“You’re joking.”

“Nope. That’s his name. And he’s yours now.”

Sergeant Linda Hamlin wondered quite what it would take to wipe that smile off Lieutenant Jurgen’s face. A 120mm round from an M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank came to mind.

The kennel master of the US Secret Service’s Canine Team was clearly a misogynistic jerk from the top of his polished head to the bottoms of his equally polished boots. She wondered if the shoelaces were polished as well.

Then she looked over at the poor dog sitting hopefully on the concrete kennel floor. His stall had a dog bed three times his size and a water bowl deep enough for him to bathe in. No toys, because toys always came from the handler as a reward. He offered her a sad sigh and a liquid doggy gaze. The kennel even smelled wrong, more of sanitizer than dog. The walls seemed to echo with each bark down the long line of kennels housing the candidate hopefuls for the next addition to the Secret Service’s team.

Thor—really?—was a brindle-colored mutt, part who-knew and part no-one-cared. He looked like a cross between an oversized, long-haired schnauzer and a dust mop that someone had spilled dark gray paint on. After mixing in streaks of tawny brown, they’d left one white paw just to make him all the more laughable.

And of course Lieutenant Jerk Jurgen would assign Thor to the first woman on the USSS K-9 team.

Unable to resist, she leaned over far enough to scruff the dog’s ears. He was the physical opposite of the sleek and powerful Malinois MWDs—military war dogs—that she’d been handling for the 75th Rangers for the last five years. They twitched with eagerness and nerves. A good MWD was seventy pounds of pure drive—every damn second of the day. If the mild-mannered Thor weighed thirty pounds, she’d be surprised. And he looked like a little girl’s best friend who should have a pink bow on his collar.

Jurgen was clearly ex-Marine and would have no respect for the Army. Of course, having been in the Army’s Special Operations Forces, she knew better than to respect a Marine.

“We won’t let any old swabbie bother us, will we?”

Jurgen snarled—definitely Marine Corps. Swabbie was slang for a Navy sailor and a Marine always took offense at being lumped in with them no matter how much they belonged. Of course the swabbies took offense at having the Marines lumped with them. Too bad there weren’t any Navy around so that she could get two for the price of one. Jurgen wouldn’t be her boss, so appeasing him wasn’t high on her to-do list.

At least she wouldn’t need any of the protective bite gear working with Thor. With his stature, he was an explosives detection dog without also being an attack one.

“Where was he trained?” She stood back up to face the beast.

“Private outfit in Montana—some place called Henderson’s Ranch. Didn’t make their MWD program,” his scoff said exactly what he thought the likelihood of any dog outfit in Montana being worthwhile. “They wanted us to try the little runt out.”

She’d never heard of a training program in Montana. MWDs all came out of Lackland Air Force Base training. The Secret Service mostly trained their own and they all came from Vohne Liche Kennels in Indiana. Unless… Special Operations Forces dogs were trained by private contractors. She’d worked beside a Delta Force dog for a single month—he’d been incredible.

“Is he trained in English or German?” Most American MWDs were trained in German so that there was no confusion in case a command word happened to be part of a spoken sentence. It also made it harder for any random person on the battlefield to shout something that would confuse the dog.

“German according to his paperwork, but he won’t listen to me much in either language.”

Might as well give the diminutive Thor a few basic tests. A snap of her fingers and a slap on her thigh had the dog dropping into a smart “heel” position. No need to call out Fuss—by my foot.

“Pass auf!” Guard! She made a pistol with her thumb and forefinger and aimed it at Jurgen as she grabbed her forearm with her other hand—the military hand sign for enemy.

The little dog snarled at Jurgen sharply enough to have him backing out of the kennel. “Goddamn it!”

“Ruhig.” Quiet. Thor maintained his fierce posture but dropped the snarl.

“Gute Hund.” Good dog, Linda countered the command.

Thor looked up at her and wagged his tail happily. She tossed him a doggie treat, which he caught midair and crunched happily.

She didn’t bother looking up at Jurgen as she knelt once more to check over the little dog. His scruffy fur was so soft that it tickled. Good strength in the jaw, enough to show he’d had bite training despite his size—perfect if she ever needed to take down a three-foot-tall terrorist. Legs said he was a jumper.

