6 - Dog
It was like watching a porcelain vase hit a concrete floor.
One second, Margaret Fletcher was standing there, a perfectly poised, if slightly misguided, force of nature. The next, the blood drained from her face so rapidly Dog instinctively shifted his weight forward, half-expecting her to pass out in the sawdust.
Her breathing turned shallow and rapid. Her pupils dilated. Her gaze snapped from his face to the heavy wooden front door, calculating the distance. Pure, unfiltered, primitive panic.
As a medic, Dog had seen fear in a hundred different shades. He knew the difference between the nervous sweat of a guy who’d lied on his resume and the absolute, paralyzing terror of someone who believed they were in mortal danger. Margaret was radiating the latter.
Tell her to have a nice day and point her to the door, Berkshire, the logical, exhausted part of his brain ordered.
He didn’t have time for this. He was working twenty-hour days to build a sanctuary for his shattered teammates. He had Blast’s physical therapy to map out, Nova’s neurological consults to finalize, and a three-bedroom apartment upstairs that currently possessed all the warmth of a cardboard box.
Furthermore, her little speech about “client dossiers” and an “open-access cloud server” was a spectacular, lawsuit-inducing nightmare.
If she actually implemented any of that, the federal government would shut the clinic down for HIPAA violations before they even saw their first patient.
She clearly had zero experience in healthcare.
Whatever she was running from, it was big, and she was entirely out of her depth.
Intellectually, hiring her was the worst tactical decision he could make.
But as he watched her hand whiten around the strap of her ridiculously expensive purse, his instincts: the ones that had made him a SEAL, the ones that made him a healer, reared up, loud and demanding.
She was running. She was terrified. And she had walked into a building full of men who specialized in protecting the hunted.
Why did she intrigue him? Maybe it was the contrast between her high-society armor and the raw grit it took to swallow her pride and beg for a job in a dusty construction zone.
Maybe it was the way she had recognized the cadence of his Boston upbringing and immediately tried to parry it, a reflex born of dealing with predators in tailored suits.
Or maybe he was just a sucker for a stray.
Margaret took a half-step backward, her boots scraping against the subfloor. “I…perhaps I should—” she stammered, her voice trembling. She was getting ready to bolt.
“Breathe, Margaret,” Dog said. He dropped the clipped, aristocratic tone entirely. He pitched his voice low and steady: his medic voice, the one he used to talk guys down when the world was exploding around them.
She froze, her wide blue eyes snapping back to his.
“I said breathe,” he repeated softly.
He watched her chest rise and fall in a shaky, deep inhalation.
Dog let out a long breath of his own, rubbing the back of his neck.
I’m going to regret this. “The bureaucracy of this place is a nightmare,” he lied smoothly, leaning back against the doorframe to make himself look less imposing.
“A formal background check takes weeks, and frankly, if I don’t get these vendor files sorted by Friday, I’m going to lose my mind.
Let’s call this a probationary period. A trial run.
We skip the formal paperwork for now, and you see if you can actually make sense of my office. ”
He paused, letting that sink in, then added, gruffly, as if it were an afterthought.
“Oh, and one more thing, Miss Fletcher. The apartment upstairs. My living quarters. Three bedrooms, runs the full length of this building. It’s a disaster.
I’m tired of sleeping on an air mattress.
I need it furnished. Master bedroom, a guest master for when I have visitors.
Kitchen stocked. Consider that part of your ‘meticulous organizational framework’ as well. My sanity depends on it.”
The relief that washed over her was so profound her knees actually buckled a fraction of an inch.
She caught herself, swallowing hard, her eyes wide as she processed the double-barrel blast of tasks.
“A trial run. And… the apartment. Yes. That… that would be acceptable.” A faint, almost imperceptible tremor went through her, but a flicker of resolve quickly followed.
“Good.” Dog stepped aside, gesturing into the chaotic rectangular room behind him. “Don’t throw anything away without asking. And Margaret?”
She paused at the threshold, looking back at him, still pale but holding her ground. “Yes, Dr. Berkshire?”
“We call them patients, not clients. And if you put their medical files on an open-access cloud server, I will personally go to federal prison, and you will be out of a job.” He offered a faint, dry smirk. “HIPAA is the only thing around here scarier than I am.”
A flush of color finally returned to her cheeks, a mix of embarrassment and realization. “Right. Of course. Patients. Confidentiality.”
“I’ll be out back with the crew if you need me,” Dog said, turning away.
He walked down the hallway, his limp aching, but a different kind of calculation whirred to life in his mind.
The moment he was out of Margaret’s line of sight, he palmed his phone, speed-dialing the secure line to Mountain View Farms. Bear, the owner of the Blue Ridge Brotherhood Protectors and Dog’s former SEAL team leader, answered on the first ring.
“Well, hello, Dog,” Bear’s voice rumbled low, warm and instantly familiar. There was a hint of surprise there; he hadn’t expected to hear from him in the middle of the day, especially with dinner plans later. “Everything good?”
“I just had a walk-in.” Dog didn’t waste time on pleasantries. Their bond was beyond that. “Margaret Fletcher. High-society type, looks like she fell out of a magazine, but she just turned white as a sheet at the mention of a background check.”
A beat of silence on Bear’s end. “Running, huh?”
“My gut says yes. And she’s got that raw fire behind the porcelain, the kind that survives.” Dog pictured Margaret’s pale face, her darting eyes. “Intellectually, I should’ve dismissed her. But…” He trailed off, knowing Bear would understand the unspoken.
“Sucker for a stray, Doc. Always have been.” Bear’s dry tone held affection. “What do you need?”
“All I have is her name—Margaret Fletcher. Judging by her speech, she’s likely from the high-society type, New England area.
Quiet, deep dive. Who she is, if she’s married, who she’s running from, and why.
Link got time for that?” Dog knew their former communications and navigation specialist, Link, now the Brotherhood’s resident tech wizard, relished a good puzzle.
“Link lives for this. I’ll get him on it. Anything else?”
“Yeah. The apartment upstairs. Told her it’s part of her job to furnish it, stock the kitchen. Master and guest master. See if she can handle a real project or if she folds under pressure.”
“Got it. We’ll bring her into the fold, if necessary. And you?” Bear’s concern cut through his gruff tone. “You getting any sleep on that air mattress?”
Dog hesitated, then spoke with a note of casual courtesy. “Mind if I crash at the Mountain for a few nights? Give her the apartment to herself.”
Bear laughed, “You know you’re always welcome there, the kids love it when you stay. No need to ask.”
Dog ended the call, stepping out into the bright afternoon sun.
His eyes swept over the surrounding woods, then the road ahead.
He was giving her the job and a place to stay, a safe haven disguised as a colossal task.
But he wasn’t a fool. He would find out exactly what monsters were chasing Margaret Fletcher.
And then, he was going to decide how to deal with them.