by Regan Black
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, twisting the handle to block the view.
Right now, she had a job to do. It was past time to restore calm to the dogs in the kennels. After that, she could focus on restoring herself. Expediting the process, she scooped up the puppies to carry them back to their kennel for what remained of the night.
In the hallway she paused, listening and looking around for Shane and Stumps, relieved they didn’t seem to be in the building. Whenever she bumped into Shane, here or in town, she felt an awkward and uncomfortable secondhand guilt. Until tonight, she’d always managed to maintain her professional footing when he was nearby.
Her arms full of the puppies, and her head a bit woozy, she pushed through the door to the kennels backward. Turning, she found herself face-to-face with Shane—or rather her face to his chest. Did everyone have to be taller than her? When she glanced up, she caught a wisp of concern in his gaze before his eyes iced over with the familiar reserve and disdain.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“My job,” she replied calmly, in deference to the puppies and fussing dogs nearby.
“How are you doing?” Carson asked.
She hid her jolt of surprise behind the wriggling puppies. How had she overlooked her brother standing right behind Shane? She knew they occasionally teamed up for cases, but seeing them together was unexpected. Giving Carson a smile, she walked down the row and settled the puppies into their kennel. She closed the latch and made a note of the time on the clipboard attached to the door.
The instant she finished, Carson pulled her into a big, lingering hug. She eased out of the embrace to get a deep breath and to make sure she wasn’t caught wallowing in front of Shane. “I suppose when they got the call about trouble here, they dragged you out of bed, too?”
“You’re my little sister. I’m allowed to worry.” He looked her up and down, his gaze stopping at her neck. “That looks like a needle mark.”
She nodded, brushing at the sore spot with her fingertips and pulling her ponytail around to hide it.
“Why didn’t the paramedics transport you?” Carson demanded.
“Because I’m fine,” she said. Did they have to do this in front of Shane, of all people? If Carson kept up the big brother routine, she was likely to lose Stumps’s respect, as well. “And I’m an adult,” she reminded him.
“I’d feel better if—”
She held up her hand and cut him off. “Can we take this somewhere else? The dogs really need to get back to normal.”
“Not quite yet,” Carson said, clearly unhappy with the answer. He waved her over as he moved down toward another aisle of kennels.
Her stomach knotted as he tipped his head to the side and pointed. “What can you tell me about this dog, Nico?”
Danica rushed forward, her shoulder bumping Shane in the process. She ignored the sensation, consumed by more bad news tonight. Whatever she’d expected to find, it wasn’t the door to Nico’s kennel hanging open, the kennel empty. “You found it this way? He isn’t anywhere inside?”
“Stumps found the kennel,” Shane replied. He held out his phone to her. “The dog isn’t here.”
She glanced down at the picture of the corgi, frozen in the quiet alert stance in front of Nico’s kennel. “Oh, no.” She pressed her fingers to her lips. “This can’t be happening.”
“Talk to me, Danica,” Carson prompted, pulling out a notebook. “Has this dog been stolen?”
She nodded. “Must have been,” she said. Worry and misery swamped her in waves as she reached for the clipboard log they kept on Nico. “According to this, I took him out to the yard one last time before ten. That was a little earlier than usual because of the puppies.”
“You don’t remember taking him out?” Carson asked.
She closed her eyes tight, searching for the memory. “I remember opening the gate and clipping the lead to his collar.” That had to be today, she thought. She’d had the last two nights off. “I don’t really remember being outs
ide with him.” Yet she must have done it or she wouldn’t have written it on the chart.
It occurred to her that if someone had attacked her to get to Nico, they could have stolen the dog more easily while she was in the yard with him. She mentioned it, but neither Carson nor Shane seemed as convinced.
“What’s his status?” Shane asked.
“Nico is fully trained attack/protection, but not yet assigned to a handler.” She turned to her brother. “Dogs with Nico’s training are kept separate and we limit their interactions. Other than his trainer, only the vet and I have had any contact with him.”
