Chapter 2 Two Strays and Some Dogs #2
The interior of Travis’s house was exactly what anyone who knew him would expect from him: looked normal on the surface, absolutely not normal underneath.
Hardwood floors that probably had pressure sensors.
Neutral walls hiding God knew what kind of surveillance.
The faint hum of electronics coming from somewhere deeper in the house, where I knew his command center waited—multiple monitors, server racks, enough computing power to hack a small country.
He was standing in the hallway, barefoot, arms crossed, staring at the box of puppies like I’d brought him a live grenade.
“They’re going to shed.”
“They’re two weeks old. They don’t have enough fur to shed yet.”
“They’ll grow.”
The mama dog pushed past my legs and made a beeline for Travis, sniffing his feet with intense concentration. He went absolutely rigid, like she might explode if he moved too quickly.
“She’s friendly,” I offered.
“She’s wet. And muddy.”
“She was outside in this fucking blizzard in a cardboard box, refusing to leave her puppies even to save herself, twenty minutes ago. Cut her some slack.”
Travis looked down at the dog, then at me, then at the box of squirming puppies. Something in his expression shifted—a crack in the usual mask of irritated detachment.
“Grab some towels from the bathroom cabinet,” he said.
“The good towels?”
“I don’t have bad towels. Who has bad towels? Never mind, I’ll get them.”
He was already moving, disappearing into a room off the hallway and returning with an armful of supplies. The not bad towels. A large plastic bin. A heating pad. A bowl for water.
I watched him arrange everything with military precision, creating a nest in the corner of his living room—which, for the record, looked like it had never been lived in. The couch still had that showroom stiffness. The coffee table was empty except for a single remote control, perfectly centered.
“You’re good at this,” I said.
His hands paused on the heating pad. “I had dogs. Before.”
He didn’t elaborate. Travis rarely did. His past, something about the CIA, was a locked room with no key, and we’d learned not to go poking around looking for one. He was a good friend, a good man, and fucking brilliant when it came to computers. Warrior Security was lucky to have him.
I lowered the box of puppies into the bin, settling them onto the heating pad.
They immediately started crawling over each other, squeaking, searching for their mother.
The mama dog circled the bin twice, sniffing every corner, before apparently deciding it met her standards.
She climbed in, curled around her babies, and let out a long sigh.
Safe. Finally safe.
“She needs water,” Travis said, already filling the bowl at the kitchen sink. “And food, but I don’t have dog food.”
“What do you have?”
“Plenty of people food. Plus, emergency rations, canned goods, enough protein bars to survive six months, and approximately 4800 energy drinks.”
I didn’t know if he was joking about the energy drinks. The way he consumed them, he could be serious. “Of course you do.”
“Preparedness isn’t paranoia.”
“It’s a little paranoia.”
His mouth twitched. Coming from Travis, that was basically a standing ovation.
We settled into an odd rhythm. Travis monitored the mama dog’s water intake with the same intensity he probably applied to monitoring international cyber threats.
I sat on the floor next to the bin, letting the puppies crawl over my hands, marveling at how small they were.
How fragile. How completely unaware of the fact that they’d been abandoned to die in a snowstorm.
“Someone just left them out there,” I said. “On Christmas Eve.”
“People are shitty. That’s why I never leave my house.”
“That’s festive.”
“It’s accurate.”
One of the puppies—the smallest one, mostly brown with a white patch over one eye—had climbed onto my palm and was now attempting to scale my wrist. Its eyes were barely open, and it kept bumping into my thumb like it hadn’t figured out how depth perception worked yet.
“Where are they going to go?” Travis asked. “After.”
“Pawsitive, probably. Lark takes in strays all the time. She’ll find them homes.”
“All of them?”
I looked down at the brown puppy, now attempting to chew on my finger with gums that had no teeth yet.
“All of them. They’re puppies, not tech hermits with emotional walls and a caffeine dependency. People actually line up for puppies.”
“I don’t have emotional walls.”
“Dude, you have a moat. With alligators.”
The mama dog had fallen asleep, her breathing slow and even, her body curved protectively around her babies.
Travis had settled into his usual chair—the one facing the monitors, because even in his living room, he needed to be able to see every screen—but he hadn’t turned anything on.
He was just sitting there, watching the dog sleep.
“Thanks,” I said. “For letting me crash your Christmas Eve.”
He didn’t look at me. “I wasn’t doing anything.”
“Me neither.”
A pause. The kind of silence that would be awkward with anyone else but somehow wasn’t with Travis. We’d spent enough time together over the years—missions, stakeouts, long nights waiting for intel that never came—that we’d gotten comfortable with not talking.
“The puppies are acceptable company,” he said finally. “You’re not too bad either.”
I grinned. “High praise.”
“Don’t let it go to your head. By the way, the feds were asking about you going undercover again.”
The feds really wanted Travis, and all the computerized goodies he’d concocted, but that wasn’t an option. I was a very distant second, but it at least gave them a reason to be in contact with him.
