I wanted to drop a quick note announcing that Waiting for Shadow, the prequel to the Tracking Jane series, is now available as a Smashwords free download. It is also available from the Kindle store where I hope to have Amazon recognize it as free download soon.

Below I include a few details and a sampler from the first chapter. Hope you read it soon!

Synopsis for Waiting for Shadow

Major Jane McMurtry is learning to walk after an IED ripped into her legs. Fitted with a new set of prosthetic legs, Jane can do more now. She can start tracking again with her new dog. She can go for long walks around her Colorado ranch. Even her back and hip pain have diminished.

But that’s not the sort of pain pressing down on Jane. She misses Shadow, the dog she trained and had to leave in Afghanistan. If he could come home. If she only had Shadow at her side, she’d handle things better. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like he’ll come soon, not before he finishes his tour of duty. That’s what Army regs and bureaucrats say. That means Jane will have to face her pain alone and either fold under its thumb, or push on as best she can.

Chapter 1 sampler

“Jane McMurtry,” a baritone voice says.

I can’t pin down why I don’t respond. Maybe I’m getting back at them for confiscating my legs and parking me in this crowded waiting room. Here I sit with my pants cinched up at the knee so as to not embarrass me or make anyone uncomfortable at the sight of my chopped off knees.

“Major?” His voice turns sing-songy in that lovely African American way.

Maybe that’s why I don’t respond now. Not because of the way he’s inflecting, but because I don’t deserve that rank. Major. I was a Captain when the IED went off, and that’s where it should have ended, like it did for the others.

His voice gets louder. “Major Jane McMurtry?”

Now I’m getting miffed. I’m on a chair. A regular chair. Not a wheelchair because they took it away after they rolled me in here. Because this is the VA and God forbid if they have enough wheelchairs to go around or care a darn about how getting left stranded makes you feel. I should have bounced and crawled my way out of here to prove I don’t need them, their wheelchairs, their treatment, their prosthetics, none of it.

But without the legs I have no way of driving home. In spite of swinging moods and flashes of insanity, I still got it. Logic, the cruel kind that certifies I’m crippled, constrained, trapped, and most of all and as much as I may hate to admit it, dependent.

“Jane?” He steps into the room, folder under his arm, smile on his face, hands on the handles of a dingy wheelchair. Lionel’s his name, I recall now. He’s helped me before.

He scans the room and picks me out of the crowd, finally. “Hey, there you are.”

“Not like I can go anywhere.”

“Oh, you’re going places, girl. Them sweet legs we’s about to fit you with? You’re gonna rock them.”

I glare at him, but I can’t keep it up for more than a second on account of his bright, wide smile. My lips break into a shallow smile of my own.

He comes closer. “Need some help?”

“I got it.”

Except for one guy I reckon is strung out on a deep-hole drug cocktail, all heads and eyes have turned toward me. Let’s see it now. How will the big ugly chick get into that wheelchair? Will we get a little show when she splatters on the floor?

“You sure?” Lionel asks.

“I got it.”

I readjust my backpack, which I’m wearing backwards on my chest. With the one skill I mastered well and early, I grab onto the chair arm-rests, do a twist and spin, and drop with a flop onto the vinyl seat.

“There you go,” Lionel says like I tricked out a slam dunk basket.

He swings me around and starts wheeling me back toward the entrance into the examining rooms.

I catch a glimpse of a gal giving me a thumbs up. “Good job,” she tells me as I roll by her. “Thank you for your service.”

Family member of someone getting treatment, no doubt. Too clean, too plump, too whole to have served and gotten chewed up in some way or another. All’s she can say is good job and thank you for your service. Well, what else can she say?

I nod and let her fall out of eye range, thankful when the door closes behind Lionel and me. On my rump I feel the vibration and rattling of the wheelchair. It will keep on rolling for a good while, if I recall where the fitting room sits, clear across the other side of the building.

“How was therapy?” Lionel says.

“A joy, as always.”

He laughs. “I remember you.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Yeah, that sunny and dry sense of humor.”

“That’s me. Here to brighten up your day.”