“So he bonds best with the handler,” Carson said.
“Right.” She wrapped her arms around her middle, willing away the tremors. This was a disaster.
As both Shane and Carson took notes, Danica watched Stumps. The adorable corgi was Shane’s partner and companion, but she had worked with him through his initial obedience training and she had written the recommendation for him to become an evidence dog. “You’ve had a long day,” she said to him in the same tone she’d use with her human colleagues. “Can we please take this elsewhere?” she asked again.
She rubbed her hands up and down her chilled arms. Her knees were like jelly and her mind kept fogging over. The whining from nearby dogs normally didn’t bother her but right now it was giving her a pounding headache and she wanted to shield her eyes from the lights overhead.
Carson nodded. “A crime scene unit will be here shortly, but you don’t have to guide them through.”
Great. More disruption for the dogs tonight. She couldn’t argue. Nico needed to be found and recovered immediately, and gathering evidence was the first step. Hopefully the RRPD would put a tracking team on the case.
The three of them, along with Stumps, returned to her office, and she was thankful for the quiet after the noisy kennel. Carson walked in and sat down in a guest chair while Shane leaned against the doorjamb, Stumps at his feet. On weak knees, she sank into the second guest chair rather than circling around to sit behind her desk. Shane’s tall, muscular form blocked the only way out. Inexplicably irritated, she bit back a request to have him move. She’d never been claustrophobic before, but tonight everything was different and it bothered her to think she couldn’t get up and walk out whenever she chose.
“What can you tell us about the attack?”
She hesitated, thinking her brother’s question should have ended with dog. “Oh. You mean what happened to me?”
He nodded, pointing over his shoulder to Shane. “They found you unconscious in the yard with the puppies. Do you remember anything about your attacker?”
“No. Not really.” She closed her eyes again. “I heard a noise. The gate maybe?” She scrubbed at her face. “No. A twig snapped near the gate—that was it.” She was sure that had been while the puppies were out.
“You need a hospital,” Shane stated.
He was studying her so intently, she pressed her hands between her knees to warm them up.
“When did you find her?” Carson twisted around to face Shane.
“About ten forty-five.” He consulted his phone again. “Log says I called dispatch at ten forty-seven.”
“Based on the log on Nico’s cage, she could have been out for up to an hour.”
“Hospital,” Shane murmured.
Restless, she pulled the tie from her hair once more and left it loose. “I just need to get home and sleep it off.”
Carson started to answer and stopped, interrupted by his cell phone. He checked the display and then looked from Danica to Shane and back again. “I need to meet with the crime scene unit. Shane will drive you to the hospital.”
Turning to go, he paused at the doorway, waiting for Shane to move. At first she thought Shane held his ground, simply being a jerk because Carson was a Gage. Then she realized they were talking. About her, she assumed, since Shane’s cool gaze rested on her and they kept their voices to a murmur. Too bad Stumps couldn’t share the details with her.
When Carson was gone, Shane’s judge and jury expression landed on her. “Let’s go.”
“I can’t leave,” she protested. “It’s my overnight.” She could handle it now that she didn’t have to go out in the yard again.
“Hayley is already here to fill in for you.”
Danica rolled her eyes. “That’s silly. I’ll be fine.”
“She’s here,” he repeated. “You need a hospital. Come on.”
When had her adult status been revoked? She didn’t want to owe Hayley Patton any favors. The woman was a great dog trainer and a nice person underneath her passion for gossip and her tendency toward the self-absorbed end of the scale.
Danica scolded herself for being petty. Hayley would be her sister-in-law by now if someone hadn’t murdered Danica’s brother Bo on the night before their wedding. She’d never quite understood what Bo had found so irresistible about Hayley, though they shared a love of animals, working dogs in particular. Maybe they really had fallen in love over the common ground of Bo’s German shepherd breeding business.
