Off the Leash

Chapter 1-2

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.