by Paige Tyler
“That doesn’t explain the teeth,” Rory pointed out.
She folded her arms with a shrug. “Dental implants.”
Sawyer had to fight the urge not to roll his eyes. “Erin, I watched blood pour out of the guy from those gunshot wounds. I’m talking pints of it. And the razor-sharp teeth were as normal and human as yours right up until he hissed at us.”
“Hissed?” Elliott repeated, the expression on his face giving away how lost he was at the moment. “What, like a cat?”
“No, definitely not like a cat,” Sawyer said, correcting him. “And yeah, he hissed at us.”
Before his teammates could come up with anything to say to that, a familiar scent tickled his nose. The perfect combination of vanilla custard and raspberries he was quickly coming to associate with Harley. She was in the hallway and coming this way. For some crazy reason, his heart sped up a little.
Harley wasn’t alone. He picked up several other scents, including the two male werewolves from her team and Weatherford. None of their scents were as distinct—or as enticing—as Harley’s. Then again, what could compete with his favorite dessert? Or the woman herself. In some crazy way, it was like he and Harley had known each other for years. Then again, after last night, maybe he needed to recalibrate his definition of crazy.
The door to the conference room swung open, and Weatherford walked in leading Harley and her team along with an older man in an expensive suit. Sawyer didn’t recognize him, but there was something about him that screamed covert agent.
Since Sawyer hadn’t paid much attention last night to the other people Harley worked with, he figured he should probably do it now. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. She’d traded in the dress he’d seen her in last night for jeans and a simple red blouse. With long, wavy, blond hair and blue-gray eyes that locked with his the moment she stepped through the door and refused to let go, could anyone blame him? Her creamy skin was like porcelain and her bubblegum-pink lips had to be the most kissable he’d ever seen.
She wasn’t simply beautiful.
She was mesmerizing.
Sawyer regained his focus in time to see Weatherford motioning everyone toward the table. Sawyer quickly grabbed a seat, hoping Harley would sit directly across from him so he could keep gazing at her without anyone else knowing what he was doing. Bollocks, he felt like a sodding teenager.
It didn’t work.
Before Harley could pull out the chair opposite Sawyer, one of her teammates grabbed it and she had to take a seat closer to the end of the table, leaving Sawyer sitting across from the big werewolf with the dirty-blond hair. For whatever reason, the guy didn’t seem to like him. In fact, if the expression on the man’s face was anything to go by, murder was currently being considered.
What the bloody hell is that about?
As soon as they were all seated, Weatherford introduced everyone on both teams, finishing with the man in the expensive suit and glasses standing beside him.
“This is Nathan McKay, head of the joint FBI-CIA Special Threat Assessment Team—aka STAT. The FBI part handles domestic missions while the CIA portion focuses on international ones. The special part of the moniker is because they tackle cases involving supernatural creatures.”
Even after everything he and his teammates had been talking about moments before Weatherford had arrived, Sawyer could tell their boss’s words caught them off guard. As the silence stretched out, he noticed Harley and the other two werewolves—Jake and Caleb—were regarding him curiously. They probably couldn’t understand why Erin, Rory, and Elliott were so freaked out over the term supernatural considering they had one on their team. That was because Erin, Rory, and Elliott didn’t know he was a werewolf, something he spent every day making sure they never found out.
While the American werewolves mentally chewed on that, Sawyer took the opportunity to size up the rest of the STAT team. Dark-haired Jes Ridley was human and carried herself like an experienced field agent. Interestingly enough, her scent was intertwined with Jake’s, which could only mean one thing—they were a couple.
They weren’t the only ones. Clean-cut Forrest Albright and the very unique-looking Misty Swanson were also clearly a couple. Sawyer was pretty sure Forrest was human, but he couldn’t say he was as confident about Misty. Her violet eyes and long, purple hair—which something told him were natural—made him think she was some kind of supernatural, though he wasn’t sure what.
Beside Sawyer, Erin let out a derisive snort.
“No offense,” she said in a tone that plainly suggested something offensive was on the way. “But I don’t buy any of this bloody supernatural stuff. And if anyone in this room does, they’re barmy. I’ll admit, last night was a little out of the ordinary, but everything in that parking garage can be explained rationally.”
McKay pinned her with a hard look. “Normally I wouldn’t care about your opinions on the existence of the supernatural, but with our respective agencies deciding they want MI6 and STAT working together on this, I need to change your thoughts on the subject quickly.”
Sawyer was so busy wrapping his head around why MI6 would team up with STAT, he barely noticed the look McKay threw Jake’s way. It wasn’t until the other werewolf pushed back his rolling chair and stood that he realized that Jake was going to shift. Right there in front of everyone.
