Rival Forces

by D. D. Ayres

  She swallowed a fair amount of crow before she spoke. “Can I talk to you?”

  “Sure.” He folded his arms across his chest and stood back on his legs.

  Lily, who’d coming running at the sound of her handler’s voice, shot through the door and launched herself at him, yipping in a delirious frenzy to see him. As if she, too, felt she had been mistreated.

  Yardley’s gaze flitted away from the toller, feeling even more rotten. When a dog thought you were wrong, you were wrong! “We need to clear the air.”

  He studied her for a second. “Shoot.”

  Her gaze flicked back to him, emotion making her eyes feel hot. “About earlier. I don’t want you to get—have the wrong impression.”

  “Which would be?” A slight curve of amusement appeared in his left cheek.

  “That I—that we.” She looked away briefly, seeking her inner bitch. When she located it, she looked up again. “It’s been a shitty couple of months. I’ve been feeling a little sorry for myself today. You happened to be in the way.”

  “Of?” Damn him. He was going to make her say it.

  “Of my temper. My anger-management skills are rusty. You caught me at a low point.”

  “Just curious. Was the low point when you poked me or kissed me, or left me out in the cold just now?”

  She wondered if he was aware that he was rubbing his chest with a hand. Mesmerized by that motion, she could almost feel again the dense heat of his skin under her own fingers. Dear Lord! Why had she ever gotten so close to him? Was her conscience going to punish her with every distracting detail until she could no longer even glance at him without the heat of embarrassment? No, not embarrassment. This scalding heat was desire. Every sexy detail of the man was a flashpoint of hunger for something out of reach.

  What about David?

  She stiffened, remembering the phone waiting for her inside. She backed up a step. “I owe you an apology. I’m not very good at them.”

  The sensual curve of his smile arched into being. “At least you’re honest. A real apology would have been better. But I’ll take it, since we both know what that was really about.”

  What was it really about? She wished she knew.

  She looked away. “I guess you think I’m a bitch.”

  He caught the curve of her shoulder in his palm as she tried to turn away and rotated her back to face him. His expression was no longer neutral. It was equal parts lust and amazement.

  “I would never call you a bitch, or any other ugly word. Complicated. Suspicious. Gorgeous. Distrustful. Sexy as hell with a mouth made for sin. You’re all those things.”

  She turned away, not wanting him to be nice because she made her feel like the earth was shifting beneath her feet and that, maybe, she should grab on to him to steady herself. Yeah, that sounded like a fine idea. And a scary one.

  She really couldn’t handle that right now.

  But he wasn’t ready to let her go, and slid between her and the door in a move a man his size shouldn’t have been able to make so fluidly.

  “Law sent me to find out what you think happened to a guy you care about. I had my doubts. But now you’ve got the feds watching you. Something big is going on. I’m not going anywhere until I know you’re safe.”

  “Promise?” Damn, the question slipped out of her.

  He looked at her a long time, giving away nothing. “You want honesty, Yard? I don’t know what’s going on between us. Hell, yes I do. But you don’t need to worry. I didn’t come here to mess with your life. Nothing’s going to happen you don’t want to happen.”

  Something struggled inside her, something old she’d buried so deep she’d forgotten it was there. “What if?”

  He shook his head. “This isn’t going down like that. You need to take care of some old business. I need to wrap my head around some things, too. We tried living on emotion once before. It nearly ruined both of us.” He was backing away as he spoke, as if their bodies shouldn’t occupy nearby spaces.

  She felt it, too, the dangerous undertow stronger than reason. She dug her nails into her palms, afraid to say anything more. Because she knew where they’d end up.

  He moved away first, toward the bunkhouse, but then swung back with the note held high in his hand. “What the hell is a spark plug dispenser doing in the Ladies?”

  “It’s what the trainers call the tampon dispenser.”

  Kye shook his head before sending another serious assessing glance her way. She felt him weighing and cataloging everything about her, as if she were a map he was only going to get one chance to memorize. “Are you okay?”

