by Paige Tyler
She shook her head as she kept typing. “Thanks for the invite, but I can’t. I have way too much to do before I leave.”
Evan frowned. “You going on vacation?”
Kendra had a hard time keeping the silly grin off her face. “Mission in Costa Rica.”
His eyes went wide. “Seriously?”
“Uh-huh. John wants me to evaluate a big international, interagency training exercise down there.”
“You’re going down there alone?”
She printed out the report on Trevor’s team and signed it, then attached the secret cover page on it and slid the document into an envelope. “Of course not. I’m going with Tate’s team. They’re taking part in the exercise.”
“Oh.” Evan shook his head. “Damn, that sounds cool.”
Kendra grinned. “Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?”
“Well, I’d better let you go then,” Evan said. “Watch yourself out there, okay?”
“I will.”
Kendra checked her email once more before logging off and thumbing the power button. It felt weird to shut down her computer. The only time she ever did it was when she went on vacation. And running around the hot, sweaty Costa Rican jungle for two weeks was going to be anything but a vacation. But she’d been begging her boss, John Loughlin, for months to go into the field, and now that he’d finally agreed, she was damn well going to make the most of the opportunity. Sure, she would have preferred if her first real mission had been going with Ivy and Landon to check out a hybrid research lab. Or maybe tagging along with Clayne and Danica to serve as backup the next time they took down a bad guy.
But John wasn’t ready to go that far…yet. He probably thought that if he sent her into the hot, humid, bug-ridden Costa Rican jungle, she’d hate it so much she’d never bother him about going into the field again. He was wrong. She was going to kick butt out there.
Kendra grabbed her purse and was heading for the door when her cell phone rang. She dug it out of her bag, putting it to her ear as she locked her office. “Hello.”
“Hey, Kendra, it’s Layla Halliwell,” the caller said, then added, “Ivy’s sister? I don’t know if you remember me, but we met at her wedding.”
Kendra almost laughed. She doubted there were many people who could forget Ivy’s younger sister. The girl had the kind of personality that made you smile just thinking about her. She and Layla had both been in the wedding party, so they’d hung out and talked—when the other woman hadn’t been hip deep in conversation with Landon’s Special Forces buddy, Jayson Harmon.
“Of course I remember you.” Kendra started down the hall toward John’s office. “What’s up?”
“Ivy told me to call you if I ever needed help, and well…I need help.”
Kendra frowned. “What’s wrong? Are you in trouble or something?”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” Layla assured her. “I’m looking for a job and was hoping you might be able to get me an interview at the DCO.”
Kendra stopped mid-step. Crap. If there was one thing Ivy was dead set against, it was her little sister working at the Department of Covert Operations. They might call shifters like Ivy and Layla extremely valuable assets—EVAs for short—but they also gave their human counterparts permission to kill them if they ever got compromised on a mission rather than let them fall into enemy hands. Ivy had been lucky enough to be paired with a partner who would die himself before hurting her; Layla might not be so fortunate. Why couldn’t Layla be like Kendra’s other friends and call asking to borrow money or something?
“You know, I’d love to, but the DCO isn’t really hiring right now,” Kendra said slowly.
There was silence on the other end of the line. “Ivy told you to say that, didn’t she?”
“What? No, of course not.”
“Yes, she did. Damn her.” Layla growled in exasperation. “She thinks I want to be a field agent like her, which is ridiculous. I don’t know the first thing about guns and spies and covert operations. I’m a psychologist. All I want is to work with other shifters like me. I don’t understand why she’s so against that.”
Kendra felt for Layla, she really did. Being told that someone knew better than you what was good for you and what you should or shouldn’t do was tough to handle. It was even tougher for Layla. Knowing there was a whole world of shifters like her out there and being told she couldn’t associate with them? Ivy was wrong to do that.
Besides, the DCO could use a person with Layla’s education and personal familiarity with the shifter mind. The psychologists the DCO had on staff—both of whom were human—were overwhelmed with the workload and not all that great when it came to helping shifters anyway.
