Look Again: A Novella (Echo Platoon Book 1) Page 3

  Fireflies flickered here and there like tiny beacons of hope. But hope refused to flare in Tyler’s breast. From his present vantage, the future looked as bleak and dark as the night he’d lost his foot.

  If only he’d died that night. Then he wouldn’t be so miserable now.

  Grief swelled in his throat, making it hard to swallow. The psychologist he’d been seeing at Walter Reed had advised him not to suppress it. Let it out, he’d said. He’d told Tyler to picture his devastation flying out of him like a winged black beast. He willed himself to do just that. The pain tripled, but his eyes remained bone-dry.

  “Fuck,” he whispered. Suddenly, he was so tired that he turned and sprawled face-down on the sofa where his mother’s garden club ladies used to perch like birds on a telephone wire.

  “Mama.” He gazed across the dark luster of the coffee table at the pink wing-back chair reserved for the club president. It faced him, empty and ugly without her smiling presence.

  The furtive approach of an interloper made Tyler tense and jerk his attention toward the door. The pointy-eared silhouette of the dog he’d taken on sucked the anxiety right out of him.

  “Go away,” he groaned. The dog had become his shadow, never more than a couple of yards away, regarding him with those steady blue eyes that looked more human than dog-like.

  As usual, Bronco ignored him. He padded closer and whined.

  “Go back to sleep,” Tyler said. The dog had cried in his crate until Tyler had made him a nest by his bed.

  Bronco ignored him. He lay down right next to the couch, within petting distance of Tyler’s hand. Tyler found his fingers in the dog’s soft fur. Bronco’s rumble of contentment brought a ghost of a smile to Tyler’s face. He thought about the woman who’d brought the dog over and whether she might let him pet her, too.

  Whoa. Where had that thought come from?

  Curiosity had made him look her up in his old year book. He hadn’t realized it at the time, but even at sixteen, Katie Crowley had the makings of a beautiful woman. Plump cheeks, wild hair, and railroad tracks on her teeth hadn’t disguised her potential, at least not to a mature eye. She’d made friends with the school nerds, and while intelligence wasn’t an attribute he’d valued in girls back then, it sure was now.

  A hankering to see her face again niggled inside him. Hadn’t she promised him a date? Why should he wait for his ten days of dog-sitting to be over before he got his reward? Hell, he needed all the distractions he could get, and he was curious to see what she’d done with the old Roberts house.

  Tomorrow, he decided, I’ll just drop by.

  By the time the blue lights of her uncle’s cruiser dappled Katie’s walls, she had regained sufficient composure to answer the door and flick on the porch light. From now on, she wouldn’t forget to keep the porch light on at night.

  “You all right?” he asked her with a searching look.

  “Yeah.”

  She told him what had happened. Then he searched outside while Katie paced her wrap-around porch watching his flashlight strafe the exterior of her home. If he didn’t find anything, he might tell her that her fears were unfounded. Maybe her house was haunted. In a way, she would prefer that to his confirming that her fears were real?

  “Found some footprints in your flower bed,” he announced, mounting the porch to stand beside her.

  Katie swallowed hard. Relief vied with terror.

  “Why don’t I come in so I can ask you some questions?”

  “Sure,” she said leading the way inside.

  They sat at her dinette table in her cozy kitchen where he asked about her past and whether anyone might have a reason to stalk her.

  Katie shook her head no.

  “What about the man who attacked you in college? Whatever happened to him?”

  An icepick of fear pierced her heart. “He served three years in jail,” she answered. “Why…why would he come after me now after all these years?”

  “I’m not sayin’ it’s him,” her uncle soothed. “Just researching my options. What ever happened with those ghost hunters who wanted to film a show here?”

  “I told them they’d be wasting their time.”

  “And they haven’t bugged you about it since?”

  She shook her head, wondering if he were on to something. “No.”

  He tapped his fingertips on her tabletop. “Would you like me to track down your folks for you, hon? You look pretty shaken up.”

