Baby downed the treat and turned her head toward the door, too well trained to rise from her down position until Kit gave the freeing command.
“Outside?” Kit fought a yawn. “You want to go outside and work?”
Baby’s keen chocolate eyes narrowed intently. As she had before, Kit had the singular sense of being probed, measured, almost trained.
Which was beyond funny, considering that she had eleven years of experience training service dogs for law-enforcement and military units. Never before had she felt one of the hundreds of dogs try to train her.
Fighting another yawn, she ran a hand down the Lab’s lustrous coat, pleased to feel its thickness. The feed mix she had developed seemed to be a success.
Kit wondered what new kind of chaos awaited her downstairs. With four puppies currently in training as military service dogs, upheaval was the norm, not that she minded. In her experience, dogs gave far more than they took.
“Up,” she said firmly. Instantly, Baby shot from the bed, twisted at the doorway in a blur of fur and skidding feet, then looked back. Kit could have sworn there was a silent command in those clever brown eyes.
Hurry up.
Of all the dogs she had trained, these were definitely the smartest and strongest. The breeder who had placed the litter with Kit had told her their parents were extraordinary, and from the very beginning, Baby and her littermates had run harder, jumped higher, learned faster. They were also larger than the average Lab puppy.
Kit ran a hand through her tangled hair. The dogs would run her ragged if she let them. Labs were notoriously exuberant and playful, just as they were focused and intelligent. Already Baby had the energy of a fully-grown dog. It was no wonder Kit usually felt exhausted at the end of the day.
She knew she invested too much of herself in each training group. She also knew that letting go was a necessary fact of life in her work.
On a good day, she could accept that.
Still seated near the door, Baby looked back, her voice rising from snarl to soft whine, like conversation in some unrecognized language.
“Okay, okay. Just don’t expect me to make sense until I grab my sweater and tank up on coffee.”
Baby nosed under the big chest and appeared with Kit’s oldest blue sweater dangling from her head. Laughing, Kit tugged the hooded cardigan over a white cotton T-shirt that had seen better days.
Not that her underwear mattered.
She lived forty miles from the nearest town. Since her closest neighbor was eighty-two and lived on the far side of a six thousand foot mountain, she didn’t receive many spontaneous visitors. Whatever she wore made no difference to anyone but her—and that was exactly the way Kit liked it.
Stretching her arms over her head, she watched sunlight flood through the big bay windows. Judging by the sky, it was a little after six. She had brought the dogs in from their kennel and checked some medical references on her computer while they ate. Her nap had lasted all of twenty minutes, and now it was time for training.
“Stay,” Kit said firmly. Baby didn’t move, her big velvet eyes shimmering with intelligence.
Since the stay command was one of the hardest things for a puppy to master, Kit was delighted. “Good dog. Good Baby.” She pulled an old leather glove from the pocket of her sweater, making a low hiss, and Baby’s ears rose sharply at this cue to pay attention.
“Come,” Kit ordered, holding out the glove.
In three excited strides Baby crossed the room, sniffing the leather with a back-and-forth motion of her head.
“Find,” Kit ordered.
Like a shot, the puppy put her nose to the floor and raced down the stairs, skidded at the front door and started sniffing.
Kit checked her wristwatch.
Four seconds later she heard Baby bark once from the back of the laundry room, where Kit had buried the glove’s mate under a wicker basket and a pile of dirty laundry.
Find complete.
“Good dog.” Jotting a note in her spiral pad, Kit headed downstairs, where Baby was waiting. Baby’s head pointed straight to the spot in the laundry basket where Kit had hidden the matching glove.
The puppy had just shaved three seconds off her most recent record.
“Good, good girl.” Another pea-sized treat appeared from Kit’s bag. Baby nuzzled the reward delicately off Kit’s wrist and swallowed it.
Abruptly the dog’s ears pricked forward. Looking up at Kit, she gave a low series of snarls.
“What? What’s wrong, Baby?”
