CHAPTER FOUR
“Good morning, Doctor Friedman.”
David smiled at Mary and tried to project more energy than he felt. “Good morning, Mary.”
It didn’t work. “Wow. You look terrible. Late night with the missus?”
“You could say that.”
Mary smiled knowingly. “You’re a lucky man having all that energy waiting for you to come home. My poor Henry has to deal with the occasional ten minutes when the kids are at school, and even then, he’s got to do all the work.”
David returned another smile but didn’t bother to answer. Mary’s laughter followed him into his office.
I’ve got to talk to her about workplace appropriate conversations, he thought drily.
In any case, it wasn’t Faith that had kept him up all night.
Whatever plans she might have had for their night were pretty much ruined by the discovery of a dead body on their walk through the dog park.
The fact that he’d somehow managed to tune her out when she was talking about how the event made her feel certainly didn’t help.
You’ve got to let this go.
He settled into his chair and stared at the blank computer screen.
He wouldn’t let it go, of course. If he was going to let it go, he would have.
Hell, receiving a death threat should have been more than enough to convince him, yet here he was, opening his desktop and navigating to a file buried in the Misc.
folder labeled an indecipherable string of random letters, numbers, and symbols.
He opened the file and folded his hands in front of him on the desk, but before he could start reading, the door burst open. He flinched and quickly closed the file, staring in shock at the intruder.
Gary stepped back with a wince. “Oh, sorry.” He held up a mug with a cartoon man in a lab coat grinning evilly. “Mary said you looked tired. I thought I’d bring you some coffee.”
“What does that mug say?” David asked his youngest staff member.
Gary turned the mug so he could see the caption. “Oh, um. ‘I stick needles in defenseless animals.’ It’s a gag mug. Jackie gave it to me. I washed it before I poured your coffee into it.”
“I think I’m fine, thank you,” David said drily.
“Oh.”
Gary flushed beet red and looked at his feet. David felt a touch of guilt—which he really didn’t deserve—and said, “Actually, I think I will take some coffee. Thank you.”
Gary brightened and set the mug on the desk. He chuckled sheepishly. “Yeah, I guess the joke’s a little creepy, huh?”
“It’s definitely macabre,” David agreed.
“Yeah, she’s got a great sense of humor,” Gary said, beaming. “I really like her, doc.”
Gary and Jackie, the head veterinary nurse who was only a few years older than he was, had been dating for a little over a month.
They’d been attracted to each other ever since Gary first arrived, but neither of them had the courage to do anything about it until David pushed Gary to admit that he liked her and turn their “get-together” into a date.
David was happy for them, but he really wished that his staff could live their dating lives without feeling a need to share it with him. He gave Gary a tolerant smile. “She’s a good girl.”
“She is!” Gary agreed. “She’s funny, and she’s sweet, and she’s hot too, which is pretty awesome. Although I guess you can’t say that since you’re married. And her boss.”
David nodded patiently. Gary reddened again and said, “Well, anyway, enjoy your coffee. I’ll get your equipment set up. Your first patient is scheduled… Um… Shoot.”
“Eight-thirty?”
“Yes! Eight-thirty.”
He ducked out of the room, poked his head back in to say, “Um, bye,” then ducked out again.
David chuckled and sipped the coffee. He opened his computer and told himself he wasn’t going to open that secret file again.
But he did. Of course he did.
Last month, David examined a Marine Corps working dog named Sierra, full name Asset Sierra-9.
Her handler, Staff Sergeant Whitaker, brought her to David ostensibly because the Marine Corps vet who usually certified working dogs for their unit was unavailable.
The Marine Corps wanted David to provide a health certificate for Sierra so she could resume her training.
That examination had revealed a dog who was physically in great health but who possessed numerous minor scars from “training accidents” and several signs of psychological trauma.
Whitaker was highly resistant to David’s efforts to investigate further, prompting him to manipulate her into bringing Sierra back.
He had falsified bloodwork to bring her back, the first time in his twelve-year veterinary career that he had ever lied about a patient. Well, he hadn’t exactly falsified bloodwork, he’d just made false verbal claims. Still a gross malpractice, though.
And it had come to nothing. He had examined her more closely and found nothing to confirm his suspicions that she was being mistreated.
But she was. He knew she was. He was one hundred percent certain that Sierra was being abused, and the way she behaved around her handler only convinced him further of that.
Then there was the weird thing that had happened during that second visit.
When David insisted on taking Sierra back to another room to examine her without Whitaker present—telling another lie to make that happen—Whitaker had stared at Sierra and done…
something. She’d hypnotized the dog somehow so that Sierra didn’t behave honestly in front of him.