“Kendra, please,” Layla begged. “Ivy won’t even know you set up the interview.”
Right. And how else would Layla get a job with a super-secret organization like the DCO? It wasn’t as if Layla could just walk into the personnel office and fill out an application.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll get you an interview with the director.”
Silence. Then, “Seriously?”
“Seriously. I’ll text you the directions to the main office in DC.”
“Thanks,” Layla said. “I owe you big for this, Kendra.”
“It’s only an interview,” Kendra said. “You have to get the job.”
Though something told Kendra that wouldn’t be a problem. She stifled a groan as she hung up. Ivy was going to kill her.
She dropped her phone back in her purse and walked into John’s office. As she’d suspected, he was more than willing to talk to Layla.
“Just because she’s a shifter doesn’t mean she’s a field operative, John,” Kendra reminded him.
He peered at her over his reading glasses, his mouth quirking. “I heard you the first two times you told me. Don’t worry. I won’t ask her to do anything she doesn’t want to do. Now go before you miss your flight.”
Actually, Kendra still had an hour before she had to meet Tate and his team at the airfield, but she could take a hint. Telling John she’d see him in two weeks, she left and headed over to the lab. The facility had gotten a complete makeover, thanks to the DCO’s new fascination with hybrids.
Six months ago, nobody knew what a hybrid was. There were the DCO’s natural-born shifters and that was it. Kendra’s very best friend in the whole world, Ivy Donovan, was a feline shifter, but no one would know it just from looking at her. Sure, when Ivy wanted to, the claws and fangs came out and she could be deadly as hell. But most of the time she was a normal woman. The other DCO shifters were like that, too—Clayne Buchanan and his wolf traits, Trevor Maxwell with his coyote abilities, Declan MacBride and his massive physique to match his bear DNA.
Then Ivy and her husband, Landon Donovan, had investigated Keegan Stutmeir, the former East German intelligence officer turned arms dealer. Everyone had thought he’d been kidnapping scientists and doctors to make a new bioweapon. They’d been wrong. He’d been creating man-made shifters, using science to shove animal DNA into humans. Everyone called them hybrids.
While they might share animal traits, hybrids were nothing like shifters. Shifters blended perfectly into normal society. You’d never notice them if they didn’t want you to. Hybrids, on the other hand, were bloodthirsty, violent, enraged creatures almost all the time. It had taken a small army of DCO agents along with a group of completely unauthorized Special Forces soldiers from Landon’s former team to take down Stutmeir and the pack of hybrids he’d created out in Washington State.
Unfortunately, two of the doctors responsible for creating the process had gotten away. Everyone knew it was only a matter of time before the DCO ran up against the hybrids again.
The official company line was that all the new high-tech equipment at the DCO training complex was to help them “understand” the threat the DCO faced, but that was crap. The assistant director, Dick Coleman, was pushing their doctors not only to understand how Stutmeir had created his hybrids, but
to also replicate the process.
All Kendra could say was thank God for Zarina Sokolov. She’d been one of the doctors Stutmeir kidnapped, and had decided to work for the DCO to make sure people like Dick could never replicate Stutmeir’s hybrid process—without anyone realizing it, of course.
The Russian doctor looked up from her microscope as Kendra walked in, her reading glasses perched on her nose and a pencil stuck in her messy blond bun. Zarina said something to the gray-haired man beside her, then slid off the stool and came over.
Kendra shivered. “I don’t know how you all put up with this place all day. It’s freezing in here.”
Zarina laughed as she pushed her reading glasses up on her head. “Is that your subtle way of asking if we can do the status briefing outside?”
“If you don’t mind?”
“I don’t mind.” The doctor grabbed her coat from the wooden rack beside the door. “I could use a break.”
