Undercover Operation, page 8
“What are you working on?” he asked.
“My schedule for the next few months,” Peyton said. “Along with my job training at the center, I also travel around to do remote training in different areas and advise other K-9 units as my time permits. It gets pretty busy, and I like to have a good sense of what I’m doing to keep chaos at a minimum. So, I find it helps to plan it all out carefully in advance.”
He thought about how she’d said she triple-trained each of her dogs in verbal commands, hand signals and clickers. Or the fact she’d gone the extra step of going through the K-9 officers’ training program herself. He had so much respect for the work she did and how she approached it.
It was attractive. She was attractive, in so many ways.
But how could Asher ever get over his own trust issues enough to build a real and lasting relationship with someone like Peyton? His ex-wife, Lucie, had an affair with a colleague on a business trip. He suspected his father had used his sales job to cheat with women behind his mother’s back. While he knew Peyton would never use her work trips to do anything like that, he also knew it would be hard for him to get over his own trust issues to be with someone who had such a busy job. But he’d also never want someone like her to sacrifice any part of her career because of his own insecurities and mess. Maybe Lucie had been right, and he was the problem.
Asher took another bite of his steak, and even though his brain knew how delicious it was, somehow it tasted like sawdust in his mouth.
After a while, Peyton wrapped up the leftovers and put them in the suite’s small fridge. Then she wished Asher and Spark good-night and went into the bedroom. He brushed his teeth, opened up the pull-out and lay there for a while listening to the sound of her keyboard clicking and clacking in the other room. Eventually the typing stopped, and he saw the light switch off from the crack underneath her door.
Asher closed his eyes and tried to sleep. But unwanted thoughts chased around his mind and wouldn’t let him rest.
Finally, sometime after midnight he got up and slid his boots on. Spark’s head rose instantly from the spot where it had been nestled in between his paws.
Asher signaled his K-9 partner to his side and clipped his leash on.
“Figure we both could use a walk,” Asher whispered. At least he knew he could.
Asher grabbed the pad Peyton had used to sketch the tattoo and left her a note saying they’d gone for a walk, in case she woke up and found them missing.
Then he and Spark slipped out into the hallway. He locked the door behind them and checked it twice. Then he walked down a long and empty hallway to an access door, opened it to find a staircase and took it down to the main floor. It opened out into the trees. The rain had stopped, but the smell of damp earth filled his lungs. Silently they walked down along the back of the building in between the forest and the lodge.
Almost immediately Asher could feel his breath begin to slow and his heart begin to settle. He prayed and asked God to forgive his past mistakes, guide his future, help him find the missing puppies and bring Mara home safely.
He heard the sound of Spark sniffing the air. He glanced down. The dog’s ears were alert, his tail was still and his snout was raised as he smelled the night.
A warning shiver ran down Asher’s spine. Spark sensed something.
A faint growl like distant thunder rumbled in the back of the dog’s throat.
“Show me,” Asher said.
SIX
Asher and Spark moved swiftly down the side of the lodge, past the pool area and toward the parking lot, where he heard the sound of a voice shouting, a car door slamming and a vehicle peeling off into the night. He rounded the corner and almost collided headfirst with a diminutive figure, who was at least a good foot and a half shorter than he was. A female voice shrieked. Asher leaped back, pulled his phone from his pocket and switched its flashlight on.
Ember’s terrified face blinked up at him in the light.
“I’m sorry,” Asher said. He quickly lowered the light from her eyes. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Spark and I were just out for a late-night walk and I thought I heard a ruckus.”
He looked down at Spark. The dog’s ears were completely relaxed now. Spark’s head buffeted gently against Ember’s leg as if reassuring her there was no reason to be scared. Ember reached down and patted Spark’s head and the dog’s tail wagged. Whatever had been going on in the darkness outside the lodge in the middle of the night, this woman had Spark’s seal of approval.
“What’s going on?” Asher asked. “Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine,” Ember said, with a quiver in her voice that told him it was anything but.
“I heard shouting,” Asher said.
Not to mention Spark had clearly sensed something was off and it didn’t seem to be with Ember.
The housekeeper looked at the ground. “My boyfriend was mad I wouldn’t cut work to go to a party with him. So, he lost it with me. It’s not his fault. He was just upset.”
Asher snorted.
“Well, that’s utter nonsense,” Asher said. “Any guy who tries to pressure a girl into going to a party with him after midnight and loses his temper when she won’t is a two-cent punk who isn’t worth your time.”
He hadn’t even stopped to think whether that was something Dan Johnson would say. Right now, Asher and his alter ego were on the exact same page.
“He’s not a bad guy,” Ember said unconvincingly.
All right, time for Dan to step up to the plate. Maybe with a little bit of Asher’s truth mingled in.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe he is. Maybe he’s not. It’s not my business. But I got a little sister around your age. She dated a guy, it turned messy and she got into some bad trouble. Really bad trouble. Look, Merry knows I’m not the perfect husband. But hopefully she also knows I really love her and respect her, and that I’m not just with her because she’s pretty. Why are you even working this late, anyway?”