“Take your time, Hamlin. I’ve got nothing else to do with the rest of my goddamn day except babysit you and this mutt.”

“Is the course set?”

“Sure. Take him out,” Jurgen’s snarl sounded almost as nasty as Thor’s before he stalked off.

She stood and slapped a hand on her opposite shoulder.

Thor sprang aloft as if he was attached to springs and she caught him easily. He’d cleared well over double his own height. Definitely trained…and far easier to catch than seventy pounds of hyperactive Malinois.

She plopped him back down on the ground. On lead or off? She’d give him the benefit of the doubt and try off first to see what happened.

Linda zipped up her brand-new USSS jacket against the cold and led the way out of the kennel into the hard sunlight of the January morning. Snow had brushed the higher hills around the USSS James J. Rowley Training Center—which this close to Washington, DC, wasn’t saying much—but was melting quickly. Scents wouldn’t carry as well on the cool air, making it more of a challenge for Thor to locate the explosives. She didn’t know where they were either. The course was a test for handler as well as dog.

Jurgen would be up in the observer turret looking for any excuse to mark down his newest team. Perhaps teasing him about being just a Marine hadn’t been her best tactical choice. She sighed. At least she was consistent—she’d always been good at finding ways to piss people off before she could stop herself and consider the wisdom of doing so.

This test was the culmination of a crazy three months, so she’d forgive herself this time—something she also wasn’t very good at.

In October she’d been out of the Army and unsure what to do next. Tucked in the packet with her DD 214 honorable discharge form had been a flyer on career opportunities with the US Secret Service dog team: Be all your dog can be! No one else being released from Fort Benning that day had received any kind of a job flyer at all that she’d seen, so she kept quiet about it.

She had to pass through DC on her way back to Vermont—her parent’s place. Burlington would work for, honestly, not very long at all, but she lacked anywhere else to go after a decade of service. So, she’d stopped off in DC to see what was up with that job flyer. Five interviews and three months to complete a standard six-month training course later—which was mostly a cakewalk after fighting with the US Rangers—she was on-board and this chill January day was her first chance with a dog. First chance to prove that she still had it. First chance to prove that she hadn’t made a mistake in deciding that she’d seen enough bloodshed and war zones for one lifetime and leaving the Army.

The Start Here sign made it obvious where to begin, but she didn’t dare hesitate to take in her surroundings past a quick glimpse. Jurgen’s score would count a great deal toward where she and Thor were assigned in the future. Mostly likely on some field prep team, clearing the way for presidential visits.

As usual, hindsight informed her that harassing the lieutenant hadn’t been an optimal strategy. A hindsight that had served her equally poorly with regular Army commanders before she’d finally hooked up with the Rangers—kowtowing to officers had never been one of her strengths.

Thankfully, the Special Operations Forces hadn’t given a damn about anything except performance and that she could always deliver, since the day she’d been named the team captain for both soccer and volleyball. She was never popular, but both teams had made all-state her last two years in school.

The canine training course at James J. Rowley was a two-acre lot. A hard-packed path of tramped-down dirt led through the brown grass. It followed a predictable pattern from the gate to a junker car, over to tool shed, then a truck, and so on into a compressed version of an intersection in a small town. Beyond it ran an urban street of gray clapboard two- and three-story buildings and an eight-story office tower, all without windows. Clearly a playground for Secret Service training teams.

Her target was the town, so she blocked the city street out of her mind. Focus on the problem: two roads, twenty storefronts, six houses, vehicles, pedestrians.

It might look normal…normalish with its missing windows and no movement. It would be anything but. Stocked with fake IEDs, a bombmaker’s stash, suicide cars, weapons caches, and dozens of other traps, all waiting for her and Thor to find. He had to be sensitive to hundreds of scents and it was her job to guide him so that he didn’t miss the opportunity to find and evaluate each one.

There would be easy scents, from fertilizer and diesel fuel used so destructively in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, to almost as obvious TNT to the very difficult to detect C-4 plastic explosive.

