by Paige Tyler
Jayson nodded. “I’m sure.”
Dick considered that for a moment, then nodded. “Let’s go, then.”
Getting up from his chair, the deputy director headed for the door. Jayson took a deep breath and followed. He had to move a little faster than he liked to keep up with Dick, which made his back twinge and tighten up, but the deputy director didn’t seem to notice, and Jayson refused to show any weakness.
As they left the operations building and walked down the sidewalk to the facility where the DCO conducted their shifter and hybrid research, Jayson’s heart beat faster. He knew this was rash, stupid, and probably insane, but after everything that had happened last night, he didn’t have a choice. No matter what, something had to change. And taking Dick’s hybrid serum would definitely change things, one way or the other.
Last night had been a complete and total disaster. Not only had he been a grade A asshole, but he was also pretty sure he might have destroyed whatever was left of his relationship with Layla.
He should never have brought up Dick and that damn hybrid serum. He’d known Layla wouldn’t be thrilled with him taking a drug that hadn’t been tested on humans, but when she immediately assumed that Dick was manipulating him into taking it, something inside him had snapped.
He’d wanted to tell her that he was frightened too, but for different reasons. He was more scared of being a cripple for the rest of his life than he was of Dick’s hybrid serum. He was terrified of her going after dangerous international arms dealers without him and scared of her spending more time with another man—even if it was her DCO partner—than she did with him. Most of all, he was afraid of sitting in a chair, watching his life—and the woman he loved—drift away from him.
But he hadn’t said any of that. Instead, only anger and frustration had come out of his mouth, and before he knew it, Layla was gone, slamming the door on him and their relationship. He’d immediately gone after her, but by the time he’d gotten to the door, her phone had rung. He couldn’t hear everything she said, but he’d heard enough to know her mission was a go.
He’d spent the whole night sitting in his living room berating the hell out of himself and waiting for the phone to ring. It hadn’t.
It wasn’t until the sun peeked through the windows that morning that everything became crystal clear to him. One miserable night was all it took to illuminate very clearly that he was never going to be the kind of man who could sit at home and wait patiently for his significant other to come back safely. One night of not knowing and he was ready to explode.
Now he finally realized why none of the relationships he’d tried to have while he was in Special Forces had survived a single deployment. Some people simply couldn’t deal with the stress of knowing the person they cared about was in danger on the other side of the world. Last night, he’d figured out he was one of those people. If Layla was going to be out there, he had to find a way to be with her. If that meant taking Dick’s serum, then so be it. Because living like this wasn’t even an option.
He was so lost in thought that he didn’t realize they’d reached the lab until the familiar medicinal stench smacked him back into awareness. That’s when he saw the DCO’s resident hybrid expert, Dr. Zarina Sokolov, standing there with a guarded expression on her face.
“Is there something I can help you with?” Zarina asked Dick in a Russian accent that could be icy cold when she wanted—like now.
Dick didn’t seem to notice that the temperature in the room had dropped a few degrees. “I need you to get Jayson ready for the hybrid serum protocol.”
Zarina lifted a brow. “I wasn’t aware the DCO’s hybrid serum protocol was ready yet.”
Dick smiled. “I guess no one told you, then. There have been a few breakthroughs in the past couple weeks. I’d appreciate it if you got Jayson ready. I’d like to start as soon as the doctors arrive with the serum.”
Zarina’s blue eyes darted to Jayson, then back to Dick. “And the serum is safe?”
“I’d never let any of our people take a drug that wasn’t completely safe,” Dick said. “Now, if that’s all, I need to make a phone call.”
Dick gave Jayson a nod, then walked out of the lab, leaving him alone with the Russian doctor.
“Jayson, this is insane. You shouldn’t be agreeing to this. You’ve seen what this serum can do to people.” she said.
Jayson had to admit, he was a little concerned that the one person who probably knew more about hybrids than anyone in the world wasn’t involved in the development of this latest serum—concerned, but not enough to make him reconsider his decision.
“I know what the risks are,” he said. “I’m willing to accept them.”
She regarded him thoughtfully for a moment, then gestured to one of the examination tables. “Let’s get you ready then. I’ll need you to take off your shirt and climb up there.”
He hesitated, not liking the idea of Zarina—or anyone—seeing his scars. “I thought I was just going to get an injection?”
“You will be getting an injection, probably more than one. I need your shirt off so I can attach the EKG and use the defibrillator on you if your heart stops beating. It will also make it easier to get adrenaline or epinephrine into you quickly if necessary.”
None of that sounded very good, but then again, neither did living his life as a cripple. So he pushed those thoughts out of his head and shrugged out of his shirt as Zarina walked over to the built-in cabinets along the wall. He tossed the garment on the back of a nearby chair and climbed onto the exam table, flinching as his injured muscles quivered in complaint when he lay back on the cold paper.
Zarina closed the drawer she’d been rustling around in, then turned toward him, a big syringe in one hand and a vial in the other. Without a word, she shoved the needle in the top of the bottle and pulled out the plunger, filling the syringe with the thick, yellowish liquid. When she was done, she set down the empty vial, then picked up a gauze pad from the counter and walked over to him.
