by Paige Tyler
“No, I want you and Agent Bosch to track them down,” Dick said. “Together.”
Trevor turned to regard the former CIA agent sitting beside him. Alina returned his gaze. There was only one reason Dick would team them up—so she could keep tabs on him. That meant she was already deep in Dick’s pockets—or Thorn’s. While he seriously wanted the chance to get out and do a little digging on John’s killer, he wasn’t thrilled at the idea of having to deal with a partner who’d be on the phone reporting everything he did to Dick five times a day.
“Before you bother asking what Alina brings to the table, I’ll clarify that point right now. She’s very good at digging out traitors,” Dick said succinctly, and Trevor had to wonder if that was a little jab at him. “It’s one of the things she’s excelled at the past few years in the CIA.”
Trevor didn’t say anything. This was obviously a done deal. If teaming up with Alina was what he had to put up with to get back in the game, he’d make it work.
“Fine,” he said. “If it’s settled then, I’d like to head out immediately. I have a couple of leads I want to look into this afternoon.”
“What leads?” Dick asked.
“I’ve heard rumors about some people down in Fredericksburg who got into a scuffle in a restaurant with a couple of guys they described as…odd. I think it might be the rogue shifters.”
Dick eyed him doubtfully. “Why the hell would any of the rogue teams stay this close to the DCO training complex? That seems incredibly foolish.”
“That’s only because you seem to think they’re out there running scared,” Trevor said. “They’re not. Ivy and Landon would almost certainly have left at least one team close to DC so they could keep an eye on what we’re doing. I’m sure you’ve already realized they likely still have people on the inside feeding them info, right?”
Trevor felt a slight twinge telling Dick this kind of stuff, but it wasn’t like it was a big secret. Dick might be a moron, but Thorn was smart enough to know at least some of the shifter teams were likely nearby. Part of staying on with the DCO was playing the game and making it look like he was actively engaged in catching his former coworkers.
Not that he was really leading Dick anywhere near his friends. In truth, he wanted to get down to the Fredericksburg area so he could check out a guy that Evan had stumbled across while reviewing video footage from the DCO’s front gate on the morning of the bombing. The guy had only started working for the DCO three weeks before John’s death, had driven onto the complex insanely early that morning, and had quit two days after the bombing. Even better, the man had a direct connection to Thorn. He’d worked IT support at one of the local Chadwick-Thorn subsidiaries before showing up at the DCO. With his background, Trevor doubted he was the man who’d built the bomb that had killed John, but he definitely could have been the one to plant the device in the director’s office.
It was someone they should have looked at a long time ago, but it had taken forever for Evan and Skye to find him, since they were dealing with their own trust issues within the remains of the DCO analyst section. It was a given that some of the people who’d stayed there were on Team Thorn. Any digging they did had to be accomplished slowly. But if this was the man who’d delivered the device that had killed John, it would be a good first step toward finding that link to Thorn.
Dick threw one of those what-do-I-do-now glances in Thorn’s direction. The former senator responded with another imperceptible nod. Thorn should rig up some marionette strings for the director. They could take their act on the road.
“Do it,” Dick said in his best imitation of a man who knew what the hell he was doing. “But I want you two to keep me informed of everything you’re doing at all times.”
Trevor snorted. “Of course you do—since you trust me so much now.”
Dick didn’t take the bait. “I don’t trust you. And I won’t until you give me reason to. Until then, you two should consider yourselves on a short leash.”
Chapter 2
“I thought we were going to Fredericksburg?” Alina asked as they passed straight through the town and kept going until they hit Highway 2 and headed south.
After leaving Dick Coleman’s office, Trevor had told her he’d meet her in front of the admin building, then disappeared. When he showed up fifteen minutes later in a black Suburban, she’d noticed he’d changed out of the black tactical uniform he’d been wearing and into cargo pants and a button-down.
Trevor glanced at his rearview mirror before giving her a smile. “We did go to Fredericksburg—and now we’re leaving. I figured since it’s such a nice day, why not enjoy ourselves with a leisurely drive through the country?”
She lifted a brow. “That’s what this is all about…a nice drive in the country?”
“Yup.”
“Yeah right,” she muttered as he checked the mirror again.
Sighing, Alina turned her attention back to the fat file folder on her lap. It was stuffed full of reports related to all the places Ivy, Landon, and the rest of the rogue shifters had supposedly been sighted. Dick had told her they were a slippery bunch, but she found it difficult to believe they could move from location to location as fast as the DCO agents trying to track them down claimed. It was like they’d put a map up on a wall somewhere and thrown darts at it.
She flipped the page, frowning as she read over the various performance records of the operatives Dick had called “shifters.” To say it read like something out of a movie was putting it mildly.
“Okay, I’m just going to come out and say it,” she told her new partner. “I’m not so sure I buy all this shifter crap. Dick made it seem like it was the real deal, but I gotta tell you, it sounds like BS to me.”
“It’s real,” Trevor said.
