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Dallas shook his head. "He stays," was all the man said.
"It's a federal offense," Maddox pressed.
"He's not property," Nolan interjected. "He's a soldier. He sacrificed for our country like any other soldier and now he needs our help." Nolan wrapped his fingers around Dallas's. "He stays."
Maddox nodded and reached out to pat his brother’s arm. "He needs a name," Maddox said.
"He has one," I heard Jett say. I turned and saw that he was sitting in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. He hadn’t joined us for dinner or the activities afterward and I’d tried not to give much thought as to why not. I was trying not to think about him at all.
Easier said than done.
Jett rolled his chair into the dining room. The air around me immediately felt charged with energy and anticipation. Try as I might, I couldn't take my eyes off him.
"His name is Apollo," Jett commented as he rolled his chair up to the table.
"How do you know that?" Maddox asked.
Jett shrugged. "I asked a friend of mine to look into it. He was able to look up the stock number from the partial tattoo."
I suspected which friend Jett was referring to and I wasn't happy about it. The idea that he’d been in touch with his friend-with-benefits was not something I wanted to be thinking about at the moment.
Or ever again.
"Don't worry," Jett continued. "We can trust him not to say anything about the dog."
"Apollo," I murmured, testing the name. It fit the beautiful animal. "Does your friend know what happened to Apollo?"
Jett's eyes landed on me and I felt that energy, that spark of awareness rush through me.
"Apollo hit on a target while he and his handler were scouting. The mark detonated a bomb, killing himself and injuring Apollo, his handler, and a few other guys. Apollo took the brunt of it. Between the explosion and the shrapnel, he had a lot of internal injuries, but he recovered. When it was discovered that he’d lost his hearing, he was retired and adopted out to his handler."
"So how did he end up here?" Nolan asked.
Before Jett could respond, Isaac called out, “I see you!” and we heard the scampering of little feet followed by claws on hardwood. We all chuckled as Isaac excused himself to go track Newt down and wrangle him back into bed.
Jett waited a moment and then continued with, "The handler was killed in a car accident a few months ago. My contact doesn't know anything beyond that. There's no record of the military attempting to get the dog back after his handler died. The guy did have a family, so they must have kept Apollo."
"That's something at least," I said. "And if someone had been looking for him, we would have heard about it, seen lost dog posters, stuff like that. So hopefully we’ll have some time to try and get a handle on his behavior. Jett, you'll need to show us the hand signals."
I wasn't looking at Jett when I spoke but when he didn't respond, I shifted my gaze to him. When our eyes met, it felt like Jett and I were the only two people in the room. He wasn't sitting overly close to me, but I could still feel the heat of his body and the strange current of electricity that seemed to link us together.
Jett slowly shook his head back and forth. "No," he said simply.
"Jett—" Maddox began, but Jett put his hand up. His eyes never left mine. I felt trapped in the most seductive of nets. When Jett opened his mouth again, it seemed to take forever to make sense of his words.
"I'll show you," he said softly. "Just you."
CHAPTER TEN
JETT
"Can I have a word with you? Outside."
Oh yeah, he was pissed. But I was okay with that because I'd rather deal with an angry Sawyer than a broken one any day of the week.
Sawyer didn't wait for me to respond. He shoved his chair away from the table and left the room without another word.
"Jett," Maddox said, clearly angry. Everyone else at the table was staring at me like I’d grown a second head. I didn't blame them. I hadn't exactly proven my good intentions since arriving at the center. I had no way of explaining the bone-deep need I had to prove specifically to Sawyer that I wasn't what he thought.
"I've got this," I said to Maddox pointedly and waited. I hoped that thing was still there, that thing where we could talk to each other without words. And his trust. I hoped that was still there too. I knew he cared about Sawyer, that all the men at the table did. When Maddox finally nodded and sat back down, I let out a breath and then turned to follow Sawyer.
