Operation Midnight

by Justine Davis

  He was amazed that the dog wasn’t going berserk, with all these hostile strangers approaching from all directions. Yet the dog seemed to understand that their mission was here, on the back side, in these few feet between the back of the cabin and the base of the bluff.

  At one time it had been the perfect protection, a near-vertical, rocky, nearly impossible drop. But over the years parts of it had crumbled, slipping down and accumulating into a slightly milder slope at the bottom. As a result, the bottom section was easier to traverse. But it was also loose, and thus more treacherous underfoot. And for his purposes, also conveniently noisy; it was hard to travel more than a few yards without knocking something loose that rattled down the slope.

  Cutter was trotting along the base of that toed-out slope, his head up, tail out straight, looking for all the world like a dog on a mission. Quinn watched as he himself worked his way slowly west.

  Cutter stopped suddenly.

  The slightest of breezes cooled his skin, and Quinn wondered what scents it had brought the alert animal. The dog took several steps up the crumbling slope, then stopped staring upward, stock-still. For the briefest second the dog’s ears swiveled back, and Quinn guessed he was making sure the somewhat-slow-on-the-uptake human was properly reading his signals.

  “I got you, boy,” Quinn whispered as he edged quietly nearer. He wasn’t sure just how keen the dog’s hearing was, hadn’t really said it expecting the dog to hear, but the ears swiveled back. And all the while his nose was working, his sides going in and out like a bellows, searching, sorting.

  It wasn’t the spot he’d expected. This was in plain view of the cabin, once they came over the edge.

  “Wish you could tell me how many,” he said as he got to the dog’s position.

  The dog’s head moved back and forth, describing a short arc that, up top, would include a distance of perhaps ten feet. Oddly, it was similar to the hand signal they used to indicate the danger zone, the spread of the enemy, how much ground they needed to focus on. If it was one of his men, the movement would indicate a small team, two, maybe three.

  But it wasn’t. It was Cutter. A dog. But still, it seemed—

  And it also seems you’re going crazy, he told himself sternly. Trust the dog’s nose and ears, but don’t go making him any more than just a dog.

  “Seven down.”

  Teague’s voice came through the radio earwig he’d put in his ear the moment he’d stepped outside; no sense in letting the enemy overhear your every move, not to mention shouting your own position.

  “Copy,” he said quietly, knowing the hypersensitive mic would pick it up. Not as good as Cutter’s ears, but close.

  “In back?” Liam asked.

  “Affirmative. Two, maybe three.”

  And that was based on the sound, or lack of, he told himself. Not a chance movement by a dog. A very, very smart dog, but still just a dog nevertheless.

  “Copy.”

  There was no suggestion one of them come to help, nor did he expect—or want—it. The day he couldn’t deal with a mere two or three hostiles, he should hang it up.

  The day you can’t handle a woman and a dog…

  Teague’s joke flashed through his head. He pushed the thought away, but not before he wondered if that day had come.

  Cutter moved, three steps farther up the hill, every line of his body taut as he stared upward, at the lip of the bluff. Again Quinn thought that this wasn’t the spot he would have chosen, were he the attacker. If it were him, he’d take the downward slope on the other side of the outcropping just ahead, because it offered a small amount of visual shelter from anyone watching from the cabin. But he also would have waited for nightfall. So did that mean they weren’t as good as he was giving them credit for, or that they were impatient?

  His mouth twisted. Maybe there were enough of them they weren’t worried about stealth, which also meant they had that most dangerous of outlooks, that of “acceptable losses.”

  Or maybe he should quit trusting a dog quite so much, he thought wryly.

  But Cutter had never let them down. Since he’d been here, he’d been tireless, and never given false warning. There was always some cause, if not armed men like today, then a hungry coyote or a venomous snake, or some other threat. He knew they all had come to trust the animal’s sharper senses, that was only logical. It was interpreting his signals that was tricky. He was, after all, only a dog. Even if Hayley thought he might be a magical one.

