Primal Force (15 page)

Law frowned. “What's up, Sam?”

Sam looked up at Alpha and then back at the door. As she did so, he moved to go past her. Sam stood her ground, lowered her head, and braced her front legs. Alpha should not pass.

Instantly alert, Law reached with his left hand to release the safety holding his gun in his holster.

“Is something wrong?”

Law looked back. Jori had exited the car and stood a few yards away.

“Get back in the car. Now.”

He didn't bother to see if his order was obeyed. With his right hand, he unlocked and pushed open the front door.

“Sam. Search.”

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Sam moved reluctantly through the door. She wanted to stay beside her Alpha and protect him. Yet this was part of their routine. She did a perimeter search each time they entered this place. However, this time was different. Something had changed. She smelled it. Perhaps he did, too.

She paused, the fur on her back twitching with tension as she lifted her nose and then lowered her head. Something faint. Very
very
faint. But real.

She moved around the room beginning on the right as she went from point to point, window to window, sniffing, studying just as she had practiced for months at Warriors Wolf Pack. All the smells here were ones she'd come to know during the past three weeks. The odors of varnish and aging wood. Fainter still were the aromas of months of cooking, the oil her Alpha used to clean his weapons, the sweet tang of soap, sharp notes of cleanser, old sneakers, ashes, and a thousand other now familiar smells of her new home. She even knew there was a very stale potato chip under the sofa where she couldn't reach it. She'd tried often enough.

Once every few feet, she stopped and sniffed the air, looking for a trace of that
other
. She licked her nose several times, an instinctive action that would improve her ability to capture scent particles. Finally, she caught it. The scent that had made her pause at the entry. She had smelled it only once before, a few days ago.

She did a quick look back at Alpha. He remained in the doorway. Usually, he walked close behind her when she did the search, holding her leash. But this time he had released her. Even from a distance she could smell the rise of pheromones sliding off him. He must smell it, too. The ugly scent. Anxiety rippled over her back in response.

“Sam. Search.” Alpha's voice was high and urgent this time.

Shivering in anticipation, she turned back to the scent stream in the air, swinging her head from side to side until she had pinpointed the source. It came from the plank-board kitchen table at the far end of the room.

She hurried over and sniffed. Yes. This was it. She hoovered the chair seat and then the laptop lying closed on the surface. The smell of the man from the Alpha's office filled her scent glands. A harder shiver rocked through her. Alpha did not like him. She did not like him, either. He had tried to take something from her.

She sniffed again at the laptop and then sat, looking back over her shoulder at Alpha. He would know what to do.

*   *   *

Law was watching Sam but he was seeing Scud. His thousand-yard stare was extending over miles and ocean and sand, and backward in time.

The smell of gunfire pricked in his nostrils. The room was flickering, brightening to reveal desert terrain.

As usual, Scud was itching to go ahead on Law's order at the first sign of trouble. He barked an order to keep his partner under control. Scud was a stubborn son of a bitch. Just like him. He wanted this takedown so bad he could taste it. But today was a reconnaissance operation. No advance warning to troops.

Law's heart jackhammered in anticipation. World's fucking greatest K-9 team! Fearless. Ferocious. Born fighters.

But there was danger here. No names. No faces. And no backup. CID didn't trust even other soldiers on a mission like this.

They would need to ratchet it down. Keep things quiet until everything was in place.

“Battise?”

Jori's voice sent Law's head swiveling toward her. She hadn't moved from the spot he'd last seen her.

“Are you okay?” Her expression was neutral but her eyes were a little too wide. She back-stepped when he turned his stone-cold warrior expression on her.

Law watched her with hard eyes, riding the adrenaline surge of his breath moving in and out as reality settled back in around him. Not desert. Mountain. Home. But the danger was real. Sam was real. Sam had alerted to the presense of another, something she'd never done before during their daily perimeter checks.

