Code Name: Baby (3 page)

“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.

 

H
E 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.

She would never see him unless he allowed it. Thanks to his skills she could stand a foot away, yet swear she was alone. He'd implanted focused images on missions in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Middle East, distorting the theta patterns of his targets until all they felt was a temporary dizziness. But in that moment of extreme suggestibility, Wolfe could shape and recreate reality—or what appeared to be reality.

He smiled grimly. Once he'd made a trigger-happy potentate in Afghanistan see dinosaurs charging out of a cave. The man had fled, screaming orders at his men, allowing Wolfe and his team to stroll into the fortified insurgent camp, locate a pair of stolen Stinger missiles, and pack them out before anyone was the wiser.

With time his skill had grown to be second nature. Sometimes he had to work at remembering where reality stopped and his own creations began.

He spread his focus, noting wind direction, weather scenarios, and optimum surveillance points. Though he remained hidden, he missed nothing. As the current leader of the Foxfire team, he demanded two hundred percent from himself in training and in the field, and failure was not a word in his vocabulary.

Unconsciously, his fingers rose, tracing the piece of metal buried in the skin above his collarbone. This chip was one of his first implants, allowing satellite tracking with precise accuracy. Other chips had enhanced his endurance and allowed him to monitor his own brain waves.

Wolfe knew his skills came at a price few people would be willing to pay. For the team members in Foxfire, pain was a given and isolation was constant. Once you entered the program, you left your past behind forever.

If not, you were summarily booted out of the program.

He sensed the force of Kit's restless gaze. Abruptly she bent double, painfully sick, and he felt a twinge of sympathy. One-on-one combat was a bitch, no mistake about it. The adrenaline rush afterward was almost as bad as the attack itself.

He felt something strike his boot. When he looked down, he saw pieces of an old toy truck sticking out of the dirt beneath him. Blurred memories shot through his mind. Wolfe remembered the day he had dropped it. The beating he had gotten for losing it.

But he didn't want to remember.

The mesa was silent now. The coyotes had drifted on without registering his intrusion on these rocks.

Down the hill, Kit vanished, followed closely by two of her dogs. Behind them the smallest Lab hesitated, ears raised. For long seconds the puppy didn't move, staring up the hill at the spot where Wolfe sat motionless.

The power of the dog's fierce intelligence felt like a physical touch.

 

L
LOYD
R
YKER HAD FINISHED
searching the lab for the third time, and once again he'd come up with nothing.

Staring at the blank gray walls, he considered his options. The facility had been on full alert since Cruz's escape. Two hundred personnel—military and civilian—were being checked for possible involvement. With enough pressure and scrutiny, one of them would eventually crack.

In the meantime Cruz was off the leash, and there was no way to calculate the damage he would cause if Ryker didn't find him soon.

The veteran of three presidential administrations frowned at the monitors above his desk. He had never felt completely comfortable with the full implementation of Foxfire. The program's concept was brilliant, but its personnel were far more dangerous than conventional weapons, which could be tracked and quantified as needed—or stripped and scrapped completely.

It wasn't so neat with people.

His eyes narrowed as he replayed the footage from the hidden lab camera—at least the rogue operative hadn't disabled
all
their security. He watched Cruz move to the mainframe computer and type quick lines of code. Why had the man accessed Wolfe Houston's service files, pulling up his training records and current duty assignment? Was there a covert connection between the two men?

He couldn't believe it. Foxfire's current leader was a straight arrow, his loyalty tested and confirmed.

Frowning, Ryker watched Cruz change screens, pulling up local topo maps and facility blueprints. After that he'd slipped past a million-dollar security system with three levels of password clearance and located complete medical data on all the dogs currently in the program. Now Cruz knew every animal's location and unique potential. To the right bidder, that information would be worth a fortune.

Coupled with the right trainer, of course.

It was a security nightmare.

Ryker shut off the surveillance tape and closed his eyes. He didn't have to replay the final footage to remember how Cruz had smiled coldly before hitting the lights, plunging the room into darkness. There was still no clue as to what he'd done next or how he'd escaped. By the time the response team hit the lab, the room was empty.

Ryker opened his eyes and sat forward slowly.

Or
was
it?

S
OMEWHERE ON THE HORIZON
Kit heard a clap of thunder.

Restless for no reason she could name, she studied the gunmetal sky. The dogs were jumpy, too, interrupting their usual play to shoot wary looks at the high ridges around the ranch. Right now Baby was standing motionless, her nose pointed into the wind.

“Do you smell something up there, honey?”

The puppy whined faintly, but didn't move.

One by one dark clouds began to billow over the mountains, blotting out the sun. Butch and Sundance sat nearby, panting. Only Diesel moved, his pure black coat streaked with dust as he sniffed furiously at a retreating gecko.

Gravel skipped over the rocks, carried in eddies by the restless wind. After a last glance at the sky, Kit opened her backpack and took out Baby's red collar. Strapping on the work collar always signaled a transition to focused commands, invaluable reinforcement for service dog training.