  He felt a split-second flash of longing, sadness for having lost the ability for whimsical thinking so very long ago. He quashed it with the ease of long years of practice; but Hayley’s image remained. He should be thinking about the operation, the job at hand, and the goal that was so imperative. Hayley was secondary, he told himself. If it came to a choice between the two, his job was to keep Vicente safe and alive. Not Hayley.

  Just formulating the thought made him recoil. And for the first time he admitted to himself how much she’d gotten to him. How much he admired her courage, never giving up in what had to be a terrifying situation for her, never backing down from him, when he’d tried so hard to intimidate her. And her smarts; after the initial shock, she’d never stopped thinking, planning, but she’d also never lost sight of reality. When the impossibility of escape had sunk in, she’d wisely abandoned the idea, and seemingly resigned herself to staying put. But still, she’d never stopped pushing, gnawing at him, poking him for answers he wouldn’t give.

  Cutter was still frozen, staring upward. Quinn studied the striking black-and-brown dog for a moment longer, thinking of another of Hayley’s qualities: loyalty. She’d literally charged at armed men to retrieve this wayward pup. He was sure she saw nothing strange in that.

  I’m responsible for him. He trusts me to take care of him. It’s part of the deal.

  Her words came back to him, her voice ringing in his head as if she were standing right here. That he remembered what she’d said, her voice, and her face so clearly, down to the last detail of how she’d raised her eyebrows in emphasis of what she thought the self-evidence of her declaration, rattled him. He was a trained observer, used to cataloging every detail that might be helpful, so it wasn’t that.

  It was that in her case, those details caused a ridiculous yet undeniable reaction in him.

  And made him an idiot, he thought sharply, standing here mooning around when you’ve got an armed team about to descend. He had to decide, and now. This faction of the small force could crest the bluff at any moment.

  Cutter was still intently focused upward in the same spot. He’d never wavered since that small breeze had brought him whatever scent had convinced him. Animals could triangulate much better than humans, he knew, with their moveable ears. But did that mean he should go against his own logic and training, which told him the spot to watch was on the other side of that outcropping?

  He never was sure what made him decide. He only knew that when he moved, he was heading for that outcropping not to wait for an attack, but to use it for cover. If it could shelter men coming down the bluff, it could also hide him from men coming down somewhere else.

  Like the spot Cutter insisted on.

  For an instant the dog seemed ready to protest.

  “It’s all right, boy. I believe you,” he whispered as he moved past the animal. “That’s where they are. We’ll turn it on them. Use the cover they should have used.”

  As if he’d understood every word, Cutter abandoned his post and followed. Trotting ahead until he was just past the outcropping, the dog angled up slightly and, amazingly, stopped in exactly the spot Quinn had chosen. He spun back and waited expectantly, now watching Quinn as intently as he had the top of the bluff.

  Quinn shook his head wonderingly as he joined the dog. And when he turned and looked back, it suddenly hit him. From here, the profile of the slope was much clearer. And what it told him was worth volumes.

  In the spot Cutter had warned him they were approaching, the slo
pe was much gentler. More of the bluff had crumbled, making a wider toe, stretching up higher, enabling someone to come down at perhaps a forty-five-degree angle most of the way instead of sixty or seventy.

  They’d chosen not the most covert way, the way most likely to guarantee surprise. They’d chosen the easiest way. Or at the least, the fastest way. And the choice told him what he needed to know.

  He crouched out of sight behind the rocks, in a curved space hollowed out by the wind over eons of time. It undercut the slope above, and eventually would crumble like the rest, but for now it was solid and holding.

  Cutter pressed up against him, refocused upward now.

  “You’re something, you know that, dog?” he whispered.

