Code Name: Baby. Christina Skye

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СКАЧАТЬ a fantasy….

      The growl stretched into rising notes and ended with a bark loud enough to snap the deepest concentration.

      Kit pushed up onto one elbow and stared at the sixty-pound black Labrador puppy pressed against the sofa. “Drop, Baby.”

      The next growl ended in a whine. The Lab dropped and went completely motionless.

      So much for Kit’s nap. The dogs weren’t used to her taking a rest after the predawn chores were finished, and Baby, her smallest Lab, was especially relentless when it was time to play. And it was playtime right now.

      Because they were smart and very determined, her puppies usually had the last word.

      “Good girl. Good, sweet girl.” Kit reached to the floor for her treat bag and held out a pea-size liver snack, Baby’s favorite. “What’s all the fuss? Are you ready to practice?”

      Baby downed the treat and turned her head toward the door, too well trained to rise from her down position until Kit gave the freeing command.

      “Outside?” Kit fought a yawn. “You want to go outside and work?”

      Baby’s keen chocolate eyes narrowed intently. As she had before, Kit had the singular sense of being probed, measured, almost trained.

      Which was beyond funny, considering that she had eleven years of experience training service dogs for law-enforcement and military units. Never before had she felt one of the hundreds of dogs try to train her.

      Fighting another yawn, she ran a hand down the Lab’s lustrous coat, pleased to feel its thickness. The feed mix she had developed seemed to be a success.

      Kit wondered what new kind of chaos awaited her downstairs. With four puppies currently in training as military service dogs, upheaval was the norm, not that she minded. In her experience, dogs gave far more than they took.

      “Up,” she said firmly. Instantly, Baby shot from the bed, twisted at the doorway in a blur of fur and skidding feet, then looked back. Kit could have sworn there was a silent command in those clever brown eyes.

      Hurry up.

      Of all the dogs she had trained, these were definitely the smartest and strongest. The breeder who had placed the litter with Kit had told her their parents were extraordinary, and from the very beginning, Baby and her littermates had run harder, jumped higher, learned faster. They were also larger than the average Lab puppy.

      Kit ran a hand through her tangled hair. The dogs would run her ragged if she let them. Labs were notoriously exuberant and playful, just as they were focused and intelligent. Already Baby had the energy of a fully-grown dog. It was no wonder Kit usually felt exhausted at the end of the day.

      She knew she invested too much of herself in each training group. She also knew that letting go was a necessary fact of life in her work.

      On a good day, she could accept that.

      Still seated near the door, Baby looked back, her voice rising from snarl to soft whine, like conversation in some unrecognized language.

      “Okay, okay. Just don’t expect me to make sense until I grab my sweater and tank up on coffee.”

      Baby nosed under the big chest and appeared with Kit’s oldest blue sweater dangling from her head. Laughing, Kit tugged the hooded cardigan over a white cotton T-shirt that had seen better days.

      Not that her underwear mattered.

      She lived forty miles from the nearest town. Since her closest neighbor was eighty-two and lived on the far side of a six thousand foot mountain, she didn’t receive many spontaneous visitors. Whatever she wore made no difference to anyone but her—and that was exactly the way Kit liked it.

      Stretching her arms over her head, she watched sunlight flood through the big bay windows. Judging by the sky, it was a little after six. She had brought the dogs in from their kennel and checked some medical references on her computer while they ate. Her nap had lasted all of twenty minutes, and now it was time for training.

      “Stay,” Kit said firmly. Baby didn’t move, her big velvet eyes shimmering with intelligence.

      Since the stay command was one of the hardest things for a puppy to master, Kit was delighted. “Good dog. Good Baby.” She pulled an old leather glove from the pocket of her sweater, making a low hiss, and Baby’s ears rose sharply at this cue to pay attention.

      “Come,” Kit ordered, holding out the glove.

      In three excited strides Baby crossed the room, sniffing the leather with a back-and-forth motion of her head.

      “Find,” Kit ordered.

      Like a shot, the puppy put her nose to the floor and raced down the stairs, skidded at the front door and started sniffing.

      Kit checked her wristwatch.

      Four seconds later she heard Baby bark once from the back of the laundry room, where Kit had buried the glove’s mate under a wicker basket and a pile of dirty laundry.

      Find complete.

      “Good dog.” Jotting a note in her spiral pad, Kit headed downstairs, where Baby was waiting. Baby’s head pointed straight to the spot in the laundry basket where Kit had hidden the matching glove.

      The puppy had just shaved three seconds off her most recent record.

      “Good, good girl.” Another pea-sized treat appeared from Kit’s bag. Baby nuzzled the reward delicately off Kit’s wrist and swallowed it.

      Abruptly the dog’s ears pricked forward. Looking up at Kit, she gave a low series of snarls.

      “What? What’s wrong, Baby?”

      The dog shot around in a blur, out the dog door and across the courtyard. Kit made a stop at the locked gun cabinet in the hall, then raced after her. Near the side door, she heard low male voices drifting across the outer wall of the compound.

      This time there were two of them.

      Baby hadn’t barked, so the intruders wouldn’t yet realize they’d been discovered. When Kit cracked the patio door silently, she could make out low whispers.

      “I told you this whole idea sucked, Emmett. If she had the box, she wouldn’t leave it all the way out here. Hell, she probably sleeps with the thing under her bed. She’s crazy like the rest of her family.”

      Kit inched up beside Baby. “Stay,” she whispered. “Stay, Baby.”

      The dog’s position didn’t waver, though her eyes glinted with wary energy.

      Kit swung open the gate and leveled her father’s old Smith & Wesson revolver at two men in dusty jeans peering down the well beneath a huge mesquite tree.

      Fear prickled at the back of Kit’s neck. The speaker was a big, sullen man she’d seen hauling feed at the local tack store or drinking from a brown paper bag outside several different bars.

      “You’re trespassing here, gentlemen.”

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