  “No!” She threw both hands up. “No way. I’m not going to ruin their vacation.” Her hardworking parents had been saving up for their world cruise for as long as she could remember.

  Her uncle grimaced and pushed his chair back. “All right then, we’ll handle this ourselves. You feel free to call me any time.”

  “Thank you, Uncle Bill.”

  She trailed him to the door on leaden feet. A real-live stalker was definitely worse than having ghosts. It was going to take all of her coping skills and the help of her therapy dog to keep PTSD from wrecking her life again.

  Chapter Three

  The next morning, Tyler put Bronco in the back of his new Crown Victoria. A fresh spring scent wafted in the air, sharpening his senses that were dulled from sleep deprivation. Driving with his one good foot, he negotiated the winding country roads en route to Number 4 Old Pine Road, anticipation beating back his dark mood.

  Driving made him miss his old Mustang with its supercharged V8 engine, but the clutch had necessitated a left foot, and now he didn’t have one. He’d traded in the Mustang for this more subdued looking car. He resented the hell out of having to drive a tame-looking automatic, but he had to admit, the Vic was roomier and made for a smoother ride. Bronco had plenty of room in the back, looking out first one window then another, tail wagging as if to say, “Where are we goin’, huh?”

  Four minutes later, Tyler slowed at the black and white sign that read CANINE COMPANIONs. Boarding. Training. Therapy. He coasted into the driveway recalling how he and his friends had haunted this place back in high school. A swarm of butterflies launched inexplicably inside him.

  Approaching women had never aroused nervousness in him before. But then he’d been a popular jock in high school, and then an elite Navy SEAL. Now he was just an ordinary man—and a cripple at that. Katie Crowley was the first woman he’d attempted to approach since he’d lost his foot. What if she rejected him? His spirits sank at the distinct possibility.

  A thick layer of gravel smoothed the once-pocked dirt track to the abandoned house. Sunlight danced on Tyler’s windshield as he drove through the copse of pines toward the house, now visible through the tree branches.

  Wow. He blinked in surprise. What had once been a gray husk of a house on a sheltered cove of Lake Anna had been transformed into a gleaming Victorian with a brand new tin roof. A coat of blue paint, white trim and lattice work, large glinting windows, and a wrap-around porch graced by a bench swing testified to its loving restoration.

  “Nice,” he breathed, impressed with Katie’s accomplishment.

  The white barnlike building behind the house wrested his attention to the kennel she’d made reference to. A sturdy chain-link fence jutted out on one side to form a sizeable outdoor holding pen. Several dogs in individual cages heralded his arrival. A couple of young black labs, a shepherd, and some breed he didn’t recognize announce his arrival as he braked to a stop.

  He stepped gingerly out of the car on the prosthesis that hurt his ankle, and let Bronco out of the back, keeping him on a short leash.

  The dogs quieted at his approach. Tails wagging, they circled their pens and pressed their noses to the chain-link, eager to greet the dog they most certainly recognized.

  Tyler entered the building proper and found himself in a bright receiving room where the sound of Katie’s voice doubled his heart rate. Bronco pulled him through the open door at the back and into a hallway with the kennels on one side and some sort of training room at the other.

  Katie’s v
oice came from the training room, but Bronco was tugging Tyler toward the dogs who’d burst through the doggie doors of their individual pens into the indoor portion of their runs. As they waged their tails, whined and postured to Bronco, Tyler looked at the remaining empty pens and frowned.

  Katie had told him her kennel was full. That was the reason she’d needed him to dog-sit, right? So where were all the dogs now? In the room with her?

  Tying Bronco’s leash to a pen so he could socialize, Tyler drifted toward the training room where he could hear Katie giving instructions. Through the cracked door, he spotted a teenaged boy in a wheel chair. The boy’s mother hovered behind him, and a single yellow lab stood at the end of a leash by his side.

  “Always pair the command with the gesture,” Katie was saying, “and that way she’ll respond to either a verbal or visual cue.”