  The animal’s dark eyes fastened on him for a moment, and just for a moment something seemed to stir there, some quick and ethereal connection between man and beast. And then Quinn nearly gaped as the dog’s expressive face relaxed into what could only be described as a grin. A doggie grin, to be sure, but that didn’t lessen the impact.

  Quinn laughed inwardly at himself. He’d never been prone to fantasy. The gene, if he’d ever had it, had been knocked out of him at age ten by a fierce, bloody, evil reality, and it had never recovered.

  But then, he’d never been prone to obsessing about a woman he barely knew, and that under the worst circumstances, either. For that matter, he’d never been prone to obsessing about any woman, even under the best circumstances. He—

  Cutter nipped his hand.

  He nearly jumped, and looked down at the dog, who was back focused upward. As if the nip had been a sharp reminder to pay attention.

  One he’d needed, Quinn admitted ruefully. But how the hell had the dog known—

  They were here. He heard the string of sounds as a small, dislodged rock tumbled down the slope. It was an ordinary sound, one you might not even connect to a presence, or even hear if you were inside the cabin. But Quinn knew what it meant.

  “You’d better get back now,” he told Cutter. “Go to Hayley.”

  The dog glanced at the cabin, as if he’d understood perfectly. But he never budged.

  “Cutter, go. Find Hayley.”

  A low whine issued from the dog’s throat, but still he didn’t move. And then a rope unraveled down the bluff and they were out of time. Hayley was going to hate him if anything happened to that dog. He wasn’t sure he wouldn’t hate himself. Crazy how an animal and a stubborn, nervy woman had worked their way into being so damned important so damned fast.

  With an effort larger than he’d been used to making for a long time, he made himself focus before he completely lost control of the situation. Still in the shelter of the rocky outcrop, he watched their approach.

  The rope had large knots every few feet, so these were no experts. Quinn knew his best chance would be when they had both hands on the rope. Which they would, unless they had harnesses that would allow them to come down one-handed, but if they had those, there wouldn’t be knots.

  One man came over. His hesitation at the top told Quinn he was right about their unfamiliarity with the process. They may have found them, but they hadn’t prepared in advance for the mission. Not the way he would have or Charlie would have. If it was Charlie, they’d have an elevator built by now.

  He hoped he lived to thank their logistical genius once more for thinking of everything.

  He hoped he lived to keep Vicente alive.

  He hoped he lived to keep Hayley safe.

  He wondered when he’d let the word hope back into his vocabulary.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The shotgun felt familiar in her hands. It was a moment before she realized why her fingers were so tight around it, why her eyes were stinging. The feel of it brought her father so close, the memory of him hovering over her, directing her on how to track the hurtling piece of clay, when to fire, what she’d done wrong when she missed, or right when she hit.

  She felt the urge to retreat, to go hide in that protected room now. She resisted it. Quinn was putting himself in mortal danger, putting himself between them and those dangerous men. It might well be his job, but that didn’t negate the magnitude of what he was doing. So how could she simply retreat, when she was armed with a weapon she knew how to use and that was effective in a last-ditch fight, if it came to that?

  She couldn’t. She’d had more than enough of just sitting, waiting. She’d run through her store of patience and standing by. Instead she edged over to the small window Quinn had looked through before opening the back door. Startled, she jerked back, then looked again.

  The window wasn’t just glass, it was some sort of lens, like a wide angle or a fish eye, giving a much more expansive view of the area than you’d expect from such a small opening. She could see everything behind the cabin, from left to right, from the ground to a strip of sky above the top of the bluff. Whoever had outfitted this place, probably the Charlie she kept hearing about, was indeed the genius they proclaimed.

  She spotted Cutter quickly, standing at the base of the bluff just before an odd vertical ridge of rock, staring upward. Quinn, for all his size, was harder to pick out in the slightly distorted image, because of the way his tan clothes blended against the matching backdrop and the fact that he was on just the other side of that vertical ridge.

