Page 61 of Rescued By the Dog Trainer

Juno presses harder against the wire, vibrating with coiled drive. When I reach down to slip the brass clip of the training lead into her collar ring, she lunges forward—not to break into the snow, but to ram her skull straight into my hip.

The impact drives a spike of white heat up my leg. Air punches from my lungs. My gloved fingers seize the top rail of the cedar fence to keep my boots anchored.

"Heel."

She ignores the command. Her broad head sweeps under my palm, ears flat, ribs wedging tight between my legs. She plants her weight flush against my damaged right joint, leaning all sixty pounds into the knee that took the cargo container over the Black Sea.

She isn't seeking comfort. She's bracing me. She knows the joint is shot.

Behind us, headlights cut through the gloom near the lower shed. Brody Gavin's Jeep rattles over the cattle guard, followed by Griff Reed's rusted pickup. Doors slam shut. Shouts echo into the gray morning. Brody unclips Zip. Sarah leads Tank toward the center runs.

The heavy timber door at the main barn creaks open. Jason steps onto the packed snow.

Barnaby holds his heel, an exact mirror of the man beside him. Upright. Carved out of stone. Dark stubble frames the lock of Jason's jaw. His gaze drives straight ahead, scanning the paddocks, the perimeter wire, the ridge—evaluating everything on this mountain except the fence line where Juno and I stand.

"Muster." Jason's voice carries across the freezing alleyway, flat and stripped of warmth. "South fence transitions. Five paces to heel, immediate down-stay on the turn. Let's work."

His focus stays fixed on the ridgeline, bypassing the black notebook pressed flat inside my zipped jacket. All pretense is gone. He's a soldier running a drill under fire, his face locked down so tight nothing gets through.

I tighten my grip on the leather lead.

"Let's go, girl."

Juno takes three paces beside me, then leans into my thigh again with stubborn force. Every step across the yard feels like dragging a fractured joint through broken glass, but I keep my chin level, facing the center run.

Running away is a coward's reflex. A flight nurse doesn't retreat under fire.

The hours grind on with the mercy of a field dressing over an open wound.

Jason works the line with drill-field precision. He coaches Brody on Zip's release cue. He checks the tension on Tank's harness with Sarah. But when he reaches Juno and me, his gaze drops to the leather lead, refusing to rise above my collarbone.

"Keep the slack six inches above the clip." The instruction lands on the packed snow between our boots, addressed to Juno, never meeting my eyes. "The turn breaks on your hip, not her shoulder."

He pivots on his heel before I can draw breath, leaving three paces of dead air between us.

The words burn against the back of my teeth, screaming to be said.

Look at me.

I held your severed artery together with my bare hands while cargo containers collapsed around us. Face me instead of treating me like a stranger on a parade deck.

You don't owe me a debt. You never owed me a single cent. I did my job, and I don't regret a moment of it.

None of it makes it past my lips. Not with Sarah and Brody watching from across the rail. Not with years of military conditioning locking my posture down, reminding me that officers don't bleed in front of the unit.

The freeze deepens through the afternoon. In the tack room, where only yesterday his breath brushed my cheek and the space between us disappeared, he treats me like unexploded ordnance. When I reach for the lead hanging beside the feed bin, his shoulder shifts two inches to the left, avoiding the brush of canvas.

No touch. No shared glance. He simply ceases to exist in any space where warmth might survive.

The distance cuts deeper than the wind coming off the ridge. The wind only numbs skin. Jason's silence carves deep into bone.

By four o'clock, the last truck rattles over the cattle guard. The yard clears, leaving only the moan of frozen cedar and the low thrum of kennel heaters. Twilight bleeds into indigo across the canyon. The temperature plunges past zero. The high ridge vanishes behind whiteout squalls.

Night falls hard across Angel's Peak.

The radiator in Mabel's blue room clanks against pine floorboards, spitting thin steam into the dry heat. The smell of cedar smoke and fried ham from the kitchen downstairs clings to the floral wallpaper.

My olive-drab combat duffel lies open across the patchwork quilt. Three pairs of wool socks. Two thermal undershirts. The spare trousers, right leg slit open to clear the hinged knee brace. Everything's rolled into tight cylinders, lined up inside the nylon shell like ammunition in a magazine.