Harley

  HARLEY

  The K9 Files, Book 14

  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

  Weston, Book 8

  Greyson, Book 9

  Rowan, Book 10

  Caleb, Book 11

  Kurt, Book 12

  Tucker, Book 13

  Harley, Book 14

  Kyron, Book 15

  The K9 Files, Books 1–2

  The K9 Files, Books 3–4

  The K9 Files, Books 5–6

  The K9 Files, Books 7–8

  The K9 Files, Books 9–10

  The K9 Files, Books 11–12

  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

  Epilogue

  About Kyron

  Author’s Note

  Complimentary Download

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  About This Book

  Welcome to the all new K9 Files series reconnecting readers with the unforgettable men from SEALs of Steel in a new series of action packed, page turning romantic suspense that fans have come to expect from USA TODAY Bestselling author Dale Mayer. Pssst… you’ll meet other favorite characters from SEALs of Honor and Heroes for Hire too!

  Returning to the town he was raised in was hard, except that Harley can once more see the only golden light of those days. He’d walked away from her because she’d been too young, and he would never be good enough. Harley was back to check on the War Dog Bowser, but Harley can’t help but feel like he never really left. But when Harley snags the War Dog from one of Bowser’s handlers, Harley knows he has to put a stop to this guy forever.

  Over all these years Jasmine awaits Harley’s return, but he won’t be happy with the changes she’s gone through. When he shows up out of the blue, she knows only complete honesty will be good enough. But it was rough and meant opening up memories of a horrible time in her life.

  Harley’s arrival prompts a hidden truth that someone will do anything to stop from coming out. And Harley will do everything he can to get justice for her …

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  Prologue

  Harley Bertram walked into Badger’s office. Geir and Erick were also there with Badger. Harley slumped into the chair, only to wince, and shifted his position.

  “How are the injuries these days?” Erick asked.

  “Much better than I expected.” Harley rotated his right wrist, then his left—a prosthetic. “Some of the surgeries did better than others.”

  “But you’re handling the hammer just fine.”

  “And the keyboards are getting easier too. So what’s up? Cade said that you were looking for me.”

  “Any dog experience?”

  Harley shrugged. “Outside of the fact that I love them, no.”

  “No K9 experience in the military?” Badger asked.

  “Assisting with the War Dogs, yes, but I never had my own. I worked with the training groups.” He sighed. “Man, they were good animals.”

  Erick nodded. “Have you heard about the War Dogs that we’ve been trying to locate and to help?”

  Harley frowned and shook his head. “I don’t know how I missed that because, honest to God, it’s hard to miss anything in this place.”

  “True enough.” Cade walked into the room, with a folder. He tossed it on the table in front of Badger. “I’m not sure what we’ll do with this one.”

  “I don’t know either.” Badger nodded. “I read it early this morning.”

  “Read what?” Harley asked.

  “So this is Bowser, a male War Dog. He was adopted and then sold.”

  “Isn’t that against the terms of service in the adoption contract?”

  “It absolutely is, but they didn’t seem to care.”

  “What was he sold for?”

  “As a security dog,” he replied.

  “Well, that might not be such a bad life.”

  “Maybe, except it looks like he’s in a possible grow op.”

  “Oh no, not drugs. Those people treat the animals really rough.”

  “Exactly,” Badger agreed. “So we want to make sure the dog’s being well treated, and, if it’s not, to remove him from the situation.”

  “But, if they bought and paid for Bowser, they might not take too kindly to that suggestion.”

  “He’s the property of the United States government. Adoptions are done on the basis where you are looking after the War Dog but do not get to own one.”

  “Right, and if I get any resistance?”

  The four men looked at him.

  “Ah, so doesn’t matter what kind of resistance there is. I have a job to do.”

  “Exactly.” Badger cocked his head. “Unless you got a problem with that.”

  “Hell no,” Harley countered. “The fewer rules, the better. Whereabouts?”

  “Montana. He’s set up near the Canadian border.”

  Harley frowned. “I wouldn’t have thought the drug-running business or the cannabis business was really good up there.”

  “Well, that’s why we’ve got a question mark on it. I’m not exactly sure what you’ll find there. But hopefully you’ll find our War Dog is a security dog in that location.”

  “And legally sold, as far as the current owners know. That could be a bit tough. Any money to help buy back the dog?”

  “Some, it just depends on what kind of money we’re talking about.”

  “Right.” He stood. “And when do I go?”

  “The sooner, the better. The locals contacted the War Dog department about the dog because another one showed up dead.”

  “Another War Dog?”

  “No, another dog and then they heard about this one, so they were asking if it was the same one.”

  “And the answer, of course, is no.”

  “I think they were also warning the War Dog department that the particular dog had been abused.”

