“We’ve got to get a move on,” Oscar said. Preston nodded shortly, and they got their asses in gear.
They packed the large crates in Oscar’s and Preston’s trucks as quickly as possible, placing the crates before calling the dogs from the kennel to jump in. The dogs, terrified, still obeyed crisply, and Preston couldn’t fathom rewarding that good will with desertion.
But when they were done, he realized that was exactly what they were going to have to do.
“Go,” he said thickly to Oscar. “Me and Preacher and Colonel will be along shortly.”
Preacher and Colonel both sat in the front seat of Preston’s truck, five-gallon bottles of water on the floor, as the two truckloads of crated animals bayed. On the horizon, the flames and the smoke were getting closer, and it was getting harder and harder to breathe.
“Soon,” Oscar said, his scared and lovely face twisting unhappily. “Soon, Preston.”
“I’m going to open the kennels,” Preston said, his voice thick and unhappy. “So they have a chance. They all know where the stream is.”
Oscar wiped his eyes with the back of the hand. “It’s the best you can do, but—”
He was interrupted by the sound of helicopter blades.
They both looked up and saw the modified Black Hawk, painted cream and decorated with Glen’s Gecko Inc. on the tail. Preston smiled a little. The helicopter wouldn’t get all the dogs—but there would be fewer left behind.
“Go!” he said to Oscar. “Go. Hurry to the shelter—we’ll be right behind you!”
“Be safe!” Oscar cried, and went running to his truck.
Preston petted Preacher and Colonel one last time before he ran for the kennels to stack the few remaining crates and count dogs.
There were way more dogs than crates.
DAMIEN knew that Preston was too stressed for more than a quick, hard hug as they finished loading the dogs into the copter, some of them pushed on reluctantly while Glen guarded the side door under the idling blades. Damien helped Preston care for the animals when he wasn’t working, so he had some rapport with them, and the thought of opening the kennel gates and hoping the dogs could get to water would have broken his heart, but watching Glen silently try hard to fathom clean-up costs for the newly refurbished Black Hawk was hard. Glen didn’t want to leave the dogs either, but keeping the business afloat wasn’t easy.
And there still wasn’t going to be enough room.
His chest constricted as Preston sprinted to the last kennel, and Glen gave him a helpless look.
“We can’t!” he said over the sound of the wind and the copter. “They’re dangerously packed in as it is—they can crush each other to death if we put in the last five!”
“Fuck!” Oh goddammit. Glen looked over the horizon at the approaching flames. While the periodic dumps of water in the last ten minutes had slowed the blaze, they hadn’t stopped it.
Glen’s look at Damien was eloquent. Preston thought Damien and Glen were heroes—Glen would do anything not to let his brother down, but one way or another, some of Preston’s precious dogs were not going to make it.
“Preston!” Damien hollered, trotting toward the kennels again. “Preston, leave them! You’ve got to, baby—you’ve got to. We all need to go. It’s getting too close!”
“Damien!” Soot was falling fast and furious through the air, and they were all wearing bandanas over their mouths. Twin clean tracks coursed over Preston’s nose as he grabbed the last five dogs by the collars. “Just—just five dogs—”
But these weren’t Pekingese or Chihuahuas. These were Lab and shepherd mixes—one of them a Mastiff/Lab/Great Dane that would probably weigh 150 pounds after he was fully grown.
“Oh, Preston—”
And at that moment, they heard the unmistakable sound of another Black Hawk, this one the refurbished vehicle that Damien had flown over the mountains of Nayarit.
Preston looked up at the sky just as Colonel, his Spencer-sense on full, started to bay from the front of Preston’s truck.
Damien looked over his shoulder and shouted, “Fire up the chopper, man. The cavalry is here!”
“YOU know this is crazy, right?”
Spencer didn’t even need to look at Elsie to know that her usually round face would be tight and almost oval with tension.
“I know,” he said tensely.
“Nobody could blame us if we didn’t go in,” she said, deftly adjusting the lift as the winds that had spread the fire buffeted their craft.
“Not a soul,” Spencer confirmed.
“I mean, they’re bosses. Good bosses, but bosses.” She was trying to sound disgruntled, but they’d been flying together for nearly twelve years—first in the Air Force, and then three years on their own as civilians—two of them for Glen Echo and Damien Ward. They’d gotten job after job by vouching for each other. One job had treated Elsie like crap. Spencer couldn’t figure out if it was because she was a woman or a woman of color, but it didn’t matter. He’d heard that note in their boss’s voice once and he turned around and walked out, Elsie at his heels.
One job had treated Spencer the same way. Elsie had heard one crack about his sex life—that’s all it had taken—and she’d dragged him out by the collar, even as he was saying, “But Elsie, I could give a fuck!”
They worked as a team, and they did it with respect, and fuck all the fuckers that fucked them.
Glen and Damien hadn’t just given them a job. They’d given Spencer a place to live so he didn’t have to bunk on Elsie and Josh’s couch anymore. They’d dragged them both into the ridiculous love lives of Glen and Damien and into search-and-rescue operations that wouldn’t make the papers because nobody would fuckin’ believe what they’d seen.
They’d invited them to barbecues at Preston’s place. Elsie and Josh befriended Oscar and the painfully shy, beautifully maternal Belinda, and Spencer befriended the dogs. Glen and Damien had invited some of their favorite clients—Tevyn Moore, a gold medalist snowboarder, and his husband, Mallory Armstrong—and they’d stayed up late on the green between the main house and Preston and Damien’s cottage, wrapped in blankets, staring at the firepit and talking about adventures they’d all had.
Elsie had just spent a week at the big house, where Belinda and Oscar lived, consoling Belinda after her miscarriage. Spencer had bought out a stuffed-animal store of plush dogs that looked like the couple’s personal pet dog, Matilda, a Great Dane with more size than sense.
They weren’t just bosses. It wasn’t just a job. These were their friends, the family they had only recently begun to accept, and once Spencer and Elsie had dropped the fleeing residents off at the fire shelter, they hadn’t even asked each other. They’d just gotten back into the Black Hawk and taken off, headed for Preston’s, because even if it wasn’t in danger, it might be, and they wanted to make sure their friends were okay.
As they were flying in, they saw how close the dragon had drawn to this home they loved, and they knew that Preston only had so many crates—their friends might not be okay.