No effing way.
But that’s exactly what Jake did, his upper canines elongating at the same time that his eyes glowed vivid gold and claws extended from the tips of each finger.
The response from his team was predictable.
Elliott shoved away from the table so fast his chair flipped over; Rory froze solid, eyes wide in shock; and Erin jumped up, pulling her Glock from the holster just behind her right hip before backing up to put extra space between her and the werewolf across the table from her.
“What the hell are you?” Erin demanded, pointing her weapon at Jake even as she moved back a little farther so she could keep an eye on all of the Americans at once. She glanced at Sawyer. “And how the hell can you sit there like this is no big deal?”
“Put your gun away and sit down,” he said calmly. “You aren’t going to shoot anyone.”
Even though he was confident Erin wouldn’t actually pull the trigger, Sawyer still sighed in relief when she lowered her weapon and holstered it before finally sitting down again. On the other side of Sawyer, Elliott took his seat as well. This only reinforced his decision to hide his secret from his teammates all these years. It would have absolutely sucked arse if Erin pulled a gun on him like that.
Weatherford stood there looking pissed as hell—and maybe a little embarrassed, too. Harley and the rest of her STAT team didn’t seem too happy, either. McKay was the only one who didn’t appear rattled by Erin’s little temper tantrum.
“Jake is a werewolf. So are Harley and Caleb,” McKay said.
On the other side of the table, Caleb grinned, flashing his fangs, while Harley simply tugged the neckline of her blouse aside to show them the barely discernible scar left from the stab wound last night.
“STAT has learned that when you’re dealing with supernaturals, it’s best to have a few on your side. While we have no idea what that man with the knife was, we do know the other creature was a vampire. And taking them down is impossible without having a werewolf or three on your side.” McKay leveled his gaze at Sawyer, his expression unreadable, before looking at Rory, Elliott, and Erin in turn. “Luckily, now you do.”
Chapter 3
“Since we’ll be working together, maybe we should compare notes while we’re waiting for the girl we rescued to come in,” Sawyer said cautiously, like he was concerned the suggestion might upset the fragile peace that had finally taken hold in the conference room. “Particularly how we both ended up in that nightclub last night.”
Working together.
>
That might be easier said than done, Harley thought. But that was what McKay and Weatherford wanted them to do.
“Track down these supernatural creatures, figure out what they’re planning to do with those prisoners, and put a stop to it,” McKay had said before he and Weatherford had left.
Apparently her boss and his counterpart in MI6 had missed the fact that no one in the room trusted each other. Then again, considering Erin had been ready to shoot Jake a few minutes ago, trust might be the least of their problems.
Harley was still musing over that when she caught the delectable scent of cinnamon coffee cake on the air. It was so mouthwatering she looked around, trying to see if there was a plate of goodies she’d missed, but there wasn’t. For the thousandth time, she cursed her crappy nose.
She glanced over at Sawyer to see him regarding her with those captivating blue eyes of his. She thought she’d imagined how handsome he was because there was no way any guy could be so good-looking, but he was even more gorgeous than she remembered from last night. It was all she could do not to spend the entire time staring at him. But Erin and the two men on his team were already suspicious of her and her werewolf teammates. If she kept eyeing Sawyer like he was that yummy piece of coffee cake she kept smelling, they might think she wanted to eat him up.
The notion was so enticing, she wanted to crawl across the table and over to him so she could do just that.
Harley stifled a moan and forced herself to focus on the real reason she and her team were there—forging a working relationship with MI6.
She didn’t know how long Sawyer and his team had been working together, but after his teammates’ display when Jake partially shifted after they’d sat down, she could understand why he hadn’t told them what he was. That must suck. Not to mention being exhausting as hell. While she wasn’t a fan of using her abilities, at least she was on a team full of people who would be okay with it if she did.
Thankfully, none of her STAT teammates had spilled his secret.
“About a week ago, our analysts learned that an officer with the French National Police filed a report from a tourist who claimed to see several men dragging some people from a van into a tunnel near the river,” Jake said. “The witness said he saw one of the victims toss his kidnapper ten feet through the air and into the side of a building.”
Sawyer nodded. “I can see how that might get your attention.”
“There’s more.” Jake leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “At the same time National Police were dealing with the kidnappings, they were also investigating the disappearance of two people from the club we were in last night. A few days later, they found both of those people floating in the river drained of blood. The medical examiner said they’d been stabbed, then dumped in the water where they bled out, but after running into that vampire last night, I think we all know that isn’t what happened.”
“You mean that thing with all the teeth Sawyer said he ran into,” Erin said.
