Code Name: Baby. Christina Skye

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      HE WATCHED HER because it was his job to watch her. His orders had come down from the very top: no involvement, no explanations, no contact of any sort. Surveillance and covert protection, nothing else.

      But that was before Wolfe had seen Kit ambushed by three men right in her front yard. He’d watched, held back from intervening only by Ryker’s explicit orders. But all that was about to change.

      He punched a code into his secure cell phone, all the time studying Kit’s house. “Ryker, it’s Houston. Yes, I’m in place. But I’m requesting permission to break cover.”

      “Permission denied. Cruz is almost certainly headed your way, and I don’t want anything to scare him off.”

      Wolfe watched clouds shadow the nearby ridge. “Sir, she was attacked a few minutes ago. Three men.” His voice was cold and hard.

      “Did they hurt her or threaten the dogs?”

      “Negative. She managed to frighten the men off. The dogs helped.”

      Ryker’s breath checked. “In that case, there’s nothing to worry about. Do your job and stay under the radar.”

      The line went dead.

      Wolfe gripped the phone, then shoved it back into his pocket. Orders unchanged. He couldn’t reveal his presence, and the situation was spiking his bullshit meter big time. There were things that Ryker hadn’t briefed him about, foremost among them the fact that Cruz’s death in Alaska had been faked. Everyone had seen how Cruz experienced mood changes during his last months on active service. There’d even been mental and physical side effects brought about by the program medications, but nothing that had been obvious, and Ryker had never briefed the Foxfire team about potential problems. All he had said in response to Wolfe’s questions was that Cruz had become unstable. And that he had been taken into protective custody for the good of the program—and the country.

      Wolfe was certain there was more to the story, but no one could pry anything out of Ryker until he was ready to talk. He had also ignored Wolfe’s questions about why Cruz would be interested in Kit and her service dogs. That silence added to Wolfe’s uneasiness.

      He had to keep Kit and her special dogs safe, without breaking cover to do it. He shook his head, remembering the shy girl with pigtails who had blushed and stammered whenever he was in the room. Now she could scare off three garden-variety thugs without any help but her half-grown Labradors and a well worn revolver.

      Times change.

      Kit was grown up now, a woman with killer legs and a mouth that called for long, slow exploration. Not that she would remember him after all this time. To say that Wolfe had changed would be an understatement. But she was still his best friend’s baby sister, off-limits for a man who could never put down roots.

      It had been years since he’d been back, years since he’d stood on Lost Mesa. Her family’s ranch was as rugged and majestic as ever, offering forty-mile views of sage, mesquite and piñon in every direction. Coyotes still called from the high ridges, reminding him of long, lazy summer afternoons.

      Ancient history.

      Cutting off bittersweet memories, he scanned the hill, hidden behind a line of sage in full bloom. As coyote song echoed from a nearby wash, Kit vanished and returned with a pair of binoculars. Silhouetted in the sunlight, strong and tall, she sought the loping pack.

      Wolfe remembered the summer when she was twelve and he was a know-it-all high school kid on fire to save the world. Things had been black and white then, good versus evil. But the world didn’t get saved and life had taught him that softness was a trap, trust only a crutch. He’d learned how to live without either.

      Watching Kit focus her binoculars, he could sense her fierce determination to protect her ranch, and the dogs lined up beside her seemed almost an extension of that drive. He wondered if so much unspoken communication between dogs and trainer was normal. He also wondered if they had sensed his presence yet. It was only a matter of time before they did.

      As the coyotes howled and snarled their way across a neighboring slope, she followed their progress through her binoculars.

      She would never see him unless he allowed it. Thanks to his skills she could stand a foot away, yet swear she was alone. He’d implanted focused images on missions in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Middle East, distorting the theta patterns of his targets until all they felt was a temporary dizziness. But in that moment of extreme suggestibility, Wolfe could shape and recreate reality—or what appeared to be reality.

      He smiled grimly. Once he’d made a trigger-happy potentate СКАЧАТЬ