by Paige Tyler
“It wasn’t a complete loss,” Trevor said. “The man I went down there to see—Seth Larson—isn’t the one who brought the bomb onto the DCO complex, but he saw several people around the main building right before the explosion. I’m sending him photos from the DCO personnel records to look through. If we’re lucky, we might get an ID on the person who set the device.”
“Seems like a long shot,” Adam said.
Trevor couldn’t disagree with that. But until he had a chance to look into a few other leads he’d been working, it was the only shot he had to go on.
“Any word on Kendra?” Trevor asked.
“Tanner saw her a few days ago and said she’s close to having her twins,” Adam said, and Trevor could have sworn he saw a smile tug at his lips. “Declan is terrified he’ll have to deliver the babies.”
Trevor chuckled. He could just imagine the big bear shifter trying to deliver the twins while worrying about protecting Kendra at the same time. He was glad Tanner was in a position to help. The big lion hybrid might have control issues now and then, but there was absolutely no one else in the DCO who possessed his heart and compassion when it came to helping people in trouble.
But then the seriousness of that situation struck him. If Kendra went into labor suddenly, Tanner wouldn’t be able to help with that. “All humor aside, she isn’t going to have to have her kids in that B&B where they’re staying, is she?”
Adam shrugged. “She’ll have to. I’m trying to bring in a doctor and a nurse to take care of her, but I have to be careful. Thorn knows Kendra is close to giving birth, too, and I’m afraid if I use anyone in the area, he’ll catch wind of it.”
Shit. Being in the middle of giving birth to twins while worrying about Thorn’s goons finding you had to be scary as hell. No wonder Declan was freaking out.
“How was your first day with your new partner?” Adam asked.
Trevor frowned. “You knew I was getting a new partner? And you didn’t think that was something you might have mentioned to me?”
That slight smile crossed Adam’s face again. “I didn’t want to put you in the position of having to fake your emotions during your first meeting with Agent Bosch. You know what they say—you never get a second chance to make a first impression.”
“Yeah right,” Trevor said. He might have a hard time picking up Adam’s scent, but he knew bullshit when he smelled it.
“So what’s your first impression of her?” Adam prodded.
Trevor pinned him with a look. “If you know so much about her, why don’t you tell me what she’s like? I’m sure you have a complete file on her already.”
Adam returned his look with those disquieting eyes of his. “Actually, I do have a complete file on your new partner. But those are just facts on a piece of paper. I’d much rather get your personal gut reactions to her. I tend to place a lot more faith in those kinds of assessments.”
Trevor ground his jaw, fighting the urge to tell Adam to kiss his ass. The man could irritate the crap out of him sometimes.
“Well, for one thing, Alina strikes me as very competent,” Trevor said. “Something tells me she was very good at the job she used to have at the CIA. Dick said something about her digging out traitors, so I suppose that’s what she did there.”
He waited for Adam to confirm or deny that last part, but the other shifter didn’t say a word.
“She didn’t lose it too badly when I did a partial shift in front of her, so I guess that earns her a few brownie points,” Trevor added, taking another swig of beer. “But Dick obviously paired her with me at Thorn’s urging, which means she’s dirty.”
Once again, Adam didn’t say anything one way or the other about that. For some stupid reason, Trevor had hoped the other shifter would tell him that he was wrong, that Alina was one of the good guys. Kind of stupid, considering the facts of the situation.
The afternoon he’d spent with the former CIA agent had left him conflicted. His head told him that Alina was completely up to her neck in Dick’s and/or Thorn’s pockets, but after the conversation they’d had on the way down to Bowling Green, not to mention seeing the way she’d handled Larson—and Cody—he kept getting this weird feeling that there was something more to her than he suspected.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure what that something more entailed. He couldn’t even be sure if it was something good or something bad. His shifter instincts, which were usually reliable when it came to judging people, seemed to be withholding their opinion on the matter of Alina Bosch for the time being. A fact that pissed him off to no end.
“Anything else?” Adam asked.
Trevor shook his head. “Not really. I tried to hide that I was investigating Thorn’s involvement in John’s death, but the fact was probably impossible for her to miss. She handled that revelation better than I thought she would, though, so I’ll have to admit, I’m torn. Part of me thinks I should trust her, but there’s another part that’s just as sure she’s playing me. I don’t suppose there’s anything in that file you have on her that suggests one way or the other whether I can trust her?”
“Unfortunately, nothing written on a piece of paper can answer that question. You’re right to worry about Alina,” he said. “Dick actively pursued her and brought her in to be your partner. We have no idea what he said to her or what he’s asked her to do. All I can suggest is that you protect yourself and not trust her any more than you have to, at least until she earns it.”
“How am I supposed to know when that is?” Trevor muttered.
Since coming to work at the DCO, Trevor had had two partners—Ed and Jake. Trust had never been an issue with either of those men. It had just come naturally.
It was funny. He’d spent a good portion of his adult life living the life of spies and espionage, going undercover for months at a time to sniff out other people who were living the same way. Now his new teammate might be someone he couldn’t trust.