Mannequins on the street carried grocery bags and briefcases. Some held fresh meat, a powerful smell demanding any dog’s attention, but would count as a false lead if they went for it. On the job, an explosives detection dog wasn’t supposed to care about anything except explosives. Other mannequins were wrapped in suicide vests loaded with Semtex or wearing knapsacks filled with package bombs made from Russian PVV-5A.

She spotted Jurgen stepping into a glassed-in observer turret atop the corner drugstore. Someone else was already there and watching.

She looked down once more at the ridiculous little dog and could only hope for the best.

“Thor?”

He looked up at her.

She pointed to the left, away from the beaten path.

“Such!” Find.

Thor sniffed left, then right. Then he headed forward quickly in the direction she pointed.

* * *

Clive Andrews sat in the second-story window at the corner of Main and First, the only two streets in town. Downstairs was a drugstore all rigged to explode, except there were no triggers and there was barely enough explosive to blow up a candy box.

Not that he’d know, but that’s what Lieutenant Jurgen had promised him.

It didn’t really matter if it was rigged to blow for real, because when Miss Watson—never Ms. or Mrs.—asked for a “favor,” you did it. At least he did. Actually, he had yet to meet anyone else who knew her. Not that he’d asked around. She wasn’t the sort of person one talked about with strangers, or even close friends. He’d bet even if they did, it would be in whispers. That’s just what she was like.

So he’d traveled across town from the White House and into Maryland on a cold winter’s morning, barely past a sunrise that did nothing to warm the day. Now he sat in an unheated glass icebox and watched a new officer run a test course he didn’t begin to understand. Lieutenant Jurgen settled in beside him at a console with feeds from a dozen cameras and banks of switches.

While waiting, Clive had been fooling around with a sketch on a small pad of paper. The next State Dinner was in seven days. President Zachary Taylor had invited the leaders of Vietnam, Japan, and the Philippines to the White House for discussions about some Chinese islands. Or something like that, Clive hadn’t really been paying attention to the details past the attendee list.

Instead, he was contemplating the dessert for such a dinner that would surprise, perhaps delight, as well as being an icebreaker for future discussions. Being the chocolatier for the White House was the most exciting job he’d ever had. Every challenge was fresh and new, like the first strawberry of each year.

This one would be elegant. January was a little early, it would be better if it was spring, but that wasn’t crucial. A large half-egg shape of paper-thin white chocolate filled with a mousse—white chocolate? No, nor a dark chocolate. Instead, a milk chocolate mousse but rich with flavor, perhaps bourbon. Then mold the dark chocolate to top it with a filigree bird, wings spread in half flight, ready to soar upward. A crane perhaps? He made a note to check with the protocol office to make sure that he wouldn’t be offending some leader without knowing it.

“Never underestimate the power of a good dessert,” he mumbled one of Jacques Torres’ favorite admonitions. This was going to work very nicely.

“What’s that?” Jurgen grunted out without looking up.

“Just talking to myself.”

Which earned him a dismissive grunt, as if he was unworthy of the agent’s attention. It wouldn’t surprise him. Clive was not trained like a Secret Service officer. His skills lay in his palate and his fingers for shaping the very finest chocolate work. He knew his big frame and good looks said easy-going and, while his size wasn’t quite to oaf, people always assumed he was just a big and clumsy guy.

Clive often felt defensive about being a chocolatier when he was so dismissed out of hand. He had spent years learning his skills. And to be invited to join the White House kitchen…well, he couldn’t think of a higher accolade. The fact that his father would agree with Jurgen didn’t help matters. However, Lieutenant Jurgen didn’t look like the sort of man to risk upsetting.

His own father had been a quiet, drunken merchant marine who rarely spoke when he was ashore—except for grumblings about his only child’s lame excuse for a choice of profession. The one blessing of having Nic Andrews as a father was how much of Clive’s life the man had spent at sea. In between, Clive and his mother had lived together in Redwood City very quietly and with some small degree of content. Their apartment had a view of the brilliant colors of the Cargill Salt Flats of San Francisco Bay. He often used their colors in his chocolates.