  “Great,” Harley muttered under his breath. “Do I get to carry weapons too?”

  “What do you want?” Badger asked, with interest.

  Harley reached out and flexed his hand. “I have a couple of my own.”

  “I’ll get the permits,” Badger confirmed, “for travel. I don’t want you to go up against a cartel or some such thing without firepower.”

  “The dog hasn’t been there all that long,” Cade noted. “You might get it on your side and turn it against its owners.”

  “You know what the answer is for that then,” Harley muttered. “The drug-runners will just end up shooting it.”

  “In that case why don’t you just shoot the drug-runners,” Cade suggested in a rough voice. “We’ve seen so many bad assholes in this world, but I get really pissed off when somebody hurts an animal.”

  Harley stood, heading for the door. “I hear you. I’ll check it out and let you know what I find.” Harley stopped and looked back at Badger’s team. “Did you guys know that I spent ten years in Montana?” The men looked at him in surprise. He smiled. “I guess not.”

  “When were you there?”

  “I was a foster kid. I left because I was getting too attached to the family. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I tur
ned eighteen and joined the navy. The history after that you know well.”

  “What do you mean, too attached?” Badger asked curiously.

  He nodded. “The foster family was not okay, but their daughter was dynamite.” And, with a wicked grin, he turned and walked out.

  Badger called back. “Have you kept in touch with them?”

  “No. I guess I will now though.”

  “What’s her name?”

  Harley laughed as he stuck his face back into the room. “Jasmine. She was the sweetest little thing. Although I wouldn’t say that to her face.” He shook his head. “She is just as likely to shoot me on sight right now.”

  “Why’s that?” Badger frowned at him. “Maybe we shouldn’t send you.”

  “It’s all good,” Harley replied. “She wanted me to stay, and I didn’t dare.”

  “Why?” Cade asked.

  “Her family. I wasn’t good enough,” he explained. “Believe me. I won’t be good enough now either.”

  “Maybe they’ve changed,” Erick suggested.

  “Maybe.” Harley shrugged. “But I haven’t.”

  Chapter 1

  Looking in Montana for a dog named Bowser was hardly something Harley had thought would be part of his life. Yet returning to this part of the world was a goal that he’d never really left behind, because Jasmine had been here. What did one do with that first love that never had a chance to go anywhere?

  Eureka, Montana, was a place where he had spent, as he had told Badger and the others, ten years. He’d arrived as a desperate, young, broken-hearted boy who’d lost his grandmother—the only loving family member he had. He shook his head, as he drove through the town. A lot of this area had grown more than he had expected. But then his memories were from a while ago. He had a lot of good memories here, but most of the memories were of his childhood with his grandmother and then growing up in a foster home, where he felt included and accepted by the daughter, Jasmine, but never accepted by the foster parents. There’d always been that sense of You’re here only temporarily.

  It wasn’t his home. It would never be his home.

  It wasn’t a family he had kept in touch with after he left. It had been made very clear that he was for optics, not because they were good people or that they were doing their best and that this was the way they could be of service. They weren’t the kind of people who wanted to adopt him or to keep him around long-term, particularly not once a relationship between him and Jasmine developed. That had been something they’d been against from the very beginning and had let him know in no uncertain terms that their daughter was off-limits.

  Harley hadn’t understood anything except rejection. It had been something he’d struggled with for a long time. And, at one point in time, it had made life difficult because he was trying to find his own feet, and that rejection had hurt. But, when his foster parents had made it very clear that they would dump his ass back into the foster system, and he could finish his school wherever, he had toned it down and had stayed quiet and acted “decent” per their rules, just to graduate from high school, just to reach the age of majority.

  But he hadn’t forgotten.

  And twelve years later, he wanted to say that he’d forgiven the harsh treatment by his foster parents, but, at the same time, he wasn’t exactly sure what was the right way to deal with the residual effects from that couple either. They were obviously terrified that Harley would take their daughter down the wrong path and then leave her in a bad way. He certainly had cared enough about her—and he had believed at the time that Jasmine had truly cared about him—but there was no getting away from the fact that her parents hated that the two would have anything to do with each other.

  Even now Harley was both excited and unnerved at the thought of seeing Jasmine again. He had no wish to see the rest of the family. He wasn’t the man he was when he left, and that was a good thing because that version of him had toned down things to get by, and that had served him well in the military. It had given him patience and endurance and the ability to bite his tongue.

  There had been plenty of opportunities in the military where Harley had really wanted to let loose, but being court-martialed for bad behavior wasn’t something that he wanted to encounter. The navy had punishments that went over and above anything that his foster family could have devised.