“I’m not sure how you know when it’s time to trust somebody,” Adam admitted quietly. “I trusted my partner years ago when I worked for the DCO, and he ended up shooting me in the back. John trusted a lot of people, and it got him killed.”
Trevor didn’t know what the story was with Adam and his partner, but he certainly understood the reference to John’s murder. The implications were clear. If he put his faith in Alina, and that faith ended up being misplaced, he was probably going to end up dead, too.
“I’ll be in touch,” Adam said.
“You might get a call in the next day or so from Seth Larson,” Trevor said as the shifter headed for the door. “He’s good with computers and security systems. In fact, I think he set up the security system at Chadwick-Thorn that Ivy and Landon had a problem with.”
Adam lifted a brow, like he was waiting to see what any of that had to do with him.
“Anyway, the guy’s in a tough situation, and I mentioned that you might be able to find him some work he could do from home,” Trevor continued. “He has a kid with special needs he has to be around to take care of, you know?”
Adam regarded him for a long time before finally nodding. “I’ll see what I can do to help him, but stop giving my number out like I’m your cousin who does plumbing work on the side, huh?”
With that, Adam turned and walked out.
As Trevor took another drink from his bottle of beer, he toyed with the idea of calling Adam in the middle of the night and leaving a message about a leaky toilet.
Chapter 5
“I don’t care if Dick said you’re already certified for fieldwork.” Sabrina Erickson pinned Trevor with a look before turning her glare on Alina. “The two of you need to spend some time training together as a team before you get into the field and find out you have zero chemistry, because it’ll be too late to do anything about it then. You’re going to sweat now so you don’t have to bleed later.”
Beside Alina, Trevor grabbed his paintball gun from the table and grumbled something under his breath about hating training officers who spouted clichés. Alina hid her smile as she loaded her own paintball gun. Sabrina was a force of nature, that was for sure.
The woman had intercepted her and Trevor in the cafeteria an hour ago and joyfully informed them they’d be training all morning. Trevor had protested, saying he had some leads related to the bombing he needed to run down. Alina noticed he hadn’t said we have leads to track down, which confirmed her assumption he planned to bail on her. Even though she knew there was a serious trust issue between her and Trevor, it still bothered her anyway. She hated not being trusted. It made her feel like the enemy. Like Wade.
The trim, athletic training officer hadn’t batted an eye but simply smiled sweetly at Trevor and informed him that he could hunt down leads to his heart’s content—after she was done with them. Something told Alina she was going to like this woman.
So they’d spent an hour at the pistol range, where Sabrina had each of them blaze through almost five hundred rounds of ammo with their issued sidearms, then come over here to the shoot house.
“You’ll be doing a scenario involving a hostage,” Sabrina explained.
Alina glanced up from loading another paintball. The black-and-silver gun had a long, slender barrel sticking out the front, a plastic tube full of bright-pink paintballs attached to the top, and a small bottle mounted below the handgrip. It looked like something out of a Star Wars movie and probably cost more than her car.
In all the time she’d been in the CIA, she’d never fired a paintball gun as part of her training. Hell, while she’d done a lot of tactical room clearance, she’d never taken part in any kind of hostage-rescue training either. That wasn’t part of her normal CIA mission, so she’d never spent any time on it.
“Jaxson and Jake will be playing the part of the opposing forces,” Sabrina continued. “You’ll need to deal with them as well as any pop-up targets in the house in order to reach the hostage. The pop-up targets will make the alarms on your vests go off if you fail to take them out in time.”
Trevor snorted, earning him a frown from the training officer.
“Something funny?” Sabrina asked.
He shrugged as he slipped a few extra tubes of paintball ammo into the cargo pocket of his uniform pants. “You realize I’m a shifter and that I can get through this scenario easily, right?”
Sabrina’s lips curved. “Maybe, maybe not. We’ll see. Besides, the objective for this training is for both you and your partner to make it through and rescue the hostage. If you get through but Alina doesn’t, you start over. Teamwork—remember?”
Trevor scowled at that but didn’t say anything.
“I’ll be watching from the overhead catwalk,” Sabrina called over her shoulder as she headed into the house. “The training event will start when the alarm rings the first time. If you haven’t completed the course before it rings a second time, you fail and have to start over.” She turned and gave them a pointed look. “By the way, keep your goggles on at all times. I wouldn’t want anyone to lose an eye in there.”
Okay, maybe she wasn’t going to like this woman, Alina decided as she slipped her goggles down from her forehead. She got the feeling Sabrina had a trick or two up her sleeve for dealing with Trevor and his shifter abilities.
At first glance, the building looked like a normal, everyday house, albeit in need of a fresh coat of paint. Then Alina realized there were no windows on the second floor and that the glass in the first-floor windows was bulletproof. The walls were probably reinforced as well. She hadn’t seen many tactical training shoot houses in the CIA. This kind of stuff was normally reserved for special operations forces. At least she and Trevor weren’t using live ammo. That would have been a little crazy. Then again, crazy seemed to be kind of the norm around here.