Once outside the lab, she and Zarina walked along the sidewalk until they were too far from the building for anyone to overhear—although with shifters on the property who had exceptional ears, there could always be someone listening in. They stopped at a section that overlooked one of the complex’s training areas. Even though it was November, the sun was out and it was an unseasonably mild day. Certainly warmer than it had been in the lab.
“The last of the DNA from the teenage girl found in Canada has been corrupted,” Zarina said softly.
Kendra let out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “Ivy will be able to sleep better knowing that.”
Ivy and Landon had found the girl three months ago in a farmhouse outside Saskatchewan, Canada—yet another victim of the hybrid program Stutmeir had started before his death at Landon’s hands. The fact that the two doctors who’d worked for Stutmeir were continuing to develop the hybrid process after his death was bad enough. That they were using kids as their test subjects was even worse. After Zarina had examined the girl’s body, she’d confirmed Ivy’s worst fear: her DNA had been used in an attempt to turn the teen into a better hybrid.
Ivy had been terrified the DCO would find out her DNA had been taken, and that Landon had violated the DCO’s number-one rule and hadn’t killed his shifter partner when it looked like she’d be compromised. Once the DCO figured that out, it wouldn’t be too hard to piece together that Ivy and Landon were married, which was in violation of rule number two.
Luckily, Zarina was running the lab now. She’d muddied the waters so much the DCO doctors would never be able to even duplicate Stutmeir’s work, much less improve on it.
Kendra watched a group of people navigating the confidence course in the distance for a moment before turning back to Zarina. The Russian doctor was staring off into the distance, too, but she wasn’t looking at the team navigating the course. She was focused on the tall, long-haired man standing off to the side watching. Kendra smiled. She didn’t have to see the guy’s face to know who he was. Just the fact that Zarina was looking at him so intently told her everything she needed to know. It was Tanner Howland, the DCO’s resident hybrid. The former Army Ranger had been experimented on by Stutmeir’s doctors, and while he was a hybrid, he possessed at least some control over the rage that had consumed the others. At Zarina’s insistence, the DCO was trying to help him get his life back together.
She turned back to Zarina. “How’s Tanner?”
A blush colored the woman’s cheeks. “Amazing.”
Oh yeah, the good doctor was all detached professionalism there. Nobody at the DCO understood how Zarina could talk Tanner down from one of his rages with a gentle touch and a few softly spoken words. They all thought she was some kind of hybrid whisperer, but it was obvious Zarina and Tanner had a serious thing for each other. And Kendra for one was damn happy to have her around. Tanner was a sweet guy when he was in control of his hybrid half. When he wasn’t, then look the hell out.
“No problems with anger management?” she asked.
Zarina pushed the hair that had escaped from her bun back behind her ear. “Not since that live-fire training exercise he and Clayne took part in during the summer. I think all those counseling sessions with Dr. Anders are helping. The other day I actually found him meditating.”
The DCO’s psychiatrist, Marlon Anders, had been talking to Tanner three times a week, but Kendra doubted that was the reason the hybrid was calmer these days. No, this was a case of beauty soothing the savage beast. Even Dick had figured that out. Which made Zarina that much more valuable to him. Because if there was one thing that excited Dick more than the prospect of the DCO having hybrids of their own one day, it was having one of their own right now.
“Have you figured out why Tanner acts differently than other hybrids yet?” Kendra asked.
Zarina hesitated. “Maybe. But I don’t want to say anything until I’m sure.”
Kendra was tempted to push, but didn’t. Zarina would tell her once she knew more. They talked for a little while longer about what Zarina was doing to slow down the DCO’s work on the hybrid front before Kendra left to go to the cafeteria.
“Be careful,” Zarina said. “I’ve heard they have bugs as big as your head down in Central America.”
Kendra shuddered. “Thank you. Now I won’t be sleeping for the next two weeks.”
She picked up the pace as she neared the cafeteria. She didn’t want to be late for her first mission.
She sagged with relief when she spotted Declan MacBride on the far side of the crowded room. At six foot eight, he was hard to miss. It didn’t look like he and his team were leaving yet, so she grabbed a cheeseburger and a plate of fries, then hurried over to their table.