Alina waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. “Show me.”
He slanted her a look. “Excuse me?”
She closed the folder and tossed it in the backseat. “You’re supposed to be a shifter, right? So show me what the heck the big fuss is all about.”
Trevor’s jaw flexed. “I’m not a trained monkey at the circus. I don’t do tricks.”
Okay, maybe demanding he perform for her had been uncalled for. She would have said as much when she caught him checking the rearview mirror again. She wanted to ask him who he thought was following them but decided that would be a waste of time. Trevor obviously didn’t trust her enough to tell her what time of day it was, much less who might be following them.
That was okay, because she wasn’t sure she could trust him much either.
It was one more thing that had her once again questioning her decision to leave the CIA. Taking a job in a classified department of Homeland Security she’d never heard of was bad enough, but chasing rogue government agents with a partner she didn’t know the first thing about and couldn’t trust was completely insane.
But then she remembered how much she’d hated her job at the Agency. She’d gotten so burned out on the crappy work they’d had her doing lately it was a miracle she hadn’t gotten herself—or someone else—killed. That’s when she took a breath and told herself that while her first day at the DCO was going a little rocky, she’d made the right choice leaving the CIA. She probably should have done it a long time ago, right after Jodi and the rest of her team had been killed.
“You okay?” Trevor asked suddenly as he drove down the tree-lined rural road.
Alina looked at him, not sure where his question had come from. “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, but your heart rate just shot through the roof, so I figured I should ask.”
All she could do was stare at him in confusion, not sure what the hell he was talking about. “How do you know how fast my heart is beating?”
“It’s a shifter thing,” he said casually, as if he were talking about the weather. “My hea
ring is good enough to pick up the beating of your heart, and it’s going a little crazy about now.”
She eyed him skeptically, wondering if he was messing with her. Dick had tried to explain the basics of the shifter genetics, but he’d made it sound like they were part animal. None of it made any sense to her. Now she wished she’d asked more questions.
She and Dick had talked for quite a while about Trevor before he’d shown up for the meeting. While Dick hadn’t gone into great detail about what a shifter was, he’d told her repeatedly that she couldn’t trust Trevor and that there was a good chance her new partner was in league with the rogue DCO agents who’d murdered the previous director. After hearing that, she’d expected Wade’s double to walk through the door.
But Trevor wasn’t anything like her old teammate—at least not physically. Wade had been average in every way possible. Trevor was anything but. He was tall and athletic with a wiry build and short, black hair that seemed to be in a permanent state of casual bedhead. Alina had met men who spent a lot of money to get their hair to look like that, but Trevor’s seemed to be completely natural. With lips that quirked constantly, a little scruff covering his jaw, and mischievous, hazel eyes, he seemed like a man who rarely took things very seriously. He’d definitely vexed the crap out of Dick, and even if he was supposed to have been part of a conspiracy to kill the former director, Alina had had a hard time keeping the smile off her face as he’d poked and prodded his boss.
By the time the meeting was over, she was ready to admit that Trevor was an attractive man with a nice body, an infectious grin, and a razor-sharp, wry sense of humor. While she had no idea what the shifter stuff was about, she’d had a hard time seeing him as a traitorous, cold-blooded killer. Then again, she’d never seen a traitorous, cold-blooded killer when she used to look at Wade either, and he’d betrayed the entire team and killed Jodi in the most vicious manner he could. All in all, she was a crappy judge of character.
“Your heart’s beating faster again,” Trevor murmured as he drove past the same gas station they’d passed twice already. “You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” she snapped.
Dammit, he was right. Her heart was thumping harder than normal. It always did when she thought about Wade.
“I’m just going to toss this out there,” Trevor said. “But can I assume you’re nervous about being in a vehicle with someone like me?”
Alina did a double take. “No, that’s not it at all. I don’t have a problem with you.”
He arched a brow and gave her a look that said she was full of crap. “So you’re telling me your heart starts racing at random moments for the heck of it?”
She opened her mouth to tell him it was none of his damn business, but closed it again. There was a good chance they could be walking into a dangerous situation when they got to wherever they were going. She’d rather not do that while in the middle of an argument. But she also wasn’t in the habit of giving up personal info without getting anything in return.
“Why should I tell you anything?” she demanded. “It’s not like you’ve been exactly forthcoming with me. You still haven’t told me where we’re going or what a shifter is. For all I know, you could be making up this stuff about being able to hear how fast my heart is beating.”
Alina expected Trevor to say something suitably snarky, but he surprised her.
“Fair enough,” he agreed. “We’re going to talk to a guy who lives in Bowling Green. He worked in IT at the DCO training complex and went into work two hours before his normal duty time on the day of the explosion.”
“You think he was working with the rogue DCO agents who killed John Loughlin?”
While the idea made sense, it wasn’t exactly in line with what he’d told Dick.
“I think it’s possible the guy might have brought the bomb onto the complex,” Trevor said.
