from it?

“Yeah, I had a thing for him.”

“A thing?”

I level a sharp gaze at her. “That’s as specific as I’m gettin’.”

“And now?”

Now I hate myself for not keeping after him. For not being his true friend afterwards. For being too weak and too self-centered to reach out to him. For sinking into my own despair, like only it mattered, while all along Joe drowned in his own nightmare.

“And now I have a job to do,” I say.

Dr. Taylor closes the folder in front of her. Where she usually would jot down an important factoid about the most recent breakthrough, now she stares at me with a half-smile.

“Thank you.” She stands up and points me to the door.

I push up from my chair and turn around to leave. Tahoe is already standing at the door, ready for me to join him. He looks up at me with the anticipation of an upcoming job. He doesn’t know what comes next, does he? To tell it true, neither do I. Devon Smith’s assistant awaits me a few feet from the door. She sits at a padded bench. When she looks up at me, I know at once how the time between now and the brief will fill up.

“Mr. Smith would like to have a word with you,” she says.

“A short word, I hope.”

“This way, please.”

Devon Smith and I have never met in his office. I reckon this occasion will represent the exception, with maybe more to come if I play nice. His assistant ushers me into a small conference room where dear Devon welcomes me with a wave toward a freshly brewed pot of coffee and an assortment of pastries from a local faux French bakery.

I decline both. “Ain’t got much time, so speak your piece,” I tell him.

“To the point, I want to chat with you about Joe Brenner.”

“Shoot.”

“He needs our help.”

“Does he, now?”

“You’ve been helping other people lately. Like that kid you found in L.A. a few days back. Did you know he’s a vet?”

“That don’t sound like the point.”

His lips break into a faint smile. “Isn’t it?”

I frown. For a couple of seconds my mind lands back on that guy’s wrist. Rick, was his name. His caterpillar and butterfly tattoo on his inner wrist matched Joe’s. Transformation, Joe used to call it.

He takes a seat and waves for me to do likewise. His assistant closes the door. A woman, a man and a solid black German Shepherd remain behind. I aim a downward pointing hand at the floor, and Tahoe responds by flopping down. He lets out a huff before he rests his head on crossed front legs. His eyes remain open, at the ready, but slumbering. It’s an early morning for him, too.

“Joe and I became close,” Smith says. “Over the years, we shared hunting trips, played golf together. Even went to the same church.”

He stops short of saying it: how I should appreciate that, me being a regular churchgoer and all. Evangelical, no less, Bible-believing even if I can’t recall the last time I cracked open my copy of the good book.

“Today you’re going to learn some things about Joe,” Smith says. “Things most people that don’t know him would use to assume the worst about him.”

“But not you.”

“Or you, I hope. You knew him better than most.”

Not in the biblical sense, I almost say. “We served together.”

“You got to know his heart, his integrity.”

“What makes you say that?”

“He told me.”

I wonder what else Joe told him. I wonder if he told dear Devon what a green-horn clueless rookie I was, and how he had to keep bailing me out. I wonder whether he said anything about how I never contacted him after he came back minus two lower legs. Because I didn’t know how to. I had nothing to say or offer. Whatever Joe told Devon Smith, a warmth comes over me over the realization that he conveyed positive things. Unless dear Devon is playing one of his games with me.

“Joe is a good guy,” I say.

“He mentored you.”

“He did.”

“You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him.”

I shrug. “What do you need from me, Devon?”

“I only ask that you keep an open mind.”

“OK.”

“And that you do your best to help bring him home. Safe.”

Our gazes interlock. I search for deceit in those eyes of his, but I find none. Rather, I sense he means what he says. He cares. He wants Joe back safe, maybe clear his name. And he wants me to take part in bringing that about.

“I’ll do what I can, Devon.”

He nods at me, and I wonder whether I’ve made a promise I can’t keep. Whatever the case, I owe it to Joe. If I didn’t show up at his bedside when I got back from my first tour, at least I can show up now.

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