by Paige Tyler
Evan’s eyes widened. “You’re not going to be able to just walk in there.”
“Why not?” Trevor shrugged. “I’ll act like I walked into the wrong room, drop the device under a table, then be out of there before they even realize I slipped a bug in the room.”
Evan exchanged looks with Vivian. “It’s not that,” he said. “Thorn put two guards on the door, and one of them is Frasier.”
Trevor cursed. His plan would be infinitely more difficult with someone guarding the door, but Douglas Frasier’s presence made it damn near impossible. Frasier flat-out hated his guts. Then again, it seemed like Frasier hated everyone’s guts, but especially shifters’.
In addition to being Thorn’s head of security, Frasier also ran certain special projects for the former senator. Which was a nice way of saying the man killed people his boss wanted dead. Trevor didn’t know a lot about the guy, but he knew Frasier had worked for the DCO years ago and that he’d been paired up with the first shifter the organization had ever discovered—Adam. Trevor wasn’t sure what happened between the two of them, but considering what Adam had said about his partner shooting him in the back, Trevor had a pretty good idea. Whatever it was, it forced Adam to go off the grid while Frasier had landed a cushy job working for Thorn. The man was never going to let him get within ten feet of the conference room his boss was in.
Trevor glanced at Tanner. The hybrid had even less chance of getting past Frasier than he did. That left only one option.
He stared at Evan, trying to come up with something to say to convince the analyst he had it in him to bluff his way past Frasier and the other guard and figure out how to slip the device into the room.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Evan asked suspiciously. Then his eyes widened as it dawned on him. “No way! I can’t go in there. Frasier would know I’m lying. He’d shoot me.”
Shit. Evan looked like he was about to start hyperventilating at the mere thought of going in the conference room. Trevor opened his mouth to point out it was highly unlikely Frasier would kill him, but Vivian cut him off.
“I’ll do it.”
Well, damn. He hadn’t even considered suggesting she do it. Which was rather sexist, he realized. “You sure about this?”
“Will this help catch the people who killed John and Olivia?” she asked.
Trevor nodded.
“Then I’ll do it. Olivia was my friend long before I started working here. She even got me the job interview. As for John, he was the best boss I’ve ever worked for and an even better person. If putting a bug in that room will get me a little revenge, I’m in. I want those bastards to pay for what they’ve done.”
“How are you going to get it in there?” Trevor asked as he handed the device to her.
“Carefully” was all she said, then she left the room.
Evan let out a breath. “What do we do if they catch her?”
“We go rescue her,” Trevor said.
Evan seemed a little nervous at that idea but nodded. “I’ll get the computer set up. That way, we’ll know what’s happening in there.”
Taking a laptop out of his backpack, Evan placed it on the table, then slipped something that looked like some kind of wireless mouse adapter into one of the computer’s USB ports and began poking keys.
“You want to pick up the pace a little?” Trevor said. “At this rate, Frasier could knock Vivian out and drag her out to the trunk of his car before you get any sound on that thing.”
“Hold on.” Evan’s fingers flew over the keys. “I’m praying she remembered to push the adapter to turn it on, or this will all be a waste of time.”
A few moments later, muffled noise came out of the computer’s speakers along with the sound of something heavy thudding together.
Evan threw Trevor a nervous look. “What the hell was that?”
Trevor held up his hand for silence, trying to figure out what the hell they were listening to.
“I thought everyone would like some coffee and Danish,” Vivian said over the speaker. “Nothing like a little caffeine and sugar to get you through a morning meeting.”
“Thank you, Vivian.”
Thorn’s deceptively sweet voice made Trevor’s teeth ache.
“Of course, Mr. Thorn. If you need anything else, just let me know.”
“Damn, she’s smooth,” Tanner said as Vivian left the room. “John should have put her in the field.”
Trevor chuckled. “No kidding. Maybe he intended to. John was always ten steps ahead of everyone else when it came to knowing who’d be a good field agent.”
“He was good when it came to seeing other people’s futures,” Evan said softly. “I wish he had spent a little more time worrying about his own. Then maybe he would’ve foreseen somebody planting that bomb.”
The mood in the small office immediately changed as the humor that had been there a moment ago disappeared. They stared at the blank screen of the laptop, listening to the men in the conference room drink their coffee and talk about whether they preferred cheese or apple Danish.
“I’m surprised you didn’t bring Alina with you,” Evan said. “Zarina told me she helped get Sage back, so I figured she was a newly accepted member of our little rebel alliance.”
“She stayed behind to take care of Sage,” Trevor said, the lie sliding wet and slimy off his tongue. Great, now he was lying to Evan like he’d lied to Alina. At this rate, he was going to end up no better than Thorn and his a-hole friends.
“But everything is good with her right?” Evan probed. “She’s on our side, isn’t she?”,
Trevor didn’t know how to answer that. His head was still advising him to proceed with caution, while his instincts shouted at him to trust her. That disconnect had him tied up in knots, not sure what to do. Why the hell did this have to be so difficult?
He shrugged. “I’m leaning that way, but in truth, I’m not sure.”
