Christina Skye - Code Name - Baby

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.

WOLFE 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.

KIT 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.