from a ladder into a mound of straw with two wriggling dogs in her arms. She offered unquestioning loyalty and her animals responded in kind.
Wolfe wasn’t a scientist, but he sensed that Kit herself was the secret ingredient.
He looked up to the scrutiny of chocolate-colored eyes. Baby continued to study him for what felt like a lifetime, sniffing his hand. Damn if Wolfe didn’t feel as if he’d been scanned, analyzed and dissected from forehead to big toe.
When Baby nudged his leg, Wolfe winced. She was a little too close to the jagged cut he’d received during his insertion jump from a military chopper north of Taos. But he didn’t pull away, sensing the dog’s concentration.
Seconds later Baby was nudged aside first by Diesel, then by Butch and Sundance. Each dog sniffed the area on his thigh where he had been wounded. When they were finally done investigating, they drew back into a motionless line.
The seconds stretched out. Wolfe felt the dogs’ concentration grow.
What in the hell was going on? Why did he feel as if he was being ruthlessly analyzed all over again? Suddenly Wolfe realized it was his wound that fascinated the dogs, possibly because they sensed something unusual—or familiar—about his blood chemistry. Another observation to go into his report to Ryker.
Across the room, Kit twisted suddenly. Still asleep, she kicked free of her cover, her hand hitting the remote on the side table.
The images on the screen multiplied, twelve small boxes of the same street scene.
Curious, Wolfe moved closer. He’d never seen a complicated TV screen like this one. Back at the lab, facilities were tight and schedules strict. Training constantly, the team members had little time for entertainment, since they had to be able to deploy at a moment’s notice, day or night.
It was fair to say that he had missed a few things, given his lifestyle. With Baby by his leg, he followed images of tanks rumbling through the streets of Paris. Against the haunting chords of a piano, he saw Humphrey Bogart’s ashen face when he was left alone for a second time.
War was hell, all right. Wolfe could identify with that.
Kit twisted again. Her other hand hit the remote, changing the display to one small box in the bottom corner of the screen.
Fascinated by the technology, Wolfe picked up the remote and sat down in the far chair while he studied the unfamiliar control. He could rig complicated trigger units for every kind of explosive device, so he figured this equipment wouldn’t be much of a problem.
He touched one of the buttons.
The action froze on the big screen.
He touched another button. In seconds he’d worked out how to resume action, mute the audio and fast-forward. After making sure that Kit was still out cold, he started the movie again. Diesel moved closer while Baby nuzzled his shoulder. With the dogs ranged around him, he felt oddly safe and protected.
But safety was an illusion with Cruz on the loose. Jumpy, he rose and circled the room, checking windows and doors. After each pass, he was drawn back to his seat beside Baby and the images that flickered over the screen.
Without a sound Sundance moved to the big window overlooking the front porch. Diesel and Butch slipped away into the shadows. Baby didn’t budge, her head resting on Wolfe’s shoulder. For one strange moment the SEAL felt an unshakable sense of belonging.
But he didn’t belong. Not as a ragtag boy, and definitely not as a man. Because of Foxfire, he would always be different, and he had accepted that difference, both gift and curse, the day that the government had implanted his first chip.
And he had work to do. Now that he had ascertained Kit’s safety, there was no reason for him to sit watching a sixty-year-old movie and enjoying the sight of Kit’s hair aglow in the lamplight.
As Wolfe stood up, Baby slanted her head and met his eyes.
He wasn’t sure if he imagined what happened next. Across the room the sound climbed, voices murmuring. Wolfe tapped a button on the remote, wondering if he had accidentally hit something without noticing. But a second later the volume climbed again.
A defective television?
He frowned at the wall of high-tech equipment and lowered the audio again. Behind him the dogs were lined up in a row. Panting, they stared at him expectantly.
As a test, he muted the sound. Instantly, it shot back to its prior level.
Wolfe dropped the volume, sorting through possible explanations. A wiring malfunction? Battery failure?
Flipping the remote, he removed the batteries. He was about to pry off the inside cover and check the inner circuitry when the TV muted on its own.
The batteries were in his hand. The dogs were ranged on the floor in front of the television, unmoving. Baby’s tail thumped once.
The dogs?
He didn’t buy it. This kind of skill had never been part of their genetic package. The source had to be an equipment malfunction.
Tensely, he pocketed the batteries and moved to the far wall. Leaning down, he scanned the controls and manually triggered the volume.
Nothing happened.
Wolfe thought it over. Then he thought it over again. His gaze returned to the dogs.
Baby sat down in the middle of the rug. Casablanca stopped, and the television switched over to regular programming, where a man with a sequined cowboy hat waved his arms and pitched used trucks.
“Hell if I believe this,” Wolfe muttered, muting the volume.
Kit stirred restlessly, and he dragged a hand through his hair, then switched off the television and waited—not sure what he was waiting for.
The silence stretched out, deep as the New Mexico night. He stared at the dogs, and they stared right back at him. A branch scraped the window. Baby draped her head across Diesel’s neck, looked at the television and wagged her tail. Coincidence?
Wolfe shook his head, returning the batteries to the remote and placing it next to Kit so she’d assume that she had turned off the movie in her sleep. Baby yawned. The previous phenomena with the television appeared to have stopped. Though Wolfe waited, nothing else happened.
Time to go.
But at the door he paused, unable to resist one last look at Kit. She was striking even in her sleep. In a dozen ways she reminded him of her mother, who’d still turned heads at sixty. Wolfe remembered the night Amanda O’Halloran had found him sleeping in the old barn, desperate and exhausted, still bleeding from his father’s drunken beating.
She had cleaned him up without a word, fed him without a word, then opened her heart as well as her house to him. When his father had come looking for him, she’d run him off with a shotgun.
He hadn’t thought of that night for years. It was this unnerving house, the dogs on the old Mexican rug and the fire that crackled happily.
He rubbed his thigh as he walked down the shadowed hallway. The wound had torn open again