The dog shot around in a blur, out the dog door and across the courtyard. Kit made a stop at the locked gun cabinet in the hall, then raced after her. Near the side door, she heard low male voices drifting across the outer wall of the compound.
This time there were two of them.
Baby hadn’t barked, so the intruders wouldn’t yet realize they’d been discovered. When Kit cracked the patio door silently, she could make out low whispers.
“I told you this whole idea sucked, Emmett. If she had the box, she wouldn’t leave it all the way out here. Hell, she probably sleeps with the thing under her bed. She’s crazy like the rest of her family.”
Kit inched up beside Baby. “Stay,” she whispered. “Stay, Baby.”
The dog’s position didn’t waver, though her eyes glinted with wary energy.
Kit swung open the gate and leveled her father’s old Smith & Wesson revolver at two men in dusty jeans peering down the well beneath a huge mesquite tree.
Fear prickled at the back of Kit’s neck. The speaker was a big, sullen man she’d seen hauling feed at the local tack store or drinking from a brown paper bag outside several different bars.
“You’re trespassing here, gentlemen.”
The smaller man spun around with a surprised curse. “You said she was in town, Emmett. Why’d you lie to me?”
“Because you’re too damned stupid to know better.” The man named Emmett stood up slowly, his gaze locked on Kit. “Tell us where it’s hidden. We’ll just keep coming back until you do.”
There was no point in asking what they meant. This man was just like the others, hoping to find the famous treasure supposedly hidden somewhere on the ranch.
Except there was no treasure.
Kit’s hands tightened on the grip of the revolver. It had been her father’s gun, and he’d taught her how to handle it safely and well. “There’s no treasure here, fellas. You think I’d be driving a ten-year old Jeep with no air and bad brakes if I was sitting on a fortune? With that kind of cash, I’d be living the high life down in Santa Fe.”
Emmett appeared to think this over for a long time before spitting on the ground beside the well. “I figure that’s exactly what lie you’d tell us, but we both know there’s Apache treasure hid somewhere in this damned well. Bones Whittaker saw it with his own eyes. That old Injun gave it to your father.”
Kit kept her expression calm despite the anger burning in her throat. “Bones was seventy years old and a drunk to boot. Why believe him?”
“Because he saw it,” Emmett said tightly. “So did his best friend and they was sober when they told my uncle. No way they’d lie about that gold your father got out on the mesa.”
“Bones Whittaker was drunk and sick,” Kit said flatly. “He wanted to be important so he made up the whole thing, right down to the story of the box he supposedly saw my father lower into the well. He even admitted it to my mother when he came up here a week before he died.”
“Your ma told you that, did she?” Emmett’s eyes narrowed. “Well, I guess she would. Best way to quiet things down and keep your nice nest egg hid. But that’s mesa gold, and it belongs to anyone that finds it. That’s exactly what I’m fixing to do.”
Kit took an angry breath. The rumors of buried treasure had begun when she was a girl, fed by the tales of an old, lonely man desperate to feel important before he died. When her parents had come into extra money after the death of Kit’s maiden aunt, they’d bought
a badly needed truck and built an addition to the kennels, adding fuel to the flames of local suspicion. Unfortunately, more than a few people still believed Bones Whittaker’s crazy story.
When Kit’s brother was at home, no one came sniffing around, but Trace had been gone for over a year now, and this was the second set of trespassers in the last month.
Kit felt a sharp tension at her neck. She glanced up and saw something move up on the ridge. A coyote?
Emmett continued to watch her, frowning when Baby barked inside the courtyard. “That your dog?”
“Yes, it is. And she—”
A callused hand shot around her shoulders from behind. “Got her, Emmett. What do we do now?”
A third man. She should have realized Emmett had an ace in the hole.
Kit dropped her revolver into the pocket of her baggy sweatpants, out of sight. Unable to break free, she pivoted and drove her boot heel down against her captor’s instep.
She fought to stay calm, to wait for her moment.
