His hands trembled as he flipped the safety back on and holstered his firearm. He sucked in air as he leaned against the wall in the stairwell and sank down along it until his tailbone hit the step under his ass.
He’d had an episode. A thing. Whatever the fuck they called it. There’d been no warning. Suddenly, he’d been back overseas and treating everything the way he would’ve if he’d still been in a combat situation. He’d had nightmares before, been caught up in memories during the day even, but nothing as bad as this.
Those people he’d heard downstairs, beyond the door, were students of the school. Advanced martial artists come to train. Some of them were amateur fighters on the circuit. One or two were professional MMA competitors, competing in the organizations based out of Philly or Atlantic City.
None of them would’ve been able to react fast enough to him bursting through the door firing a gun to survive.
It would’ve been a bloodbath.
And maybe he would’ve come to his senses in the midst of the carnage. Or worse, he could’ve continued out the front of the school into the very public area, continuing to think he was in a combat zone.
Souze stepped forward and stuck his cold, wet nose right into Rojas’s face.
“Ugh.” Rojas pushed Souze’s muzzle away, but the GSD returned and got in his face again. “I’m okay. I’m back. It’s fine.”
He pushed himself up to stand. The dog was responding to his agitation, and he was damned lucky Souze had responded at all. It wasn’t in the scope of the dog’s training.
Rojas stared down at the dog, then buried his hand in the thick fur along the back of the dog’s shoulders. Souze’s eyes closed in response to the good scratching Rojas gave him, leaning in as Rojas moved his hand up to massage around the base of the dog’s ears.
“Thanks, buddy.” Rojas could only imagine what would’ve happened if Souze hadn’t been there. None of it was good. “I owe you. Big time.”
He stood there with Souze for a few more minutes, listening to the sounds of the men downstairs training. He needed to be sure he was in the here and now, not trapped back in places he’d left far behind. As a Navy SEAL, his missions had been in and out of hot spots, focused and comparatively short in length in terms of deployment. There wasn’t any one mission haunting him. They all did, in one way or the other. It made figuring out his own triggers a struggle, made every day an unknown minefield to navigate.
When he was sure he was steady, he wiped the cold sweat from his brow and palms and pulled his tee on over his holster. Then he continued down the stairs, opening the door slowly.
Revolution MMA was exactly the way it should be. The blinds were up, letting in the morning light, and four men were training hard on the mats. One of them was Cannon. Cannon must’ve left Souze to hang out loose downstairs without a placement command. Good thing he had.
As Rojas stepped out, a couple of them gave him an upward chin jerk in greeting but didn’t pause in their timing drills.
Rojas led Souze straight to the back door and let them both out into the open.
They should head back to Hope’s Crossing Kennels, but he was steady now with Souze’s timely help, and there was still a pressing need for action.
He had no doubts Elisa’s car would still be under surveillance. Even though there weren’t yet signs of someone tapping into the surveillance feeds at Revolution MMA, it was only a matter of time. Her stalker would likely hack into other stores with security coverage of the parking lot as well. Elisa hadn’t been back in a day or more as far as her stalker could tell, and efforts would increase in intensity to gain some sort of control over her again. If it’d been Rojas or any of his team monitoring a target, they’d have sent someone to keep direct eyes on the car.
It was the most recently known connection to Elisa.
So he started them on a long walk around the perimeter.
“Time to work.” At his words, Souze’s posture changed from easygoing to alert.
It was a familiar phrase, one Rojas used at the beginning of every training session with Souze. It let the big dog know they were getting to serious business.
He and Souze made their way around the front of the building. At this time of the morning, there wasn’t a lot of foot traffic since most of the stores didn’t open for a couple more hours. But there were a few people walking along the main road and a few joggers.
The two of them walked the length of the row of cars, stopping at Elisa’s and cutting between the driver’s side of her car and the one next to it. Rojas paused, mimicking searching his pocket for keys as he let Souze sniff around the cars. The big dog put his nose to the ground, followed a scent trail practically under Elisa’s car and up the side of it.