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  BLAZE

  The K9 Files, Book 4

  Dale Mayer

  Books in This Series:

  Ethan, Book 1

  Pierce, Book 2

  Zane, Book 3

  Blaze, Book 4

  Lucas, Book 5

  Parker, Book 6

  Carter, Book 7

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  About This Book

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  About Lucas

  Author’s Note

  Complimentary Download

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  About This Book

  Blaze had planned to go home to Rockfield, Kentucky, some day. He just hadn’t expected it to be this soon …

  Until Badger offers a reason to head in that direction. As a longtime animal-rescue volunteer, hearing about the plight of Solo, a shepherd with severe dissociative issues from her military days, Blaze knows he has to see this through.

  Camilla, on her way to an event she’s planning, tries to avoid hitting a dog as it runs across the road. Blaze witnesses the accident and stops to help, realizing this could be the shepherd he’s looking for. Even better, Camilla is a hoot, and it’s been so long since Blaze has had anything to smile about.

  But memories run long and insults cut deep, and someone isn’t happy about their blossoming friendship. Or maybe even several someones … How far will they go to stop it? And who will still be standing when this all ends?

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  Prologue

  Jager walked into the boardroom to fill his cup of coffee. “Who decided the coffeemaker should be in here anyway?”

  At an odd silence, he turned around to see Blaze Bingham sitting at the boardroom table, a guilty look on his face.

  Jager raised an eyebrow. “The least you could do is answer,” he said jokingly.

  Blaze grinned at him, sorting photographs into separate stacks. “Personally, I think it’s a silly place for the coffeemaker,” he said, “but, when you get a cup of coffee and turn around, you see this big empty table. It does invite all kinds of things.” He motioned at his own cup. “Which is why I haven’t left.”

  “You’re done for the day anyway, aren’t you?” Jager asked, sitting down beside him.

  Jager studied the man in front of him. Blaze had a scar across his cheek that twisted his features somewhat, but he was still a good-looking man. That scar gave him a badass look. Jager imagined the women would like it, if they ever got past the initial shock. But, then again, Blaze, it appeared, deliberately kept himself out of the loop from most of the social scenes. Jager wondered at that, but then they all had their own challenges when it came to getting back into the circle of life and relationships after recovering from injuries such as theirs.

  “What are all those photos?”

  Blaze just chuckled, spreading them in front of him. “Most people have pictures of babies,” he said. “These are my babies. I volunteer at the local rescue center.”

  Jager looked down and saw dogs, more dogs and even more dogs. He smiled as he picked up one photo of a French bulldog, his grin wide and happy. “These are all at the shelter?” he questioned. “I hope not, because that would mean the shelter is incredibly full of unwanted animals.”

  “No,” Blaze said. “They’re the ones we’ve helped place. Rescuing animals is good for the soul.”

  “Do you have much in the way of dog training?” He studied Blaze’s face intently. They still needed more men for the K9 files. They had three down, all successful. Jager didn’t want to slow the momentum now. But every one of the assigned men had gone out, and not one of them had come back. Personally, Jager thought that made it a double success, but he wasn’t so sure the commander who’d placed their trust in him and the rest of the guys would agree.

  “I grew up raising them,” Blaze said. “My dad is Newfie and Saint Bernard crazy. We had purebreds. My mom used to show them, and Dad raised and trained them.”

  “So you have some training experience?”

  “Some,” he said. “My dad is a wicked hand at that though.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t go into the K9 unit in the military then.”

  “I tried,” Blaze said, giving him a lopsided grin. “But I failed.”

  At that, Jager’s eyebrows shot up. “It doesn’t look to me like you failed at much in life.”

  “Well, I’d like to think I failed at this one for the right reasons.”

  Jager waited.

  Blaze picked up a photo, then slowly pulled it toward him, stacking them all together again. “See? Part of the reason those K9 dogs are in the military is how well suited they are for the grueling training they go through. But we’re warned that we’re not allowed to get too attached. We’re told these dogs could move out, not become part of our group, and that we wouldn’t have any say in the matter. We’d be handlers, not owners. Now, if we retired and the dog was retiring at the same time, that’s a different story. But …”

  “You figured you couldn’t go into it without your heart getting engaged.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Interesting. How do you like working here?”

  “To be honest,” Blaze said, “it’s just a stopgap measure. I was thinking about going home to my dad, maybe taking over the family business.”

  “Training Saint Bernards and Newfies?”

  “Maybe other dogs,” he said. “The old man keeps trying to tell me to come back. We lost Mom two years back, and he’s lonely. There’s just him and me now.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “Kentucky.”

  “You’re here in New Mexico why?”

  “Because I was still wandering my way back there,” he said, this time the grin nowhere in sight. “It seems like I was doing everything I could to avoid going home. Going home triumphant after a promotion or willingly retiring from a long and illustrious career is one thing. Going home broken and not quite yourself is a completely different thing.”

