K-9 Defense (HQR Intrigue) Read online

  To help a desperate woman’s search,

  he’ll have to brave treacherous territory.

  In the wilds of Alaska, grieving former marine Colter Hayes shuts out the world...until he and his combat tracker dog become Kensie Morgan’s last hope of finding her long-missing sister. The improbable mission starts to rekindle Colter’s desire to rejoin the world—while saving Kensie from a killer unsettles his heart. Can they find all they are searching for before it’s too late?

  “Helping you wasn’t easy for me. I know you don’t get it, but trust me when I say that any kind of mission was the last thing I thought I needed.”

  She was silent, so he pushed forward, faster now, starting to feel foolish for not just blurting a simple apology and leaving it at that. “That’s why I bailed on you when I found out you weren’t telling me everything. And when I kissed you...”

  Kensie stayed silent, lips pursed like she was waiting for a real apology. Or maybe she wasn’t even listening to him. It was hard to tell.

  “I’m sorry. I should have—”

  “It was a mistake. I get it. I agree. We got carried away in the moment. It’s not like it’s going to happen again,” Kensie said, cutting him off suddenly.

  It wasn’t going to happen again? Even though that had been his plan, too, hearing her say the words made him long to pull the truck over and see if she really meant it.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to Denise Zaza for suggesting I write a book with a hunky hero and a K-9 partner—I had so much fun creating Colter and Rebel! To everyone involved behind the scenes with K-9 Defense—I appreciate everything you do. Finally, thank you to my family and friends, who are always willing to lend their support on my crazy writing journey. Special thanks to Kevan Lyon, Andrew Gulli, Chris Heiter, Robbie Terman, Kathryn Merhar, Caroline Heiter, Ann Forsaith, Charles Shipps, Sasha Orr, Nora Smith and Mark Nalbach.

  K-9 DEFENSE

  Elizabeth Heiter

  Elizabeth Heiter likes her suspense to feature strong heroines, chilling villains, psychological twists and a little romance. Her research has taken her into the minds of serial killers, through murder investigations and onto the FBI Academy’s shooting range. Elizabeth graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in English literature. She’s a member of International Thriller Writers and Romance Writers of America. Visit Elizabeth at www.elizabethheiter.com.

  Books by Elizabeth Heiter

  Harlequin Intrigue

  K-9 Defense

  The Lawmen: Bullets and Brawn

  Bodyguard with a Badge

  Police Protector

  Secret Agent Surrender

  The Lawmen

  Disarming Detective

  Seduced by the Sniper

  SWAT Secret Admirer

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.

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  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Colter Hayes—In a single moment, Colter Hayes lost everything: his marine brothers, his job, even partial mobility. Now he’s hiding and healing in Alaska with his combat tracker dog, Rebel. When Rebel saves the life of outsider Kensie Morgan, Colter sees in her everything he’s ever wanted—but knows now he’ll never have.

  Kensie Morgan—For fourteen years, Kensie has been searching for the sister who was abducted right in front of her. She travels to Alaska on a long-shot lead, but she’s ill-prepared to face the natural perils—or her distracting attraction to Colter.

  Rebel—Colter’s loyal companion was a marine K-9 until she and Colter were injured in the ambush that killed the rest of their unit.

  Alanna Morgan—In the years since Kensie’s younger sister was kidnapped, leads have dried up. But Kensie has never given up on finding her.

  Henry Rollings—No one knows much about the reclusive local, but Kensie is certain he’s hiding something about Alanna. The problem is, no one can tell her how to find him to get answers.

  Danny Weston—He offers to help Kensie find Alanna, but Danny may not be what he seems.

  Over the years, I’ve been lucky enough to have many loyal companions like Rebel. This book is for all my furry, feathered and scaled family members.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Show of Force by Elle James

  Chapter One

  “I’m still alive.”

  Three simple words in a note. A note signed by the sister Kensie Morgan hadn’t seen in fourteen years had sent her in a frantic rush across 3,500 miles. Kensie had left a brief message on her boss’s voice mail, telling him she needed some time off, then called her family. They’d been less supportive.

  But this time, Kensie had to believe, the lead could be real.

  The hope had buoyed her from one layover to the next, warmed her as she stepped off the plane in Alaska. For early October, the temperature was way colder than she’d expected, and it had only gotten worse as she’d paid for her rental pickup truck and headed north.

  Desparre, Alaska, was the kind of place you came to to drop off the map. The sort of place no one would think to look—and even if they did, they might never make it out.

  After her GPS had given up and she’d made a half dozen wrong turns, she’d finally been able to get directions from a local into town. Now Kensie shivered as she stepped out of her truck for the first time in four hours. Her heavy down jacket was no match for the windchill, so she tugged up the collar as strong gusts whipped her long hair around her face. There was no avoiding the snow covering the walkways, so Kensie trudged through it. Her next stop after the police station was going to be for a new pair of boots.