“What is that?” he asked.
She swabbed his left bicep with the alcohol wipe. “Gamma globulin. It’s to boost your immune system and help your body handle the stress of taking the serum.”
She shoved the needle in his arm and pushed in the plunger. He inhaled sharply. Damn, it felt like she was injecting him with a Jell-O shot made out of battery acid.
“That kind of burns, Doc,” he said with a laugh.
Zarina pinned him with a look as she pulled out the needle and massaged the area with her fingers. “The hybrid serum will be much worse.”
She walked back over to the counter without waiting for a reply. Jayson snorted. She must have been absent from medical school the day they taught bedside manner.
It turned out that Zarina had a better bedside manner than Jayson had given her credit for, at least compared to the two doctors who came in with Dick thirty minutes later. They ignored Jayson as if he weren’t there, instead asking Zarina a few medical questions that he really didn’t understand before finally nodding at Dick.
“Are you ready?” Dick asked.
Was that excitement in Dick’s voice? Jayson had to admit, right then, there was a part of him that wondered if Layla was right about the deputy director using him. But as Dick leaned over the table, his gray eyes full of concern, it was hard not thinking the man genuinely cared about him.
“I’m ready,” Jayson told him.
Standing behind Dick, Zarina looked uneasy. Knowing she was worried only made Jayson worry too, so instead he focused his gaze on the high ceiling. The two doctors approached the table, one on either side. A moment later, he felt each of them shove a needle deep into the muscles of his biceps.
At first, he didn’t feel anything besides the pain that came with getting stuck by syringes. Maybe Zarina had been messing with him about the serum being worse than the yellow goo she’d pumped into him.
That’s when the burning started—first in his arms, then all over. Within seconds, the fire spread through his entire body. He gripped the edges of the table. Shit. Maybe this was going to kill him.
He closed his eyes and forced himself to take slow, deep breaths. That helped for a little while. At least until the muscle spasms started. The pain was excruciating then. But it was nothing compared to how much it hurt thinking he might not ever see Layla again or have the chance to be her partner—they would have been awesome together.
He felt someone grab his left hand and squeeze tightly. He opened his eyes to see Zarina standing beside the exam table, concern on her face. On his right, Dick grabbed his other hand.
Jayson wasn’t sure how long the pain lasted, but at some point, it began to recede—slowly at first, then faster as the minutes—or was it hours?—ticked by.
Through the fog surrounding him, he heard the doctors talking to each other about the readings displayed on the various pieces of medical equipment hooked up to him and comparing notes about his reaction to the serum.
As the pain finally disappeared completely, he looked over to see Zarina still holding his hand. Dick was on the far side of the room, a cell phone up to his ear. Jayson heard him saying something about the first phase of the test being very successful.
Jayson was so focused on what Dick was saying that he didn’t realize Zarina had released his hand until one of the doctors who’d administered the serum came up and began poking and prodding him like he was a piece of pizza dough.
“It’s been two hours and the results seem nominal so far,” the man said to Dick as the deputy director hung up the phone. “We need to move on to phase two and get him into a field environment as soon as possible. It’s the only way we’ll know for sure whether the serum worked.”
The doctor didn’t even look at Jayson as he spoke. Why should he? To them, he was just a two-legged lab rat. A rat they anxiously wanted to get into the field in order to evaluate the success of their experiment. Normally, that kind of dismissive, condescending bullshit would have pissed Jayson off. But right then, he’d have liked nothing better than to go into the field. And he knew exactly where he should go—to meet up with Layla.
* * *
“I never thought we’d get in here so easily,” Ivy whispered to Landon as a member of Thomas Thorn’s security staff led them up the marble stairs to the third floor of the former senator’s home.
“No kidding,” Landon muttered. “Though I have to admit, coming in through the front door almost seems like cheating.”
On the way up the steps, she and Landon passed several plain clothes detectives, two uniformed police officers, and three crime scene techs. None of them looked happy to be there. From what John said when he’d called, Thomas Thorn was royally pissed that someone had waltzed into his heavily secured home while he’d been there and made off with a family heirloom.
When they reached the third floor, the guard led them to a room at the end of the hallway. Thorn and his head of security, Douglas Frasier, were over by the far wall near a big picture frame that had been swung back on a hinge to reveal an open safe. A tall, dark-haired man in jeans and a leather jacket who exuded pure cop stood near the big window, and from the way he was clenching his jaw, he was obviously angry about something. He wasn’t the only one. Ivy could practically hear Thorn’s teeth grind together as he took in the empty safe. As for his paid muscle, Frasier looked like he was waiting for a live chicken to walk by so he could bite off its head.
The detective frowned when he saw her and Landon. “This is a crime scene. I’m going to need you to step outside.”
“That’s not necessary, Detective. I asked them to join us,” Thorn said. “These are Agents Donovan and Halliwell from the Department of Homeland Security. They’re here to help with the investigation.”