“Don't move again until I tell you to. Got that?” The words were said quietly but with such force he felt them in his chest.

He waited until she nodded. Her eyes were too wide and her mouth was slack. Not a good way to start their time together. But he had a job to do. He turned and walked inside.

The main room consisted of a living area with a sofa, TV, and fireplace. His eyes moved systematically left to right as he did a perimeter check of the room. His left hand remained on the handle of his weapon. Above was a loft open to the floor below. Law wasted no time searching there. His focus went to Sam, who still sat beside the table. She wasn't agitated or looking around in expectation of spying an invader, as even a family pet would do if it suspected a stranger was nearby. Sam's action was clear. The intruder had had one destination. Law went to the table.

The only thing there was his laptop. Beyond the dining area, sliding doors led onto a back deck. Could someone have gotten in that way? He checked. A cutoff broom handle lay in the door's track to prevent it from opening even if unlocked.

Satisfied that the intruder was gone, Law walked back toward the front door. As he did so, he refocused his attention on Jori. He'd left her standing alone without explanation. He needed to do something about that.

She stood on the gravel drive where he'd left her. He took a careful breath, taking in the details of her for the first time. She wore a blue turtleneck sweater, puffy vest, leggings, and knee-high boots. The briefest sketch of a smile widened his mouth. The boots matched! Then he saw her face. It was pale and pinched. She was afraid. Of him? It hit him like a punch in the gut.

He stepped onto the porch. “Someone's been here.”

“Okay.” She didn't move, but he saw her gaze shift and fasten on his left hand.

He looked down at the Sig Sauer in his hand. When had he pulled his weapon? It was an automatic response to a perceived threat. He holstered it and set the safety. He needed to distract her, fast, before she ran screaming for her life.

“You can come inside.” He made an elaborate gesture of welcome with his hand. “I won't bite. At least not without an invitation.”

Jori found she couldn't return his smile. It didn't reach his eyes. The shaggy wounded veteran who had come to Warriors Wolf Pack three weeks earlier had been a very bitter, angry man. Now something had shifted that anger into purpose. She could hear it in his voice. See it in the gleam in his eyes. She wasn't at all certain of its origin. Did it have anything to do with his suspected intruder? Or had he slipped into a place where he made up his own reality? And how was she supposed to handle that? Nothing about that was in the doggy training handbook.

Once inside she looked around, trying to sound casual. “Did you find any signs of forced entry?”

He shrugged and wiped at the sweat at the back of his neck from the adrenaline rush of moments before. “I don't always lock my door. I've nothing here I care about.”

She would have cared if she'd lost the laptop she spied on the table. But that didn't seem a tactful thing to point out just now. “Could it have been kids messing around?”

Law moved to check his kitchen, even opened the refrigerator. “Not kids. They would've eaten something. Drunk my beer. Trashed the place looking for money and weapons. Meth heads would have taken the computer to fence. This person wanted something specific. He didn't mean to leave a trail.”

“Oh.” He still thought there was an intruder.

His jaw began to work. “Go ahead. Say it.”

Jori took a deep breath. He wasn't going to like her thoughts. She could see it in his expression. But she had seen him moments before. On his face had been the look of a man a million miles away from their reality. Caution told her to take an indirect route.

“Someone would have to be pretty stupid to break into a law enforcement officer's home.” She pointed to his holstered gun.

He grunted as if she had made a joke. “Are you afraid of me now?”

“No.” And she meant it.
Afraid for you.
But she couldn't say that. He wouldn't thank her for her concern. Not her place to be afraid for him. Her job here was as a trainer. So she'd use that.

“If you'd stayed for the full ten days of training, you'd know we teach our dogs to do perimeter searches.”

“But you don't expect them to ever find anything.” His expression said he knew exactly what she was implying. “The perimeter search training is just a placebo to reassure us paranoid head cases that the Bogeyman isn't real.”

