After spending a great deal of time preparing for a dual release in December, I sure am glad to get back to writing. All the better that it involves a Tracking Jane series story!

Fleeting Shadow will come as a short story covering a part of the eight month period between Rover and Tahoe-1. This story will provide additional details regarding what happened to Shadow and Allison between those two Tracking Jane episodes.

Best of all, I will offer Fleeting Shadow as a free download, through my site only, to all my mail list subscribers. So… if you want your copy, you know what to do, right?

Here’s an excerpt and a preview cover to pique your interest:

Fleeting Shadow, excerpt: Black Friday

“Shady’s got recon,” Cassandra whispers next to me. “Let her do it, Jane.” Her voice rises enough to peak above the white noise of shoppers and the din of Christmas music that echoes inside the shopping mall.

Outside a coffee shop, we sit at one of three round, two-seater tables, the one that lets me rest my back against a wall and away from the folks that meander by. We made it through two stores before my mind started spotting enemy combatants and IEDs masquerading as flower pots all around me. My throat’s dry, and the cold glass of water Cassandra fetched for me ain’t helping much.

“She can catch and detect far more than you,” Cassandra whispers on. “Take it easy and let her do her job.”

I glance down at Shady. She sits erect, as tense as she can get. But she ain’t doing it on account of any real dangers out there, whether a pack of C4 floating by inside a bulky shopping bag, or a swerving stroller that conceals an AK-47. No, she’s on edge because of my imaginings. My pheromones tell her I’m set to go off. She senses it and responds with hypervigilance of her own.

Her ears twitch at every sound. Her nose sniffs at the air. Her eyes scan this way and that, and on occasion turn to me with mellow brown assurance. We’re in the clear. Nothing to fear.

Though I usually avoid crowded, high traffic settings, unlike many vets suffering from the mental anguish I brought back from overseas, I don’t have many of these episodes. Indeed, having a dog with me wherever I go helps, more or less because of what Cassandra said. Shady takes care of guard duty. Which means I don’t have to. I’ve endured one or two of these episodes, but only when Shady couldn’t come with me, or I decided I didn’t need her. Like right after I came back from my last deployment, the first couple of times I ventured back to church and I deemed it a safe enough place to not merit Shady’s company. Big mistake.

Still, I haven’t gone through this for some time. At least a year, I reckon.

I ponder why I feel this way now. I think on it with all the self-loathing and self-blame accompanying what everyone deems a break with reality.

Maybe I should’ve brought Shadow this time. Maybe it’s his limping and what it may mean for him—and for me—that pulled my pin, so that now I have to keep a tight grip on this grenade-like psyche of mine. Maybe it’s Allison, laid up on some hospital bed, and the fact that I put her there.

I close my eyes and try to breathe in calm and shove out anxiety. Or whatever that quack of a counselor called it. Shady lays her head on my lap and shoots me another of her hot snorts before she pulls out to watch on my behalf.

With a hand on the back of her neck I tell her, “I know. You got this.” Like I believe it, I say it to myself, again and again. She’s got this. I don’t need to take it from her. Besides, I’m sitting in the good ol’ United States, ain’t I? Perfectly safe here, inside this mall, with Christmas music, registers cha-chinging and all that, right?

“Black Friday,” I mumble. “Why do they call it that again?”

“Biggest shopping day of the year,” Cassandra says. “Or they’d like it to be. Hasn’t been that for the last few years, economy in the dumps, etcetera.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I sigh more than say, with more of that exhale the anxiety bit.

Shady exhales a snort of her own. I keep my eyes closed, but I relax my eyelids.

Cassandra places her hand on mine. “We can go, if you want.”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

Cassandra stands and waits for me to gulp the rest of my water. On the way out, close to the mall’s exit, she says, “Well, since we’re in town and all—” She leaves it at that, the way she does when she’s baiting me to ask what she means.

I don’t fall for it, keep walking ahead, with Shady breaking into a near trot next to me.

“Allison’s hospital isn’t too far from here,” Cassandra adds. “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind a visit.”

I fight the urge to stop. “You sure about that?” I don’t add, “after the way she and I left off last time,” but Cassandra no doubt reads between my lines.

“I think it’ll work out.” Cassandra’s lips draw a faint, almost playful smile. “We talked this morning. She’s ready for visitors, alright.”

“Mm-hmm, I bet she did.” I go through the door first. A blast of cold air hits me flush in the face as I try not to come across annoyed at Cassandra’s shopping ruse. “If you’d told me, I’d brought Allison some leftover turkey,” I add, but a gust of wind swallows my words, and I don’t bother to repeat them.