Defender Hellhound (Protection, Inc: Defenders Book 3) Read online

  “I don’t know what I expected,” she murmured aloud as she sent it to join the skewer.

  As she spoke, she was struck by the longing to have Ransom with her, to hear her say that and for his face to lighten into that wry almost-a-smile. It was the oddest feeling, as irrational as it was intense. He would seem so incongruous at this ridiculous vegetable festival, which was exactly what made her want to see him there.

  “Stop thinking about him,” she muttered, drawing a glance from the rutabaga mascot.

  She wished Merlin was with her. Now he was a man who would appreciate this sort of thing… though maybe not this exact example of it. A brief grin crossed her face as she imagined him rushing around, trying all the rutabaga fare within a period of ten minutes, concluding that he disliked rutabagas, and dragging her off to a turnip festival instead.

  He was so close. They were literally in the same city. All she needed to do was call him, and he’d be there. And she’d be with her best friend, her almost-a-brother, and she’d no longer be alone…

  …and, like any good brother, he’d instantly pick up that something was up with her, and he’d hound her until she told him everything. Imagining the look on his face when he found out that she was dying made her feel almost physically ill.

  No. What she needed was someone who didn’t have all that history with her, who hadn’t grown up with her, and who didn’t consider her family. Someone who wouldn’t cry when he learned her secret, because he already knew it.

  A tall lean man with dark brown eyes and red-brown hair, like a spirit of autumn. A man who’d risk his life to save a woman he didn’t even know, who’d offer to go to the ends of the earth with her on a moment’s notice because he thought he could save her. A man with a little bit of stubble roughening his cheeks and chin. She’d felt it as they struggled together at the cliff’s edge, along with the startling softness of his lips as they’d brushed across her wrist…

  Natalie shook her head hard, sending her hair flying. She clenched her fists at her side and told herself, I don’t need Ransom. He is the opposite of what I need. And more importantly, I’m the opposite of what he needs.

  The fact that he’d stuck in her memory, his image so vivid that she could almost feel the ghost of his warmth at her side, was proof that she’d done the right thing in getting the hell away from him. She had a plan for the rest of her life, and she wasn’t going to let him mess it up. And she especially wasn’t going to let her last action in this world be to mess up his life.

  It was a lucky thing that soon she’d be eight thousand miles away from him. There was nothing like a lot of distance for removing temptation.

  So she didn’t feel as enthusiastic now about the Taj Mahal (the tall motel, she recalled with another quick grin) as she had when she’d written it down. But once she was actually there, she was sure she’d enjoy it. After all, it was a wonder of the world.

  The Rutabaga Festival, she decided, was not even a wonder of the neighborhood. She took out her bucket list and crossed it off. She’d find something else to do for the rest of her day.

  A sharp yelp made her head jerk up. It sounded like a puppy—a puppy that was afraid or hurt. Poor thing! Natalie looked around, but saw no dogs other than a few happily trotting along on leashes.

  The yelp sounded again, even more scared-sounding. It sounded like it had come from high overhead, but that was impossible. The fair was in a field with scattered trees, and there were no buildings beyond the low food stalls.

  She craned her neck anyway. And there, clinging and scrabbling for dear life on a high branch of the tallest tree in the field, was a puppy. A little white husky puppy, fluffy and adorable, stuck up a tree like a cat.

  White-hot rage burned through her body as she realized that someone must have put the puppy there. Probably as some kind of sick joke. Or maybe they were filming it, hoping for a viral video. If she caught whoever had done that, she’d give them a viral video—one of her dragging them somewhere high and leaving them there!

  The puppy whined, looking down at her with bright blue eyes, and Natalie forgot her fantasies of revenge. She sprang into action.

  “You!” She pointed to a woman showing off her homemade quilt in which every square had an embroidered rutabaga. “Grab that quilt and follow me! And you, and you, and you!” Natalie pointed in turn at the nearest three people, making sure to meet their eyes so they couldn’t pretend they hadn’t heard. “You follow me too! You’re going to use the quilt as a net, in case the puppy falls!”

