Her Rogue Alpha (X-Ops Book 5)

by Paige Tyler

  Just then, a pair of glowing, yellow eyes appeared from behind a tree and started moving toward them.

  “What the hell?” Mikhail said, his voice filled with alarm as he lifted his pistol higher and took a step forward.

  Jayson lowered his weapon and put a hand on the Russian kid’s shoulder. “Relax, Mikhail. It’s our backup.”

  “Yeah, relax, Mikhail.” The words were more of a growl than anything. “I know Jayson just got finished teaching you how to use that weapon, but I can promise you it won’t work nearly as well after I shove it sideways up your ass.”

  “That’s enough, Clayne,” Danica said as she slipped out from behind his very large shadow and moved up to stand beside him.

  Mikhail gave Jayson an uneasy look but lowered his gun. Beside him, Dylan and Olek did the same.

  “I’m glad you guys finally got here,” Jayson said. “Did Kendra fill you in on our plan to hit Zolnerov’s place?”

  The wolf shifter exchanged confused looks with Danica, then turned his gaze back to them. They looked at Jayson like he was speaking a foreign language.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Clayne demanded. “Were you two going to hit Zolnerov’s place on your own with three kids for backup?”

  All three teens opened their mouths to say something, but Clayne cut them off with a growl and a glare that made them take a step back.

  “Wait a minute,” Clayne said to Jayson. “Before you answer that, how did you guys even know Kojot was here? Danica and I were too busy trying to keep up with him to ever get a chance to call the DCO and tell them the piece of shit was on his way to the Ukraine.”

  Layla’s jaw dropped. “Kojot is here? Right here—in Zolnerov’s house?”

  Clayne looked so exasperated that Layla thought he might go into full wolf mode. “Yeah. Isn’t that why the two of you—make that the five of you—are here? To take down Kojot and stop Zolnerov from getting the weapons the arms dealer is bringing in?”

  “No.” Now Jayson was the one who looked confused. “We’re here to rescue Anya and the other girls. Didn’t Kendra tell you guys anything?”

  “Who the hell is Anya?” Clayne asked.

  Jayson—who looked like he was on the edge of losing it too—started to answer, but Layla interrupted. “Look, we don’t have time for this. But if the two of you insist on talking it out, maybe we should pull back into the woods a little in case one of Zolnerov’s guards comes this way?”

  “Agreed,” Danica said, taking Clayne’s hand and pulling him back into the forest.

  Layla did the same with Jayson, leaving Dylan and the other two teens to follow. Once they’d gone a few dozen yards into the woods, they all stopped. Jayson immediately began to explain who Anya was and why they were breaking into Zolnerov’s estate to get her, but Clayne stopped him before he could get very far.

  “Hold on,” Clayne said. “You and Powell came here to rescue Dylan, but now you and Layla are rescuing Dylan’s girlfriend. Why the hell would John send you here with a jackass like Powell, and where the hell is that walking asshat of a so-called DCO agent now that the shit is about to hit the fan?”

  Jayson looked at Layla as if to say, You wanna help me out with this?

  Layla quickly brought them up to speed.

  “How did you get involved?” Danica asked.

  “I was worried about Jayson, so I convinced Kendra to send me here to help,” Layla said. “John doesn’t know, of course, and will probably have a cow when he finds out.”

  She paused, trying to see if she’d left anything out, then decided she’d hit most of the high points. “So now we’re going in to get Anya and the other girls Zolnerov kidnapped. We don’t know what he wants with them, other than the typical creepy reasons why a man like Zolnerov would hold a group of teenaged girls captive.”

  Layla braced herself for another barrage of questions, especially about the hybrid drug Jayson had taken. As much as she didn’t want to get into that in front of Dylan and his friends, she was going to have to tell Clayne and Danica enough to satisfy them. Maybe she and Jayson could talk around the subject and still get the critical details across.

  “So, Powell’s dead, huh?” Clayne said conversationally. “Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”

  “Clayne,” Danica rebuked sharply.