A second arm locked at her waist.
She caught the smell of aftershave and old sweat as she tried to jam her elbow into his solar plexus, but he was fast, constantly twisting out of range.
“Get her gun.” Emmett’s voice was strained. “Damn it, Harry, do I have to do everything?”
Her captor slammed her forward and pinned her against the courtyard wall, driving her cheek into the rough stucco.
She blinked back tears, refusing to show weakness or pain to these lowlifes. “My brother will kill you for this.”
“But your brother’s not here, is he? Maybe he won’t be coming back.”
Kit kicked viciously, felt her boot strike bone.
“Ben, where’s her gun? You see her drop it?”
“I don’t see no gun here, Emmett.”
Low growling drifted over the wall. “It’s those dogs of hers again.” Ben sounded frightened. “You said they wouldn’t be here, Emmett.”
A mass of dark fur and angry feet shot over the courtyard wall. Missiling down, Baby struck Emmett’s shoulders. Moments later two other furry shapes crossed the wall. One rammed the back of Ben’s legs, knocking him to the ground, and the third landed in front of Kit, teeth bared and menacing.
Then she was free, her revolver trained on the intruders who were circled by her snarling seventy-pound puppies. The dogs had waited for their moment to strike, working together.
“Get moving, you three. And spread the word that the next man who comes up here will be dodging my bullets.” She sighted down the length of her revolver, glaring at Emmett, who was clearly the instigator of this harebrained operation. “But first take off your shoes. Do it now. All of you.”
Three sets of eyes measured Kit, then cut back to the snarling dogs.
“Do what she says, Emmett. Never knew a woman could handle a gun worth shit. She’ll kill all of us in a second.” Ben pulled off his boots and tossed them to the ground. “Can I go now?”
Kit waved her hand and the man immediately took off over the dirt. “What are you waiting for?” she snapped at the other two.
“Dogs don’t scare me.” Emmett crossed his beefy arms. “Especially puppies.”
Baby bared her teeth while Butch and Sundance, Kit’s other dogs, moved into a tight line next to Baby, the three ranged together as one unit.
Kit stared coldly at Emmett. “They could break your arm in a few seconds. Probably chew up your face pretty bad, too.”
“Don’t think you frighten me none, O’Halloran. Don’t think it’s over yet, either.”
“Come on, Harry,” Ben called from down the hill. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Fine by me. I’ve had enough.” The other man pulled off his boots, tossed them beneath the mesquite tree and headed down the slope after Ben.
Two down. One more to go.
“You too,” Kit snapped at Emmett. “Don’t forget your shoes.”
Color surged into the man’s heavy cheeks. After some angry fumbling, he freed his battered sneakers and threw them hard through the air.
Kit was surprised to see Baby jump up and catch them in her teeth.
“One day you won’t be so lucky. Those dogs of yours might not be around.”
Kit kept her expression cold. “Get going, and remember what I said. Next time I’ll shoot first and consider the legalities later.”
Dust drifted over the hillside. Kit didn’t move until all three men had made their way past a row of cottonwood trees far down the hill, where an old pickup was hidden. After they shot out of sight, her knees began to shake, her stomach twisting in knots.
There was no reason to feel sick. Emmett and his friends were gone. She was safe now.
Saying it didn’t help.
She leaned forward against the mesquite tree and threw up. When the spasms stopped, she set her revolver carefully on the ground and sat down on the wall above the well where mesquite leaves shivered in the wind like whispered promises.
But Kit didn’t believe in promises anymore. Every promise that ever mattered to her had been broken. Even her brother had left, tossing all the responsibilities of the ranch onto her shoulders.
She took a deep breath, sagging against the old tree. Her father had planted it the same day he married her mother. Together they had watered it, staked it and tended it. Now the thick, gnarled trunk was twisted into three knots, towering over the well like a rich, dark rope beneath a canopy of green.
Small leaves blew free, raining down on Kit’s face. She sank to the ground. How much longer before Emmett and his friends came back?