  Her fingers tingled from the cold and she clenched them into tight fists in her pockets, hoping the motion would also ease her nerves. She’d planned to make the store where her sister’s note had been found her first stop, but when she couldn’t find it, she’d given up and headed into the main part of town.

  Kensie glanced around, taking in the assortment of buildings—post office, clothing store, bar, drug store, grocery store, church. She felt like she’d stepped back in time to the eighteen hundreds. The only thing missing was horse-drawn carriages. But it was probably too cold for horses. Even the monstrous all-weather truck parked up the street seemed ill prepared for Desparre once winter descended.

  Chicago got cold, but after not even one day in Desparre she was longing for the ridiculously cold-but-not-this-cold windchill off the lake.

  With the exception of a guy playing with his dog down the road, she was the only fool outside. Kensie hustled, careful not to slide in the snow as she yanked open the door to the tiny police station. Her stomach churned as reality set in. She was finally here.

 
This time will be different, she told herself, trying to bolster her courage.

  The officer behind the counter looked up as she entered, but she wasn’t sure if the scowl on his face was for her or the blast of cold air she brought inside. “Can I help you?”

  Desparre probably didn’t get a lot of outsiders, so she was going to stand out here. Kensie had gotten the same questioning looks each time she’d stopped to ask for directions on the outskirts of town.

  If her sister Alanna really was here, maybe she’d be the one to find Kensie.

  If only it could be that easy. But fourteen years of bright, painful hope drawn out for days or years and then dashed in yet another dead end, in yet another godforsaken town, told her that nothing about finding Alanna would be easy.

  But if the note was real...

  The hope that bloomed inside her now brought tears to her eyes.

  The officer stood and rushed to her side. “Are you okay? Do you need help?”

  She blinked the tears back and prayed her voice would be steady. “I need to talk to someone about the note you found from Alanna Morgan.”

  Frown lines dug deeper, creating grooves across the officer’s forehead. He looked like he belonged in a rocking chair with a couple of grandkids on his knee, not wearing a police uniform. “Why?”

  “I’m her sister.”

  The flash of emotions on his face was quick, so quick Kensie might have missed them if she hadn’t seen them so many times in her life. Surprise, discomfort and pity first. Then something hard and distant—law enforcement probably learned to compartmentalize to keep themselves from going crazy case after case, victim after victim.

  “You shouldn’t have come all this way. Didn’t you talk to the FBI?”

  The FBI had spoken to her and her family, of course. They’d been the ones to call and inform Kensie about the note found in Desparre in the first place. But that didn’t matter. “I needed to see for myself.”

  The frown was back, this time mixed with worry, but the officer nodded, patted her on the arm and then said, “I’ll be right back.”

  He disappeared through a door marked Police Only and Kensie took a deep breath.

  You can do this, she reminded herself. She was just out of practice. It had been years since the last lead on Alanna.

  Standing in a police station now took her back to her childhood. All those years of waiting in hard plastic chairs, her mom’s hand clutching hers way too tight, as they prayed for any shred of good news. Her dad standing stiffly beside them, his arm wrapped around her brother, holding him close as if that could keep him safe. Officers catching her gaze and then looking quickly away. Kensie’s palms damp and her heart thudding way too fast.

  Missing Alanna. Knowing it was all her fault her little sister was gone.

  “Ma’am?”

  Kensie looked up, realizing her eyes had glazed over as she’d stared at the floor, getting lost in her past. She stiffened her shoulders, tried to look like the professional woman she’d become instead of the terrified thirteen-year-old who always reappeared whenever she heard Alanna’s name.

  She held out a cold hand, shook hard and stared the new officer directly in the eye. Let her know she couldn’t be sent off with a “sorry” and a pat on the back.

  “I’m Chief Hernandez.”

  From the slight grin the chief gave, Kensie’s surprise probably showed. She was young for a police chief, likely only a few years older than Kensie’s twenty-seven.

  But there was wisdom in her steady gaze and strength in her handshake.

  “Kensie Morgan. I want to see the note that was left at the store.”

  Chief Hernandez held out her other hand and Kensie reached for the computer paper.

  It was a photocopy, but her heart beat faster at the slanted cursive handwriting. She read it aloud. “My name is Alanna Morgan, from Chicago. I’m still alive. I’m not the only one.”

  “You recognize the writing?” the chief asked, skepticism in her voice.

  “Alanna’s? No.” How could she? Her sister had been five years old when she’d been kidnapped out of their front yard. At five, everything had been big sloppy letters, forming words that were often misspelled. There was no way to know what Alanna’s handwriting looked like now. If she was really still alive, she’d be nineteen.

  Nineteen. The very idea made pain and longing mingle. What would a nineteen-year-old Alanna look like? What had happened in all the years between? Kensie had missed all of her sister’s milestones.