Evan frowned in confusion, while Tanner gave him a look that said he thought Trevor was full of crap. He knew the feeling. He was confused, too, and pretty sure he was full of shit.
Thankfully, the door opened, and Vivian stuck her head in, saving him from fielding any more questions about Alina.
“We good?” Vivian asked.
Trevor motioned at the laptop. “We have audio, but it remains to be seen if we’re going to grab any video from the projector. Regardless, you did good.”
Before she could say anything, the screen on Evan’s laptop flickered to life.
“We’ve got video,” the analyst announced excitedly.
Vivian nodded. “I need to go out and man the desk in case anyone else walks in late for the meeting. Hope you get what you need.”
“Me, too,” Trevor said. “Thanks again.”
As she closed the door behind her, an image of some kind of chart appeared on the laptop screen. The timeline along the bottom stretched back at least four years, while the rest of the slide was filled with a bewildering array of stars, numbers, and various horizontal lines. It didn’t look like some kind of diabolical scheme concocted by Thorn to take over the world—or whatever the hell he was up to. In fact, it looked like something involving a weapons development schedule.
Trevor cursed. This was probably going to end up being a huge waste of time. He’d screwed the partnership he’d been building with Alina for nothing.
A man’s voice came through the speaker. Even with the guy explaining the chart, Trevor was still lost. All the scientific terms might as well have been Greek as far as he was concerned.
“The program has grown in leaps and bounds since the minor setback we experienced at the end of May when our test subject was unable to sustain a full transition,” another man said.
The picture on the screen changed to a man lying twisted and motionless on an exam table.
Trevor did a double take. Shit, that was Aaron Moore. He’d been an agent at the DCO right up until the moment he’d volunteered to take the hybrid serum Thorn’s doctors whipped up in their test tubes and died in horrible, screaming pain as a result.
Now the chart made a whole hell of a lot more sense. It outlined how long they’d been working on the hybrid serum.
“We still don’t know why Agent Moore responded so poorly to the serum,” the man continued. “While it was a reduced dosage, Agent Harmon displayed absolutely zero side effects when given the same treatment. In fact, it appears the serum failed completely in Harmon’s case. I admit, having a test subject die from such a small tweak in the formulation continues to confound our failure review team.”
Trevor ground his jaw at the total disregard for human life apparent in the man’s voice as he talked about Moore’s death. Former Special Forces lieutenant turned DCO agent Jayson Harmon should have died, too. What Thorn’s doctors didn’t know was that Zarina had injected Jayson with her own experimental drug minutes before they’d administered the hybrid serum. Only her drug hadn’t been meant to turn him into a snarling beast with a mouth full of fangs. It’d been meant to counteract the serum.
Unfortunately, Zarina didn’t have a chance to inject the same drug into Moore, since no one had a clue the guy was going to do something as stupid as volunteer for the protocol before anyone had even figured out if it worked on Jayson.
“As a consequence of the failure with Agent Moore, the team made the decision to go back and restart the project with raw hybrid material gathered by operatives in Tajikistan,” the man explained.
Trevor bit back a growl. That confirmed something he’d been worried about ever since the mission to Tajikistan back in March. The entire purpose of it had been to wipe out the last remnants of the hybrid research program, but two members of the raid—Moore and another dirty agent—had obviously taken samples from the facility before destroying the place.
“Starting from square one worked to our advantage, because we now have a successful formulation,” the man said.
“You’re telling me the serum finally works?” Thorn said. “You’ve created completely functional—and stable—hybrids that possess the same abilities as the naturally existing shifters?”
“That’s exactly what we’ve done,” the doctor said, pride evident in his smug voice. “In fact, it’s possible we’ve made a few improvements over the original, as I think this video clip from our research facility on the farm will demonstrate.”
Trevor glanced at Tanner and Evan to see them standing there with the same shocked expressions on their faces. He was damn stunned himself.
“He’s exaggerating, right?” Tanner asked. “There’s no way he could create hybrids that good.”
Trevor could understand Tanner’s reluctance to believe what he was hearing. Every hybrid variant created up to this point, in Washington State, Costa Rica, Tajikistan, or Maine, had all been stricken with some level of aggression, rage, or control issues. Unfortunately, that included Tanner and Sage. If Thorn’s people had overcome that, this was a complete game changer. It meant Thorn no longer had to pretend to be interested in keeping natural shifters around. He could wipe out every one of them on the planet if he wanted to.
On the computer screen, a video replaced the slide presentation. At first, all they could see was what appeared to be an obstacle course, but as the doctor continued to narrate, four large men dressed in military camo appeared on the screen. As the camera followed their progress through the course, it was obvious they weren’t normal humans—or normal shifters.
They snarled as they moved, exposing more razor-sharp teeth longer than any shifter possessed. They looked like frigging sharks. They ran fast, too, making jumps and leaps that few but the most agile shifter could pull off. And when they extended their perfectly matching long, curved claws so they could scale a vertical wooden wall thirty feet high, Trevor knew Thorn’s doctors hadn’t exaggerated.
