Justine Davis - Operation Notorious

I don’t want him tamed. I love him as he is. And he loves me. So if you hurt me, you hurt him. Don’t.

Charlie had blinked, stared, then burst into laughter. She’ll do, little brother. She’ll do.

Indeed she would. Forever.

“Well,” Hayley went on after a moment, “if something’s really eating at him, one of us should be able to get him to talk.”

A quiet woof turned both their heads. And simultaneously, they laughed at their dog, Cutter.

“You can, is that what you’re saying?” Hayley asked the clever animal.

Cutter’s plumed tail wagged, and his amber-flecked dark eyes gleamed with amusement. Given the dog’s history, Quinn wouldn’t put it past him to have even the man who had once been the most famous attorney in the country spilling his guts to him.

And then the dog’s expression changed, and his head swiveled around, looking north. Never one to waste time, he trotted off to investigate whatever had caught his attention.

“Good thing all the neighbors know him,” Quinn said.

“And we don’t live in a city of leash laws,” Hayley added.

Once they’d realized what they had on their hands, they had introduced Cutter to all of those neighbors. Most were receptive to a trained watchdog who would look out for all of them as part of his home duties. The dog was respectful of the older neighbors, gentle with the young children, playful with the pets in the zone he’d mapped out for himself, and somehow realized that the rather reclusive residents on the corner didn’t care for dogs and kept his distance.

“Maybe he can help Gavin,” Hayley said.

Quinn grimaced. “Sure. Because Gav is so good about accepting help.”

“Because he doesn’t trust anyone. Except Foxworth. Cutter is part of Foxworth. Besides there’s one thing he can be surer of with Cutter than anyone.”

Quinn lifted a brow at her. “Which is?”

“Cutter,” she said seriously, “will never, ever lie to him.”

And that, Quinn thought, was the key to Gavin de Marco. He would tolerate much, never blinked at the grimness and unfairness he sometimes encountered in his work for them but, with very good reason, he refused to put up with liars.

And now he was going to get therapy from a dog. A dog Gavin didn’t quite understand yet. But he would. He’d have no choice.

Quinn nearly grinned at the prospect.

* * *

Katie Moore drew her knees up tighter to her chest, wrapping her arms around herself as if that could keep her from flying into pieces. The nightmare hadn’t been this bad for a while, and she’d dared to hope it might eventually go away entirely. But last night it had returned with a vengeance and now, three hours after waking up screaming, she was still shaken.

She sat on the floor of the small garden gazebo, amid a patch of roses stubbornly refusing to admit it was almost November. She stared at one of the blooms, studying each curving petal as if it held the answer. When she had moved here, away from the city where life had turned so ugly, she’d planted the roses around the gazebo with some vague idea in her mind that someday when the worst was over, she would sit here and breathe in the sweet scented air and remember the good times. She’d never had a sister by birth, but she’d found her sister of the heart, and since they’d met in elementary school they’d rarely gone a day without communicating in some way.

And still sometimes she had her hand on her phone to call before she remembered she would never speak to Laurel again.

Images from last night’s horrific dream seethed just below the surface, and her barricades seemed particularly weak this morning. She wished it was a workday; losing herself amid the books she loved would help get her mind off this ugly track. Maybe she should go in anyway. Surely, there were things she could do.

Being the librarian in a town this small wasn’t a difficult job, but she loved it. The new library was a beautiful, light, airy space that was a delight to the community that had worked so hard to make it happen.

Laurel would never see it.

That quickly, she was back in the morass. She felt so lost without the steady, loving friend who had always been there for her. If she hadn’t been the one to find her body, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. The loss would be just as great, but she wouldn’t have those horrifying images seared into her brain. Maybe—

“Woof?”

Katie snapped out of her grim thoughts, startled by the quiet sound. She smiled when she saw the dog sitting politely at the bottom of the gazebo steps. Cutter, Hayley’s dog, from down the street. He was unmistakable with his black fur over face, head and shoulders, shifting to a rich reddish brown over his back down to his fluffy tail. She’d seen him often since her neighbor had come by to introduce him, and had been amusedly grateful he had apparently taken it upon himself to protect this entire block. More than ever now she needed reassurance of safety.

“Hello, boy. On your rounds?”

For an instant she could have sworn the dog shook his dark head. She laughed at herself. She’d never had the tendency to anthropomorphize animals, but it was hard to avoid with this one. Especially when he came up the steps, turned and sat down beside her, and leaned in. As if to comfort her, as if he knew how roiled her inner self was this morning.

As, perhaps, he did. Dogs did wonders as therapy animals, she knew. One of the most popular nonfiction books in the library last month had been the story of one such dog. But she wasn’t sure anything could alleviate this kind of pain. What could possibly make this any easier to bear? She shuddered, her throat going tight, nearly strangling her airway. Cutter leaned in harder, and when instinctively her hand came up to stroke his soft fur, she found, to her surprise, that the horror receded slightly. Only slightly, but enough to allow her to breathe again.

She hugged the dog. And by the time he trotted off toward home, his rounds completed for the morning, she realized she was going to have to read that book.

* * *

Gavin de Marco shifted the backpack slung over one shoulder, and adjusted his grip on the duffel in his left hand as he walked through the airport parking structure to the rental car area. The crisp Seattle air was like a gulp of pure, clean ice water after the humidity he’d left in St. Louis, which was having trouble surrendering its grip on a muggy summer even two months into fall.

Two children in Halloween gear raced past him, shrieking. He’d almost forgotten the day of costumes and candy was nearly upon them. A man he’d noticed on his flight let go of the suitcase he’d been wheeling and bent to greet the two mini-superheroes, a wide, loving smile on his face. The woman with the children joined them, and the look the man gave her made Gavin turn away. It was personal, intimate, even here among the throngs of a busy afternoon at SeaTac Airport. That “you’re mine and I’m yours” kind of look that meant a deep, irrevocable bond that might change over the years, but would never fade or break.

The kind of look Hayley gave Quinn, and more surprisingly, Quinn gave Hayley.

The kind of look no woman had ever given him.

Not, he thought wryly, that he’d ever earned it.

He let out a disgusted breath. The disgust was aimed, as it usually was lately, inwardly, not at Quinn Foxworth, one of the last few people on earth he trusted without reservation.

Unfortunately that few did not include himself any longer.

He made himself focus on the task of picking up the car. He’d refused Quinn’s offer that they would pick him up—by car, plane or helicopter, whichever he preferred—and insisted on the rental car. He wanted to be independently mobile, because recently there were times when he just couldn’t stay put.