After Sabrina disappeared inside, Alina turned to Trevor and held up the paintball gun. “What the heck do I do with this thing? I’ve never fired one before.”
If Trevor was surprised by that admission, he didn’t let on. “The gas pressure bottle under here propels the paintballs when you pull the trigger,” he said, pointing it out with his finger. “The tube on top holds ten paintballs. Think of it like a magazine and reload accordingly. People who do this paintball stuff seriously use containers that hold fifty to a hundred at a time, but the training officers rarely let us get away with that.”
“I don’t know why,” she quipped. “I personally always like to have a lot more ammo than I think I’m going to need.”
Trevor smirked but didn’t laugh. “This is the safety. It operates just like the one on your normal sidearm. Just take the weapon off safe and pull the trigger when you’re ready to fire.”
Without another word, Trevor turned and headed for the door of the shoot house.
“Don’t you think we should talk about how we’re going to do this before we go in there?” she asked, hurrying to catch up with him. “This could get ugly if we don’t have a plan.”
He shrugged. “I’ll take the front of the room as we go in. You cover me and deal with the back side of the room. It shouldn’t be that complicated. I’ll be able to smell and hear Jake and Jaxson long before we get to them.”
Alina opened her mouth to ask what the heck he expected her to do while he was sniffing around like a bloodhound when a loud buzzer went off.
Trevor lifted his foot and kicked in the door with the heel of his boot.
Alina cursed and followed him inside. The first room had three doors leading off in different directions but was otherwise empty. Before she could even begin to wonder which room they should start with—or why the hell the place smelled like a litter box that hadn’t been cleaned in a week—loud music filled the house.
She did her best to ignore both the blaring techno beat and the god-awful stench, moving quickly to cover the blind spots to the left and right of the door they’d come in. It would have been a lot easier if she’d been working with a partner who was interested in communicating—and working as a team.
Fortunately, the first room was clear, so the fact that she had no idea which direction Trevor was going to move as he crossed the threshold didn’t come back to bite them in the ass.
Alina shook off her irritation, waiting for Trevor to figure out which direction he wanted to go. He paused, and she assumed he was sniffing for a clue. There were three doors to choose from. But then she realized he was standing there with a pissed-off look on his face.
“What’s wrong?” she shouted.
Trevor cursed. “It’s Jake. The damn guy knows exactly how shifters work—me especially. Between the loud music and cow piss he dumped all over the place, he’s taken away any advantages I have. I can’t hear or smell a damn thing.”
“Cow urine?” Frowning, she looked around and realized the floor and walls were suspiciously wet. “Okay, that’s officially gross.”
“The clock is ticking, people!” Sabrina called out from the dark catwalk above them. “Get a move on before you get the hostage killed!”
Alina looked questioningly at Trevor.
He shrugged. “I guess we do this the old-fashioned way.”
Heading for the closed door on the far side of the room, he kicked it open, leaving her no choice but to scramble to catch up. She turned her attention to the right side of the room just as a man-shaped silhouette popped up from the floor with the picture of a bad guy with unkempt hair on it.
Alina aimed her gun and squeezed the trigger twice in rapid succession, popping the target right in the center of the chest with pink paint. She was thinking the gun was surprisingly accurate when two more colorful splats hit the same target, even though it was her responsibility.
She threw Trevor an irritated look just as a green paintball exploded in the center of his chest. She spun in t
he direction the shot had come from, only catching a brief glimpse of a dark-haired man as he jerked back around a corner and disappeared. A split second later, she felt something smack into her upper back.
Crap on a stick.
She didn’t have to see the green paint dripping on the floor to know she’d been hit. All because she hadn’t been paying attention to anything except how annoying Trevor was. Her new partner had gotten her shot!
“Don’t bother starting over!” Sabrina shouted. “You haven’t made it far enough even to count as a good beginning. Keep going.”
Trevor growled and wiped his hand across the green dye painted all across his chest. His eyes were blazing yellow, and she could see the tips of his fangs extending over his lower lip as a rumble of anger continued to vibrate out of his chest.
He slammed his foot into the center of the next door, completely ripping it off the hinges and sending it flying across the next room.
Alina blinked. Apparently, Trevor had a temper. Well, at least after getting hit with a paintball. She couldn’t blame him. She was damn pissed—not to mention embarrassed—they’d been taken out so easily.
She followed him but was once again forced to scramble to try and cover her partner, knowing the whole time she probably couldn’t trust him to do the same for her. Instead of working as a team, they were two people trying to work through a shoot house scenario completely on their own.
As expected, the results were a complete disaster.
Alina and Trevor moved from room to room, so worried about Jake and Jaxson they missed nearly every pop-up target in the house. The damn alarm buzzer on her vest rang nearly nonstop, and on those rare occasions when she was able to focus on her surroundings enough to hit the targets, Jake or Jaxson would pop out of the nearest doorway and smack them with a green paintball.