  “As always.”

  He stared a little longer, then turned away.

  Yardley stared after him. He moved with an easy loose-hipped stride that was both liquid-smooth and ultra-masculine. It felt like a mistake, letting him go. But what else could she do?

  She rushed back into the house and into the kitchen and snatched up her phone. It took what seemed forever to power on. And then she was staring at the main screen.

  NO MESSAGES.

  She blinked. Pushed the MESSAGE button again. Blank.

  A chill splashed through her. A space hollowed out in her middle. The air suddenly seemed too thin.

  She’d been so sure, so positively certain she would be the person David contacted when he got the chance.

  She started typing a message on her phone but then paused. Just because she and the FBI thought she would be David’s primary contact didn’t mean that was true. Whatever he was into had nothing directly to do with her. The last she’d heard, he was overseas. Her mistake to think he’d turned to her in his time of need?

  She put the phone down. Only time would tell.

  CHAPTER NINE

  An hour after she had plunked herself down before her computer to pay some bills and calculate expected income for the coming year, Yardley heard the sound of Kye’s SUV come to life. She went to the window and wondered why he was driving away without a word. When he had swung the vehicle around in an arc, she could see that Lily was in her crate in the backseat.

  She sprinted for the door but by the time she got it open, the SUV had moved through the gates—when had he reopened them?—and onto the road. Her stomach lurched. He’d said he’d needed time to think. But he’d also promised he wouldn’t leave her. Where was he going?

  She gazed up at the late-afternoon sky, trying hard not to feel any way about what had just occurred, but failing miserably. He had probably had time to realize she wasn’t treating him very well. Maybe he’d decided he’d had enough and just left. But that didn’t seem like Kye. He was the most direct and honest person she’d ever known. He’d have marched in here and said Screw you to her face before he left.

  Her gaze refocused. Thick gray clouds with faint purplish undersides rimmed the northern horizon. The turn in the weather due by nightfall was on its way in.

  Yardley moved back into the house. Oleg was curled up inside his crate dozing, even though the door stood open. No music, no TV, no other sounds. Her life was back to normal. She was alone. She felt … empty.

  The day was quickly getting away from her. Not that it mattered. As New Year’s Days went, this one wasn’t worth holding on to. In fact, the sight of the spreadsheet she’d been sitting in front of made her shake her head. She ran an empire, a small one. But she ran it all alone, which meant every decision was hers, from what feed to buy to which breeder to buy from, how best to feed and house their handlers, and what cleaning products were safe. Exhausting. Her life nibbled away at by a thousand tiny pecks.

  She turned from her computer. She didn’t feel like being productive anymore. She counted off the reasons. They were good reasons, too. Too much champagne the night before. Too many unpleasant surprises, starting with the obscene Christmas card.

  The raw edginess of earlier in the day had given way to a dragging tiredness that felt like being harnessed to a tractor tire. But absolutely none of that had anything directly
to do with the man who’d driven away.

  And yet, he was all she could think about. When, if, Kye came back, she’d be nicer, more available. He said they needed to talk. They’d talk.

  She rubbed her forehead, wondering why even eating felt like too much of a burden. What she wanted most at the moment was for this lousy holiday season to be over with. Once she was back to work, surrounded by the men and woman who looked to her for every major decision, she wouldn’t have time to think about anything else. She excelled at solving others’ problems. She just stank at handling her own.

  She wandered into her bedroom and slipped into bed without really thinking about it. She’d take a nap. Just a nap.

  Oleg followed her in and curled up by the door, joining his handler in sleep.

  * * *

  Wind shoved the house, hard. The scraping sounds of things being rearranged beyond the walls of the house woke her as the room filled briefly with brilliant jagged light.

  Yardley sat up, completely disoriented by the dimness. She’d only meant to sleep half an hour. The locomotive sounds of wind traveling in a hard straight-line whoosh rattled the windows of the house a second time. But that wasn’t the sound that riveted her. It was the crying shriek of something wooden being pried loose.

