Justine Davis - Operation Unleashed

The problem was Quinn’s, not Cutter’s. How was he going to explain to a dog that absent genuine abuse, Foxworth never interfered in marital or parent-child situations? But family matter or not, when a boy this young talked about going away, it deserved some intervention. Just not the full force of the Foxworth organization.

On that thought, the dog let out a small sound, a soft but emphatic woof. Then he turned his attention back to the boy. Quinn felt decidedly shrugged off. Cutter had directed “Fix it,” and fix it he meant.

“You know,” Hayley was saying to the still silent boy, “Cutter’s pretty smart. He’s not a Bloodhound, but I’ll bet he could find your house without you even telling him where it is.”

Damn, she was good, Quinn thought. She had the boy’s attention now, and she’d managed to focus it on an idea most kids his age would find irresistible. She’d be a great mom.

For an instant his stomach went into free fall. They weren’t even married yet and he was thinking about kids? When not so long ago he would have sworn that would never happen, that he would never, ever bring kids into a world so screwed up by the people supposedly running it? But a baby, with Hayley? Their child?

Right, he muttered inwardly. Just dealing with this kid’s got you going sideways. You’d be great with one of your own.

“Could he?” the boy asked, stroking the dog’s head. “Really?”

“Shall we see?”

She glanced at Quinn. He gave her a half shrug. He’d been working with the dog on commands, if you could call it working when the animal seemed to learn everything on the first try. Once he’d come to trust the dog, once they had all accepted him as part of the team, he’d realized it would be best if everybody knew and used the same commands. He’d thought about using a different language, as military and police K-9s did to insure the dog obeyed only their orders, but since Cutter tended to completely ignore anyone he didn’t know and trust telling him what to do, it seemed unnecessary.

“We can try,” Quinn said. “Just remember Foxworth doesn’t do domestic.”

Hayley flashed him the smile that never failed to send a shiver down his spine. “It’s not me, it’s him you have to convince,” she said, nodding toward Cutter. She didn’t add, “And good luck with that,” but it was in her tone anyway.

“Great,” he muttered. He’d never met a more stubborn creature than that dog, and that included himself and even Rafe. “Let’s go, then.”

The boy looked at him somewhat warily. Quinn softened his voice. “Shall we see if he can do it?”

The boy still didn’t speak, but slid off the swing.

“Cutter,” Quinn said in an entirely different tone, one of command. The dog’s head snapped around, those intense eyes fastened on him. Quinn pointed at the boy.

“Backtrack,” he ordered.

The dog glanced from Quinn to the boy, then back. And then he whirled on his hindquarters and trotted off toward the tall trees. Quinn watched the boy watch the dog, saw the child’s eyes widen when Cutter stopped at the edge of the forest, beside a tall hemlock with a long branch dragging downward, and looked back over his shoulder at them.

“That’s my secret path! He does know!”

He took off after the dog at a run.

Quinn and Hayley followed. At least this, Quinn thought, should be quick. Return the kid home, and then they themselves could go home. And he could get back to his thoughts of luring Hayley back to bed for a leisurely afternoon of enjoying the miracle of them together.

He tried to ignore the little voice in his head reminding him that with Cutter, nothing was ever that simple.

Chapter 2

Alyssa Kiley paced because she couldn’t be still. Panic was edging its way upward from some low, gut-deep place she hadn’t heard from in a long time. Her fingers tightened on the phone she held as she resisted the urge to call the police, the fire department and anyone else she could think of. Drew was on his way. He’d fix all this. He always did. Despite the arguments, despite his sometimes presumptuous manner, he always did.

And her common sense told her he was right, Luke had been missing less than an hour. But she’d checked every place in the house, with some nightmare memory of a murdered child found in her own basement. She’d checked every neighbor on their short, narrow street, and no one had seen him. She’d called his best friend Dylan’s house, even knowing they were out of town for the weekend, just in case they’d changed their plans.

She wouldn’t be so anxious if it hadn’t been for that weird feeling she’d been having lately. It was silly to think someone had been watching her. When she’d mentioned it to Drew he’d naturally wanted details she couldn’t provide, because she’d never actually seen anyone. But even his assurances didn’t make that crawly feeling at the back of her neck go away.

Now she was wondering if what she’d been feeling was some sort of precognition, a foreshadowing of disaster.

She stared at the stand of trees across the road from the house. Normally, she loved looking at them—tall, strong evergreens, softened by the misty rain. But today that forest had never seemed bigger, or more endless. Even knowing that was silly—that they hadn’t changed—didn’t help. There was nothing normal about this morning.

It had been a while—quite a while—since she and Drew had argued like they had this morning. But it was Doug’s birthday, and that was always a rough day. How did you deal with a man who would just as soon ignore the fact that his younger brother had ever existed?

Luke must have heard them. They were usually careful to avoid that, but this morning it had flared up too quickly. She’d been on edge, knowing what day it was, and all it had taken was one exasperated glance from Drew to set her off.

And now her son was missing. Guilt stabbed through her. This wasn’t all Drew’s fault, she could have, should have, held it in until Luke was out of earshot. But Drew had a way of—

A noise from across the street, followed quickly by the sight of a dog bounding out of the trees startled her out of her useless musing. God, she was standing around wasting time treading old, tired ground, while Luke was gone.

To her surprise the dog, a large animal with a black head and shoulders shifting to brown over his back and tail, headed straight for her. He didn’t seem at all threatening, but she watched him warily. It was a strange dog, after all.

The animal came to an abrupt halt two feet in front of her. And unexpectedly sat, his ears up, his gaze fastened on her. She felt strangely pinned, as if she couldn’t move if she’d wanted to. But the dog was sitting so politely she didn’t feel the need.

She knew he wasn’t from anywhere on the street; there were only two dogs who lived here and they were both the little powder-puff kind of things that seemed as if they’d break if you just looked at them funny.

The dog cocked his head at an angle and made a low, odd sound. If he’d been human, she would have said it held a note of reassurance. But of course he was a dog, so that was silly.

And then he looked over his shoulders, back to where he’d come bursting out of the trees. To where someone else was coming. She could hear the noise of branches pushed aside, rubbing on each other. For an instant she wondered if the dog had in fact been fleeing something bigger and more threatening than he, no matter that something about him made her think he wouldn’t be afraid of much. But bears weren’t unheard of around here, and—

Her son came through the trees at a dead run.

“Luke!”

She ran for him, sweeping him up before he could say a word. Just the other day she’d been thinking how big he was getting, but now he felt like the slightest of weights, so glad was she to have him back in her arms.