It had been hours since someone had broken into their suite.
“There’s been some problems getting people to work shifts,” she said. “We’re short-staffed. People keep quitting. My boyfriend used to date another girl in housekeeping who quit a few weeks ago.”
Sounded like the lodge had really gone downhill since Stacey was murdered.
“Heard a rumor somebody killed the owner a few months ago,” Asher said. “Did that really happen?”
“Yeah,” Ember said. She looked almost relieved that he’d changed the subject away from her boyfriend. “In April. We had two owners, Ms. Stark and Mr. Ballard. Somebody shot Ms. Stark and her boyfriend. I heard it was his jealous ex-girlfriend.”
That would be his half sister, Mara. Asher forced himself to let that slide.
“Things have been kind of weird around here ever since,” Ember said. “Like there were a few minor robberies before she died, but it’s gotten a lot worse.”
“I take it people really liked Ms. Stark?” he asked. “More than Mr. Ballard?”
“No, not really,” the housekeeper said. “Mr. Ballard is a real cutie. All the girls have a crush on him. But Ms. Stark was the one who made sure things got done.”
Huh. Now that was interesting but not surprising.
“By the way, my wife Merry’s been looking to get another puppy,” he said. “One of the other guests said they heard some howling the other night. Does your boyfriend or any of his friends have dogs?”
Ember shook her head. “No, my parents have a couple of terriers, but they live in Portland.”
Asher thanked her, waited until she was safely back into the building and then paused a long moment outside in the dark with Spark to make sure her unscrupulous boyfriend didn’t show up to cause any more problems. Then he and Spark turned and walked back in the darkness toward the door that he’d come through.
His feet dragged with every step as if the accumulative burden of carrying all the questions that ran through his mind was weighing him down. He’d promised Peyton he’d help her find those bloodhound puppies and all he’d found was a housekeeper with a bad boyfriend, a string of unexplained thefts, a couple of drug dealers who’d sent him on a wild-goose chase to a scuba shop and a masked attacker who’d shot at them—and then held a knife to Peyton’s throat.
The memory of that terrifying moment filled his mind.
Peyton had been in trouble, her life had been threatened and he hadn’t been able to save her.
Something in his heart knew he couldn’t let that happen again.
* * *
Peyton was standing on the deck of a boat. A storm was raging around her—waves crashed over the side, rain poured down around her and she could hear the bloodhound puppies howling and crying out for her. Agent, Chief and Ranger were scared. They needed her. But water streamed down her face, blinding her eyes, and she couldn’t see them anywhere. She ran. Her feet slid on the slippery deck. The boat seemed to grow longer and longer beneath her feet. Suddenly the puppies loomed over her. Agent, Ranger and Chief were huge and monstrous now with snarling teeth and gigantic claws. She called their names and tried to signal them. But they’d forgotten who she was. She was no longer their trainer. She was their prey. Their jaws opened to swallow her whole...
Peyton sat bolt upright in the bed. Her heart pounded as fragments of her nightmare still flickered at the edges of her mind.
She’d spent months training Chief, Ranger and Agent. They’d been so sweet and intelligent. What if she was right in her hunch that whoever had stolen them was trying to train them to help their drug operation? Would they even recognize her if she found them again? What if her precious puppies were gone and there was no way to remind them of who they really were?
She closed her eyes and prayed.
Lord, please let us find them before it’s too late.
She got up, dressed in simple jeans and a T-shirt and brushed her red hair down around her shoulders. Then carefully she combed the red hairs from her brush and flushed them down the toilet, so no one in housekeeping would spot any long red hairs. Silence fell from the other side of the door. She opened the door and stepped through into the living room of the suite.
There lay Asher, fast asleep on the pull-out couch, with Spark nestled beside him. The dog’s furry head was tucked tightly into the crook of Asher’s neck so that the man’s chin rested just behind the dog’s ears. Asher’s left hand rested gently on the dog’s side, and Peyton was suddenly aware that he hadn’t ever put his pretend wedding ring back on since taking it off the night before—and that she’d forgotten to remove hers. She’d even slept with it on.
Peyton stood there for a long moment watching them sleep. A feeling she couldn’t put into words swelled in her chest. If she’d hoped this undercover mission would help throw some cold water on her foolish crush on Asher, she’d been sorely mistaken.
And yet, how could she let herself develop feelings for a man who so clearly didn’t want a relationship? Or relegate herself to being seen as someone’s sidekick?
His green eyes opened, and a slow grin crossed his face. Then just as quickly as the smile had appeared it disappeared, and he sat up so suddenly Spark scrambled for a moment to resettle himself.
“What time is it?” he asked. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” Peyton said, “and it’s ten to eight, which gives us a little over an hour before Gunther’s Scuba Shop opens. There’s a coffee maker, so I figured I’d make us some and we could have leftovers for breakfast.”
Asher tossed the blankets off him and stood. He was still wearing the clothes he’d had on the night before. He’d even left his boots beside the couch. Spark climbed onto the floor and stretched, pressing his nose against the carpet and his tail up in the air.
