Page 1

Chapter One

The walls were closing in again.

Daniel Travis pressed his palms to his thighs, anchoring himself to the metal chair beneath him, trying to remember where—and when—he was. St. Luke’s Hospital. Kansas City, Missouri. Lower-level meeting room C. Tuesday night PTSD support group.

He wasn’t back there. He wasn’t on patrol. He wasn’t—

Pirate let out a low huff beneath the table and gently rested his scruffy head on Daniel’s knee.

The mutt’s fur was wiry and too long around the ears. His nose sat like a big, black button on the end of his snout, and his ears were brown, his chest was white, and the rest of him was a mixture of tan and gray. His one good eye blinked up at Daniel, calm and focused, the black eye patch over the other giving him the look of a lopsided cartoon outlaw. Pirate didn’t care about the tension in the room. He didn’t need words or therapy. He just needed Daniel to breathe.

Several of the other veterans had brought their service dogs tonight, too—Labradors, retrievers and shepherds. Ben Hunter’s black German shepherd, Rocky, lay still but alert beside his chair, ears twitching at every new voice or shift in the air. The dogs were quiet, steady presences, anchoring their handlers like weighted lines in a rising tide.

Daniel tried to focus. To keep listening. To just be here.

But the smells—disinfectant from the janitor’s cart outside the door. That sharp snap of a plastic water bottle being opened. The sudden clatter of a clipboard dropped in the hallway.

Too much like—

Boom.

He jerked.

The sound wasn’t real.

But the pounding in his ears sure as hell was. So was the shiver of muscle memory that rolled across his shoulders, tightening his spine, drawing every nerve in his body taut.

Daniel stood abruptly. The legs of his folding chair screeched across the tile floor. Every head in the circle turned. Their expressions blurred, but he felt the weight of them. The pity. The recognition. The fear.

Their facilitator—Peter, or Phil, something soft—called out his name. “Daniel? You want to take a break?”

He couldn’t answer.

Someone else stood. A shadow with a familiar hook at the end of his prosthetic arm glinting in the overhead lights.

“Easy, man.” The voice was gravelly. Calm. Ben Hunter.

The Army vet stepped between Daniel and the door, not close enough to crowd him but enough to remind him where the hell he was. Half his left arm ended in a polished titanium prosthetic. He wore his usual camouflage jacket with the sleeves pushed up, and his calm blue eyes were steady.

“Breathe. You’re not there,” Ben said. “Nobody’s shooting. Nobody’s bleeding. It’s just us. You’re safe.”

Safe.

That word scraped against something raw inside Daniel. Safe was what they’d told him right before the roadside bomb exploded and took three of his Marine Force Recon buddies and most of the left side of his face with it.

He couldn’t talk. Could barely breathe. The walls were too close, the air too sharp. His chest squeezed like someone had cinched a strap around it.

Someone else in the circle started talking. A younger guy, probably National Guard, sharing his story about driving supply routes and watching a kid no older than ten trigger a homemade device with a cell phone.

That was the final push.

Daniel’s fists clenched. His lungs burned. Even though there were no nerve endings on that side of his face, his prosthetic eye throbbed in sync with his pulse. His skin crawled.

He had to get out.

He shoved past Ben, hard enough that the man had to plant his feet to stay upright.

“Daniel,” Ben called. Not angry. Just concerned. “Don’t leave like this, man. Talk it out.”