“They’re starting.” It was clear by his tone that Jurgen could break Clive over his knee like a piece of sugar work despite Clive’s size and would be glad to demonstrate at the least provocation.

“Oh, thanks,” seemed to be an acceptable response.

A “you’re welcome” grunt sounded softly.

Miss Watson had told him to watch, so he closed his notepad and tucked it in his shirt pocket.

“Any suggestions on what I’m looking for?” Miss Watson had not been clear on that point. He looked down at the new officer and the small dog entering the far end of the course. He picked up a pair of binoculars from the window ledge but the dog was still small, barely reaching the officer’s knees.

He scanned upward.

A woman. For some reason he hadn’t expected that. Of course with the silly little dog, that somehow fit. However, officer or not, the woman offered a great deal to be looking at. Five-seven or eight. Medium chocolate brunette, about a fifty percent cocoa, with a nicely tempered shine like a fine ganache. It fell in a natural flow down to her shoulders, slightly ragged rather than in some DC socialite perfect coif. A thin face without being gaunt. Perhaps intense would be a better word.

Her jacket hid her shape, but she wore no hat or gloves despite the cold. Tan khakis hinted at nice legs. Army boots declared definitely not DC socialite.

“Well, for one thing, she’s not following the damned course,” Jurgen sounded puzzled.

“Is that a bad thing?” Clive could see the worn track and that they definitely weren’t on it.

Jurgen made a sound that was neither yes or no.

“What’s her name?”

“Linda with Thor,” as if it was a single name.

Clive couldn’t stop the laugh. “That scruffy little mutt is named Thor?”

Jurgen’s grin would look appropriately nasty to be carved into the flesh of a Halloween pumpkin.

The woman had transformed once she started the course. Pretty and intent had transformed to focused to the point of lethal. She moved with all the efficiency of a fine-honed knife blade. Maybe she was Thor and the dog was Linda.

With a series of hand signs—Linda’s mouth rarely moved though he did spend some time watching it—she directed the dog along a storefront. When she disappeared inside, he turned to watch the camera feeds on Jurgen’s console.

“It isn’t just the dog,” Jurgen volunteered. “The dog has the nose, but the handler guides the dog to make sure no area is missed. Neither one can do it alone. Hundred percent a team effort.”

Inside what might have been a real estate or travel agency, the dog sat abruptly and looked back at Linda. The officer stuck a red Post-it on one of the desk drawers.

“PETN. Very hard to find. Under half of the dog teams find that one,” Jurgen didn’t sound pleased. Maybe he was one of those people who was only happy when someone was suffering. Clive had worked for more than one chef like that.

“Linda with Thor”—or “Thor with Linda,” he wasn’t going to commit on that one yet despite Jurgen’s evil grin—were on the move again.

Just as they stepped out of the office, Jurgen flipped a switch on his console.

Clive jumped as the blast of sirens sounded from a police car parked at the curb, even though they were muffled by distance and the observer station’s windows.

It must have been painfully loud right next to the car, but Linda and Thor both merely looked at the wailing vehicle, sniffed their way around it, then continued along the street.

For an hour they left behind a trail of red Post-its and for the most part ignored sirens, gunfire, and other distractions. Once an actual explosion spattered them with dirt. For that, Linda had wrapped her arms around the dog and huddled in a bookstore doorway with her back turned toward the worst of it. Moments later they were back at their task.

Clive could look down in wonder. She’d positioned herself so that if the explosion had been lethal, rather than merely a training distraction, she’d have given her life to save her dog. Maybe the guys on the Presidential Protection Detail really would step in front of the bullet if given the chance. Would he himself step in the line of a rogue chocolate shard? Perhaps, but only because that didn’t sound terribly threatening.

When they reached the end of the course, they stopped in the center of the intersection. From a small pack, she pulled out a fold-up bowl and poured some water into it for Thor before drinking herself. Then a doggie treat. Nothing for the handler.

With a tip of his head, Jurgen indicated that Clive should follow him down.

As they stepped out onto the street themselves, she was tossing a bulbous Kong toy for Thor. He’d once more turned into the dog most likely to belong at a little girl’s tea party, eating all of the cookies whenever the hostess wasn’t looking.

