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  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF CATHERINE MANN

  “Catherine Mann weaves deep emotion with intense suspense for an all-night read.”

  —Sherrilyn Kenyon, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “Catherine Mann’s picture should be in the dictionary next to ‘superb.’”

  —Suzanne Brockmann, New York Times bestselling author

  “A brilliant . . . adventure woven with gripping emotion.”

  —Dianna Love, New York Times bestselling author

  “Heart-pounding.”

  —Booklist

  “Touching in its emotional pull.”

  —Romance Junkies

  “Heart-stopping romance.”

  —The Romance Studio

  “A terrific tale!”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  “Not only riveting but also movingly profound . . . Will captivate your imagination.”

  —Cataromance Reviews

  “I loved all of Ms. Mann’s Dark Ops books and highly recommend that you check them out.”

  —TwoLips Reviews

  “Entertaining, pleasurable, and suspenseful. One can’t help falling in love with the characters. A great read!”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Terrific romantic suspense that never slows down . . . An action-packed story line.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  Berkley Sensation titles by Catherine Mann

  Second Chance Ranch Novels

  SHELTER ME

  Dark Ops Novels

  DEFENDER

  HOTSHOT

  RENEGADE

  PROTECTOR

  GUARDIAN

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  SHELTER ME

  A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2014 by Catherine Mann.

  Excerpt from Rescue Me copyright © 2014 by Catherine Mann.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

  BERKLEY SENSATION® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-63748-7

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / August 2014

  Cover illustration by Anna Kmet.

  Cover design by Diana Kolsky.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  To Rob—my hero, my friend, my love. Always.

  Contents

  Praise for the novels of Catherine Mann

  Berkley Sensation titles by Catherine Mann

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  PART 1

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  PART 2

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  PART 3

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  PART 4

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  PART 5

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peak at Rescue Me

  Acknowledgments

  People have asked me if I write about my own life. I am, after all, married to a military man who served over twenty years in the Air Force. However, this story is not autobiographical, although it was most certainly born in my heart—and in my fears as my imagination flew down a path that every military spouse has traveled at some point thinking: “What if the worst happened?” My husband eventually retired and thank heaven we never had to face that heart rending, ultimate sacrifice made by others who’ve lost a loved one in uniform. This book, born in my heart and fears, is in honor of every one of those fallen service members and their families.

  I owe many people bucket loads of gratitude for helping me pour out this story onto the keyboard. There aren’t words enough to thank Wendy McCurdy for her unconditional trust that I could pull this off even when I doubted myself. Bless her, she didn’t even wince when I said I wanted to toss in a semi-feral dog’s point of view. Thank you as well to Katherine Pelz and the entire Berkley team for all their hard work on behalf of my stories. I am also incredibly lucky to have the support of my stellar agent, Barbara Collins Rosenberg, a savvy voice of wisdom and direction.

  And how do I thank the most brilliant critique partner and awesome friend on the planet? Joanne Rock is the best, hands down. Much appreciation goes to both of my amazing beta readers, too. My super-talented daughter Haley Frank, an Army wife, made sure I remembered those nuance-ey differences between Air Force lingo and Army lingo (any mistakes are purely my own—ooh-rah/hoo-uh!). And my dear friend and fellow animal rescuer Zo Carlson shared her fantastic eye for proofreading, while also understanding what my crazy-dog-lady side wanted to convey.

  Speaking of kindred spirits in the animal rescue world, I am so very grateful to Executive Director Dee Thompson, her staff, and the volunteers at the Panhandle Animal Welfare Society (PAWS). Their endless capacity for compassion for abandoned and abused animals humbles me. Everyone at PAWS has taught me so much as we travel this rescue journey.

  What great book-lover camaraderie I’ve found via the Internet. I owe Dr. Linda Hankins, DVM, a deep debt of gratitude for answering all my veterinarian questions, even patiently responding when I Facebook messaged her at midnight. (Again let me stress, any mistakes are totally my own.) And my treasured Facebook crew—Stephanie, Anne, Ann, Vickie, Linda (again), Debra, Judy, Sue, Paula, Kay, Elaine, Jan, Peggy, Pamela, Eileen, Sylvia, Dakota, Debby, Barb, Gail, Marcia—I am so lucky, lucky, lucky to have them cheering me on and helping spread the word about my books. Although I must say, as much as I enjoy visiting on the Internet, I look forward to our next gathering in person.