  Focus on now, Kensie reminded herself. Focus on what you can change. “What do you know?”

  Chief Hernandez shrugged, then frowned, like she regretted the motion. “Not much, I’m afraid. We don’t know who left it. We can’t be sure it’s even real. It says—”

  “I know,” Kensie cut her off, not wanting to hear a repeat of the FBI’s depressing analysis. “But you must know something. What about the store owner who found it?”

  “It was in a stack of bills. He couldn’t even say who put it there or when.”

  Chief Hernandez tilted her head in what Kensie had long ago come to recognize as a pity gesture. “I’m sorry. You came a long way for nothing.”

  The tears surprised her. They rushed hard and fast to her eyes and Kensie ducked her head, trying to blink them back.

  “Miss Morgan—”

  “Thanks,” she said, handing back the photocopy of the evidence—the photocopy of what might be her little sister’s writing. Without another word, she rushed out the door.

  This time, the cold was just what she needed. It slammed into her face, stinging her eyes and probably freezing the tears on her cheeks.

  Get it together, she told herself. Ducking her head against the wind, she hurried for her rental, parked across the street.

  It didn’t matter what the police thought. It didn’t matter what the FBI thought. It only mattered what her heart was screaming.

  Alanna was still alive. And Kensie might finally be able to bring her home.

  The gunning of an engine ripped her from her hopeful thoughts. Her head jerked up and right, toward the source of the sound.

  A station wagon the size of a small boat was plowing down the street, spraying snow and coming straight for her.

  * * *

  COLTER HAYES DIDN’T know what happened.

  One second, his retired Military Working Dog, Rebel, was goofing off, chasing a stick as naturally as she’d once tracked dangerous bombers back to their hideouts. The next, she was racing away from him so fast he knew her injured leg would be acting up later.

  He heard the engine a second after that, spotted the old station wagon careening around the corner, cutting through the slippery snow way too fast. And a woman frozen in the middle of the street.

  “Move!” he screamed at the woman, cursing the injury in his own leg—sustained at the same time as Rebel’s—as he raced for both of them.

  He’d never make it in time.

  The world around him seemed to move in slow motion as panic shot up his throat, mingling with the cold and making it hard to breathe. The car slip-sliding out of control. His five-year-old Malinois–German shepherd mix—the only friend he had left in the world—running straight in front of it.

  Colter pushed his leg as hard as he could, trying to follow, trying to be of any use at all. But it was no good.

  Rebel leapt up high, slamming into the woman’s chest with her front legs, knocking both of them out of sight as the car raced past Colter. It slowed for a second, then sped off.

  The panic dropped lower, making his chest hurt and his heart beat too fast. The memory of a year ago, of Rebel jumping on him as a bullet passed so close he felt its trajectory over his head, made it hard to breathe.

  He tried to push it out of his mind, willed himself not to fall into that darkness as he raced
across the street, sliding in the snow toward the two figures lying prone on the ground. He dropped to his knees, ignoring the pop in his knee and the pain that rushed up his thigh.

  Another memory from a year ago, of surgery after surgery as he begged to know the condition of his unit. No one would tell him.

  Colter blinked the present back into focus.

  Rebel climbed off the woman, her movements a little stiff. She nudged her way under his arm, like she knew he was hurt.

  Colter dug one hand into the soft fur on Rebel’s back, reassuring himself she hadn’t been hit.

  Still lying flat, the woman groaned and reached a trembling hand up to the back of her head, poking around like she was searching for blood. But her hand came back clean and he helped her to a sitting position.

  She stared at him with haunting brown eyes framed by dark lashes. Long, silky dark hair slid over her shoulders and across the back of his hand. The kind of woman he wouldn’t have been able to resist once upon a time.

  But she was as stupid as she was gorgeous.

  “What were you thinking? Crossing the road without paying any attention?” His voice rose even as Rebel pushed her wet nose into his neck, something that usually made him laugh.

  But nothing could make him laugh today. “You almost got yourself killed. You almost got my dog killed!”

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, sounding more shell-shocked than scared at her near miss. She reached a still-trembling hand out toward Rebel, gently stroking his dog’s brown-and-black fur.

  Rebel ate it up, the little traitor, giving the woman a solid push with her nose as if to ask for more.

  The woman laughed, a deep, rich sound that seemed to curl around his body.

  Colter scowled at both of them, but tried to keep his anger in check. Stupid or not, she had almost died a few minutes ago. And she wasn’t a soldier in battle, but a civilian clearly out of place in Alaska.

  To his surprise, his voice came out calm, almost soothing. “Let’s get you out of the street before another car comes through. Everyone’s going too fast today. Living here, they should know how to drive in the snow, but with the first snowfall of the season, it’s like everyone forgets.”