  “How serious were the injuries?”

  Blaze shrugged. “Compared to you guys? I’m probably not too bad. I have a prosthetic foot, missing a rib on the right, lost a little off the liver, and my spleen is gone.”

  “All survivable injuries,” Jager said, knowing just how tough those recoveries would have been.

  “Which is why I’m sitting here right now. I know I want to go home, but I haven’t quite adjusted to going home less than I was.”

  “I don’t think it’s less,” Jager said. “I think it’s life. We make plans, then life takes you out, blows you up and says, ‘Okay, so now what are you going to do?’”

  Blaze chuckled. “Lord, isn’t that the truth? It’s been good for me here,” he said, “to see everybody’s issues, not just my own. The rehab center didn’t seem real. Everybody had such major traumas that I could almost disassociate from it, believe I was doing better. It led me down a deceptive lane that said I was doing better, that—as long as I ignored it—I was better off than everybody around me, so I could return to a normal life. But, of course, the reality is, this is a normal life, but it’s not the same one I left.”

  “You have to be adaptable,” Jager said.

  “You’re not the first one to tell me that,” Blaze said. “You see? You guys, you’ve all found partners. You’ve all got prosthetics of one kind o
r another, injuries that I’m sure go well beneath the skin, and yet, you’ve all done well for yourselves.”

  “I think a large part of that,” Jager said in all seriousness, “is the support group we have around us. I had these guys. They’re the ones who helped me pull through. And, even though I went … I’ll use the word ‘dark’ for the sake of understanding at the moment … I walked away from everything and everyone. When it was time to come back to the light, I came back to these guys. Because I knew they understood. I knew they were where I needed to be. And I knew that, if I had any way at all to make it happen, I would stay close.”

  “That’s because you were all in the same unit,” he said. “And I understand that. I wish I had that, but I don’t.”

  “No,” Jager said, “but you have something else that many of us don’t have, and I think for most of us we would almost take that over what we have. I say almost because the bonds between us are very, very tight. But you have a father—a father who loves you, a father who’s willing to give you some training, a second chance, his time and energy. You don’t know how much longer you have him around to volunteer that.”

  “Exactly why I’m sitting here going over these photos,” Blaze said. “These are successes in the sense that these rescues came in, were rehabilitated and moved on.”

  Jager waited, knowing Blaze’s next line was the one that really counted.

  Blaze lifted his gaze, and once again that crooked smile peeked out. “I came here broken, not connected to who I really was. I feel like I’m rehabilitated, and it’s time to move on.”

  “If you’re interested,” Jager said, “I have a way for you to go home that maybe won’t feel like you’re going home with your tail between your legs.”

  Blaze studied him, an eyebrow raising. “You’re offering me a job back home? I don’t know how that would work.”

  “Well, it’s not so much a job as a mission from Commander Cross.”

  At that, Blaze sat back and said, “Wow. That’s not a name I’ve heard very often.”

  “No. He requested our assistance with a program that got shut down, and, of course, typical of all government programs, the chances of it being reopened again are pretty nonexistent. He asked us to finish what the department had been working on when they lost their budget, their funding and their staff.”

  “Okay. I’m confused,” Blaze said. He grabbed his cup of coffee and took a big sip, his gaze never leaving Jager’s. “Tell me more.”

  “I can’t guarantee that the dog,” Jager said, after he explained as much as he could, “is still in Kentucky, but I do recall that one of them was last seen there.”

  “Not only could it not be there,” Blaze warned, “it could be anywhere by now.”

  “Exactly. However, our intel so far has been spot-on with the last three.”

  “Interesting. And what am I supposed to do when I find this female?”

  “Consider this a welfare check,” Jager said. “Make sure she’s okay, in good hands and living a decent life.”

  “Easy to do if she is in a good situation. But what if she’s not?”

  “Which is why we’re even more concerned about following up on these animals as soon as we can,” Jager admitted. “The first three were not in ideal situations. In each case though, they ended up in the best scenario.”

  “What?” Blaze asked. “The men adopted them themselves?”

  Jager chuckled. “In two cases, yes. Ethan has Sentry, but he also gained three more with a fourth on the way. He is now doing training workshops and training the animals to be taken out in K9-specialized situations.”

  “Wow, good for him. But then Ethan was a K9 handler, wasn’t he?”

  “K9 handler and trainer,” Jager confirmed. “Pierce, … well, he helped reunite his dog with her owner before she was shot by the authorities or the locals who all thought the dog was attacking humans for no reason.”

  “That’s just wrong,” Blaze said stoutly. “These dogs have served their country many times over. Why would anybody want to do that to them?”

  “It’s a tough thing to understand. But Pierce has also been elected sheriff in a community that badly needed an honest leader,” he said. “The last one was Zane back in Maine. He found his dog, called Ketch, literally being hunted. He caught up to the dog just as he was at a vet clinic, but, of course, Zane went back to an ex-girlfriend, and the two of them are together again, and he has adopted Ketch.”