“You missed two,” Jurgen snapped out his form of a polite greeting, not bothering to look at his clipboard.

Linda flinched as if she’d been slapped and her shoulders sagged.

But Clive had learned some things about Jurgen’s expressions: there was a sourness there like bitter chocolate. “What’s been your best score by any other team?”

“Five misses,” Jurgen’s scowl now included him since Clive had just spoiled his fun.

Linda still didn’t look any happier. That told him a lot about her—this was one seriously driven woman. Anything less than perfect was a hundred percent failure. Which he supposed was true when your job was to make sure that no one blew up the President.

At that moment Thor stopped playing with his toy, trotted up to Jurgen’s feet, circled him once, and sat abruptly with his nose aimed at one of the lieutenant’s shoes.

“Damn it,” he growled. “Okay, that makes one miss.”

“Let me guess,” Clive could get to enjoy this after all. “The observer’s station also has an explosive.” Then his breath caught in his throat. He wouldn’t put it past Jurgen to have him sitting on an explosive the whole time he’d been in the observer’s chair.

* * *

Jurgen’s expression said it all.

“Of course,” Linda couldn’t believe she’d missed it. “It is always the person and place you least suspect that gets by you.” That was certainly never going to happen again.

She was furious with herself for missing that but wasn’t going to show any weakness. It was one of the great traps of serving in the military. If a woman showed the least weakness, she’d forever be tagged as unable to perform. If a guy showed ten times as much, he’d be tagged as being tired and probably told he’d done a good job. The military had taught her how to hide anything she was actually feeling—often until she barely felt it herself.

It was even more galling that some stranger had to be the one to point it out. He didn’t sound or act like Secret Service, making it even worse.

“Usually takes a new dog-handler team weeks of hard work to get even close to that kind of performance. Fine!” Jurgen’s tone said it was anything but. He yanked a sheet from his clipboard, scrawled a signature, and handed it across. “Oh eight hundred tomorrow. Report to Captain Carl Baxter at the USSS office in the West Wing of the White House. Take that damn dog with you. I’ve got a meeting to get to.” Then he stalked off. A trumped-up meeting, because earlier he’d said he had all day.

Linda could only look down at Thor in amazement. She squatted down and gave him a big scritch. It wasn’t Thor’s fault that she’d screwed up and not led him into the control center to sniff around and she had to make sure that he knew that. She’d never before worked with such a well-trained dog. He flopped onto his back and presented his belly. As she rubbed it, his back leg began kicking spasmodically in joy.

“You did so good, Thor. You are such a good doggie!” She used that ridiculous high-pitched voice that so many dog trainers used. She was long past being embarrassed by it. Mostly. She couldn’t care less about Jurgen, but something about the other man who’d stayed behind made her less sure.

“Maybe I should leave you two alone.” He had a nice deep voice, befitting his large frame.

Linda glanced up at him. Her automatic profiling assessment kicked in: Caucasian male, closecut dark hair, dark eyes, built big like a wrestler—enough so that he’d look heavy if he wasn’t six-four. Instead he looked like the guy most likely to wrap you up in a friendly bear hug, which would force her to flatten him if he tried. His standout feature was powerful hands well marked with small cuts and burns. That and an amazing smile, which lit up his whole face. He wore a fleece jacket over a maroon turtleneck and a knit scarf in a blocky pattern of brilliant colors that made his brown eyes even warmer.

“Hi,” his pleasant tone not the least diminished by her own silence, which was now growing awkward.

Thor had rolled to his feet, sniffed around the man, then looked up at him wagging his short tail.

He knelt down and reached out to scratch the dog’s ear.

She snapped her fingers to get Thor’s attention and made the hand sign for “enemy” as a test.

He looked up at her in surprise as if she’d lost her mind.

She sighed and whispered, “Spiel.” Play. The dog could do what he wanted.

He nosed out and slipped his head under the stranger’s half-extended hand. Without a moment’s hesitation, the man began to rub the offered ear. Easy for the dog.

Not so easy for her. Well, she had to start somewhere and he looked kindly enough.