  “Pick it up,” said the youth with a plucking gesture.

  The lab pounced eagerly at the red handkerchief lying on the ground. She snatched it up and offered it to the youth, but then she didn’t want to let go.

  “Sheena, drop it,” Katie commanded with an air of authority that made Tyler’s eyebrows rise.

  The dog deposited the moist cloth reluctantly on the boy’s lap.

  “She’s still very much a puppy, as you can see,” Katie apologized with a fond smile and a treat for the dog. “But that’s a good thing. She’ll give you ten to eleven years of quality living.”

  A sudden thought stabbed Tyler’s consciousness. Quality living. The sign at the head of Katie’s driveway flashed across his mind’s eye. Boarding. Training. Therapy Certification. He looked over at Bronco, who looked back at him as if sensing the sudden shift in Tyler’s mood.

  Wait one damn minute. What if Katie hadn’t asked him to dog sit as a favor to her? What if she’d tricked him into a taking a therapy dog because she figured he needed help?

  The appalling thought had him reassessing her from the shadows of the hallway.

  Caught up in her instruction, she had yet to notice him. Everything about her appearance from the hip-hugging jeans that accentuated her athleticism to the plaid shirt that strained across her breasts appealed to him. His body responded like a red-blooded, testosterone-driven male who’d gone without sex for almost five months. But his pride bristled at the certainty that she’d lied to him. Worse than that, she had pitied him. That had to be the real reason behind her request that he take Bronco off her hands.

  The dog was a stinking service dog for handicapped people! Tyler ground his molars together as a wave of mortification and outrage rolled through him. He must have made a sound or a gesture of some kind because just then Katie glanced toward the door and caught sight of him. “Tyler,” she exclaimed.

  He glowered at her, too stunned and chagrined to say anything.

  “Would you excuse me for a minute?” With a forced smile, Katie left the youth and his mother and joined him in the hall, closing the door behind. Her cat-like gaze slid from where Bronco was tied to Tyler’s stricken expression. “Is everything okay?” she asked him.

  “You tell me.” He hated the tremor in his voice. To think he’d driven over here intending to talk her into that date she’d promised him when all along she thought of him as nothing more than a cripple and a potential client for one of her dogs!

  She didn’t bother to continue the pretenses. “Tyler, I’m sorry, I—”

  “You’re kennel isn’t even full. You lied to me. You tricked me into thinking I was helping you,” he accused, steamrolling over her apology.

  “I know,” she said quietly. “If I’d told you the truth, you would never have taken him, would you?”

  “Damn right. I don’t need a therapy dog just because my foot’s missing. There’s nothing else wrong with me. I can still walk; I can still drive. I don’t need a damn thing from anyone. I can do this myself!”

  By the end of his tirade, her eyes reflected wariness and his face was burning hot.

  “You can take care of your own damn dog,” he added. And then he swung around and hobbled painfully toward the exit, where he paused ever-so-briefly to glance over at Bronco who had started to follow him, only to be halted by the leash. The dog returned his gaze expectantly.

  Disgusted with himself, with life, with everything, Tyler hastened out of the building and strode as fast as his prosthesis allowed to his car. He half expected Katie to chase after him, offering abject apologies and stammering out excuses for her subterfuge. But he made it to his car without being assaulted.

  Dropping behind the wheel, he swung his feet in, wincing when his prosthesis struck the door frame. He jammed the key into the ignition. When he glanced up, Katie was standing at the door of her establishment watching. It was then that he noticed the dark half-moons under her eyes and the unhealthy pallor of her face. She lifted a single hand in farewell, dignifying his rude behavior by acknowledging his departure.

  His face burned anew. He nodded back, cranked the engine, and swung his car around in the narrow parking area. As he drove away, he glanced back once to see Katie bow her head and rub her eyes in a gesture of defeat.

  Terrific, Katie thought, rubbing her eyes in the hopes of easing the ache behind them. Tyler Rexall had seen straight through her deception and now he hated her. His furious reaction had been heartbreaking. This was just what she didn’t need right now—one more reason to lose sleep at night.

