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She paced the floor, waiting to hear about the mission. She couldn’t remember a time in her life she had been so worried about someone. The grief in her heart from losing her family hadn’t healed and was the heaviest thing she ever carried and might never heal from it. She couldn’t take it if anything happened to her husband, too.
She still wasn’t used to the word husband. She had been living as his wife for two weeks, but it was still a name she wasn’t quite used to.
“Do you want to play a card game?” Mitch asked.
“No, thank you.”
“How about watch a movie?”
“No.”
“Pacing won’t help the time go quicker,” he said gently.
“How do you do this? How do you sit by and do nothing when your friends are in danger?”
“You are right. There is nothing I’d like better than to be with them, having their six. When another team deployed, we were home training for our turn to deploy. We focused on our team, our missions. Everything else was a distraction. These days, I’msetting up the K9 facilities at Valhalla and hoping I can help those who come back injured or changed.”
“Yeah, how’s that going, anyway?” Maybe he could take her mind off things for a minute.
“It’s going. We’re getting our nonprofit paperwork filed. The idea is to breed and train K9 service dogs, PTSD dogs for veterans, seizure dogs, etc. I also hope to start an adoption service for retired K9 dogs from the military. The dogs are heroes and deserve to retire in a home with a loving family.”
“That’s amazing,” she said and meant it.
“Shadow saved my life. When I was injured, I had no one. If I couldn’t be a SEAL anymore, I didn’t want to live. My identity was over. Shadow gave me a reason to live. I was forced to reclass, which means I switched my military job to K9. They medically retired me out of the military because of my injuries, and Shadow was a year from retirement, so my commander pulled some strings and let him retire with me.”
“Love at first sight, dog addition.”
“Exactly!” Mitch laughed.
“When do you think we’ll hear something?”
“When there’s something to hear.”
“I hate this.”
“I hate this too, Frankie. I hate that you have to go through all of this. None of it is right.”
“Okay, how about a card game?”
“Let’s do it.”
“They’re headed back,” Mitch said a few minutes later, looking up from his phone.
“All of them?” Frankie asked, shooting to her feet.
“All of them.”
“Any injuries?”
“Not on our side.”
“Oh, thank God.” She fell back into the chair. Grabbing her phone, she checked the messages. Nothing. Why hadn’t Shane texted her?
“Phantom texted me. Shane’s driving,” Mitch said as if reading her mind.
She nodded.
When Shane walked in the door five minutes later, she threw herself into his arms and kissed his face. She was never more relieved in her life.
