It’d only been a few weeks since, during a witness interview down in Houston, he’d found Tesha malnourished and chained to a stake with no water and no shelter in sight. Because her video-game-playing, chain-smoking, whiskey-chugging owners felt it was okay to ignore her, Reese had decided she deserved better.
Perhaps his actions had been technically illegal, but Reese hadn’t lost a minute of sleep since he’d personally relocated her, carrying her right out of that backyard and putting her into their SUV. He could still remember the fury he’d felt that day, seeing her helpless and neglected. It had filled him with a pain he hadn’t experienced before, and he couldn’t, in good conscience, walk away from her.
So here she was. And under the close eye of the town veterinarian, he was happy to say Tesha had put on a solid ten pounds and sported a happy-go-lucky grin more often than not.
Reese found himself smiling. “I take it you were good for JJ while we were gone?”
Tesha’s head cocked to the side, and Reese would’ve sworn she was smiling back at him.
“Maybe nottoogood.” He reached down to scratch her head.
Tesha’s tongue lolled out of her mouth and her eyes closed, making him laugh.
“Well, look at you.”
Reese glanced over to see Magnus strolling toward them, his full attention on Tesha. She spared Magnus a brief look only to have her interest piqued. She barked once, stood momentarily, then sat directly in front of Reese, facing away from him this time, her tail thumping with barely restrained anticipation.
Magnus laughed as he neared. “Hello, Tesha.”
Reese could admit he’d been skeptical upon first meeting Magnus when Brantley had dragged him over to the dog day camp to introduce them. It didn’t have anything to do with the camp itself, which he learned was well maintained and well staffed. The five-acre facility held a single-story house, where Magnus lived, a decent-sized metal barn behind it, which was the main office, training room, and luxury kennels, as well as several outbuildings, a few penned-in areas, and a large swimming pool specifically for the dogs.
That didn’t include the three hundred acres of rocky terrain the facility sat on that Magnus utilized for training search-and-rescue dogs.
Reese thought back to his first introduction to the twenty-four-year-old Magnus, which had been shortly after they’d happened upon a young woman—clearly rocking her going-out clothes from the previous night out—slipping out of Magnus’s house and right into the backseat of an Uber as they were pulling in. He wouldn’t have thought anything of it except it wasn’t a drop-in type of meeting. Magnus had been expecting them, yet his flavor of the night had been lingering upon their arrival.
Turned out, if it hadn’t been for the woman doing the walk of shame, Reese would’ve been highly impressed. He’d given Magnus the benefit of the doubt, and after a solid hour of Magnus working with Tesha, Reese’s pessimism had been quashed. More so when Magnus had informed him that Tesha wouldn’t be the only one undergoing training. Evidently, Reese and Brantley would learn just as much as Tesha, and they had been for the past few weeks.
The good news was, Tesha had taken to Magnus, something Reese had been worried about in the beginning. She still rarely left Reese’s side when they were together, but she didn’t cower or quiver when Magnus was around. In fact, he’d go so far as to say Tesha liked the man. Then again, it was easy to like Magnus. He was just … likable.
“Doesn’t look like you partied too much with JJ,” Magnus said to Tesha.
The man had been introduced to Jessica James, the Off the Books Task Force’s hacker extraordinaire, several months ago, even worked with her a few times on how to handle Tesha in regard to training. Being a bit on the protective side where Tesha was concerned, Reese had asked JJ for her opinion of the man. Her honest answer: “He’s got bedroom eyes and really,reallynice arms.”
Not exactly the type of feedback he’d been looking for, but that was JJ. Ever helpful if you were looking to date someone, but not necessarily when you wanted to utilize their professional services.
“Probably in bed by ten,” Reese commented. Seemed to be what JJ did these days, ever since she’d broken things off with Baz.
When Tesha stood, Magnus held up one finger. She immediately sat again.
“Good, girl,” he crooned, praising her with a scratch on the head.
“Keepin’ up with the training, I see.”
“It’s our main focus,” he admitted. “Now that we’ve mastered house trainin’, anyway.”
Magnus squatted down to get on Tesha’s level. “Mastered, huh? Very impressive, Tesha.”
It really was. For the first two weeks of her being in the house, Reese had felt as though he spent most of his time at the back door, urging her to go out in order to avoid any accidents. As time went by, she’d started announcing her need to go out until it was second nature. Then, like they’d done in the barn, once the fence had been put up, they’d installed a dog door, giving her free rein.
“And the leash? How’s that goin’?”
“She has no problem with the harness,” he admitted, remembering how Tesha had been terrified when he’d first started training her on a leash. He figured it had to do with the fact she’d been tied up for so long. Magnus had suggested trying the harness rather than the collar and, sure enough, no issues.
“And your bed?” Magnus grinned. “She still fightin’ to sleep there?”
Reese chuckled. “No. Definitely not.”
That had been the main thing Brantley had been focused on, ensuring they didn’t have to share a bed with the dog.