He couldn’t prove that. Hell, it sounded outlandish. If it weren’t for the way Sierra refused to look at Whitaker at first and the way her eyes flickered when she finally gave in, he would just dismiss his concerns as paranoia.
Maybe it was just paranoia, but hypnosis or not, something serious was going on with Sierra.
He knew it because a Colonel Chastain from the 93rd Testing Brigade had sent him a message instructing him to delete all of the information he had on Sierra and informing him the Marine Corps would no longer need his services.
He was an FBI contractor, so that didn’t have an impact on his career, but the message had ended wishing him and his wife good health.
David wasn’t an investigator, but he could understand a threat when he saw one.
They wished him and Faith good health while strongly insinuating that if he remained a thorn in their side, they wouldn’t retain good health.
Which made what he was doing now all the more dangerous. The file he was looking at contained all of the information he’d gleaned about Sierra since opening his investigation.
Which was just about absolutely nothing.
Asset Sierra-9 wasn’t listed on any Marine Corps working dog records.
There was likewise no record of a Staff Sergeant Whitaker, a Colonel Chastain, or a 93rd Testing Brigade.
So, either this wasn’t a Marine Corps operation at all, or the Marines were hiding some very sketchy stuff.
There was a knock on the office door. Thank God his staff was learning. He closed the file, sipped his coffee, put on a professional smile and called, “Come in.”
The door opened, and the female half of the latest office romance poked her head in. The flush on her face and the laughter in her eyes suggested she and David had stolen a moment together when she arrived. That and the slightest of smudges on her lipstick.
“Good morning, Jackie,” David said. “What can I do for you?”
“I was just wondering if you’d put the order in for the bloodwork for that military dog?”
The blood drained from David’s face. He almost asked what Jackie was talking about before remembering that he’d examined an Air Force dog the day before he and Faith left for Italy.
Jesus, I need to pull myself together. “I thought I had, but I’ll double check. Is he here?”
“Yeah, they stopped by to see if we could squeeze it in without an appointment.”
“Go ahead and draw the blood,” he said. “I’ll put the order through right now.”
“Okay. Thanks, doc. Hey, is that Gary’s mug?”
“Yeah, he’s letting me borrow it. I’ll make sure he gets it back.”
Jackie winced. “I told him not to show you that. I figured… Well, it’s a joke, but…”
“I like jokes,” David replied. Sometimes. “I’m glad you two are getting along so well.”
She brightened, and he immediately regretted encouraging her. “We are!” she exclaimed. “He’s SOOO cute. He’s a huge dork, but I’m a huge dork, so that works for me. He’s a really good kisser too, not that you asked.”
“I definitely didn’t,” David said drily.
Jackie caught the hint. She pinked a little and said, “Well, thank you for sending him my way. I’m really glad we finally hooked up. Not like… hooked up. I mean, we did hook up, but…” She reddened further. “I’m gonna go now.”
David nodded patiently, and the embarrassed nurse closed the door and headed off to draw the Air Force dog’s blood. Hopefully she didn’t daydream while she was working the needles.
His eyes fell to the caption on the mug. He grimaced and turned it around, but that only showed a frightened dog recoiling from the unhinged vet. He sighed and moved the mug behind the picture of Faith and Turk on his desk.
He looked back up at the file, and his office door opened again. He flinched and pressed his lips together, grateful he’d moved the coffee out of the way.
“Sorry, doc,” Jackie said. “I was just wondering if you knew what was going on at the base.”
He blinked. “The base?”
“Yeah. My cousin said she saw a bunch of dogs exercising in a field inside the base. Her boyfriend is a Marine, and she visits him on base a lot. He’s a helicopter mechanic, and she sometimes…”
David tuned Jackie out as she related the story of her cousin’s relationship.
He could just kick himself. He was trying to figure out what secrets the Marine Corps might be keeping about working dogs when there was a literal Marine Corps base in Quantico.
He hadn’t looked into them because they didn’t officially have a K9 program at that base, but if the 93rd wasn’t sharing their existence with the world, then they would probably want to station themselves at a base that didn’t officially have a K9 program.
“Anyway, I was just wondering if you knew. I thought Faith might have heard something.”
He blinked and smiled at Jackie. “No, I’m sorry. She hasn’t said anything to me.”
“Oh well. No big deal. I’ll go get that bloodwork done.”
She left the office for good this time, he hoped, and David opened his computer once more. He typed a single note at the bottom of the word document.
INVESTIGATE MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO.
He checked his watch. Eight-twenty-five. Time to get ready for his first patient.
He took the coffee mug with him and dumped the liquid in the breakroom sink before rinsing the mug and leaving it to dry on the rack next to the sink. He didn’t need coffee anymore. He had a lead. He was going to find out what was happening to Sierra.
Even if it killed him.