Dog Warrior Read Online Free PDF Page B

from his shower, he padded around the kitchen, trying to figure out what to cook for breakfast with the power out.
    â€œI’m going to wake up Ukiah,” Atticus told him. “That way we can feed him and put him back to bed, out of the way for most of the day.”
    â€œSounds like a plan.”
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    Atticus unlocked the door to the basement bedroom and opened it, half expecting to find either an empty room or a snarling, angry stranger. Ukiah, though, still lay in the bed as they had left him, apparently so deeply asleep he’d notmoved all night. In sleep, his brother was just a young man, badly battered but healing.
    He should wake the boy, and yet he stood at the door, watching Ukiah. All the possibilities of the world existed in his sleeping brother. A family. A friend. A belonging complete beyond any he had ever hoped for. A bitter enemy. A cold mirror reflecting back how inhuman he truly was. Once he was awake, time would flow, a single path taken, a course he probably couldn’t control. A part of him hardened over the years by the real world foresaw that the cruelest road most likely would be taken.
    Atticus stood watching his brother, hoarding this moment before things went wrong. If he stored it away, no matter what, he would have this one moment of peace.
    â€œWe’re almost out of eggs,” Ru called from the kitchen. “So we’re going to have pancakes.”
    Time started again.
    â€œOkay,” Atticus called back. “I’ll have him up in a minute.”
    Ukiah was sluggish to get roused and up the stairs. Atticus could feel his brother’s bone-deep weariness as his body slaved to knit bones, repair organs, and deal with the massive blood loss that the mice represented.
    At the top of the steps, though, Ukiah suddenly veered off toward the back door. The blanket around Ukiah’s shoulders slipped to the floor as he opened the door and stepped out onto the deck. Hunching against the stiff cold wind sweeping off the ocean, the boy started for the railing, faltered, and came to a halt. Atticus felt disorientation flooding into his brother, sweeping away both dismay and sense of self.
    He’s never seen the ocean before!
    Picking up the blanket, Atticus went out to rescue him. The feral look was gone, replaced by more human confusion and distress. Naked, the boy was shivering but too overwhelmed to move.
    â€œCome on.” Atticus wrapped the blanket around his brother’s shoulders and pulled him back inside the house, shutting the door on the roar and the salt-laden spray.
    â€œI could hear it roaring all night.” Ukiah whimpered like a lost puppy, his gaze still trapped by the endless gray of ocean. “I could feel it pounding against the land, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.”
    â€œIt’s the Atlantic Ocean.”
    Ukiah tore his gaze away, dismay creeping back in. “Where am I?”
    If he’d never seen the sea before, he didn’t know the New England coastline.
    â€œGloucester, Massachusetts,” Atticus said. They had decided on the town in case—like Atticus—Ukiah had maps stored in his perfect memory. Gloucester faced water to its south, and had islands across its bay. Not a perfect match for Nantucket Sound, but Gloucester gave them a hundred-mile margin for error. They kept within the state to account for the proliferation of Massachusetts license plates if they had to move him any distance.
    â€œHow did I end up here?”
    â€œRu and I drove in from Buffalo last night. We stopped at the Ludlow service area on the Mass Turnpike and found you locked in the trunk of a car.” Atticus described the car, only to get a blank look and a slow shake of the head. “We were hoping you could tell us about it.”
    â€œLast thing I remember,” Ukiah said slowly, “I was with Rennie in a parking garage.”
    Through years of experience, Atticus was able to treat the comment as