LITMIR.BIZ

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his weapon, he held the door for her. “Lock yourself in and wait for backup,” he ordered. “I’m going to see what Stumps can find.”

      She tried to protest but he pinned her with that unrelenting, chilly blue gaze. It wasn’t a look any argument would overcome. She sat down at her desk and soothed the puppies with soft words and warm caresses. She wanted to be out in the kennels, sorting out the situation. Helping. The dogs needed a familiar face and the quickest possible return to their routine. At this rate, tomorrow’s training plans would fall on deaf dog ears after the disruptions tonight.

      Despite the sirens they’d heard outside, it seemed to be taking forever for anyone to actually arrive. She wondered what he’d told them when he made the call after Stumps had found her. What had they been doing walking out this way? She supposed it could have been a case. Knowing he worked private cases as well as assignments for the RRPD, that thought didn’t give her much comfort.

      When Shane had been training to partner with Stumps, she’d tried time and again to reach out and bridge the abyss of resentment between him and the Gage family. Shane hadn’t been the least bit interested in her efforts. Stumps she remembered fondly from those days and enjoyed whenever he returned for a refresher.

      His partner, Shane, not so much. Tall and ripped, with sandy blond hair and hard eyes, he’d given her shivers—not all of them good. He was wonderful to look at, but he carried a chip on his shoulder the size of the nearby mountains, though she could hardly blame him.

      As she pulled a bag of dog treats from her lower desk drawer, she trembled at the memory of asking Shane about his choice to become a private investigator rather than going through the academy to become a police officer.

      “Someone should keep cops honest,” he’d replied in that flat tone that unnerved her. “I nominated myself.”

      The Colton and Gage families had been feuding since the first days of Red Ridge. But Shane harbored more resentment than all the generations before him. His words, dripping with well-aged hatred, were a clear warning to mind her own business. Danica considered herself a quick study and she’d lost her courage to share how his predicament had affected her own career choices.

      “His predicament,” she muttered to the puppies. What a pathetic understatement for wrongful imprisonment. Weary and inexplicably sad, she managed to get the puppies to sit and rewarded them accordingly as she tried to purge the past she couldn’t change from her mind.

      That exchange years ago had convinced her Shane would never find a way to forgive her grandfather for the dreadful mistakes that had cost Shane his freedom and so much more. She understood why he hated them all collectively, but she’d never quite been able to stop wishing she could fix it. She studied the bright eyes in the two attentive faces watching her. “Why can I remember the past just fine and have no idea what happened to us tonight?”

      * * *

      With Danica as safe as possible, Shane backtracked with Stumps. He heard vehicles out front and the flashing lights were bouncing off the side of the brick building, spilling into the yard. At the door between the yard and the kennel, he drew his gun once more and set Stumps to searching again. Stumps moved with purpose, Shane’s encouragement following him, as he confidently trotted into the kennel and searched the rows.

      Shane noted the various dog breeds along the route. Had this been a visit for a refresher course, he would have appreciated the soft-eyed basset hound or given reassurances to the enormous Newfoundland who watched Stumps work with obvious concern. It was easy to judge the progress of each dog’s training by how they reacted to the disruption. The fully trained dogs were quietly observant. The dogs still in progress whined or barked as Stumps and Shane passed.

      Stumps abruptly turned down an aisle that seemed deserted. He’d clearly caught the scent of something that didn’t belong. Stumps walked a bit further and then dropped into a perfect alert pose in front of an open kennel. Shane read the tag on the door and swore.

      Nico. Belgian Malinois. Protection.

      “Great.” If this dog had been released without authorization, the training center had a brand-new crisis on their hands. Shane took a picture of the tag with his phone and another picture of Stumps at alert. Then he released his dog and gave him a reward.

      “Shane? It’s Carson. You in here? Where’s Danica?”

      At the sound of Carson Gage’s voice, Shane called out, “I’m in the last row. Danica should be locked safely in her office.” He should have known the dispatcher would notify Danica’s oldest brother, a detective with the RRPD. Though Shane avoided the Gage family whenever possible, Carson was notoriously thorough on his cases and had earned Shane’s grudging respect through the years.

      “Is she hurt?” Carson asked as he hurried forward through the rows of dogs.

      Shane hesitated. He wasn’t a paramedic and yet he didn’t want to worry the other man. “She made it to her office under her own steam. I found her in the yard with two new puppies. I assume by the way she came around that she’d been drugged.”

      “Found her?” Carson echoed with a scowl.

      “Stumps sensed a problem during our walk. I looked over the fence and found her out cold on the ground.”

      Carson put his hands on his hips, looking up and down the empty row. “Someone took her down to get in here?”

      “That’s my guess.” Shane pointed to the sign on the empty kennel door.

      Carson gave a low whistle. “That’s a problem.”

      Both men knew a missing or stolen dog trained in protection could pose numerous threats to the thief as well as the community. The odds of this ending well for the dog or the people who’d taken him were slim.

      “Maybe the tag is leftover and Nico was relocated earlier,” Carson said.

      Shane shook his head. “Stumps would disagree.”

      “I figured.” He glanced at Shane. “Can I tell him he did a good job?”

      “Sure.” Shane knew that Stumps considered Carson an extension of his pack after they had collaborated with the detective and Justice, his K9 partner, on a few cases.

      Carson dropped to a knee and rubbed Stumps between the ears, praising him lavishly. Shane nearly laughed. If Stumps had been a cat, he might have purred. He was definitely preening.

      Standing again, Carson said, “Let’s go see if Danica can shed any light on this.”

      Shane knew what Carson hoped to hear, but his money was on Stumps’s assessment of the situation. Leaving a tag on a kennel and the door open was sloppy work and no one at this facility would make that kind of error. There was too much time and money invested in each of the dogs trained here to let that casual approach stand. Especially not in the case of a protection dog.

      As they all headed toward the offices, Shane had no doubt Danica had been attacked for the sole purpose of stealing the dog. Now his questions revolved around who would want to steal a dog with lethal potential, who knew such a dog was here, and how they’d known to strike tonight.

      * * *

      Danica barely managed to escape the care of two dedicated paramedics. Her office was too small for a medical team, their gear, the puppies and the thoughts racing through her mind. She knew the paramedics meant well. They might even be right about her needing a full exam, since no one had any idea what drug the attacker had used to incapacitate her. She promised to see her doctor tomorrow and sent them along.

      She pulled the band from her hair and scrubbed at her scalp, combing her hands through her hair before pulling it into a ponytail again. Dragging the back of her hand across her mouth, she tried to erase the memory of that heavy palm smothering her mouth, strong fingertips pinching her jaw. A tremor slipped down her spine as she glanced out her office window to the darkened training yard. No one was out there—she knew that. No one was watching her talk to a couple of puppies. Still, she walked over and lowered the blinds,

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