29 - Dog
The flight from Boston to the small mountain airstrip had been short, but for Dog, it felt like an eternity suspended in the clouds.
He had spent the last eight weeks obsessed with the mechanics of his own body: the constant, skin-pinching pressure of the socket, the stubborn tilt of his pelvis, and the weighted, artificial cadence that had become his new reality.
He had analyzed every jarring vibration and every mechanical recoil of the carbon fiber until his leg felt less like a part of him and more like a piece of equipment he was forced to maintain.
But as the wheels touched the Virginia tarmac, his focus shifted from his limb to his heart, and he realized he was walking into a mission for which he had no intel.
“You’re doing it again, Doc,” Jake said as he unbuckled his seatbelt. “Checking the safety on a weapon you aren’t even carrying. Relax. It’s the Farm, not a kill box.”
“Last time we were here, we were fleeing a sniper and a bounty,” Dog reminded him, his voice tight. “The perimeter isn’t exactly what I’d call relaxed.”
“Yeah, well, things have changed since we left for Maine,” Jake said, grabbing Dog’s rucksack. “Especially that woman you left behind.”
The drive through winding mountain roads was a sensory assault.
The smell of cedar and damp earth, the biting January wind, the soft glow as sunlight hit the ridges.
It was exactly as it had been three months ago when he had practically carried a trembling Margaret Fletcher into Bear’s kitchen.
But as the iron gates of Mountain View Farm slid open, Dog felt a soreness in his hip that had nothing to do with a bear trap.
“Perimeter is green,” Jake noted, slowing the SUV as they rounded the bend toward the big farmhouse. “Bear’s truck is gone. Looks like the boys followed through on that fishing trip.”
“Good,” Dog muttered. He wasn’t ready to face the Brotherhood yet. He needed to find his footing in this new version of home first.
The SUV crunched to a halt on the gravel drive.
Before Dog could even reach for his door handle, the front porch of the farmhouse became a stage.
Flora stepped out first, followed by Noor and Elena.
They were armed with buckets and spray bottles, looking like a tactical cleaning unit prepping for Nova and Blast’s arrival.
Then, Margaret stepped through the door.
Dog froze, his hand hovering over the door latch.
The woman standing on that porch was not the one he had bundled into a private jet three months ago.
She was wearing a faded flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of practical denim jeans.
Her hair, once a masterpiece of high-society precision, was pulled into a messy ponytail with several chestnut strands escaping to frame her face.
But it was her hands that stopped his heart. She was wearing a pair of bright yellow rubber dish gloves, a streak of white foam on one forearm. She looked like a woman who had been elbow-deep in a scrub bucket, and she didn’t look bothered by it at all.
“Go on,” Jake nudged. “Show her you remember how to stand.”
Dog grabbed his cane, though he hated the sight of it, and pushed the door open.
He swung his left leg out, the carbon foot meeting the gravel with a muted, metallic stamp.
He centered his weight over the still healing crack in his hip, feeling the jarring vibration travel up his leg, took a breath of the thin mountain air, and stood up.
He didn’t use the cane. He forced his body to remain upright, his jaw set as he began the walk toward the porch.
Every step required a conscious command from his brain to his hip.
Every eye was on him. Flora’s gaze was soft with relief; Elena looked protective,as if she were shielding Margaret from the hurt he caused; Noor looked skeptical.
But Margaret. She just watched him. She didn’t rush down the steps to help him. She didn’t gasp at the way he favored his left side. She stood her ground, her yellow-gloved hands resting on the railing, her chin tilted up in a gesture of quiet, unshakeable strength.
He stopped at the foot of the steps, looking up at her. The words he had rehearsed for two months: the apologies, the explanations, the medical justifications, all died in his throat.
“Margaret,” he said, his voice sounding raw.
“Doctor,” she replied. Her voice was calm, melodic, and entirely professional. There was no trace of the Emery he had unearthed in Maine. “It’s good to see you’re mobile. Jake said the recovery was challenging.”
“I’ve had worse missions,” Dog said, the lie tasting like ash. He gestured vaguely toward her gloves. “I see I’m interrupting the house prep.”
“We’re getting the rooms ready for Nova and Blast,” Margaret said, stepping to the edge of the railing. She didn’t look moved by his presence so much as she looked busy. “The world didn’t stop turning while you were in Boston, Barkley.”
“Will told me,” Dog said, his voice dropping an octave. “He told me everything. That you were the one funding the clinic. That you’ve been on-site every day.”
Margaret’s jaw set in a line of quiet pride. “I’m building the facility this town needs, Barkley. And I’m doing it because it’s my job, not because I’m a liability you need to manage.”
The word liability stung, a direct echo of the cruelty he’d used to push her away in the hospital.
“Margaret, I wanted to protect you.”
“You wanted to protect your pride,” she interrupted, though there was no malice in her tone, only a weary truth.
She pulled off one of the yellow gloves, revealing a hand that was red from hot water and missing the heavy diamond rings of her past. “But out here, Barkley, we don’t have time for vanity. We have work to do.”
“You’re staying in the first-floor guest master,” Flora called out, stepping forward to break the tension. She walked down the steps and gave Dog a stiff, quick hug. “No stairs. There are fresh linens, and Eloise is making a list of groceries for you to help with. Go inside and rest.”
“Thanks, Flora,” Dog muttered, leaning on his cane now that the initial surge of adrenaline was fading.
He looked back at Margaret, hoping for a sign, a flicker of the woman who had wept in his arms in the meadow. But she was already pulling the yellow glove back on.
“Dinner is at six, Barkley,” Margaret said over her shoulder as she turned toward the door. “Try to be on time. I have the contractor coming by at seven to discuss the plumbing in the trauma bays, and I’d like your input on the surgical layout. If you’re up for it.”
As she disappeared into the house, Dog stood on the drive, the wind whistling around his ears. He was back at the Farm. He was standing on his own. But as he watched the door close, he realized he hadn’t just lost a foot in that meadow.
He had lost his place as her protector. And looking at the woman who had just commanded the porch with a scrub brush in her hand, he realized he was going to have to prove he was worthy of being Emery again.