Harry bared his teeth and menaced in a horrible growl as he lunged again. The man used the pack to buffet the second attack. He twisted and blocked, countering Harry each time the dog tried to latch on to something with flesh.
The man was either trained in self-defense or damn lucky. But he would tire long before Harry ever surrendered. “Lady!”
Jessica almost smiled. Good boy. If Harry could best this man, she’d have a lot less reason to be afraid of him. “You lie down flat on the ground and I’ll call him off.”
Harry had a chunk of the backpack between his teeth now, and the attack had turned into a desperate tug-of-war. The man couldn’t surrender his grasp or he’d be defenseless at the next charge. “Fine. Call him off.”
“Harry, sit!” she commanded.
The dog obeyed, plopping down on his haunches beside the man’s shoulder as he dropped his pack and threw himself prostrate onto the swath of fading grass at the center of her driveway. The man lay perfectly still beneath the dog’s watchful eye.
Harry panted from the exertion, licking his muzzle, then letting his tongue loll out the side of his mouth. The man was catching his breath, too. But the instant he moved, a big black paw settled onto his shoulder and he went still.
“Is this how you greet all your customers?”
“You’re no customer.” Lowering the gun from her cheek and shoulder, she kept it trained in his general direction and left her finger near the trigger. “What do you want?”
SAM WASN’T READY to answer that question truthfully. He hadn’t expected a warm, trusting welcome when he showed up with his vagrant cover story, but he was a little surprised to be greeted by a backwoods, Hatfield and McCoy, you’s-trespassin’-on-my-land routine.
Where was the professional businesswoman with an eye for beauty and a penchant for history his contact in Chicago had told him about? Her face matched the newspaper photo of the elegant brunette at a museum exhibition opening he’d found in the Chicago Tribune archives—the same face the attending E.R. nurse had confirmed as his Jane Doe rape survivor.
He’d spent three weeks piecing together nebulous clues and putting a name to the face of the woman he was searching for. Then he’d run a background profile on her. And now he was here.
This was Jessica Taylor.
His Jane Doe had a name. And a definite attitude.
He suspected that earning her trust wouldn’t be easy. Without the sanction of the Bureau, and with little more than a hunch to go on that she would be the break he needed in order to find Kerry’s killer, Sam couldn’t conduct a normal investigation. He needed to get to know Jessica Taylor better than he knew his own partner. He needed to become her very best friend and get her to start talking. About Chicago. Her attack. How she escaped.
Who did it.
Either she’d been too terrified to give a useful report to Chicago PD, or her attacker had been too crafty—too intimidating—for her to recall much. He might even have done a little brainwashing on her. Sam intended to find a way inside her head and learn the truth. Learn enough so he could match up her attacker to Kerry’s and track him down.
But with that pump-action shotgun pointed his way and this hairy, black beast standing over him, his covert mission would be damn near impossible.
Kerry had always teased that it had skipped a generation, but Sam wondered if he could dredge up any of his father’s Belfast charm. Lifting his cheek from the scraggly grass and dirt, he tried to restart the conversation. “What kind of dog is this?”
“The very protective kind.”
Idly, Sam wondered if she’d always sounded this hard. Judging by the resonant tone and sultry pitch of her voice, Ms. Taylor could sound downright sexy if she softened up her articulation and dropped the sarcastic wit. It was probably an unfortunate byproduct of the attack. He’d be curious to know what other feminine attributes she was trying to hide.
Irrelevant, a stern inner voice warned him. Though curiosity was not the same as attraction, he wanted to argue, Sam wisely ignored the deviation from his quest. He turned his nose to the ground and inhaled the dank, musty smell of the dirt that reminded him of Kerry’s funeral—reminded him of why he was here. “So I gathered. He looks like a black shepherd, but his muzzle is broader. And obviously he’s bigger than any German shepherd I’ve seen.”
“He’s a German shepherd, Irish wolfhound mix.” Irish, huh? Maybe the hairy beast had some redeemable qualities, after all. “He was too big and too smart for his previous owners. But he suits me.”
Sam tried to move his head so he could actually look at Jessica, but apparently the dog didn’t feel the connection of their Irish roots. The growl in his throat became a deafening bark and a flash of sharp, white teeth. Sam forced his body to relax and resumed his prone position on the grass. “He seems well trained.” He’d worked with K-9 units before, but had never been on the receiving end of such training. No wonder the perps usually surrendered without much of a fight.
“He is.”
“I didn’t show up by chance, Miss Taylor.” He heard her feet shift their solid stance on the wooden floorboards, the first flinch in her protective armor. He’d called her by name. Better retreat a step. Even up the playing field. “I’m Sam O’Rourke. The clerk at the convenience store up on the Highway 50 intersection gave me your name and directions. If you let me have a chance, I can explain why I’m here.” Silence. Damn, she was a hard nut to crack. “Do you need the dog and the gun both?”
“I don’t know yet.”
It was hard to be charming with his face pressed to the dirt and a wolfhound-shepherd beast sitting on his shoulder. Kerry had been right. He’d always done better with a more direct approach.
“Look, I can see this was a mistake. The guy at the store said your regular help wasn’t able to put in enough hours and that you were desperate for an extra hand around the place.” He looked around slyly and noted the overgrown patches of grass taking over the gravel parking lot and driveway, the dead branches of stately elms that needed trimming, the rust on the red-and-white metal storage barn, the tarp-shrouded load in the back of a pickup truck waiting to be unloaded. The man hadn’t lied. “But he must have been mistaken. If you let me up, I’ll go back into town and find work somewhere else.”
“You’re looking for a job?” She sounded skeptical. She might be stubborn, but she was smart. Deceiving her wasn’t going to be easy. “Why didn’t you call first? Where’s your car?”
Technically his Kia was in a garage back in Boston. But the junker he’d picked up in Chicago had been easy enough to abandon at the side of the road outside Kansas City to establish his cover. “Until I earn enough money to fix it, it’s sitting in the shop. I’m driving cross-country from Boston to San Diego. Sort of a sabbatical. It broke down on the highway.”
“What kind of sabbatical?” she asked, her voice still filled with doubt. “You don’t look like a professor.”
“That’s my business.”
“Not if you want to work for me, it’s not.” Was she considering his proposition? “I’ll let you sit up if you explain who you are and don’t make any sudden moves.”
It wasn’t much of an offer, but he’d take it. “Deal.”
She whistled—a bold, brassy tomboy whistle. Unexpected. Interesting. Irrelevant. “Harry, come.”
A tremendous weight lifted as the dog immediately obeyed her command. The jet-black beast trotted up the steps onto the porch and cuddled at his mistress’s side as if he thought he was a lap dog. Minding her warning, Sam slowly rolled over and sat up. He spun around on his bottom to face her, brushing bits of grass and gravel dust from his