“Nice scarf.”

He looked down at his chest. “Oh, this one. Thanks. My mom knit it for me last Christmas. It’s the colors of home.”

“Where did you grow up, in a kaleidoscope?”

“Almost. South of San Francisco there are these huge salt flats that turn wild colors as their salinity increases. This is the last scarf she ever knit for me. I made one of cherry blossom colors for her that same year.” His smile was wistful, which was more than she’d ever feel if her mom died.

“You knit?” She couldn’t imagine how with those big hands of his.

“Doesn’t everyone?” But his smile said that rather than an actual expectation, it was some form of humor—not one of her strengths. It was getting strange, not knowing if he was someone to salute or not, so she held out a hand.

“Sergeant Linda Hamlin. New to the Secret Service—as of today, I suppose.”

“Clive Andrews,” which still didn’t tell her who he was. He reached up from where he still squatted by Thor. His hand was warm—her fingers were freezing—and as powerful as it looked. His massive hand completely enveloped hers. That’s when she realized that he wasn’t merely big, he was immensely strong. If he was trained, she might have trouble taking him down—though she’d learned more than a few dirty tricks fending off unwanted attentions in her decade of service.

There was an easy roll to his voice that hinted at Scottish, overlaid with a soft American accent that she couldn’t pin down—which must be San Francisco. It made him sound as much of a mutt as Thor.

“Not Agent Hamlin?”

“Special Agent is separate from the Uniformed Division. The canine teams are UD; we use ranks.”

“Oh.”

Great way to build a friendship—her first potential one outside of the military in a decade—by correcting him. It did tell her that he wasn’t Secret Service or he’d have known that. Which raised the question of what he was doing on their secure base.

“And this is a White House patrol dog?” He rubbed under Thor’s chin.

She looked down at Thor’s shaggy appearance. Despite his exceptional performance, it was clear that she was going to be endlessly harassed about him. She sighed and changed the subject.

“And you are…?” Best way to appease a man, talk about him.

“The White House chocolatier.” His cheery wince said that he too was expecting a certain dismissive reaction.

When she didn’t take the bait, he merely acknowledged it with a shrug.

Again the silence was stretching… “Is there a reason a chocolatier is here at James J. Rowley Training Center?”

This time the shrug looked a little awkward as he rose back to standing, much to Thor’s dismay.

She was an expert on reading a dog’s body language. Men were a mystery to her. Well, except for a few obvious nonverbal messages that she had made it a rule to ignore. But she wasn’t getting those from Clive the Chocolatier.

“Grown men actually make their living with chocolate?”

That earned her another of his dazzling smiles, “Only the lucky ones.”

“Chocolate was never a big motivator for me.”

He slapped a hand on his heart and staggered backward as if she’d knifed him with her Benchmade Triage foldable. “You have set me a challenge, madam. I shall expect you to visit the White House Chocolate Shop at your first convenience so that I may convince you otherwise.”

“The White House has a chocolate shop? Like where you buy chocolate?” She was definitely back in civilian land. The places she’d been operating, a chow tent was a luxury and a mess hall mostly a distant dream.

He sighed and hung his head as if she was a hopeless case, which wouldn’t surprise her for a moment. But then he smiled down at her again, as cheerful as ever. He and Thor were apparently two of a kind.

“Actually, in the world of chocolate, a chocolate shop can be either a place of sale or a kitchen. Mine is a actually a chocolate kitchen. We just call it a shop.”

“Okay. Sure. Whatever. I’ll look you up if I get there.” A chill breeze flapped the piece of paper directing her to report at the White House tomorrow and made her shiver. “Okay, when I get there.”

Clive cast off his fooling around. His friendliness actually made her feel warm despite the freezing temperature. She really needed to get some gloves. Did he know how powerful that smile was on his handsome features?

Her jerk-o-meter wasn’t twitching either, which was unusual.

Then, of all unlikely things, he bowed deeply—once to her and once to Thor, the second bow accompanied by a brief head pat—before turning and heading for the parking lot.

A nice guy. One who remembered her dog. She didn’t like being charmed by any creature with less than four legs, but he’d somehow managed it.