From her chair, she matched Shane’s cool gaze. After all, his half sister Demi Colton was the prime suspect in her brother’s murder. The situation was just one more point of strife in the latest generation of the Colton-Gage feud. The Gages were perpetually certain the Coltons put family ties above the law and yet the Gages had made plenty of mistakes through the years. Shane might be the most glaring of those mistakes.
Though she personally refused to put too much stock in the circumstantial evidence found to date, the facts weren’t lining up in Demi’s favor. It was a balancing act for Danica, caught between grieving and knowing the investigation needed time to run its course so the right person ended up in jail.
“Come on,” Shane said.
She didn’t like the way he watched her as she pushed out of the chair. “I’d rather go home. I’ve already told the paramedics I’m fine.”
“Great.” Shane extended a hand, urging her forward. “You can tell the doctors, too.”
She started to shake her head and thought better of it.
On a grumble, Shane closed the distance and seized her elbow. His grip was firm and gentle and sent a burst of tiny sparks up and down her arm. “Do you know what they injected me with?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “Stumps didn’t find anything in the yard, so the attacker must have kept the syringe he used.”
On the way out of the training center, they passed Hayley sitting at the front desk, looking as polished and composed as ever. Even when she dissolved into tears over Bo, Hayley always seemed to be the epitome of beauty and polished grace.
Though they were both twenty-five, Danica always felt like the awkward younger tomboy around Hayley. It never surprised her that Hayley’s long blond hair, blue eyes, sweet smile and generous curves drew so many admiring glances. Beside her, Danica’s figure would best be described as streamlined and easily overlooked. It didn’t bother her. Much.
Even now, she caught Shane’s appraisal of Hayley as they walked out. She couldn’t care, having no claim on where his eyes or interest wandered. The cool fresh air and velvet darkness of the South Dakota night refreshed her immensely.
“Where’s your car?”
“I walked to work today.”
“Can you walk down to the police station?” Shane asked. “If not, it looks like the ambulance is still here.”
A trick question, she decided, following his gaze. The paramedics were leaning against the rig, chatting with another RRPD officer who had responded to Shane’s call. One of them waved to Shane. “If I walk it, will you drive me home rather than take me to the hospital?”
“No,” he replied.
She’d rather not continue the conversation, and being outside was helping. For a time there was only the muted sound of the corgi’s toenail
s on the sidewalk as he trotted beside Shane. Neither her shoes nor his made any noise.
“You were drugged,” Shane pointed out. “We shouldn’t take any chances.”
His insistence on helping confused her. “Why do you even care?” She was a Gage. He was a Colton. On top of that, her grandfather, a decorated officer in the RRPD, had railroaded an investigation and sent Shane to prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
His hand tensed on her arm. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “When I looked over that fence and saw you, I wanted to keep right on going.”
She appreciated the honesty, though it was hardly comforting. In Red Ridge, Shane was as well-known for his stark candor as he was for surviving the wrongful conviction and carving out a new career with his spunky K9 partner.
At last they reached his dove-gray SUV parked at the curb in front of the police station. The parking lights flashed as he pressed a button on the key fob and opened the passenger door for her.
“What were you doing out here anyway?” she asked when he had Stumps settled in the back seat.
“We were walking off a long drive from the other side of the county,” he said. He took advantage of the complete lack of traffic and pulled a U-turn to go to the hospital. “Stumps likes to walk out this way every chance he gets.”
“He probably still thinks of the training center as his territory,” she said, thinking out loud. “He wouldn’t be the first.” She couldn’t help wondering about Nico. How had a stranger gotten him out of the training center without incident?
“Could be,” Shane allowed.
The street seemed to do a slow spin around her head. She used the headrest as an anchor, distantly thinking a medical evaluation might not be a bad idea. “Whoever took Nico drugged him, too,” she said under her breath, her eyelids growing heavy. “No way he’d let a stranger lead him away.”
She was thinking about what that might mean for recovering him swiftly as a blanket of blissful black enveloped her once more.
CHAPTER 3
Her voice was so faint Shane leaned as far across the center console as he dared to hear her, hoping Danica was recalling something helpful. “What would they use to drug him?”