Warmed up from a good run across the mesa, the dogs were ready to focus on training. Baby's dark eyes probed Kit's face, and the dog quivered with excitement, awaiting the first command. No one could say that these animals didn't love to learn.

Kit began by reinforcing simple stay commands, then followed up with a variety of heel and halt repetitions, alternating ten minutes of training with five minutes of play and copious amounts of praise. After Baby ran through her moves, Kit slipped collars on Butch and the other dogs in turn. Accustomed to working serially, the dogs seemed to compete for fast command acquisition. Sometimes they even seemed to think as a team.

A family of quail shot out of the brush, making the dogs start. Even then, none moved, still on down command. “Stay,” Kit repeated quietly.

Baby whimpered, bumping against Kit's leg. Lightning cracked over the ridge, followed by the roll of thunder.

Baby's ears flattened.

From a cluster of rocks up the slope Kit heard a shrill, rising wail. On a punch of fear, she recognized the cry of a mature cougar. Despite the wild pounding of her heart, she suppressed a primal urge to run.

“Stay,” she ordered, one hand on Baby's head. If the dogs bolted, the hunting cat would be on them in a second, drawn by their motion.

Across the clearing Kit saw her rifle in its sling next to her backpack, and she cursed herself for not keeping the weapon within reach. Over the last months she had seen a rare cougar track on the higher slopes, but none of the animals had ever come close to the ranch.

Brown fur flashed up the ridge. Kit felt the skin tighten along her neck. She gripped her big oak walking stick, the only weapon at hand against a predator with ten times her strength.

Wind sighed through the cottonwood trees.

Kit heard the big cat cry again, the high wail like a physical assault. Beside her leg, Baby gave a powerful twitch.

“Stay, all of you.” Kit's voice shook.

She knew she would have to take on the big cat armed with only her stick. Her father had done it once, and he'd told the story in electrifying detail for years afterward.

Staying calm was crucial. Sudden movement would trigger an immediate attack. In the face of a cougar, she also had to stand tall, raising her stick so that the cat would recognize her as an intimidating predator prepared to fight back. Her father had also warned her never to stare into a cougar's eyes, since this was considered a dominance challenge from one predator to another.

With one hand still on Baby's neck, Kit raised her big oak stick. “Heel.” She spoke loudly to the Labs as she moved backward. As the wind shook the trees, she took another cautious step, the dogs ranged close beside her.

The low, stubby branches of a mesquite tree shook furiously. Brown fur brushed against shivering leaves, and a mature male cougar stepped onto a boulder, mouth open in a snarl.

Too close.

There was no way Kit could possibly reach the rifle now.

Swinging her heavy stick, she took three running steps forward, answering the cougar's cry with her own loud shout. Despite her terror, she reached deep and found her strength, shaping it to match the predator's cry. Cougars ranged by territory, killed by territory, and were famously unpredictable, especially if they were defending their young or a previous kill.

This would be Kit's only chance to save the dogs and herself.

The cougar stared at her, all hunger and rippling muscles. Her dusty sneakers slipped in a patch of gravel, and she fell to one knee, then lurched up instantly, her hands raised while she shouted hoarse warnings in a voice that sounded like a stranger's. At the top of the ridge, the narrow path twisted past a huge boulder streaked white with quartz, and there the cougar waited, smudged by sunlight, muscles taut, ready to jump.

Ready to kill Kit and carry away her dogs.

Warm sunlight slanted down. A hawk called far down the slope. Kit felt every detail cut deep into her mind as the dogs tensed beside her, barking wildly.

The big cat took a step closer. Grimly, Kit prepared for the attack she sensed was seconds away. The big predator swung sharply to one side, then circled the boulder, snarling in a mix of anger and pain while its powerful shoulders flexed, almost as if it were wounded.

Then the brown body jumped high and cut through the streaming sunlight past Kit, past the dogs, landing less than four feet away. In an instant, the big cat was gone, swallowed up in the shadows cast by junipers and sage.

The glade fell silent. Even the dogs were still.

Kit spun around, guarding the route where the cougar had vanished. When there was no more sign of movement, she raced back to grab her rifle, racked in a shell and leveled the barrel.

With her rifle on one arm and her walking stick in the other, she issued sharp commands to the dogs, herding them uphill away from the trees where the cougar had left the trail. It was a longer route back to the ranch, but no overhanging rocks would conceal a stalking predator.

Kit wasn't about to be cornered again.

Her hands shook, wind brushing her face. Dimly she realized her cheeks were wet with tears.

 

W
OLFE COULDN
'
T BREATHE
.

His fingers dug into the dirt as he watched Kit's shaky progress up the steep slope. He still couldn't believe she'd gone after the cougar armed with no more than a stick.

Fearless—or just crazy. Maybe both.

He'd been on his way up the ridge even before she'd seen the animal stalking her, but she'd done all the right things to make the cougar back down. Her quick, smart response had prevented him from breaking his orders to remain undercover.

She would never know how he had seen the big cat when it was poised to attack. She would never suspect that the animal's growl of anger and fear had come from Wolfe's silent intrusion. He couldn't control the animal, but he could enhance Kit's appearance to make her resemble a fearsome predator.