  Layla knew how she felt. It was like men had no filter at all between their heads and their mouths.

  “What?” the wolf shifter growled. “The guy was a total dickweed. The only reason no one capped him before now is because he was usually smart enough to keep his ass out of the field. Serves him right for trying to off Jayson.”

  Danica just shook her head. “I think we can help you fill in the blanks on why Zolnerov kidnapped Anya and the other girls.”

  “You can?” Dylan stepped closer. “Why?”

  “They’re payment,” Clayne said.

  Layla got a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  “Payment for what?” Dylan asked.

  “For the weapons Kojot is giving him,” Clayne said, then added, “Kojot will take just about anything as payment as long as it’s valuable. In this case, it seems he’s okay with taking those girls.”

  Jayson frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense. What kind of weapons could Kojot offer that Zolnerov doesn’t already have? We’re in a frigging war zone. There are more weapons here than he could ever shoot.”

  Clayne shook his head. “Not like this he doesn’t. We just followed Kojot in from the Kurgan region of southern Russia. He left there on a private cargo aircraft with a large shipment of crates delivered to him from a Russian military facility called Shchuch’ye. He loaded the crates on a big truck and came straight here.”

  “Shit,” Jayson muttered.

  “What is it?” Layla asked. She didn’t know where the Kurgan region even was, much less want kind of weapons the Shchuch’ye facility made.

  “Russia has been destroying their stockpile of chemical agents for years, but the Shchuch’ye depot still stores plenty of it,” Jayson explained. “I don’t have a clue what kind of delivery platform we’re talking about—rocket warheads, artillery rounds, who knows?—but if he brought a shipment of weapons from there, you can pretty much guarantee it’s some kind of toxic crap.”

  “Oh God,” Mikhail murmured. “The colonel is going to use chemicals on the pro-Ukrainian forces to try to end the fighting all at once.”

  “Maybe,” Danica agreed. “But based on what we know about Zolnerov, we’re thinking his plan is a little more twisted. It’s possible that he could use the weapons somewhere here in Donetsk against his own people, then blame the pro-Ukrainian forces for it.”

  “That actually makes sense,” Layla said. “There’s still a lot of fighting going on right now, but the borders have essentially stabilized. If Zolnerov is able to convince everyone the Ukrainians used chemical weapons on them, all that will change. It would rip the top off this whole region and destroy any possibility of a negotiated peace settlement. As one of the most senior military leaders in the area, people would naturally look to him to take charge.”

  “We have to stop him,” Mikhail said urgently.

  Clayne regarded the Russian teen for a moment before turning his attention back to her and Jayson.

  “Kojot’s cargo truck with the weapons is in one of those outlying buildings on the south side of the compound,” the wolf shifter said. “If I know him, he’s going to be close to his weapons until he gets his payment. Since it seems like he’s getting paid in human cargo, I’m guessing he’ll use that same truck to get the girls out of here. Danica and I didn’t have enough intel to come up with a plan, other than killing Kojot in the most violent method I can think of. If you two have a better idea, we’re listening.”

  Layla blinked in surprise. Clayne had always struck her as the make-it-up-as-
you-go type. She never thought he’d be willing to go along with someone else’s plan. Then again, Ivy had told her that Danica was a good influence on the wolf shifter.

  She and Jayson quickly outlined their plan to Clayne and Danica, from the teens creating a distraction to her tracking down Anya. Since Dylan and the others were there, Jayson avoided any mention of using Anya’s scent on the scarf to find the girl, but Clayne and Danica were experienced enough to read between the lines.

  “What kind of distraction do you have planned?” Clayne asked Mikhail.

  “I have some friends bringing in a car that we’re going to ram into the gate and blow up remotely. The trunk is full of old ammo, so the guards are going to go flip out when the vehicle catches on fire.”

  Clayne looked impressed. “That should do it.” He looked at her and Jayson. “The plan sounds good. You two rescue the girls. Danica and I will target Kojot and those chemical weapons.”

  “Whoever gets their part done first goes and helps the other,” Jayson added.