Detective Hayes looked like someone had just handed him a lemon to suck. “DHS is working home break-ins these days?”
“This is Detective Braden Hayes,” Thorn said, interrupting before either she or Landon could respond. Probably a good thing, since Landon would have almost certainly said something snarky in response to the sarcastic tone in the detective’s voice. “He handles major robbery for the Washington Metropolitan Police Department. You three will be working together.”
Hayes’s eyes narrowed. “Burglary is a police matter. DHS has no jurisdiction here. Unless you’re trying to tell me that this case has terrorism implications that I don’t see.”
“This isn’t an issue of jurisdiction or terrorism,” Thorn snapped. “This is about someone breaking into my home and stealing something that’s extremely valuable to me. You will work together, you will find the thief who took my property, and you will get back what they took. If you can’t do that, Detective, I can call the MPD brass and have someone else assigned to this case. Is that clear?”
The detective’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t say anything. Obviously, he was smart enough to realize this wasn’t a battle he could win. Even for a former senator, Thorn possessed a tremendous amount of influence in the DC area. Add that to the power that came with his position as CEO of Chadwick-Thorn and his place on the DCO Committee, and Thorn could easily make life a living hell for the detective if he wanted to. The only problem was, Braden Hayes seemed like the kind of man who loved tilting at windmills, even if the windmill always won.
She’d better step in and say something before the two men decided to drop their pants and compare dick size. “What do we know about the thief so far?”
Hayes and Thorn continued their staring contest for another long moment before the detective finally turned his gaze on her. “Unfortunately, we don’t know much of anything about the thief at this point. We can’t even say for sure how many of them there were.”
“No evidence left behind, I’m guessing?” Landon asked.
Hayes shook his head. “Nothing. No fingerprints, hair, fiber, or trace materials. No footprints anywhere on the grounds, no obvious signs of forced entry, and not a single mark on the safe. No one would even know it had been tampered with if it weren’t for the fact that it was left hanging open.”
“How did the thief get in?” Ivy asked as she wandered around the study.
“We’re still looking for his entry point into the home, but right now it’s looking like he came in through a third-floor window in the hallway, by way of the roof. I was up there earlier with some of the security staff. You’d have to be a psycho to walk around on that tile, but that seems to make the most sense. I’m thinking the thief lowered himself down from the edge of the roof somehow and came in through a window, but how he did it is beyond me.”
Ivy’s estimation of the detective went up a few notches, not just because he’d actually figured out how the shifter had gotten into the home, but also because he’d been committed enough to clamber around on the roof and confirm his suspicions.
“About all I can say for sure is that the thief is good,” Hayes added. “Based on the time line established by the security people working last night, the thief couldn’t have been on the property for more than fifteen minutes.”
“What did he take?” Landon asked.
“This,” Frasier said, handing Landon a photograph of what looked like a flawless diamond. “It was last appraised for twenty-five million and is worth considerably more than that now.”
Ivy blinked. While she couldn’t tell the exact size of the diamond from the picture, it looked huge.
Landon handed the photo back to Frasier. “Was anything else taken?”
“No,” Thorn said quickly—too quickly. “Just the diamond.”
Ivy’s kitty alarm immediately went off. Thorn was lying, she was sure of it. And something told her that the former senator was more interested in getting that other item back than he was the diamond.
Detective Hayes hung around a few
more minutes before announcing he was going to start checking the usual fences to see if they’d heard of anyone looking to sell a diamond.
He handed Landon his card, then gave both of them a nod. “If you’d like to compare notes, give me a call.”
The moment Hayes left the room, Thorn looked at Ivy expectantly. “Was the thief a shifter?”
“Could be,” she said. “Especially if Hayes is right about how the person got into the house.”
“Could be?” Thorn frowned. “I thought shifters could identify other shifters purely by scent?”
Ivy gave him a bland smile. “My sense of smell isn’t that good. I have feline DNA, not bloodhound. If it was a shifter, they weren’t here long enough to leave much of a scent trail behind. Not that it would have mattered. With all the cops and crime scene techs running around here, whatever traces left behind have been obliterated by now.”
Thorn swore. “I want you two to stick close to Hayes. I get the feeling he already has a few ideas about who this thief might be. If so, figure out who he is before Hayes can pick him up.”
Landon exchanged looks with her. “What do you want us to do when we identify him?”
“Get the information to Frasier.” Thorn’s mouth twisted into an evil smile. “He’ll take care of it from there.”
A chill ran down Ivy’s spine. Whatever the female shifter had taken, it was obviously something the former senator was willing to kill to get back.
Hayes was waiting for her and Landon outside.
“I thought you were going to talk to some fences,” Landon said drily.
“I’d appreciate both of you staying out of the way on this case, regardless of what Mr. Thorn said,” Hayes said, then added, “I’ll give you as much credit as you want, as long as you don’t interfere in my investigation.”
Hayes didn’t wait for an answer, but simply walked over to his silver Dodge Charger and got in without a backward glance. Landon chuckled as Hayes drove off. “I think I like this cop. He reminds me of Clayne—without the claws and fangs.”