  She bolted to her feet, fumbling for the light switch of her bedside lamp. The glare was harsh, like being caught in headlights. Blinking against it, she saw that Oleg was already at the open door, his gaze fixed on something beyond.

  A third burst of wind struck so hard, Yardley seemed to feel the assault through the walls. The sounds of banging joined the shrieking metal and crying wood. It sent Oleg darting into the living room barking furiously.

  Heart lurching with the unexpected injection of adrenaline, Yardley reached for the flashlight she kept by the bed and followed the wolfdog.

  As she entered the living room a lightning burst so blue-white it outshone the yellowish interior light stabbed her eyes. In the crack of thunder that followed, she recognized the source of the banging. It was the loose screen on a living room front window. She’d been meaning to fix it, along with half a dozen other things, for weeks.

  Propelled by the next gust, the edge of the frame struck the glass sharply, moving that repair job to the top of her To-Do list.

  As the crackle-slam of thunder rolled through the house, she rushed back into her bedroom. She pushed her feet into her boots, not bothering to tie them, and scooped up a jacket from a chair. As she hurried back through the rooms to the kitchen, she pushed her arms into the sleeves and zipped up. The temperature had dropped while she was asleep. The house felt cooler, and more empty than before. Yardley opened a drawer and grabbed a hammer and a screwdriver, then headed toward the front door.

  Oleg crouched down with gaze fixed on the second of the three windows that fronted the porch. As she reached for the locks, he charged forward, trying to beat her out of the door.

  Yardley shook her head. “Oleg. Zustan!” The K-9 froze and swiveled his head her way. He didn’t look the least bit happy about the command to stay. His gray fur twitched with nervous energy, as if he thought he could solve the problem if allowed out. “Stand down, guy. This is a job for opposable thumbs.”

  A few thick cold raindrops thudded on the porch planking as she opened the door. Once outside, she saw the screen in the light of the porch bulb. Tethered by one hinge, it bounced and banged against the glass like an angry kite trying to free itself from a tree. Easy enough to fix. She shut the door behind herself.

  Tucking her flashlight away, she grabbed the screen’s frame in one hand and reached into her pocket for the flathead screwdriver to pry the hinge loose. No time for niceties like trying to unscrew it. Despite the efforts of the wind to thwart her, she pried the screw out of the wood without much damage that she could tell. Smiling in triumph, she turned toward the front door.

  A man stood beneath the porch light. In the seconds it took for his identity to register, he spoke.

  “I’ve been watching and waiting for you all day. First that fellow with a dog showed up. Then the feds. But they’re all gone.”

  Officer Vance Stokes, dressed as a civilian, had mounted the porch steps and stood a few feet away, just out of the rain. “Of course, I never thought it would be this easy to separate you from your dog. But then the wind came up and the screen started banging. And here we are. All alone.”

  Too late she realized that Oleg had been far too agitated over the sounds of mere inanimate objects in a storm. He’d known or suspected someone else was out here in the gloom of the winter evening. An ugly sensation moved through her stomach as fat drops of rain struck her face. Still, this was her property. “Officer Stokes. Why are you here?”

  “Did you get my holiday card?”

  She didn’t answer, thinking now for the first time since she’d opened it of the red envelope with the obscene Photoshopped picture.

  “Guess I forgot to sign my name.”

  Yardley clamped down on the first insulting words that came to mind. No need to antagonize a man who was already angry. It didn’t show on his face. He was a cop. His feelings wouldn’t show until he was ready for them to.

  “What do you want?”

  “You sound more receptive to my requests today. Good to know.” Lightning flickered around them, throwing sharp angles of contrasting light and shadow over his features as if he were a character in a horror movie. Only this was very real. “I need you to write my K-9 sergeant and apologize for not giving me a dog.”

  Yardley shook her head, holding the screen in both hands like a shield. “Our decisions are final. You show no aptitude for working a dog.”