They’d made hybrids that somehow combined the strength and power of a bear shifter like Declan with the agility and claws of a feline shifter like Ivy, all in a fully controlled package.
Trevor waited for one of the men to say where this testing was being done, but other than a couple more references to a “farm,” no one said anything useful.
“And the test subjects are all taken from among my most elite paramilitary units?” Thorn asked. “They’re loyal to me?”
“Yes, Mr. Thorn,” the doctor said quickly. “The minute we had the new formula worked out, we started our recruitment effort with volunteers who’d spent at least ten years working on your various black-ops teams. Additionally, our psychology assessment process placed the highest emphasis on those who demonstrated loyalty specifically to you. These men represent exactly what you’re looking for. They’re highly trained, fast, strong, dangerous, fearless, and completely loyal to one person and one person only—you.”
That seemed to please the hell out of Thorn. He continued to pepper the doctors with questions regarding the strengths and weaknesses of the hybrids and when there’d be enough of them to proceed to phase two of the project. The doctor seemed to think these new super soldiers had no weaknesses and suggested that phase two could be ready as soon as Thorn gave the word.
“You have it,” Thorn said. “Accelerate the timeline, and proceed the moment you think the team is ready.”
“What the hell does phase two mean?” Evan whispered.
“No idea,” Trevor said. “But I’m guessing this is the move we’ve all been waiting for.”
After the meeting was over, Evan transferred a copy of the briefing onto a flash drive and handed it to Trevor.
“Get back to the complex, and start scouring the video for anything we might have missed—where the farm is, who these doctors are, who these new hybrids are, and what the hell phase two of Thorn’s plan is,” Trevor told him. “Everything and anything you can find.”
Evan nodded. “Will do.”
“What are you going to do?” Tanner asked after the analyst left.
“Get this information to Adam,” Trevor said.
Tanner nodded. “You want me to come with you?”
“No. We can’t risk someone seeing us together. Besides, I have something more important I need you to do.”
“What’s that?”
“Take another run at Dick’s office,” Trevor said. “Now that we know what we’re looking for, maybe you can find something that will tell us where the hell Thorn is cranking out these hybrids and what he plans on doing with them.”
Tanner groaned. “Why don’t I go talk to Adam while you sneak into Dick’s office? I’m a former Army Ranger. I’m no good at all this snooping and spy work.”
Trevor shook his head. “No way. To get into his office, I’d have to sneak past that guard dog secretary of his. She hates my guts. You, on the other hand, she seems to like. Which confuses the hell out of me. I always figured she didn’t like me because I’m a shifter, but that prejudice doesn’t seem to apply to you.”
“She probably doesn’t like you because you’re always such a smart-ass around her,” Tanner muttered. “Besides, it’s Saturday. Phyllis won’t even be there.”
“Phyllis is always there,” Trevor said. “The woman probably has a hideaway bed under her desk.”
Tanner frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve been snooping around Dick’s home and office for weeks with nothing to show for it. Hell, considering the fact he wasn’t invited to this meeting, it’s possible he may not even know what Thorn is doing.”
Trevor found that hard to believe. Dick and Thorn had been working hand-in-hand since the inception of the DCO. The idea that he wouldn’t know about something this big seemed impossible. Then again, if there was one person on the planet better at manipulation than Dick, it was Thorn.
“Dick knows something,” Trevor insisted. “Root through his office looking for reference to a farm. If Evan can come up with the names of those doctors we listened to or a facial recognition ID on those hybrids, look for them, too. Based on what we just heard, Thorn’s plan is going down in less than a week. If we’re going to stop him, we need to have intel now.”
Tanner let out a breath. “I’ll try, but I’m not promising anything. I suck when it comes to searching through computer files.”
“Then figure out another way to get the information we need,” Trevor said. “Before it’s too late to do anything with it.”
Chapter 11
Jaxson had gotten Alina and Sage back on the complex without being noticed, then Zarina distracted the guards while Alina slipped the girl back into her room. After that, all three of them had moved heaven and earth to get in contact with Derek’s Special Forces team down at Fort Campbell. Luckily, the sergeant and his team had just come back from a field exercise, so he’d been able to talk to Sage on the phone.
Sitting on the edge of the bed while Sage lay on her side, her pillow tucked under her head, a wistful smile on her face, Alina had to admit the effect Derek had on her was nothing short of amazing. Sage was as relaxed as if she’d taken a Xanax. Alina had never seen anything like it.
“How did you and Derek meet?” Alina asked softly.
“He saved my life in Tajikistan,” Sage said. “I didn’t know that’s where I was, of course. Actually, I was barely aware of anything. I only knew I was filled with terrible pain and rage every minute of the day. I’d been like that for so long, I wanted it all to be over with. When the building where I was kept prisoner caught on fire, I thought my prayers were going to be answered and that I would finally get some peace. Then Derek was there, risking his life to save mine, even though I didn’t want him to. I even tried to kill him, but he wouldn’t give up. He got me out and brought me here.”
Alina wanted to ask what had happened to her over there but didn’t think that’d be a good idea. Sage had been experimented on and turned into a monster. That wasn’t exactly something a person would want to talk about.