Alina waited for him to say something else about the man, but he fell silent. That left her with a lot of questions, the first one being why no one had already talked to this guy. Surely, the people investigating the bombing would have done that right off the bat. More importantly, why had Trevor lied to his boss about where they were going and what they’d be doing?
“You told the director you wanted to talk to some people who’d gotten into a scuffle with two men you thought might be the rogue agents,” she reminded him.
He glanced at the side mirror this time. “Yeah, I did.”
There was a lot of stuff he wasn’t telling her, including who he thought was following them. She decided not to push on those two subjects…yet. He was talking, and she wanted to keep that going. Time to move on to a different topic and see what else he’d tell her.
“Back to the shifter thing for a minute,” she said, trying to sound casual. “Dick said something about you having animal DNA, but that’s just an expression, right? Like when someone says a person is as mean as a junkyard dog or strong as an ox.”
Trevor didn’t say anything for a long time, and Alina thought she’d pushed too far.
“I’m a coyote shifter,” he finally said. “I have canine DNA mixed with my own. When I shift, I take on certain physical characteristics of a coyote.”
All Alina could do was stare. What could she say to a man who’d just claimed to be part coyote?
“Are you serious, or are you just messing with me?” she demanded.
In answer, Trevor took one hand off the wheel and placed it on the center console between them. As she watched, his fingernails extended until they turned into five sharp claws almost an inch long and deadly looking as hell.
Alina stared. It had to be a trick.
She opened her mouth to ask how a human could possibly have claws but stopped cold as he turned to look at her with eyes that were glowing yellow and a pair of elongated canines protruding out over his lower lip.
Crap on a stick.
She jerked back so hard, she almost snapped her neck, then immediately regretted her reaction at the flicker of disappointment that crossed his handsome face. Before she could say anything, the claws, fangs, and glowing eyes disappeared.
Trevor put his hand back on the wheel and focused once again on the twisting, turning country road. “Enough about me,” he said casually, as if having long claws poking out from under his fingernails was an everyday occurrence for him. Hell, maybe it was. “Now that I’ve told you where we’re going and demonstrated the shifter stuff isn’t BS, let’s get back to you. Why was your heart beating so fast before?”
Alina didn’t answer. She didn’t like confiding in a stranger, even if he was supposed to be her partner. But he’d answered her questions, so she supposed she owed him something.
“A mission went wrong a couple of years ago in the CIA. I try hard not to think about it, because when I do, I get upset. That’s probably why you heard my heart racing.”
She tried not thinking about the fact that her heart was probably racing all over again simply from making that confession, and she prayed he wouldn’t push for more details.
“Are you wondering if you made a mistake getting out of the CIA?” he asked.
Her first instinct was to say no. Then again, that was always her first instinct. But instead, she nodded.
“Yeah. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t wondering that. But then I realize I did the right thing. It was time for me to leave,” she said.
She looked out the passenger window, waiting with a slight sense of dread for his next question, the one where he asked her exactly why she’d left the Agency.
Nothing had been the same after the operation in Turkey. In the immediate aftermath of the ambush that had killed her entire team, she’d been so furious that all she could do was think about spending the rest of her life hunting Wade down and making him pay. The need for revenge was like a fever that raged day and night.
The Agency
had done everything they could to help her find Wade at first. But after about a year of scouring the globe, the search had started to lose steam as other events took priority. The Agency moved Wade’s cold-blooded betrayal to the back burner, he was placed on a watch list with thousands of other high-value targets, and Alina was told to let it go. She hadn’t, and it had cost her.
Initially, the Agency had allowed her to stay in the field, but over time, her fixation with finding the man who’d killed her team had made her coworkers and supervisors uncomfortable. They began to think she was unstable, obsessive, and a risk to other agents. To some degree, maybe she was. Because for a long time, all she cared about was getting revenge.
Finally, the big shots at Langley had decided to put her zeal for catching traitors to good use and transferred her to the CIA’s version of Internal Affairs. Instead of chasing after bad guys, she’d been chasing dirty agents. It wasn’t something an agent should ever be asked to do, and Alina had hated it. So when the director of the DCO had approached her out of the blue about a new job—one that included a promise to jump-start her search for Wade—she’d hadn’t even had to think about it. That brilliant move had gotten her a partner who had claws and glowing yellow eyes.
Well, she’d wanted a chance to get out and do something different. From now on, maybe she should be more careful what she asked for.
“You going to be able to focus on what we’re doing here?” Trevor asked, pulling her out of her reveries.
Alina gave herself a shake and realized they were in the parking lot of a nice little apartment complex with well-trimmed hedges and perfectly manicured lawns. Around them, the other spaces were filled with electric cars. It wasn’t exactly a place that screamed “cold-blooded killer hideout.”
“I’ll be fine,” she assured Trevor, then added, “assuming you’re actually planning to tell me what we’re doing here. Who’s this guy we’re looking for, and do you have anything linking him to the bombing besides the fact that he happened to come into work early that day?”