  Stokes canted his head to one side. “You’re not listening. I’m not asking, I’m telling you how it’s going to be. I need this position. I’m not working vice and I’m sure as hell not going back to patrol. So you just write the letter and give me a dog and we’re even.”

  He had taken a few steps toward her when the curtains in the window beside her collapsed from the inside and Oleg appeared in the window, lips drawn back from his feet as he furiously tried to scratch his way through the glass.

  Stokes banged the glass with a fist and laughed as Oleg’s fury redoubled. “How you doing, fella? That’s right. Me and your bitch handler are gonna have some good times together.”

  Yardley’s left foot began to jiggle. This wasn’t the attitude of a sane man. It was way too reckless for an officer on the job. Even bad cops knew they could push their outlaw tendencies only so far. The appearance of respectability was essential.

  “Your department’s let you go.”

  Stokes’s attention snapped back to her. “That’s why I need the letter. I need my job and my position as a K-9 officer back.”

  She couldn’t get him either of those things, even if she wanted to. But she knew better than to further anger him. “You’re not the only officer who’s been turned down by the kennel.” Keep it neutral, she thought. Don’t acknowledge his anger with your own. “There’s at least one person a year who doesn’t—isn’t compatible with our program.”

  “Bullshit.” His neutral expression slipped. Anger glinted in reflected flashes of lightning. “I watched you. You get your jollies out of putting grown men through their paces, making them watch you. Eager to follow you around like lapdogs in case you give one of them a chance to cover you.”

  Yardley stopped listening. She couldn’t afford to take the trip he was about to give her into the inner workings of his mind. She got it. He was going to attack her. It was a struggle she needed to win. That’s all she needed to know.

  She was out of practice. Hadn’t taken a self-defense course in a while. She wasn’t by nature a fighter. Even as a child she was always struck before she hit back. But she always hit back harder, longer, stronger until her opponent cried for mercy. Reservation life wasn’t for the faint of heart.

  She didn’t realize she was backing up until she noticed he was coming toward her
. “—think you’re hot shit. What you need is for a man to show you who’s in charge. What you need is a good fucking over.”

  She hesitated too long. His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist just as she was about to swing the two-by-four-foot screen at him. She cried out as he twisted her wrist painfully and her fingers lost their grip. Her legs hit the banister just below butt level. He tried to jerk her forward but she used the screwdriver in her free hand and stabbed at his wrist holding her hostage. He cried out, freeing her. And then she was falling, off the edge of the porch.

  The sky opened up in that moment. As she hit the ground painfully, weight on one shoulder while the bricks of the flower bed border dug into her back and scraped one elbow, rain like a fire hose sprayed down on her. Scrabbling like a turtle, she tried to right herself.

  Stokes got there before she gained her feet.

  He didn’t say a word, just grabbed her from behind and flipped her onto her back. And then he dropped his full weight on her as she sprawled in the grass.

  Yardley worked with strong muscular animals, still donned a bite suit on occasion, and knew how to leverage the bite of ninety-plus pounds of canine fury to stay on her feet. But she hadn’t been in a real fight since she could vote. Now she was in the fight of her life.

  He was tugging at her cargoes. He was bent on rape. That. Was. Not. Going. To. Happen.

  She was so angry, so angry. She reached into her pocket, looking for the hammer she’d brought outside. She found it.

  She was remembering things now. Go for the soft parts. Neck, crotch, eyes. Painful and messy but effective.

  Stokes had forgotten about her as an adversary. He was in full rape mode. His mouth was all over her, her neck, a breast he’d freed. She was drowning from the rain pouring into her nostrils as she lay pinned to the ground. She raised the hammer very slowly, twisting it so that the claws would strike. Something soft. Something vulnerable. More vulnerable than she was.

  She swung but didn’t connect. He was flying backward. Propelled by what seemed to be superhuman forces—a mini tornado? Then she heard voices, two men shouting obscenities as they struggled. Freed, she levered forward into a sitting position. That’s when she saw two men backlit by a vehicle’s brights. Kye McGarren had Vance Stokes in a head lock on his knees.