  Clayne nodded. “Agreed. Be careful in there. With Kojot here, there are probably even more soldiers around than normal.”

  A soft buzzing sound came from Mikhail’s back pocket. He pulled out his cell phone and looked at the display.

  “My friends are here,” he said. “We need to meet them around front. It should only take us about ten minutes to get everything set up and ready.”

  Dylan looked at Jayson. “You want us to text you before we’re ready to let the car go?”

  Jayson shook his head. “No. We’ll go when we hear the boom.”

  “Those kids are pretty ballsy,” Clayne remarked softly as the teens disappeared into the woods.

  “Yeah,” Jayson agreed. “Hopefully they don’t do anything too ballsy and get themselves killed.”

  Layla silently agreed.

  “We’re going to move around to the south,” Clayne said. “We’ll go over the wall at the boom, too.”

  “I’ll call you on the satellite phone if we need you,” Layla said.

  Danica arched a brow in her fiancé’s direction. “I’d say that’d be great, but Clayne smashed the sat phone to pieces three days ago.”

  He shot her a glare in the dark. “It kept ringing all the time.”

  “Phones have been known to do that on occasion,” she said. “Some people have even been known to put the crazy things on vibrate or silence them altogether. But you decided to slam it into a brick wall, then throw it in the river for good measure. Both approaches work I guess.”

  Clayne growled.

  Danica shook her head. “If you need us, yell really loud. Clayne will hear and we’ll come running.”

  A few moments later, the other two DCO agents were gone, leaving Layla and Jayson alone in the forest with the occasional thud of artillery in the distance to keep them company.

  “We’re going to have to figure out a quiet way to get over the wall,” Jayson said. “Maybe you can show me how to do one of those shifter jumps of yours so I can see if I have it in me.”

  Layla bit back a groan. Crap. She couldn’t put off telling Jayson about Zarina’s antidote any longer. He seriously thought he might have the ability to jump up and grab the top of a fourteen-foot-high wall. She had to tell him the truth. She couldn’t let him go in thinking he had some kind of miraculous abilities he didn’t. She had to tell him, no matter how much it hurt him to hear it.

  “Before we go over that wall, there’s something important you need to know,” she said.

  He grinned. “I already know you love me—remember?”

  She couldn’t help smiling in return, even if her heart was thudding so hard in her chest it was almost painful. “I do love you, but this is something different. Something I should have told you long before now.”

  He must have picked up on the urgency in her tone because the smile left his face. “What is it?”

  She took a deep breath, wishing she could come up with a better way—a better time—to say it. But there was no better time or place. There was just now, only minutes before Dylan and the others created a distraction and kicked off the mission. She had to trust that Jayson’s love for her was enough to get them through this.

  “Jayson, do you remember Zarina giving you a shot before Dick’s doctors injected you with the hybrid serum?”

  He looked confused for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. It was a gamma globulin. She said it would boost my immune system.”

  Layla shook her head. “It wasn’t a shot to boost your immune system. It was an antidote that Zarina had developed for Tanner in the hope that it could change him back into a regular person. She wasn’t planning to give it to you, but she had no choice. She was terrified you’d end up like all the dead hybrids the DCO has found, so she gave you the antidote hoping to save your life.”

  Jayson looked stunned. “What are you saying?”

  She knew her eyes were now glowing vivid green, reminding him of exactly what she was—and what he wasn’t.

  “I’m saying you’re not a hybrid and you’re not indestructible. You need to know that before we go over that wall.”

  Chapter 13

  Ivy was sitting in a comfortable chair in Dreya Clark’s living room waiting for the feline shifter to come home when she heard footsteps heading down the hallway. She breathed a sigh of relief as she picked up the other shifter’s scent. After seeing what had happened in Columbia Heights with Thorn’s goons, she wasn’t sure Dreya would come back to her apartment in Foggy Bottom. There had been an equally good chance she’d bolt and find another place to hide. Hell, there was still a chance the shifter would bail when she smelled Ivy and realized there was someone in her apartment. Ivy hoped not. The woman was scared enough already and chasing her wouldn’t help.