Two of Declan’s teammates, Brent Wilkins and Gavin Barlow, were arguing about baseball—again. The World Series was over, and neither the Yankees nor the Red Sox had played in it, but the two former homicide detectives had made trash-talking about each other’s hometown team a sport all its own.
She pulled out the chair beside Declan and sat down. “Hey.”
He barely glanced at her before pushing away his empty plate. “I’m going to get a couple more cheeseburgers. Anybody want anything?”
On the other side of the table, Brent looked at the big bear shifter like he’d just announced he was taking up ballet. “A couple more? You just ate four.”
Declan shrugged his broad shoulders. “They’re small burgers.”
Kendra looked down at her own cheeseburger. It took up half the plate.
Tate Evers let out a snort. At forty, he was the oldest guy on the team, but you’d never know it by looking at him. “You do realize you’re going on a mission, not into hibernation, right?”
“Yeah, I know. That’s why I’m getting something else to eat. It’s a long flight to Costa Rica.”
Gavin shook his blond head as Declan walked over to the counter. “A real grizzly bear thinks the amount of food Declan puts away is freaking ridiculous.”
Kendra laughed. Poor Declan. His teammates were always teasing him about how much he ate. She was just jealous all that food turned to pure muscle. If she ate half of what he did, she’d roll out of the cafeteria.
She picked up the bottle of ketchup and poured some on her fries. “I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get something to eat before we left.”
“No worries there.” Tate picked up his fork and dug into a slice of apple pie. “Military flights always run a little late.”
She’d picked up her burger and already taken a couple bites when she realized that Brent and Gavin were eyeing her funny.
“Did we miss something?” Gavin asked Tate in his Boston accent.
Kendra frowned. Tate hadn’t mentioned she was going with them?
“Tate?” Brent prompted when he didn’t answer.
“Kendra’s going to Costa Rica with us,” he said casually.
“What?”
Kendra turned to see Declan standing there with a big plate of food and a pissed-off look on his
handsome face.
“Remember I mentioned John was sending an observer down with us?” Tate said. “Kendra’s the observer.”
The muscle in Declan’s jaw ticked under his perpetual stubble. “No, you didn’t mention that.”
“I didn’t? Huh.” Tate shrugged and ate another forkful of pie. “I’m telling you now, then.”
Declan let out a grunt that Kendra couldn’t translate as either acceptance or disagreement. It was just a grunt.
“John finally decided to let you go into the field, huh?” Gavin asked. “Good for you.”
He leaned forward and gave her a fist bump. Kendra laughed as Brent did the same, but her amusement quickly died when she caught sight of Declan. He was sitting beside her, glowering at the cheeseburgers on his plate like he wanted to pound them flat. She stared down at her own burger, not nearly as hungry now. Maybe these next two weeks weren’t going to be as much fun as she’d thought.
***
The flight down to Costa Rico was pure hell. Instead of the roomy C-17 or C-5 Declan had expected, they’d been stuck in the cargo area of a smaller C-130 that had most of the available space filled with pallets of equipment and supplies. He and the rest of the team were relegated to two sets of drop-down benches wedged between stacks of bottled water. Worse, the two rows of uncomfortable seats were facing each other. Brent, Gavin, and Kendra were on one side while he and Tate were on the other. Which meant he had to look at her the whole way. There was a time when he would have thought spending a whole day gazing at Kendra was time well spent, but being forced into close proximity with her now made him mad as hell.
Or maybe he was still pissed off at Tate. He and the former U.S. Marshal had gotten into it pretty good before leaving the tarmac at Anacostia-Bolling.
“Why the hell is Kendra coming with us?” Declan demanded when he finally got Tate alone. “There’s no reason for us to be going down there, but there’s even less for her. She doesn’t even add anything to the team.”
Unless you counted long, blond hair, big blue eyes, and the sexiest butt he’d ever seen.