  Cutter moved then, over to where Quinn was, whether at a command or not she couldn’t tell. She had little doubt the dog would follow a command from Quinn; he’d been astonishingly receptive to the man’s every wish since he’d laid eyes on him. She didn’t understand it. The dog was friendly enough with anyone he didn’t take an instinctive dislike to, but he had, until now, obeyed only her. He might, occasionally, do something someone else asked, but it was usually something he wanted to do himself anyway. He’d fetch for Mrs. Peters’s nephew for as long as the boy could throw, but he wouldn’t do tricks for him.

  But he would for Quinn. Somehow she was sure of that. The dog had just about taken out an ad declaring his devotion. And he had that annoying way of looking at her expectantly, as if wondering why she wasn’t following suit, when it was so clear to him this was how it should be.

  She shook her head sharply, telling herself to stop imagining a dog was thinking more than any dog thought, and pay attention. In the same moment, startling her, Cutter reached out and nipped at Quinn’s hand.

  Quinn jumped as if startled out a reverie. Which seemed impossible; the man never lost focus, any more than the dog did. He—

  A movement from the top of the bluff interrupted her thought. Quinn’s instincts had obviously been right. Her hands tightened around the shotgun. She resisted the urge to double-check the load; she knew the string of shells were there, she’d put them in herself. And she had another full load of shells in each pocket of the vest Quinn had given her to wear. If she needed more than that, she was going to die anyway.

  “You should come back to the safe room.”

  Vicente’s voice came from a few feet behind her. “Not yet,” she said, not turning her face away from the slightly distorted view.

  “But if they get past him—”

  “I don’t think they will.”

  “You have great faith.”

  She glanced at the man, realizing what he said was, at least in part, true. “In that, yes.”

  “But you do not trust him in other ways. In the ways a woman must trust her man.”

  Her man? Not likely. “Quinn,” she said flatly, “is no woman’s man.”

  “Not yet.”

  Vicente said it in a tone tinged with amusement and an odd sort of satisfaction. In a tone that irked her. The man seemed to realize it, because he smiled, a smile that matched the irritatingly amused voice.

  “A woman needs a good man.”

  She turned her head to stare him down. “And what,” she said, her voice as cool as she could make it, “makes you think he is one?”

  “If you cannot tell that, then you are not as clever as I think you are. Perh
aps not even as clever as you think you are.”

  A quick retort leaped to her lips, but a movement caught by the corner of her eye drew her sharply back to the window.

  They were coming over the cliff.

  In that instant, the last of her mind’s stubborn resistance to this whole idea, the last of her normalcy bias, the idea that what was happening wasn’t really happening, and that if she just waited, things would get back to normal, vanished.

  It was happening. She was in a remote cabin with armed men attacking.

  Knotted ropes unrolled down the bluff.

  They were attacking now.

  And she realized with a disgust aimed solely at herself that she’d been dwelling on the wrong questions all along. She shouldn’t have been focused on who Quinn and his men were, or who the oncoming force was. She should have been pushing to learn who this man looking at her now was, because she realized now, too late, that that answer would hold all the others.

  “This is my fault,” he said, his tone regretful now. “But I assure you, I was attempting to do the right thing, the good thing.”

  It was too late to speculate what that would be, there was only time now to react, to deal with the threat. And hope she was alive to unravel the truth afterward.

  To hope that Quinn was alive, to find out the truth of who he was.

  It was the last esoteric thought she had time for. A third rope followed the first two. Men came over the edge, heading down quickly, if without much grace. They were armed, heavily, weapons in holsters and shoved into belts and larger ones slung over their shoulders. Again her grip on the shotgun tightened and she wondered if she’d lost her touch, if she’d even be able to get off two or three shots as quickly as she used to.

  Not to mention that while hitting a flying clay pigeon might be trickier than a man right in front of you, the mental aspect was something else again. Although she guessed the intellectual trappings would vanish when that man was coming at you with every intent to kill.

  She heard two shots.