  Ignoring the bewildered murmurs, she grabbed the closest two by the wrists (they were a sulky teenage boy and his harassed-looking mother) and hauled them with her. She released them once she got to the base of the tree, hustled them and the others into position holding the quilt outstretched below the puppy, and began to climb the tree.

  It wasn’t a terribly difficult climb, though there were long stretches with no branches where she had to shimmy up. What made it hard was her fear that she’d frighten or excite the puppy enough to make it lose its grip.

  “Hey pal,” she murmured as she made her way upward. “Hold still, all right? I’m coming to get you, but you can’t move a muscle. Just stay where you are.”

  The husky puppy gave a piteous whine, but kept still. Natalie’s heart pounded as she got closer, reminding her of the doctor’s warning to avoid surprises and intense emotions. If she got too scared, it could literally kill her. And then the puppy would fall for sure.

  But her heart was only beating faster and harder. That was normal when you were excited. As long as it kept to its current steady rhythm, she’d be fine.

  “It’s okay,” she said softly, unsure if it was to the puppy or herself. Either way, she hoped she wasn’t lying. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  The branch the puppy was on was far too slender to bear her weight, and the poor little thing was too far out on it for her to reach. Natalie frowned, wondering how the hell the horrible person who’d stranded the pup had even gotten it there. Nobody was light enough to crawl out on that branch.

  Then she realized how it had been done: the branch above it was strong and thick. That puppy-stranding creep must have gotten out on that branch, then lowered the puppy in a basket on a rope.

  Natalie didn’t have a basket. But she didn’t need one. She shimmied upward, wriggled along the branch until she was above the puppy, then locked her ankles around the branch and released her hands, letting herself dangle upside down. She stretched out her arms as far as she could, but she couldn’t quite reach…

  The little white puppy gave a happy bark and leaped upward, right into her waiting arms.

  She caught and cuddled it, dizzy with relief. “You poor thing! Well, you’re safe now. Don’t you worry, I’ll take revenge on whoever put you there if I ever figure out who it was. But first, we have to get back down.”

  The puppy wriggled excitedly and licked her arms and face. Its fur was incredibly thick and fluffy. Still dangling upside down by her ankles, she considered the route back. She could retrace her climb holding the puppy in one arm, but it would be awfully tedious.

  “Don’t be scared,” Natalie told the puppy. “I promise, this is safe. I’ve been doing it since I was eleven.”

  She held the puppy tight with her left arm, leaving her right free, and released her ankles. They plummeted downward, and she heard a chorus of screams from below.

  “Oops,” she muttered as she caught a branch with her right hand. She’d forgotten that she had an audience. Raising her voice to a shout, she called, “It’s okay! I’m a trained professional!”

  The puppy barked, as if to say, “That was fun! Do it again!”

  Natalie obliged, releasing the branch and catching the next one down. She proceeded that way until she got to the last branch. She did a swing all the way around it, just for fun, since the puppy seemed to be enjoying itself. Then she dropped lightly to the ground, planting her feet solidly and without a wobble.


  The puppy wriggled delightedly in her arms. The crowd—a much larger one now than the four people she’d grabbed—burst into cheers and applause. Next thing she knew, she was surrounded by a mob of people asking for her autograph and how she’d learned to do that and if she’d be willing to be next year’s Rutabaga Queen.

  That brought her down to earth. She wasn’t going to have a next year. But she smiled and deflected everyone with a fake name and a fake background as a Cirque du Soliel performer, and then turned the questions on them. Apparently the puppy didn’t belong to anyone, and no one had seen how it had gotten into the tree.

  “I think he’s yours,” said the woman with the quilt.

  “Oh, no,” Natalie said. “I can’t have a pet. I’m leaving town tomorrow morning.”

  The puppy gave a gusty sigh, flopped down across her shoes, rolled over on to his back, and began to snore with all four feet in the air, like a dead bug. Natalie, caught between amusement and dismay, noticed that he was a boy.