  She looked up just as his brake lights disappeared from sight.

  Recalling the couple waiting for her in the training room, she had no choice right now but to shake off her depression. Tonight, however she knew that she would wallow in it. With a heavy step, she reentered the kennel where Bronson cocked his head at her as if asking a question.

  “It’s not your fault, buddy,” she assured him. Unclipping his leash, she opened an empty pen and ushered him inside it. Then she returned to the training room to continue working with her clients.

  Tyler punched up his pillow and groaned in frustration.

  During Basic Underwater Demolition Training, the grueling candidate-elimination camp for wanna-be SEALs, he’d gone three full days without sleep. As a SEAL proper, he’d managed to scrape by on just four hours of sleep a night. However, the last time he could recall sleeping more than two hours in a row was in the hospital when he’d been hooked up to an IV laced with pain-killer.

  The lack of sleep was torturing him. The dark of night seemed to stretch on forever. And there was nothing to do—no time-critical missions. No known enemies. Just…meaningless nothingness that went on and on and on.

  For a change, his thoughts tonight didn’t revolve around the incident that had robbed him of purpose. His thoughts had fixated on the scene between him and Katie that afternoon, and his words replayed over and over again, giving him leisure to analyze every nuance of what he’d said.

  I don’t need a therapy dog just because my foot’s missing.

  Possibly true. He could still walk with a prosthesis, even though it pained him. He could still drive. He wasn’t a cripple like the youth in the wheelchair.

  There’s nothing else wrong with me.

  Really? Well, if that were true then he’d be sleeping like a baby right now, wouldn’t he? He’d have moved past the tragedy that had left him physically and emotionally imbalanced, and he’d have figured out what the hell he was going to do with the rest of his life.

  I don’t need a damn thing from anyone. I can do this myself!

  What a crock. He’d come home because he needed his family. Sure, they’d tried to be there for him. They’d taken the time to welcome him home and to feel out his state of mind. But his sister was busy with school, and his father had his hands full coping with his wife’s decline. And then there was his mother, whom he needed most, who had kissed his scrapes and bruises all his life and told him he was good to go. She didn’t even recognize him.

  And that sucked. That sucked more than anything.

  Hot tears slid from the co
rner of Tyler’s eyes and slid toward his pillow.

  You can take care of your own damn dog.

  The memory of his last sentence to Katie made him wince. Never in his life had he spoken to a woman like that. His parents had raised him to be a gentleman, a role that he had taken seriously. He’d opened doors for women, showed them kindness and respect, never pushed for physical intimacy just because he could. While there’d never been any shortage of women in his life, he had still held himself aloof for one reason. He wanted a relationship born of respect, like the kind that his parents had.

  Along came Katie, who’d planted a seed of interest regarding the future, and he’d ruined everything by squashing her selfless gesture. What an ass he’d made of himself. Hell, he owed her an apology.

  Remorse burned in his gut, making it impossible to find sleep. Sitting up in bed, he found himself staring at the blanket on the floor where Bronco had curled up for the past two nights. Strange how quickly he’d gotten used to the dog there.

  Now the house seemed emptier than ever.

  Loneliness carved a hole in his aching chest. He swallowed hard, managed a shuddering indrawn breath before the dam burst unexpectedly.

  A salvo of racking, awful noises issued from his throat. I’m crying, he realized, half relieved, half terrified to let his emotions get the better of him.

  Let it go, urged the voice of his psychologist.

  And so he did, one part of him chagrined to realize what he had been reduced to—a man with only one foot, with no future, no hope.

  He sobbed until the tears ran from the hands covering his face, down his forearms to his elbow, until he felt like a wrung-out SEAL trainee in BUDs. And then, by degrees, his weeping subsided and he managed to fill his lungs without them convulsing. He felt better. But he still owed Katie an apology, and he doubted he would sleep until he’d put that chore behind him.