Soldier's Rescue. Betina Krahn

      KATE STAYED AT the shelter that night, catching a few winks of sleep on the lumpy, donated sofa in Isabelle’s closet-size office. In the empty hours before dawn she kept going over the day’s events, recalling everything Nick had said and second-guessing every response she had given. She’d be lucky if she ever saw the Stantons again.

      Nick clearly had a thing about hurt dogs, undoubtedly tied to his experiences in war zones, and was doing his best to avoid resurrecting bad memories. And Ben had a thing about hurt dogs that produced the exact opposite reaction. He was drawn to them, wanting to help in whatever capacity he could.

      By dawn, she was aching from lying on that miserable couch and bleary-eyed from lack of rest. And when she checked on the injured dog, her heart sank. His heartbeat had grown weaker and was giving her a premonition that this case was not going to end well. After all that work...she hadn’t lied to Nick, she truly did believe she wasn’t responsible for every life she touched. But that didn’t mean she didn’t get involved with animals or that losing a patient didn’t take a toll on her.

      Nance arrived early in the morning with breakfast sandwiches and gigantic cups of coffee. Jess came by on her way from an overnight somewhere and agreed to come back later and stay with the dog so Kate could go home and get some rest. Isabelle checked in between sessions with potential adoptive families. And Hines showed up with his new buddy, the visibly smaller but not entirely mobile Moose, to spend a little time with his other charges in the kennels. But overlaying all of that normal activity was a quiet sense of expectation, an air of impending loss. It was almost six hours before the dog’s weary heart gave way to the inevitable and stopped beating.