Ghost came over and leaned against me. He does that. I know it’s more of a greyhound trait and the fuzzmonster is pure White Shepherd, but Ghost isn’t one to pass up a trick that might get him petted. I ran my fingers through his fur.

“I don’t suppose you know how to sniff out a nuclear bomb, do you?” I asked him. “No? Guess I’d better do it.”

He wagged his tail to show that he believed me to be Captain Invincible who could find those pesky nukes and crush them in my hands of steel. That or he thought I had more goat strips in my pocket.

I debated taking a shower and maybe drowning myself. Might be a tension breaker.

Instead I called Rudy Sanchez.

“Cowboy!” he said instead of hello. “Are you home?”

“I wish. Where are you?” I could hear wind rushing past the phone.

“On the way to the Warehouse. Mr. Church called ten minutes ago and told us to come in right away. Can you tell me what’s happening?”

We were both on scrambled phones, so I gave him the highlights.

“Dios mio!”

“No kidding.”

“How are you doing with all of this?”

His question, I knew, had very little to do with the mission and a lot to do with my overall mental health. Rudy and I have a lot of history. When I was a teenager my girlfriend Helen and I were jumped by a gang of older teens. The guys completely trashed me, breaking bones, rupturing some stuff inside. While I lay there coughing up blood they took turns with Helen. That image is seared onto the front of my mind. I see it every single day.

Helen and I healed from the physical trauma. I got involved in martial arts and made myself as tough and as ruthless as I could. Helen wandered down a few dark corridors inside her head and never found her way out.

We met Rudy during his psychiatric residency at Sinai in Baltimore. Helen was having one of her frequent breakdowns and Rudy did some amazing work with her, pulling her back from the brink time after time. He also helped me work on my internal wiring. Unfortunately the darkness was too much for Helen, and one day she let it take her.

I kicked in her door and found her.

Her death nearly killed me. Nearly killed Rudy, too. He’d never lost a patient to suicide before. We were already best friends, and that friendship probably saved us both. Since then we’ve become closer than brothers—certainly closer than I am to my own brother. Rudy is the only person in whom I place total trust.