“I took Spark for a walk around midnight,” Asher said. “Spark alerted again. We ran into that housekeeper, Ember. She was clean, but she’d just had a fight with some bad-news boyfriend who’d just left for a party, so he might be who Spark detected. She told me the thefts got a lot worse after Stacey was killed. The lodge has been understaffed too.”
“You questioned a suspect without me?” Peyton asked.
“You were asleep, and I just ran into her.”
His tone was light. She knew he was right too, and she’d have done the same.
So why did it bother her?
Because maybe she was still a bit sensitive about Owen’s “Mrs. Asher” comment and being seen as someone’s sidekick.
Lord, help me sort my heart and keep it out of my mission.
She went over to the curtains and pulled them back, sending the morning sun streaming into the room.
Asher inhaled sharply.
She turned back. “What?”
“Nothing,” Asher said. He ran his hand over the back of his neck. Was it her imagination or was he actually blushing?
She crossed her arms and held his gaze. He looked away first.
“It’s just your hair, okay?” he said. “It looked really nice and fiery all of a sudden when the sun hit it. You had it covered up under that wig all day, pretty much, yesterday.”
Sudden electricity shot up her arms and heat rose to her face too. She walked past him toward the coffee maker, somehow not able to meet his gaze either.
“I thought gentlemen preferred blondes,” she said.
“Maybe they do,” he said, and his voice sounded a little bit lower and rougher than usual. “But I never claimed to be a gentleman.”
She laughed and so did he. Then he slid his boots on, grabbed Spark’s leash and took the dog for a walk, while she tried to tell herself that whatever had just happened between them was good-natured work banter and that they definitely hadn’t been flirting.
By the time he got back, Peyton had already folded the sofa bed back into a couch, pinned her blond wig back over her hair and was sitting at one end of the couch with a fresh cup of coffee.
“I grabbed a couple of different flavors of yogurt from the restaurant on my way back,” Asher said. “I remember you said they were your usual breakfast. Thought you might want to add them to the leftover fruit from last night.”
He’d remembered.
“Thank you,” she said. “That’s really thoughtful.”
Half an hour later they were back on board The Mixed Blessing. The lodge didn’t have its own marina, but there was a marina only a short walk away in Puget Sound. Asher piloted the boat, while Peyton sat in the bow. She stretched her legs out in the sun. Spark lay beside her with his head resting gently on her knee. The weather forecast had warned them that rain would be returning with a vengeance later in the afternoon, but for now there were only a few wispy clouds at the edge of the horizon.
October in Olympic National Park was a time of transition and change. All around her she could see that the gentle green of maple, ash and aspen leaves had already begun to change into their vivid fall colors. By the end of October the entire forest would have transformed. During the summer, Olympic was one of the top five most visited national parks in the United States. But once the rainy season arrived in force by late October, the mass of tourists cleared out, and the park’s rain forest came alive. Bright red, orange and yellow mosses coated the trees and colorful mushrooms sprung from the forest floors. The park would be pummeled by a good twelve feet of rain over the winter, while storms sent mighty swells and powerful winds to beat at the rugged shores.
Lord, right now my heart feels like this national park around me. I’m caught between two seasons. Neither of which I fully understand. Part of my heart is longing for a relationship with a man like Asher. Part of me isn’t ready to let go of the independence I have. Help me to trust You for whatever comes next.
And please, don’t let my foolish heart threaten this mission.
The Rock River marina was fuller than she’d expected it to be. Seemed the crush of tourists weren’t quite ready to give up on the summer season yet. They docked at the same slip they’d had the day before, and then made their way to shore. Peyton and Asher both wore mirrored sunglasses and baseball hats, and Asher’s ring was back on his finger. Asher held Spark’s leash and walked so closely beside Peyton that their hands kept accidentally brushing against each other, sending confusing sparks flying up her arms.
It was incredible how easily Asher stepped into his Dan persona. The way he held his shoulders changed, as if he was intentionally making himself larger, and his jaw clenched as he smiled. He nodded to tourists, buskers and caricaturists as they passed, he handed out business cards to everyone they spoke to, and went out of his way to introduce himself to vendors and tell them about the business they were starting in the spring.
As they reached Gunther’s Scuba Shop, Asher leaned toward her.
“I want the three of us to go in together this time,” Asher said. “You’re good at reading people, and it would be great to get your take on Gunther. I still have no clue what to make of our interaction yesterday.” He grinned and his eyes twinkled. “Not to mention the fact you managed to get yourself into a little bit of trouble last time I left you out here unsupervised.”
He was teasing her.
“Hey, don’t forget I came back with a pretty big catch,” she said.
He chuckled. “Like you’d ever let me forget.”
She laughed so loudly that an elderly couple sitting on a bench by the water looked over at them and smiled.
“That’s a beautiful wife you got there, son,” the elderly man called with a twinkle in his eye. “You be sure to take good care of her, all right?”
