Dogma #5
Roman was terrified as daylight crept into his kennel. He practiced trying to balance himself on two feet and straighten his spine. He felt so tall it was scary. And he practiced using his voice time and again. It was so strange, hearing his own mouth and breath form the words he was used to hearing from James. He had to try a lot before it sounded anything like James’s easy words.
He had to practice, because he instinctively knew, in the deepest part of him capable of fear, that he was in a terrible spot. He couldn't let the people here know what had happened to him. He just couldn't. Dogs didn't change into men. It was unnatural and maybe very bad. The Doberman in the next kennel was terrified of him. Probably men would be too. Roman was confused about everything, but not about that.
So he practiced talking, and then he practiced walking on two legs in his new towering, gangly form. He fell and got up again. And he fell and got up again and again.
In this body, his senses were dulled. Sight, smell, hearing—they all felt muffled. But he could think. His brain was a freight train, the thoughts coming so fast they tumbled into one another and vanished unless he grasped them tight. And his hands. His hands were amazing. He could close his fingers around the chain link and climb. But unfortunately, there was a cover on top of his kennel so he couldn't get out that way. He couldn’t open up the door from this side either.
He tried things he'd seen James do—rub his hands together, point, makes signs he didn't know the meaning of. He could hardly believe the hands were his, but boy, did they work well.
After dawn, the man in camo came to bring his breakfast. Roman sat on his haunches, exposed and unable to do anything but wait.
The man saw him and froze. "What the hell? What are you doing here?"
Roman rose slowly to his flat feet, steadying himself with one hand on the chain link wall. "Let me out, please," he said, his voice hollow.
"What the hell are you doing in my kennel, soldier? Fucking naked? And where's Roman?" The man was angry. He put his hand on his walkie-talkie.
"I heard barking. Came to see the dog. He got past me and the door shut." The words were rough, but he thought they were right.
"He got out?" The man unlocked the door and opened it wide. "Do you know how valuable these dogs are? How did you get this door open? And where the fuck are your clothes? You'd better not be perving on my dogs, or I'll bust your ass back to Tulsa!"
Roman pushed past the man with all his strength and ran.
He managed to hide in the crawl space under a barracks until they stopped looking for him. When the sun got high, and the soldiers were all on exercises or in the mess hall, he crawled out and let himself into the barracks. It took several panicked minutes to get in, his hand was awkward on the door handle. But he got inside and he pawed through one of the trunks that held clothes. He dressed himself, which was way harder than it looked, and then cowered in the empty barracks bathroom, crawling up onto a toilet and closing the door.
What was he going to do?
He could try to go back to being a dog. There was an itchy feeling in his body that made him think he might be able to shift back. He was afraid, though, afraid of the pain he’d had before. And some instinct inside him urged strongly that it was not a process that should be reversed. That felt wrong.
Even if he could go back to being a dog, what then? He would wait in his kennel until they assigned him to another handler. There would be obstacle courses, and loud noises, and fiery hoops. There would be days of work in the rain and mud and other days in the heat. And then there would be another big plane, and he would go back to Afghanistan, and he would sniff for bombs. He would see men blow up and there would be gunfire, always. And his new handler might die too.
He shivered and cringed, sitting on the toilet with his booted feet on the rim and his face in his knees.
He couldn't go through that again. He didn't want to. If James were here, Roman would do it again for him. He'd be that brave, put up with the noise and the dust and the heat and the blood. But without James? He would rather lay down and die than do that all over again without Sergeant James Pattson.
There was a burst of artillery fire outside, and Roman startled and shook.
There was not a great deal of reasoning involved, in the end. Only gut instinct, only can'ts and won'ts that ran deep in his bones. He knew what had happened to him was very special. It wasn't right to go back to being a dog all the time, not before he'd even tried to be a man. And he wouldn't go back to war without James.
Roman did what he had to do. He uncurled himself, left the stall, left the barracks, and walked to the base's front gate. He watched for the guard in the little booth to be busy talking to the driver of a car and he walked out.
He didn't look back.
By Monday morning, Matt had pulled himself together and was determined to act professionally. Not that he’d ever not acted like a professional, exactly. But he'd allowed his mind to go where it shouldn't have gone, and he'd paid the price. He’d been shot down big-time, and he’d never been too good at hiding it when his heart hurt.
Just ask him, cariño, Luci had said that Sunday morning before the bike ride. Are you a man or a mouse? Better to know for sure so you can stop tormenting yourself. Damn the woman and her stupid lawyer logic.
Of course, it had turned out that Roman Charsguard was straight. Fine. Good. He was the last man on earth Matt should mess around with anyway. For God's sake, he was Matt's work partner and not even the kind of partner that you could totally trust. He worked for Beaufort, not the DEA. Matt could have really gotten himself into a quagmire if he'd acted on his attraction.
So it was a good thing that Roman had shot him down. It was a good thing Matt had gotten that wake-up call before he did something stupid. It was a done deal.
But another voice in his head knew the truth—it sucked ass. Matt had been crushing on the guy hard. Roman was the guy who'd rescued Matt, the guy Matt had thought about for months, unable to forget those burning, sad eyes. He was Matt's ideal man with his powerful body, soft eyes, and that whole military vibe. They both loved the outdoors. Matt could do things with Roman that he hadn’t been able to do with any other guy he’d hooked up with. He was gorgeous, sweet, honest to a fault, good-hearted, poignantly vulnerable, strong, and inexplicably naive at times in a way that brought out Matt’s protective side.
And… it didn’t matter. They were colleagues, nothing more.