  As always, all my love goes out to my family that continues to grow larger by the year—my husband, our four children, our two new in-law children who I love every bit as much as my blood-related kids. And of course more love than I ever even knew existed goes out to my precious, perfect granddaughter. Last, thank you to my four-legged, furry family who teaches me about unconditional love every day: Sadie, Sam, Faith, Toby, Cooper, and the one who started it all . . . Trooper.

  Prologue

  I WAS BORN
IN the land of Babylon.

  Thousands of years ago people spoke the same language there, before the Big Master scattered them. Maybe that’s why I understand what humans mean even when they can’t understand each other. Or possibly that’s why they can’t understand me, because they left.

  But then perhaps they can’t understand me because I’m a dog.

  No. Really. I’m not putting myself down. I’m seriously a D-O-G. Yep, I can spell, too, but I can’t tell people that, either, because . . . Come on, you know the reason. Say it with me. Because I’m a . . .

  Dog.

  And while I was born in Babylon—a.k.a. Iraq—my life changed forever the day I left that home with Sergeant Mike Kowalski. The morning I went away was tricky, because the Sergeant had to sneak me out of the forward operating base on one of those monster-big cargo planes they call a C-17. I was going for the ride to end all rides.

  Back then they didn’t have very many of those cool puppy rescue organizations to bring dogs back from a war zone. In my day, the Department of Defense law stood more often than not. No pets on military installations. And bringing them home? Huge negative on that.

  So rules were bent, twisted and broken to rescue me, but it was a must-do operation to complete my mission. To understand my mission fully, you need to know how I ended up with Sergeant Kowalski.

  Back when I ran in a pack with my cousins, we scavenged for scraps. Best place to look? U.S. military installations. The guys in uniforms, the ones from across the ocean, fed us. Good stuff, too. So we howled out the locale of new troops setting up camp so our pack buddies would know.

  I hit the mother lode with those guys.

  “No MREs for you, Trooper. You get steak,” said a colonel with silver hair, dusty camos and creaky knees.

  The first time I ate steak, I almost peed myself. Of course I peed myself for a lot of reasons in those days because I was still a puppy. Six months old then. Twelve months old when I left that place. Eleven years old now.

  During my puppy days, the rest of my pack didn’t want to stay at that particular camp because it was busy and big, and they were ancient and wary. But I was the youngest, the only one of my litter to survive, and gut-deep hungry from only scraps of leftovers. I was way below being the alpha dog. Not even really a beta dog. More like a zeta. Or would that be omega?

  Anyhow, after we ate our fill for a week, it was a tough choice sticking around by myself, because yeah, I would lose my pack, but hunger won out. Six months later when the time came to leave on that plane? I didn’t hesitate for a second. Sure I would miss this place where they tossed a tennis ball and seemed to think I was a rock star because I figured out fast they wanted me to bring it back. Like that was hard after tracking rats in the desert for dinner?

  But I knew it was time to leave Babylon. Iraq. Home.

  I had a mission. That was what the Sergeant told me. I was needed. Magic words to a dog. We live for a job, a purpose. It’s what we were created for by the Big Master.

  My mission: to heal a family, the family that had lost their person. I was supposed to be their link to him because he was the one who found me. The silver-haired Army colonel who fed me steak.

  I’m ashamed to admit that the first time I saw him, I tried to bite him. I bared my teeth and all the fur rose up on my spine. That’s dog talk for “back the hell away because I’m thinking about taking your face off.”

  Except he didn’t back away. Colonel McDaniel dropped the slab of meat on the sand, and the smell hit my nose like a drug. Drool pooled in my mouth, and before I could think, I lunged. I ate the whole thing in three bites, along with rocks and sand scraping over my tongue into my starving belly. The silver-haired man nodded and left.

  The next day, he did the same thing.

  And the next.

  Until my fur didn’t rise anymore and I nipped the edge of the steak, tugging it from his hand.

  One day, the Colonel touched the top of my head and said, “Good boy, Trooper. Good boy.”

  I didn’t know what a human hand felt like until then. His fingers smelled like grease from the steak and salt from his sweat, tempting me to lick them. But I was afraid I might slip and bite him. So I held the steak between my teeth and stayed still while his hand brushed between my ears just once.

  I was scared. Pee-myself scared. But that first quick touch? I wanted that again as much as I wanted another steak.

  Maybe more.

  So yes, I stayed even when my pack left. I let him scratch my ears for a lot of days and a lot of meals. Even when he brought along a military doctor to jab me with a bunch of needles. And people wondered why I didn’t like the doc. Really?