  “Take him with you,” said the quilt woman. She bent down, expertly transferred the puppy from Natalie’s shoes to the rutabaga quilt, and thrust the bundle into her arms. “There you go. Keep it. A lovely warm bed for your lovely new pup!”

  The puppy woke, blinked his blue eyes at her, then lunged forward, his paws going on either side of her neck like he was hugging her, and began licking her face.

  “I can’t—” Natalie began, and got a very unwelcome French kiss. “Yecch!”

  By the time she’d wiped off her face and had the wriggling puppy safely wrapped up, the crowd had dissipated, leaving them alone together.

  Natalie gazed down at the puppy. “Guess it’s just you and me now, kid.”

  The puppy conked out again while she called a taxi, and she was able to smuggle him safely into her motel room. Once inside, she left him snoozing on the bed while she took a shower. She’d gotten all sweaty wandering around the Rutabaga Festival, and shimmying up the tree had lodged itchy bits of bark and dead leaves in all the places where you didn’t want them.

  Standing under the soothing water, Natalie tried to figure out what to do about the puppy. She couldn’t legally take him to India, and she didn’t want to risk trying to smuggle him onboard a plane. It seemed like her only options were to cancel the trip and keep the puppy, or keep the trip and give the puppy up.

  The puppy scratched at the bathroom door, whining sadly.

  “I’ll be out in a minute!” Natalie called.

  She tipped her face up to the water, closing her eyes.

  A bark sounded right next to her. She nearly jumped out of her skin, and only her trained acrobat’s reflexes kept her from falling over. The puppy had somehow gotten into the bathroom and was standing with his paws on the rim of the bathtub, his white tail wagging madly.

  Natalie hurriedly restrained him before he could leap in with her, then scooped him up and carried him at arms-length to the door. She could have sworn she’d shut it, but she must not have closed it completely. Or maybe he’d stood on his hind legs and turned the knob. She’d heard huskies were very intelligent. Either way, he’d evidently pushed it shut behind him after he’d gotten in.

  She plopped the puppy back on the bed, closed the door and locked it, and returned to her shower.

  He scratched at the door again.

  “No!” Natalie called. “You can’t come in! I’ll be out soon.”

  The puppy barked, as if in response. Then she heard rapid-fire clicks, like he was madly dashing across the floor, then a thud and a yelp, as if he’d crashed into the wall. This repeated several times. On the third, Natalie burst out laughing. The puppy gave an indignant yip.

  “Okay,” she said. “You got me.”

  The Taj Mahal was a wonder of the world, but there was only so long that you could spend looking at a building, no matter how beautiful it was. The puppy had already brought her more happiness than she’d felt in months. Not to mention that the Taj Mahal would be fine without her, while the puppy was a living creature that needed her. If she kept him, they’d make each other happy for a year, and she could make arrangements to get him a good home once her time was up.

  Once she made that decision, she felt better. She didn’t—she couldn’t—have human companionship, but at least she’d no longer be all alone.

  As Natalie dried herself off and dressed, she realized that a suspicious silence had fallen. Either the puppy had fallen asleep again, or he was up to something.

  She opened the door. The puppy was nowhere to be seen. And the room wasn’t big. There was nothing in it but the bed, a table and chairs, a closet, and a mini-fridge.

  Natalie looked under the bed. No puppy.

  She opened the closet. No puppy.

  Feeling like a lunatic, she looked inside the mini-fridge. Still no puppy.

  Frantic, she rushed to the front door and was about to fling it open when she heard a yelp behind her. She spun around. It seemed to have come from the closet, but there was still no…

  A second yelp drew her gaze upward. The closet had a high shelf, well above Natalie’s reach or line of sight, but she could now see a fluffy white head sticking over the edge and peering down at her. The puppy let out a nervous whine.

  “How in the world did you get up there? You must be some kind of champion jumper…” Her voice trailed off as she remembered how she’d found the pup. Was it possible that he’d put himself in the tree? “Or a champion climber?”

  But that made no sense. Dogs couldn’t climb trees, the closet had nothing to climb but a bare wall, and while the high shelf was just barely within the possible range of jumping ability, the branch the puppy had been stuck on had not been.