“Yeah. I got the message. We’re going to meet after the holidays.” The brown puppy had given up on my finger and was now attempting to burrow into the space between my palm and my knee. I scooped it up, held it against my chest, felt its tiny heartbeat racing against my shirt.
“You ever think about getting another dog?” I asked.
Travis was quiet for long enough that I thought he wasn’t going to answer.
“Sometimes,” he said. “But I’d have to leave the house to walk it.”
“They make dog doors.”
“They also make security vulnerabilities.” He shifted in his chair, something flickering across his face that was gone before I could identify it. “Maybe someday.”
Coming from Travis, that was practically a five-year plan.
One of the puppies in the bin started crying—a high, thin wail that made the mama dog’s head snap up. She sniffed the offender, determined it wasn’t dying, and went back to sleep. The puppy kept crying anyway.
“What’s wrong with it?” Travis asked, alarmed.
“Nothing. Puppies just cry sometimes.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re babies. Babies cry—human or canine. It’s what they do.”
“That seems inefficient.”
“Take it up with evolution.”
The crying stopped as suddenly as it started. Travis visibly relaxed.
“You’d be a great father,” I told him.
“Children are security liabilities. They have no concept of operational silence, they touch everything with sticky hands, and they’re legally required to attend institutions where they share information indiscriminately with strangers.”
“So that’s a no on kids.”
“That’s a no on kids.”
The hours passed strangely—fast and slow at the same time, the way they always did when you were stuck somewhere unexpected. Travis and I played some video games and checked on the pups. Watched a little TV and check on the pups. Googled if puppies could die from hiccups then… yeah.
At some point, I raided Travis’s kitchen and found enough supplies to make a passable dinner. He had opinions about how I messed up his organized his spice rack. I had opinions about the fact that a grown ass man owned a spice rack that organized.
The mama dog woke up long enough to eat some scrambled eggs—Travis’s idea, something about protein and nursing—and then passed out again. The puppies continued their cycle of sleeping, nursing, squeaking, crawling on each other, and sleeping some more.
Somewhere around eleven, one of the braver puppies escaped the bin.
I didn’t notice until Travis made a sound I’d never heard from him before—something between a yelp and a strangled cough.
“What?” I jumped up, turning from the show I was watching.
“There’s a puppy on my server.”
I looked over. Sure enough, the brown-and-white escape artist had somehow made it across the living room, down the hall, and into Travis’s command center, where it was currently investigating a tower of computer equipment that probably cost more than my truck.
Travis dove for him, scooping up the puppy with hands that were surprisingly gentle. The puppy, completely unbothered, tried to lick his chin.
“How did it even get in here?”
“Determination.”
“It’s two weeks old.”
“Early bloomer.”
Travis held the puppy at arm’s length, staring at it with an expression of profound betrayal. The puppy wiggled, trying to get closer to his face.
“It’s defective,” he said.
“It’s adventurous.”
“Same thing.”
But he didn’t put it down. He carried it back to the living room, deposited it in the bin with its siblings, and then stood there for a moment, watching to make sure it didn’t escape again.
His system chimed at midnight—some automated reminder he’d probably set up years ago and never bothered to disable. The sound made us both look up, suddenly aware of the time.
“It’s midnight,” Travis said.
I looked around his living room. Me on the floor, covered in dog hair, my jacket still wrapped around a sleeping mama dog. Travis in his chair, a cup of cold coffee forgotten beside him, his monitors dark for once. Snow still falling outside the windows, thick and relentless.
Not how I’d expected to spend Christmas Eve. But not bad, either.
“Merry Christmas,” I said.
Travis almost smiled. “Merry Christmas.”
Later—much later—I stretched out on Travis’s couch with a pillow that smelled like fabric softener and absolutely nothing else. The man didn’t even have a scent. It was unnerving.
The brown puppy was on my chest. I’d given up trying to put it back in the bin. Every time I did, it just climbed out again. Eventually, I’d decided it could sleep wherever it wanted.
The quiet pressed in, but it didn’t feel as heavy as usual. The storm was still howling outside, but in here, it was warm. Safe. Full of the small sounds of sleeping dogs and humming electronics and Travis doing whatever Travis did in the middle of the night when normal people were unconscious.
My thoughts drifted back to Mia. They always did, when I let my guard down.
Her face in the Christmas lights. The flour in her hair. Her laugh. God, I could still hear the sound of her laugh.
I wanted to remember it because I sure as hell knew I’d never hear it in real life again. The chances of us meeting again were basically nonexistent. We both had our separate lives. I’d made my choice—stupid as it was—and now I had to live with it.
The puppy shifted against my shirt, letting out a tiny sigh.
I pulled the blanket up and let the memory go. Some mistakes you just had to carry.
*
* Books from characters in this chapter:
Cooper – WARRIOR SECURITY: COOPER
Travis – WARRIOR SECURITY: TRAVIS
Beckett & Audra – WARRIOR SECURITY: BECKETT
Liam & Mara – MONTANA SILENCE
Jude & Lena – MONTANA STORM