He chuckles. “Tha’s all right. That grumpy thing ain’t gonna last long. Because when you see these legs, when you walk on ‘em, you’re going to bust a move, girl.”

I want to be angry at him, but I don’t have it in me. With all the pain and shame he wheels around this place, probably getting paid barely above minimum wage, guys like him try their best to boost you as best they can. With a smile, with a strong helping hand, with respect, with genuine interest in how you’re doing they make you feel like you ain’t got it so bad.

“Are you asking me out on a dancing date, Lionel?”

“Oh, you wanna go clubbin’ now? I get ya. Yeah, but I gotta say it. If you think them therapy sessions are tough, you ain’t sweat nothin’ until you gone dancing with Lionel.”

I smile at that. It feels good to smile. “Do you give lessons?”

“Oh, yeah. I’ll be your hip-hop coach. Hey! How’s this for an idea? With all the press you been gettin’, you could land yourself on Dancing with the Stars! Won’t that be something?”

“Yeah, I bet I’d grab the sympathy vote, no problem.”

“Hey, I’m serious, here. You could do it. Give you a goal, too. We all need us some goals and aspirations, right?”

“Right now I’d be happy to walk instead of waddle.” I almost stop there, but because he cares, I go on to add, “I want to get back to tracking. Full time. Not just these little jobs I’ve been doing for my local police department, you know?”

“Hey, baby steps, girl. You doing it right, and you’s doing fine.”

“Did you see me on TV?”

“You mean 60 minutes?”

“Tick, tock, tick, tock.”

“Sure did. Streamed it on the Internet. Nice story. Got you just right. You and your dog. What’s her name?”

Shadow, I almost say. “Shady.”

“Girl, right? Love that name. Shady. Not your common name. How did you come up with it?”

I sigh. We’ve turned, and at the end of the long hallway I see the large door that won’t come soon enough. “Because Shadow felt like too much of a cliché.”

“Hmm. Well, Jane. These legs we’s about to give you, they’re the sports model. You know what I’m sayin’? I see you and Shady doing your job no problem.”

“Sure. Thanks.” The way I say that must come across like a cold splash of water. Lionel stops talking.

He keeps rolling me until we get to the entryway, but we don’t stop there. We turn right and head down a shorter, narrower corridor. I almost ask where we’re going, but it don’t much matter so long as we get this over with.

We stop at a few feet from a door that seems of a different ilk. Heavier. Reinforced. A cipher lock to its right lights up red from each key. But Lionel doesn’t type on it.

I crane my neck to look at him and see he’s looking up. Tracing his gaze, I see a domed camera above the door. It blinks green with what looks like a moving laser point. I look back at Lionel to see he’s standing real still. The door clicks. A hiss comes from inside, and the door starts swinging outward, its outer edge tracing along the yellow tape semicircle Lionel stayed clear of.

“Fancy,” I say.

“Ain’t it?”

We walk through. I squint to try and raise a recollection, but no, I’m darn sure I ain’t come here before. Still, doubts remain. I’ve been drugged enough that maybe I came in here and wouldn’t remember it even if in exchange for my recollection they promised to grow me some real legs and threw in a svelte fashion model figure for good measure.

“How are you, Jane?” The female voice comes from Dr. Hinckle. She’s been treating me ever since I’ve had enough conscious awareness to notice who’s peeking and poking me.

I sit a little straighter in my chair. “I’m missing some legs.”

“Well, I can assure you that’s an extremely short-lived and temporary condition.” She comes over with outstretched hand. We shake, and she adds. “They did explain why we needed them, right?”

“Can’t say that they did.” To tell it true, they might have said something I didn’t quite catch in the middle of being peeved about going leg-less. “Just took ‘em and slapped me on a chair in the waiting room.”

“Oh, I’m sorry about that. How disconcerting for you.” She looks down at her clipboard, checks something off before she levels her gaze back at me. “It saves time. We use your old legs to match up against the new ones while you wait your turn, and by the time you come in here, we have less to do.”

“Hmm. You know what they say about efficiency?”

She smiles broadly with all the pleasant fakery she can toss my way. “What’s that?”

“It’s the hobgoblin of uncaring hearts.”