  “Well, I’m not going home to an ex-girlfriend,” Blaze said, “so that won’t work.”

  “You might be surprised,” Jager said. “Consider this—we don’t know who or what or why we’re directed in certain places, but, if we leave ourselves open to what may come,” he spoke with a big grin, “just look at us. We all arrived here without partners. And we’re now seven married men who couldn’t be happier.”

  “I could hope for something like that,” Blaze said, stroking the scar on his cheek, “but I highly doubt that’ll happen.”

  “We thought the same thing,” Jager said with a nod. “Don’t listen to that voice. That’s fear talking. Fear that you’ll be alone, fear that nobody can see past the scars. And it’s not true. You’ve got seven prime examples right here in front of you. We found unbelievably wonderful women who could see so much more than what we did.”

  “Sure. But now you’re adding a dog to the package.”

  Jager stood up and grinned. “Dogs are supposed to be chick magnets, remember?”

  “Ah, so that’s what you’re doing. You’re throwing me a bone, literally, to help me get a partner.” Blaze shook his head. “There’s got to be somebody better for this job.”

  “Maybe,” Jager said. “In which case, we’ll offer him one of the others out of the files.” Then he added, “Besides, how many of them have families who train animals? How many of them have families and properties that can handle a K9 animal that just wants to come home and rest? Remember. This K9 has her own scars, and she’s just looking for love too. And in this case she’s a loner. Her name is Solo, and, if you can find her, she needs to be brought in from the cold.”

  And, with that, he walked out, leaving Blaze wondering what he’d just been signed up for.

  Chapter 1

  Blaze drove his truck down the long stretch of Kentucky highway. He’d been consumed with Solo since he started this trip. She truly was a loner according to her very slim file. She’d been one who bonded the first time easily and less so each time she underwent a handler/trainer change.

  After her last handler had walked away from the K9 division, she’d struggled to assimilate into her new situation. As luck would have it, Blaze was heading back home, and that was the dog’s last known location. And then she had taken off, and no one knew what had happened since.

  The adopted family had been stalwart in their own defense, saying the dog had not taken to any of them, even though they’d tried hard. Maybe because of that they hadn’t devoted much time to finding her. As far as anyone knew, she was on her own.

  Not a good scenario for a loner dog to become more isolated. Blaze’s heart ached for Solo. Blaze understood loneliness all too well.

  Blaze picked up his takeout coffee and winced. It was pretty bad. It tasted days old, but it was coffee, and he was still trying to stay awake on this trip. For whatever reason, he’d decided to not tell his father he was coming, and he’d thrown the rest of his stuff in the back of his pickup and hit the road. This was everything he owned, and wasn’t that a shocker at this stage of his life?

  When he was only about twenty miles away from his destination, he pulled up at the turnoff and stopped, parking the truck off to the side of the road and hopped out. He studied the area, smiling. It had been a long time, at least ten years, since he’d been here other than visits on leave.

  Up ahead was a Mustang convertible on the side of the road. He frowned and walked the hundred yards to a woman looking down at a flat tire. “That looks pretty nasty.” Then he waite
d for her reaction. To his scar.

  “Of course it is,” she said, still staring at the tire, blowing long strands of blond hair back up over her forehead. “Anything I do ends up bad. It could be just a simple flat. It could be that I had a spare in the trunk. It could be that I wasn’t out here alone. And just imagine if I was dating a mechanic—I could call him, and he’d come and pick me up. But, of course, none of that is reality.” She looked at him without one blink and said, “Sorry, I’m not normally this upset. But right now”—she motioned at the tire before returning her hand to her hip—“this is the final straw.”

  She didn’t react. Not one iota. How odd. He liked her already. Plus, she felt familiar somehow … “So, what else happened to your day that made this the final straw?”

  “It’s not even the whole day. It’s just the last fifteen minutes. I was driving along the highway, busy thinking about the bloody events I have to arrange for this upcoming weekend, when a dog shot across the highway in front of me. I swear to God, I was on a direct course to hit it. I swerved and then ran over something, managed to come to a stop here and then saw the flat tire.”

  “A dog?” Blaze asked, looking at her with interest.

  “A shepherd something. A shepherd mixed with something, I mean. It must be one from a breeder around here that got loose.”

  “I do know a breeder around here,” he said, curious about the dog she’d seen. What were the odds it was Solo? “But he breeds Saint Bernards and Newfies.”

  She looked at him briefly and then shrugged. “Sorry. I understand basically what those dogs are, but I don’t really know the differences.”

  “The first similarity is they’re both big,” he said. “The differences, … well, there are quite a few but mostly color. Newfies are solid black and have massive heads. Saint Bernards also have massive heads, but they’re usually white and brown.”

  “Newfies are the ones that look like bears, right?”