Despite the jagged emotions Kit must be feeling right now, she was doing fine, keeping the dogs close as she set a good pace across the mesa. If he had his way, he'd be up there beside her, close enough for protection should the need arise.

But orders were orders. Right now Ryker wanted only deep cover surveillance on Kit and the dogs. Protection if needed, but no exposure.

Crouched near a juniper tree, he watched her. She was quick and confident, with spare elegance in every long stride. Short and spiky, her hair glinted with hints of copper in the shifting sunlight. When she moved into the shade, the color changed, dark as French wine he'd tasted once in Burgundy. The short, uneven chunks hugging her face made him want to slip his hands deep and feel her warmth. He stifled the unfamiliar longing and forced his thoughts back to his mission.

Thanks to his training, he was adept at burying his emotions and forgetting them. The sight of a woman's uneven hair wasn't going to make him backslide.

In Wolfe's line of work, feelings got a man killed faster than bullets.

He kept that thought in mind as he followed Kit back to the ranch, careful to stay out of sight.

 

K
IT WATCHED SHADOWS
pool across the empty courtyard, feeling unbearably tired.

She was still shaken by her encounter with the cougar. Shivering, she stared at the ridge above the ranch and realized how lucky she was to be alive. She wanted to believe that her quick response with voice and motion cues had scared the predator away, but she couldn't. The animal had looked wounded. Perhaps something else had frightened it and sent it running away into the brush.

Too keyed up to sleep, she paced the living room, unable to forget the cougar's shrill cry. Silent and smart, the animal could be outside the wall right now, searching for a tree branch with access into the nearby courtyard.

Enough.

Disgusted, Kit grabbed her old sweater from the arm of the couch and strode down the hall. If she couldn't sleep, she might as well tackle the pile of bills that had accumulated over the last week. Food, equipment and medical care for the dogs were just the beginning, yet she refused to stint on materials or food for her animals, even if it meant that she wore threadbare jeans and sneakers with holes in the bottoms.

The ranch was a steady drain on the small legacy that had come to Kit at her parents' death. With forty acres of high desert stretching between two mountain ranges, the land was unsuited for ranching, and the cost of adding modern irrigation would have been prohibitive. Thanks to Kit's growing reputation training service dogs, her bank account had finally crept out of the red, but it might be five years before she could actually take a vacation.

Five years….

Frowning, she sank into the old chair behind her wooden desk. It was the same place where her mother had handled the ranch's account books and budgets. The pitted wood was cool beneath her fingers, smooth from years of use. Closing her eyes, she could imagine her mother lining up pens and stacking bills in neat piles as she calculated new ways to stretch a dollar.

Kit did the stretching now.

A local dog food company was pestering her to endorse a new product. The money would help her buy new tires for her Jeep and install an alarm system at the ranch.

As she reached for her checkbook, she saw the red message button flashing on her telephone and quickly scanned the calls. She would be devastated to miss a call from her brother, who was impossible to reach and always phoned at unpredictable times. If she'd missed Trace today, it might be months before she heard from him again.

Triggering her replay button, she fumed through two mortgage offers. The third message was from her oldest friend.

“Kit, it's Miki. I just got back from a new project in Santa Fe. You are not going to believe the assignment I landed this time. Let's go drink double shots of tequila while I tell you about it, okay? I need some advice. Stop spoiling those gorgeous canines and give me a call.”

Kit smiled, wondering what kind of bizarre situation her old friend had gotten into now. A year ago it was making a tour documentary for a punk band that performed with defanged rattlesnakes, and her most recent job had been shooting trailers for indie horror movies. Whatever her new assignment, it was bound to be strange. Miki attracted
bizarre
like honey attracted flies.

The next message was the crisp, professional voice of Kit's vet, calling to make an appointment for a vaccination titer, a procedure required to check the immunization status of the four puppies. Liz Merrigold had been the O'Halloran family vet for nearly a decade, as well as the local contact for the breeder who had supplied Kit's current litter of training dogs. Liz always kept a sharp eye on the animals placed for training under her supervision, gladly providing medical advice and moral support, day or night.

Kit jotted a note on her calendar to call and confirm a time for the visit. While she wrote, she triggered the last message.

“This is Doctor Rivera's office, Ms. O'Halloran. Doctor Rivera asks that you call the office at your earliest convenience. He'd like to speak with you.”

Kit looked down at her hands. All the energy seemed to bleed out of her body. She sank lower in the chair, staring at the breeding awards that lined the walls of the study. Presidents, generals and movie stars smiled down from mismatched frames, mute records of her family's contribution to humane and practical training techniques for service and working dogs. In twenty-five years her parents had personally trained over two thousand dogs, and Kit was determined to expand on their legacy.

But her body might have different plans.

After a long day of exercise, she could no longer ignore the deep throb in her right hip. Wincing, she pulled a heavy medical textbook from a nearby shelf. She didn't expect to find anything new because she had read every relevant page at least fifty times. All of them pointed to the same conclusion: joint deterioration, pure and simple.

Kit wished that Trace would come home. She missed his outrageously bad jokes and his off-key Rolling Stones renditions.