  As it was, Harley had left, telling Jasmine that he would return but, of course, hadn’t. His good-bye speech had been only to stop her tears and to get out of a situation he knew had no happy ending—especially if she wasn’t prepared to leave with him. But then, she’d only been sixteen, and that had been even harder for him to deal with over each passing day because he had been older. He’d wanted to take that further step with her but didn’t out of respect for her and his foster family. He also knew that step would lead to an ending of which there was no going back from, at least from her parents’ perspective.

  Harley had left as soon as he could to avoid that attraction. And, of course, Jasmine, being sixteen, had desperately wanted him to promise to come back, so he had. But he knew at the time that he wasn’t returning, and he figured she’d known it too, even at sixteen. But, if not then, now, some twelve years later, she should be more than happy that he had left. Or at least that she had had a full life that she wouldn’t have had if he had stuck around.

  The best thing Harley could have done was go into the navy, but he didn’t want to tell his foster family that—although they probably figured it was a good thing because it got him out of their hair. Plus it would straighten him out because, as far as they were concerned, he needed straightening out. Yet what he really needed was acceptance and a little love, and that was in short supply with this temporary family. With that foster family came lots of discipline, lots of anger, and lots of You will do this because we say so.

  But, at the same time, they gave him food, a bed, and a roof over his head. That the home environment had been cold and that the foster parents didn’t include him was a completely different issue. Harley didn’t understand his foster parents’ desire to have a foster child around. Harley couldn’t envision needing a foster child around, especially when his foster parents had no healthy feelings toward him.

  Plus, they had a child. A biological child. It’s not like Harley filled a childless gap in their home. He shook his head at the thought. He didn’t know what kind of sin his foster parents were trying to make up for or what kind of life they were trying to give anybody because, from Harley’s perspective, it had been a pretty rough one right from the get-go. He felt sure Jasmine would agree with him, even today.

  But Harley had survived, and he had to admit it was in part because of them. So they deserved his respect if nothing else. He never talked to anybody about the kind of relationship he had with them—even not telling Jasmine much, as they were her birth parents—yet the saving grace for all of the dysfunction in that household had been Jasmine. As a little sister, she’d been to die for. The fact that she wasn’t his sister had just added to their stress and their relationship issues.

  As far as his foster family was concerned, he would never be good enough, and he needed to learn that lesson right off the bat. And he did. The foster parents didn’t hold back right from the beginning, so, when Harley realized how close he and Jasmine were getting, he knew it would just be trouble. When somebody was off-limits at that stage, off-limits was off-limits. No such thing as partial off-limits. It was like, You are a bad deal, Harley. Get out of here fast, before you break our rules, … before you cross these lines.

  He drove through Eureka, staring at the relatively large malls that had sprung up since he’d been gone. He even passed what looked like a large training center, maybe for the sheriff or the military. He shook his head in wonder and kept on going. As he traveled through the town, heading north, he realized that he hadn’t given the location much credence, when he thought about the drug-running and the problem of the dog. Eureka was very close to the Canadian border, j
ust about nine miles farther north. Maybe that was good, as far as drug-running went. Maybe they were crossing the border all the time with the drugs. He didn’t know.

  Harley did know that a pub was just on the outskirts. The family of an old friend of his owned the pub, and, as far as he knew at the time, his friend had gone into the family business and had no intention of ever leaving. They rented rooms over the pub, so Harley hoped to stay there and to see if his buddy was still around.

  When the pub finally appeared in front of him, he smiled because, of all the things that made him feel like he’d come home, the pub was one of them. It didn’t look any different. It still had great big antlers hanging above the entrance and still had a huge parking lot for truckers and God-only-knows whatever else. He wondered if they’d turned it into an RV park too, from the size of it and with how many RVs were there. Maybe they rented by the night there too.

  Harley pulled off to the side, hopped out, and stretched his legs. The rental truck was fine, but after his injury—with a really bad parachuting accident, where he got winged midflight and crash-landed—his leg was never quite the same. Neither was his hip and, of course, his left arm. Still, he was way better than his buddies. One of them had not made it through that jump, and Harley swore he wouldn’t argue or complain anymore. Yet human nature being what it was just made him do it anyway.

  As he walked in through the double doors, he removed his sunglasses, stopped, and looked around. He swore to God that absolutely nothing was different in the place. Twelve years later and it looked like yesterday. He walked up to the front counter and sat down.

  One of the help looked at him. “What will you have?”

  “A plain burger and a beer,” he replied instantly.

  “Got it.” Then he turned and walked away.

  It had always been that way. Harley didn’t need to look at the menu, didn’t care to look at the menu. As long as it was still the same burger, he was good. When the barkeep returned with a draft in a tall glass, Harley smiled because that was the same too. He looked over at the bartender. “Any chance Daniel’s around?”