It was with that anthem humming in his mind like a Gregorian chant that Matt went into the office on Monday. He found Roman at his desk. Roman blushed when Matt walked in and stood up, practically going to attention.
"Hey," Matt said casually. He sat down and got on his computer without further conversation.
"We should... go out and check lines today," Roman said hesitantly, as if afraid Matt would protest. "It's been a while since we've checked the early ones."
"Sure," Matt said without looking up. "And I'd like to cover that northwestern part of the grid this week—sections A1 through 10. Assuming nothing comes in from the satellite that's more important."
"Okay." Roman sounded relieved.
"Give me ten," said Matt, tapping away.
Roman mumbled something about egg sandwiches and left the office.
When he shut the door, Matt sighed in relief. He could do this. From now on, it was strictly business. He had to find his SWAT persona again—tough, determined, kick ass, impersonal. He had a job to do. In fact, he had more than one. He had his DEA job and he also had to figure out what Sheriff Beaufort was hiding. Now that he’d put to rest this romantic foolishness, maybe he could actually be effective.
The fishing line Roman had put up was broken. It'd been strung across the end of a fire road on the side of Mountain 882. Roman called it Hawk's Point, but that name wasn't on the map. At the end of the fire road, there was a little-used trail that ran into dense woodlands. They'd hiked it one day a few weeks ago. Matt recalled dense woods, a long, slow uphill, and an eventual lookout to a lake where hawks soared overhead. But he wasn't positive he was remembering it right. The trails were all starting to blur together now.
"It could have been anything." Matt watched Roman as he squatted on the road, looking over the broken ends of line. "A bear. Hikers."
"No, there was a vehicle." Roman's nostrils flared as he sniffed. He pointed to some faint movement of stones on the gravel road. "Two men. They smell of the city. One smells... sick." His nose wrinkled, his eyes lost in thought.
Ooo-kay. Matt thought Roman was playing up the whole Indian tracker thing. He couldn't help but voice his skepticism. "Are you seriously telling me you can smell that two guys were here?"
Roman looked up, his brown eyes startled. "It's... I have a very sensitive nose."
"If you say so." Matt shrugged. He could see the tire marks, though, now that Roman had pointed them out, and those were convincing enough. "Well, the truck's gone, so they're not here now. Maybe we should hike in a ways. See if they did anything."
"Yes." Roman stood up. His posture was stiff, his face tense and unhappy. "I should call Lance and let him know there are strangers around." His fingers went to the phone in his pocket.
"Why don't we check it out first? Then we can both make a full report to our superiors."
Roman put his phone back in his pocket reluctantly. He nodded.
They walked up the trail. Roman appeared to be tracking. He looked around at the brush and trail constantly, and he appeared to be sniffing too. He was dark and intent, and Matt just let him be. He wasn't sure he believed Roman could smell anything. But he'd heard of some guys in the Marines who were gifted trackers by sight, so he didn't comment.
The trail was level for about half a mile, then started gaining altitude quickly. Matt kept scanning the forest around them for any signs of vandalism. They only went up the steep grade for about five minutes when Roman called out from behind him.
"Stop."
Matt looked back at Roman.
He shook his head. "They turned around here and went back to their vehicle. Probably they didn't like the trail."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes." Roman said firmly. "Very sure. There's no point going farther."
Matt slowly walked back to Roman. "What do you suggest?"
"Let's go back to the truck and get the map. We can check the lines at all the points close to here."
"That's good," Matt agreed. "Maybe we'll even run into them. Assuming the line here was broken recently, that is."
"It was broken on Saturday."
Matt looked at Roman doubtfully.
"I think," Roman added with a blush. "Because it rained last Thursday night. There would be less evidence if they'd been here before that."
"Okay, so since Thursday night. You're probably right that it was over the weekend." Matt ran a hand through his short hair. "Could be hikers or hunters."
Roman tilted his head in that quizzical way of his. "Hikers have plenty of good trails that are marked. And hunters are permitted only on state game lands."
"If they're hunting legally."
Roman started to say something, then shook his head. "Let's check the other lines."
They spent all day checking lines in a circumference out from that one broken line. They found two more lines that had been snapped and evidence that a vehicle had been both places. Roman seemed convinced it was the same vehicle, and the same two men, but Matt didn't see how he could possibly know that. Still, there was no doubt someone had been driving around scouting out-of-the-way areas. There weren't many legal reasons for someone to do that.
Matt had to agree that hikers were unlikely. They chose trails that hardly deserved the name and didn't go far down any of them, if Roman were to be believed. And if they were illegal hunters, the Forest Service would want to know about it.
Or they could be looking for a place to start a meth lab or a marijuana farm.
It was 6 p.m. when they returned to Roman's truck from the last trail they'd checked. The sky was orange on the horizon.
"I'll call the Forest Service and my boss," Matt said. "See if they know of anyone who's been in this area."
"It's not them," Roman said positively.
"Doesn't hurt to check."
"That’s true."
It was the most they'd said to one another in hours. Once Matt had stopped trying so hard to ignore Roman—not ignore, just treat him as he should be treated, which is to say, like a guy I’m not interested in, at all—he’d realized Roman was acting funny toward him as well. He'd catch Roman looking at him with a sad or confused look, or purposefully not looking at him, even turning his back to him when they stopped for water or to check the map.
Maybe Roman had figured it out. Maybe he'd realized a regular guy did not ask another guy if he was straight and then act pissy at the answer. Matt could admit he hadn't played it nearly as cool as he should have. He'd just... he'd been really disappointed.
Whatever. It didn't matter now. It was better this way. It would be easier on Matt if they didn't try to be friends. He didn't want Roman's pity.