  After a while, Colonel McDaniel sat in the dirt and talked while he fed me chopped-up chunks from his hand. He told me about his family, his childhood dog also named Trooper and other stuff. Secrets between him and me that made tears leak out of his eyes. I just listened because it was all I could offer in return for the food and the scratches.

  Then one day he didn’t come. The Sergeant did, though. Other buddies, too. They told me that before the Colonel had died, they’d promised him they would look out for me.

  I didn’t know what “died” meant then. So I waited for the silver-haired man to return. While I waited, I learned to play fetch, and since they kept on feeding me, I didn’t go off searching for Colonel McDaniel. I would catch that ball all day long and bark when anybody came up to their camp.

  That didn’t always go well for me, but we’ll save that tale for another time. Like the story about why the steak man didn’t make it back home. Some things are hard to think about, even for a dog. We have to figure it out in smaller nibbles rather than gobbling it up. Because if we try to take everything in at once, the next thing you know, we might chew up somebody’s pillow or pee on their boots. Which meant I was lucky to get a rubbery hot dog.

  So to keep your pillow and boots safe since we’ve just met, I’ll think about a happier time, that special day when I was twelve months old. The day I left home. It was all about the airplane. The family. My mission.

  The day I flew to the United Steaks of America.

  PART 1

  Whoever invented crate training should have to spend eighteen hours in a wooden box strapped inside a cargo hold. Baby, I was born to run.

  —TROOPER, OVER THE ATLANTIC

  One

  SIERRA MCDANIEL HAD ordered a drug test for a whacked-out Pomeranian, then milked a nanny goat to bottle-feed a litter of motherless pit bull pups. And it wasn’t even noon yet.

  The Tennessee summer sun baked her hair faster than the professional highlights she couldn’t afford anyway. She checked the latches of each kennel run attached to her mom’s converted barn/animal rescue, complete with doggie doors and an air conditioner. Someone had tampered with the locks and let all the dogs out last week, torquing off their cranky neighbors even more.

  But then who wanted an animal rescue next door? Even if next door was an acre away on either side.

  She double-checked the detoxing Pomeranian sprawled on a puppy bed, looking loopy. The fur ball had bitten a teenager, and the cops had soon deduced the dog discovered a hidden bag of pot, started chowing down on the weed and objected when the outraged teen tried to recover his stash. Animal Control had called her mom’s rescue for the pup that Sierra now called Doobie even though his real name was Lucky.

  God, what she wouldn’t give to be a regular English Lit grad student at Vanderbilt, living in a crappy apartment with flea-market furniture. Rather than going to the local college and living in her childhood bedroom of pink ruffles and faded boy-band posters. What she wouldn’t give to have her dad come home today with his unit.

  But he wasn’t, and no amount of wishing could change that.

  She could, however, honor his memory by doing what he would want. So she spent every spare moment between summer classes and her grad assistantship duties pitching in at her mother’s Second Chance Ranch Animal Rescue. Not that her mom w
ould ask for help with the rescue or her own job teaching online classes year-round. Even though Sierra saw the pain and struggle in her mother’s eyes, to the rest of the world Lacey was the ultimate independent military wife, giving all for her man. Holding down the home front. Raising Sierra and Nathan to be the perfect military brats.

  Oh, hey, and caring for Grandpa McDaniel while Alzheimer’s sucked him deeper into the quicksand of dementia.

  As if that wasn’t enough, Mom decided to save homeless and abused animals in all her free time, starting up a nonprofit rescue organization that didn’t pay a dime. The nanny goat—freshly milked—bleated in agreement from across the yard, bell clanking around her neck before she went back to chomping grass.

  Seriously, weren’t goats supposed to be gifts for third-world villages?

  Huffing her sweaty bangs off her brow, Sierra yanked open the door to the mudroom on their rambling white farmhouse and quickly slammed it closed behind her, muffling the din of barking to a dull roar. Checkered curtains on the door fluttered. Through the window, Tennessee fields stretched out as far as she could see, dotted with other homesteads. Her family only owned a couple of acres total, fenced in, but even still, half the neighbors complained.

  Some more vocally than others, threatening to file an injunction to shut the whole operation down at a county council meeting scheduled for next month. Another problem for another day.

  She scuffed the poop off her gym shoes once, twice, then gave up and ditched her sneakers in the sink. They landed on top of the black galoshes Lacey used for kennel work, sending their old calico kitty soaring away. Sierra eyed her own purple monkey rain boots with a stab of regret that she hadn’t tugged them on this morning.