  Ivy drew her SIG 9mm and rested it on the table beside the chair, keeping her hand on the grip. She hated the idea of having the gun out in plain sight when Dreya walked through the door, but Ivy wasn’t sure how this meeting was going to go down or if the other shifter had a weapon.

  Once they’d gotten Dreya’s name, Adam’s people had been able to track her down within a couple hours. Ivy had swung by the thief’s jewelry shop first, but it had been locked up tight. She’d been heading to her apartment next when she got a call from a man with a deep voice who told her that Dreya Clark had a safe house under another name in Columbia Heights and that was where Ivy would find her.

  Ivy had gotten there just in time to see Thorn’s men corner Dreya in the alley. Ivy had been about to jump in when a huge guy charged in like a bull and crushed both of them. Even though she couldn’t pick up his scent, the man was too big and fast to be anything other than a shifter. She suspected he was one of Adam’s people but didn’t have a chance to confirm it. She couldn’t let Dreya get away. She only hoped Dreya would let her talk before the inevitable fight-or-flight instinct kicked in.

  Dreya opened the door and was ten steps into the living room before catching sight of Ivy. The blond shifter stopped short, eyeing Ivy—and the gun—suspiciously. Her blue eyes darted around the room, as if calculating the odds of reaching cover before Ivy could shoot her.

  She must have decided her chances weren’t that good because she didn’t move. Dreya was nervous, no doubt. Two men had just tried to Taser and kidnap her.

  “Are you the one who’s been torturing and killing all my friends?” Dreya asked.

  “No.” Ivy stood, then slowly picked up her gun and made a show of putting it back in its holster. If Dreya had a weapon, she would have pulled it out already. “That would be Thorn’s personal security, a man named Douglas Frasier. Those two men who cornered you in that alley in Columbia Heights worked for him, too.”

  Dreya’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know anyone named Thorn. I think you’ve made a mistake.”

  Ivy almost smiled. She didn’t know why, bu
t she liked Dreya. Maybe because she reminded her of Layla—whom, according to Kendra, had found Jayson and would be on her way home soon. Dreya seemed to have that same kind of clever innocence about her that Layla possessed. Too bad she’d gotten herself involved with stuff that put her on Thorn’s bad side.

  “I know you have absolutely no reason to believe this, but I’m here to help you,” Ivy said. “You stole something from a very powerful person and if we can’t figure out a way to get him off your trail, you’re going to end up dead like your friends.”

  Dreya folded her arms and lifted her chin. “It wasn’t me. I’ve never stolen anything. Like I said, you have the wrong person.”

  “Wrong person, huh?” Ivy snorted. “That wasn’t you who broke into Thomas Thorn’s mansion over near Embassy Row a few nights ago? It wasn’t you who came over the back wall and climbed the side of the three-story structure like it was nothing? Or ran along the ridgeline of the roof, somehow walking on those terracotta tiles without breaking any of them, then slipping in through a third-story window?”

  Ivy went on to describe exactly how Dreya had moved around Thorn’s library, right down to where she’d walked and what she’d touched.

  Dreya blanched. “You were outside Thorn’s place that night, weren’t you? You were the one I smelled as I was climbing on my bike. Why didn’t you stop me then? Or come after me?”

  “I couldn’t care less that you stole something from the man, but now Thorn is after you and I can’t stand around and do nothing while he tries to kill you.”

  Dreya chewed on her lower lip, considering that. “So what are you doing here if you don’t work for Thorn? You want a cut or something?”

  “No, I don’t want a cut,” Ivy said. “I want to help you get away.”

  Dreya regarded her warily. “Why would you want to help me? You don’t even know me.”

  Ivy shrugged. “Let’s just say we have a lot in common, not the least of which is a great dislike of Thomas Thorn and the way he does things. I have no interest in seeing someone like Thorn and his goons get away with killing you. And that’s what will happen if he doesn’t get back what belongs to him.”