His sarcastic tone rubbed her the wrong way. “Our dogs provide a reality check. Don't underestimate the value of knowing, despite what your senses are telling you, that your dog says there's nothing to worry about.”

“But your service dog did just alert.”

Law walked over to the table and held his hand a scant inch above the closed laptop.

“What are you doing?”

“I turned my computer off this morning. It's warm. Someone turned it on recently.”

Jori folded her arms. “Or maybe you left it plugged in and the heat is from the battery charging.”

“Do you see a cord?”

Jori didn't. “Why would someone want access to your computer?”

“Good question.”

“So, Sam really did alert on an intruder?”

Instead of answering, he reached into a pocket and produced a few treats. Obviously he wasn't going to share his thoughts with her. “Sam.
Heir. Gute Hund.
”

Jori noticed he'd reverted to German, law professional K-9 command mode.

Sam didn't seem to mind. She came forward and got her petting and kibble treats for a job well done from her Alpha.

“Has she learned much German?”

Law frowned. “There's an ongoing debate about how much language a dog really understands. A few words, certainly. It's more the tone of voice.” He petted Sam absently, as if something else was on his mind. “She did all right. For a doodle.”

For a doodle.
The phrase bothered Jori. It was obvious that Sam was totally devoted to Battise. But Battise had yet to return that full-hearted affection.

She bent and let Argyle, squirming like a dervish, down onto the wood floor.

Argyle
meow
ed as if someone had stepped on her tail, became an arched ball of fur that skipped sideways, and then shot across the floor and down an unseen hallway.

Sam, spying the cat, followed their uninvited guest at a cautious stalking pace.

Jori sighed. It seemed as if every other living thing in the room was operating off some high-frequency intensity she couldn't hear.

“You want a beer?”

“No thanks.” Jori supposed this was his way of saying the emergency status was over. “I need to get back on the road. I didn't leave a deposit with the motel in Springdale. I just planned to stop by to let you know I had arrived.”

“You could have just called.”

Jori held his gaze.
So could you.

And there it was, the reason they were dancing around each other.

Not wanting to sound like a woman left behind, she concentrated on the reason she was being paid to be here. “Do you have those moments often, where you need Sam to reset reality for you?”

He blinked twice, as if calibrating his thoughts. But if she hoped he was going to answer the question, she was disappointed. “Why did you agree to come, Jori?”

Another, more dangerous question. But if he could ignore questions he didn't want to answer, she could, too.

She looked around. “Nice place.”

“I rent.” The
keep out
sign went up in his gaze. “It provides the privacy I like.”

She rounded on him. “I wasn't hinting that I wanted to stay with you.”

“Too bad. You would make a nice change from having Sam in my bed.” He hadn't moved an inch closer but she suddenly felt crowded as he watched her with his lids at half-mast.

He seemed so calm, so in control. The challenge in his expression said it didn't matter if she jumped him or walked away. He had six other things on his mind and none of them, or all, might be about her. He wasn't giving away clues. His cool made Jori want to wipe that smug look off his gorgeous face and replace it with a lustful grin from lips swollen and damp from her kisses.

He set his Smokey Bear hat on the table then reached to unhook his rig and lay the twenty-plus pounds of his utility belt on the table beside it. “I'm going to make this easy for both of us.”

When he looked up she didn't have to wonder what
this
was. It was there. Direct. Hot and volatile as his sludge-gold gaze. Absolute lust.

He stopped just inches away and leaned in to bring his lips on a level with her own. “We already know how good it can be between us. That makes it simple. We either act on it. Or we don't.”

He reached up and took the tab of the zipper on her vest and began dragging it slowly down. “What about it. Want to get naked?”

Jori held still. She knew he was trying to steer her away from her assessment of his earlier actions as symptoms of PTSD. The problem was, it was a damn effective tactic. The carnal hunger that she'd been ignoring for three weeks was out of its box and stomping around her bloodstream in military boots.