  “Little mysteries,” Natalie said, smiling. Animals could do the most amazing things…

  The puppy jumped. She held up her arms to catch him.

  He vanished in mid-air.

  Natalie’s heart skipped a beat.

  The puppy reappeared in the air above the bed and thumped down. He yawned, scratched his ear vigorously with a hind leg, and flopped down, fast asleep.

  But Natalie’s heart kept on skipping beats. Its normal rhythm was getting more and more irregular, until it felt like a bird with a broken wing flopping around in her chest.

  I could die right now, she realized. Just from the shock of seeing that sweet little puppy teleport.

  Panic rose up within her, but she forced it down. Moving slowly and deliberately, she sat down on the floor, then lay on her side, breathing deeply and rhythmically. One-two-three-four inhale, hold one-two, one-two-three-four exhale, hold one-two. One-two-three-four inhale…

  After a few minutes of that, her heart’s rhythm returned to normal. Once she was sure she wasn’t going to drop dead, she sat on the bed beside the sleeping puppy, stroking his thick fur and thinking about what she’d seen. It had been a shock—the exact sort of shock the doctor had warned her about—but it had come from something real and astonishing, not a hallucination or an optical illusion or a dream.

  The puppy could teleport. She’d seen it herself. That had to have been how he’d gotten on the shelf, up the tree, and inside the bathroom.

  Rubbing his soft ears, she racked her mind for anything she’d ever heard about teleporting dogs. Janet had sometimes told tales of magical animals. Merlin had loved those, especially the ones about King Arthur’s dog Cavall, who could travel seven leagues in the blink of an eye.

  “Huh,” Natalie said aloud. She’d always assumed that meant Cavall could run incredibly fast, but maybe “in a blink” was the literal truth.

  The pup did need a name.

  “Cavall?” Natalie asked, nudging him.

  He woke up, nipped her finger, then blinked out. He reappeared wedged in the bathroom sink, tummy-up and paddling all four paws in the air.

  Cavall seemed maybe a tad too dignified.

  He thrashed himself onto his belly, wagging his tail and barking, then blinked on to the floor and began to chase hi
s tail.

  Definitely too dignified.

  The husky puppy was such a doggy dog, despite his amazing ability. A good doggo, not a figure from legend. But she liked the idea of giving him a circus-related name. He was obviously drawn to high places, just like her. A wire-walker dog, a trapeze dog, a dog fit for the great circus family, the Flying Wallendas…

  “Wally?”

  She was answered with a joyous yelp.

  Chapter 4

  Ransom watched Natalie walk across the beach until she’d vanished from view. Everything he’d said and done replayed in his mind, as if he was re-watching a scene from a movie and hoping it would come out differently if he re-ran it often enough: hoping that this time, this time, they wouldn’t go in the basement or the dog wouldn’t die or Ingrid Bergman would join the Resistance with Humphrey Bogart instead of getting on that plane.

  You’ll never see her again, came the low, grinding growl of his hellhound’s voice in his mind.

  She said I could call her, Ransom silently replied.

  He winced at the thought of what it would cost him if he did as she’d teasingly suggested, and used his power to find her phone number. Natalie had no idea, of course, but while some knowledge came to him unbidden, it was far more difficult—and painful—to try to learn a specific thing.

  But he didn’t need to rely on his power for a question like that. Tirzah, his teammate who did hacking, research, and cybersecurity, could find it for him. He could swear her to secrecy, and not mention that the reason he was looking was that Natalie was in town and he’d seen her.

  You’ll never see her again, his hellhound repeated. She’ll die because you couldn’t convince her to trust you. And that’s because you’re not worthy of anyone’s trust.

  The hellhound’s words echoed in his mind as Ransom trudged along the beach, climbed the path up the cliff, and hiked down to where he’d left his car. Every time he thought of something he could do—call her before she got on that plane, stop by her motel room, follow her to India—he ran up against the basic, unsolvable problem of having no way to convince her to let him stay with her, and so doing nothing more than repeating his failure.