wonder Kit usually felt exhausted at the end of the day.
She knew she invested too much of herself in each training group. She also knew that letting go was a necessary fact of life in her work.
On a good day, she could accept that.
Still seated near the door, Baby looked back, her voice rising from snarl to soft whine, like conversation in some unrecognized language.
“Okay, okay. Just don’t expect me to make sense until I grab my sweater and tank up on coffee.”
Baby nosed under the big chest and appeared with Kit’s oldest blue sweater dangling from her head. Laughing, Kit tugged the hooded cardigan over a white cotton T-shirt that had seen better days.
Not that her underwear mattered.
She lived forty miles from the nearest town. Since her closest neighbor was eighty-two and lived on the far side of a six thousand foot mountain, she didn’t receive many spontaneous visitors. Whatever she wore made no difference to anyone but her—and that was exactly the way Kit liked it.
Stretching her arms over her head, she watched sunlight flood through the big bay windows. Judging by the sky, it was a little after six. She had brought the dogs in from their kennel and checked some medical references on her computer while they ate. Her nap had lasted all of twenty minutes, and now it was time for training.
“Stay,” Kit said firmly. Baby didn’t move, her big velvet eyes shimmering with intelligence.
Since the stay command was one of the hardest things for a puppy to master, Kit was delighted. “Good dog. Good Baby.” She pulled an old leather glove from the pocket of her sweater, making a low hiss, and Baby’s ears rose sharply at this cue to pay attention.
“Come,” Kit ordered, holding out the glove.
In three excited strides Baby crossed the room, sniffing the leather with a back-and-forth motion of her head.
“Find,” Kit ordered.
Like a shot, the puppy put her nose to the floor and raced down the stairs, skidded at the front door and started sniffing.
Kit checked her wristwatch.
Four seconds later she heard Baby bark once from the back of the laundry room, where Kit had buried the glove’s mate under a wicker basket and a pile of dirty laundry.
Find complete.
“Good dog.” Jotting a note in her spiral pad, Kit headed downstairs, where Baby was waiting. Baby’s head pointed straight to the spot in the laundry basket where Kit had hidden the matching glove.
The puppy had just shaved three seconds off her most recent record.
“Good, good girl.” Another pea-sized treat appeared from Kit’s bag. Baby nuzzled the reward delicately off Kit’s wrist and swallowed it.
Abruptly the dog’s ears pricked forward. Looking up at Kit, she gave a low series of snarls.
“What? What’s wrong, Baby?”
The dog shot around in a blur, out the dog door and across the courtyard. Kit made a stop at the locked gun cabinet in the hall, then raced after her. Near the side door, she heard low male voices drifting across the outer wall of the compound.
This time there were two of them.
Baby hadn’t barked, so the intruders wouldn’t yet realize they’d been discovered. When Kit cracked the patio door silently, she could make out low whispers.
“I told you this whole idea sucked, Emmett. If she had the box, she wouldn’t leave it all the way out here. Hell, she probably sleeps with the thing under her bed. She’s crazy like the rest of her family.”
Kit inched up beside Baby. “Stay,” she whispered. “Stay, Baby.”
The dog’s position didn’t waver, though her eyes glinted with wary energy.
Kit swung open the gate and leveled her father’s old Smith & Wesson revolver at two men in dusty jeans peering down the well beneath a huge mesquite tree.
Fear prickled at the back of Kit’s neck. The speaker was a big, sullen man she’d seen hauling feed at the local tack store or drinking from a brown paper bag outside several different bars.
“You’re trespassing here, gentlemen.”
The smaller man spun around with a surprised curse. “You said she was in town, Emmett. Why’d you lie to me?”
“Because you’re too damned stupid to know better.” The man named Emmett stood up slowly, his gaze locked on Kit. “Tell us where it’s hidden. We’ll just keep coming back until you do.”
There was no point in asking what they meant. This man was just like the others, hoping to find the famous treasure supposedly hidden somewhere on the ranch.
Except there was no treasure.
Kit’s hands tightened on the grip of the revolver. It had been her father’s gun, and he’d taught her how to handle it safely and well. “There’s no treasure here, fellas. You think I’d be driving a ten-year old Jeep with no air and bad brakes if I was sitting on a fortune? With that kind of cash, I’d be living the high life down in Santa Fe.”
Emmett appeared to think this over for a long time before spitting on the ground beside the well. “I figure that’s exactly what lie you’d tell us, but we both know there’s Apache treasure hid somewhere in this damned well. Bones Whittaker saw it with his own eyes. That old Injun gave it to your father.”
Kit kept her expression calm despite the anger burning in her throat. “Bones was seventy years old and a drunk to boot. Why believe him?”
“Because he saw it,” Emmett said tightly. “So did his best friend and they was sober when they told my uncle. No way they’d lie about that gold your father got out on the mesa.”
“Bones Whittaker was drunk and sick,” Kit said flatly. “He wanted to be important so he made up the whole thing, right down to the story of the box he supposedly saw my father lower into the well. He even admitted it to my mother when he came up here a week before he died.”
“Your ma told you that, did she?” Emmett’s eyes narrowed. “Well, I guess she would. Best way to quiet things down and keep your nice nest egg hid. But that’s mesa gold, and it belongs to anyone that finds it. That’s exactly what I’m fixing to do.”
Kit took an angry breath. The rumors of buried treasure had begun when she was a girl, fed by the tales of an old, lonely man desperate to feel important before he died. When her parents had come into extra money after the death of Kit’s maiden aunt, they’d bought a badly needed truck and built an addition to the kennels, adding fuel to the flames of local suspicion. Unfortunately, more than a few people still believed Bones Whittaker’s crazy story.
When Kit’s brother was at home, no one came sniffing around, but Trace had been gone for over a year now, and this was the second set of trespassers in the last month.
Kit felt a sharp tension at her neck. She glanced up and saw something move up on the ridge. A coyote?
Emmett continued to watch her, frowning when Baby barked inside the courtyard. “That your dog?”
“Yes, it is. And she—”
A callused hand shot around her shoulders from behind. “Got her, Emmett. What do we do now?”
A third man. She should have realized Emmett had an ace in the hole.
Kit dropped her revolver into the pocket of her baggy sweatpants, out of sight. Unable to break free, she pivoted and drove her boot heel down against her captor’s instep.
She fought to stay calm, to wait for her moment.
A second arm locked at her waist.
She caught the smell of aftershave and old sweat as