How much more could she take?
The three dogs pushed closer, licking her face with small whimpers as if offering exuberant comfort while their tails churned up little circles of dust beside the well.
She frowned, wondering where Diesel was. The most curious of the lot, he was probably back in the courtyard, tracking a squirrel or some other small animal.
But before she could go look, she leaned forward, throwing up all over again.
Some days definitely sucked.
HE WATCHED HER because it was his job to watch her. His orders had come down from the very top: no involvement, no explanations, no contact of any sort. Surveillance and covert protection, nothing else.
But that was before Wolfe had seen Kit ambushed by three men right in her front yard. He’d watched, held back from intervening only by Ryker’s explicit orders. But all that was about to change.
He punched a code into his secure cell phone, all the time studying Kit’s house. “Ryker, it’s Houston. Yes, I’m in place. But I’m requesting permission to break cover.”
“Permission denied. Cruz is almost certainly headed your way, and I don’t want anything to scare him off.”
Wolfe watched clouds shadow the nearby ridge. “Sir, she was attacked a few minutes ago. Three men.” His voice was cold and hard.
“Did they hurt her or threaten the dogs?”
“Negative. She managed to frighten the men off. The dogs helped.”
Ryker’s breath checked. “In that case, there’s nothing to worry about. Do your job and stay under the radar.”
The line went dead.
Wolfe gripped the phone, then shoved it back into his pocket. Orders unchanged. He couldn’t reveal his presence, and the situation was spiking his bullshit meter big time. There were things that Ryker hadn’t briefed him about, foremost among them the fact that Cruz’s death in Alaska had been faked. Everyone had seen how Cruz experienced mood changes during his last months on active service. There’d even been mental and physical side effects brought about by the program medications, but nothing that had been obvious, and Ryker had never briefed the Foxfire team about potential problems. All he had said in response to Wolfe’s questions was that Cruz had become unstable. And that he had been taken into protective custody for the good of the program—and the country.
Wolfe was certain there was more to the story, but no one could
pry anything out of Ryker until he was ready to talk. He had also ignored Wolfe’s questions about why Cruz would be interested in Kit and her service dogs. That silence added to Wolfe’s uneasiness.
He had to keep Kit and her special dogs safe, without breaking cover to do it. He shook his head, remembering the shy girl with pigtails who had blushed and stammered whenever he was in the room. Now she could scare off three garden-variety thugs without any help but her half-grown Labradors and a well worn revolver.
Times change.
Kit was grown up now, a woman with killer legs and a mouth that called for long, slow exploration. Not that she would remember him after all this time. To say that Wolfe had changed would be an understatement. But she was still his best friend’s baby sister, off-limits for a man who could never put down roots.
It had been years since he’d been back, years since he’d stood on Lost Mesa. Her family’s ranch was as rugged and majestic as ever, offering forty-mile views of sage, mesquite and piñon in every direction. Coyotes still called from the high ridges, reminding him of long, lazy summer afternoons.
Ancient history.
Cutting off bittersweet memories, he scanned the hill, hidden behind a line of sage in full bloom. As coyote song echoed from a nearby wash, Kit vanished and returned with a pair of binoculars. Silhouetted in the sunlight, strong and tall, she sought the loping pack.
Wolfe remembered the summer when she was twelve and he was a know-it-all high school kid on fire to save the world. Things had been black and white then, good versus evil. But the world didn’t get saved and life had taught him that softness was a trap, trust only a crutch. He’d learned how to live without either.
Watching Kit focus her binoculars, he could sense her fierce determination to protect her ranch, and the dogs lined up beside her seemed almost an extension of that drive. He wondered if so much unspoken communication between dogs and trainer was normal. He also wondered if they had sensed his presence yet. It was only a matter of time before they did.
As the coyotes howled and snarled their way across a neighboring slope, she followed their progress through her binoculars.
Code Name: Bundle! Page 2