The redhead might be on the fence when it came to this whole supernatural thing, but it was obvious her interest was piqued when it came to the idea of vampires. She might not think the same after coming face-to-face with one of the things. Harley was going to have nightmares about the creature she and Sawyer ran into.
Jake nodded. “Yeah, that thing.”
Sawyer looked at Harley. “Did you know that’s what we were chasing when we went after it?”
“No,” she said. “That was as much a surprise to me as it was to you. McKay mentioned they existed, but it’s one thing to hear about a vampire and another to deal with one in real life. I completely blanked on what that thing was even when Jake shouted over the radio about how to kill it.”
Harley left out the part about Jake being pissed at her afterward, saying how stupid it had been to go after that creature without any of her STAT teammates for backup. She couldn’t say much in her defense, especially since she wasn’t sure how to explain that she’d been completely comfortable with Sawyer—a man she’d never met before and didn’t know anything about—watching her back.
“So how do you kill a vampire?” Elliott asked. Of Sawyer’s teammates, he seemed the one most accepting of the possibility of them working together. Or maybe he was better at hiding his discomfort than the others. “Sawyer said he and Harley put at least eight bullets in the thing and it didn’t slow down at all.”
Jake snorted. “They could have shot him twenty more times and it still wouldn’t have stopped him. The only way to kill a vampire is to take off their heads or rip out their hearts. Though trapping them in a building and burning it to the ground also works.”
“If vampires are so tough to kill and they have all those damn teeth, why didn’t that one go after Sawyer and Harley last night, instead of turning tail and running away?” Erin asked.
“Because werewolf blood is like acid to a vampire,” Jake said, his gaze flicking to Sawyer. “The damn creatures are scared to death of getting our blood on them.”
Sawyer seemed as intrigued by that as the rest of his MI6 team and Harley wondered if he was replaying the fight from last night. Was he thinking they might have been able to take down the vampire if they’d known that?
“Okay, so that’s the deal with a vampire,” Elliott said. “What about the guy who could make himself disappear? What do you know about him?”
Jake sighed. “Our intel people back in DC are digging through everything they have as well as talking to an expert on the subject of supernatural creatures, but so far, we’ve got nothing. I have no idea how we’ll deal with him next time other than to suggest none of us go anywhere on our own. The guy is less likely to get the drop on you if there’s someone watching your back.”
Harley could vouch for that.
“What about MI6?” she asked, looking at each of them before settling on Sawyer. “How did you know about the trafficking ring?”
Erin and the other two British operatives looked at Sawyer, clearly waiting to see what their team leader would say. Harley got that. Management might want them to work together, but neither side wanted their closely guarded secrets getting out.
“We didn’t,” Sawyer said after a moment. “Three weeks ago, my team and I were in Mexico City chasing down a guy who broke into the MI6 classified records repository in Buckinghamshire. We were there to track him down and interrupt the information transfer with whoever hired him, then grab them both and get back what he took.”
“Do you know what kind of information he stole?” Harley asked.
Sawyer shook his head. “No. The archives hold everything MI6 has ever written down, recorded, videotaped, or collected. It could have been anything from files related to ongoing operations, old case reports, financial documents, even personnel records for retired operatives.”
Harley suddenly had a vision of the huge warehouse in Raiders of the Lost Ark, except MI6’s was filled with mountains of paperwork.
“We followed our guy to the northern part of the city to what we assumed would be the site of the exchange, but when we got there, he was nowhere to be seen,” Sawyer said. “We split up to search the area and a little while later, I found him and several other men trying to kidnap a woman. I ran toward them, and by the time I got there, the guy we’d been chasing was dead and the other men escaped with their captive, who just so happens to be the same woman we rescued last night.”
Jake frowned. “What led you to the club?”
“Pure luck,” Sawyer said. “We got a tip that a man fitting the description of one of the kidnappers had been spotted there.”
From the way Sawyer glanced at his teammates, Harley got the feeling he was leaving a lot of the story out to keep from revealing he was a werewolf. Jake must have realized it, too, because he didn’t press for details.
“If the guy who broke into the MI6 repository was working for the traffi
ckers, why kill him?” Caleb asked.
“I don’t think they did,” Sawyer said. “I think the woman they kidnapped did.”
Wait. What?
Harley glanced at her teammates to see that they looked as confused as she was.
“What makes you think that?” she asked.
“I was still a hundred meters away, so I couldn’t see exactly what happened, but as they were dragging her toward their vehicle, there was a bright flash of light. It blinded me, and by the time I could see normally again, our suspect’s body was smoldering on the ground.”
That wasn’t what Harley had expected. She’d assumed they’d struggled for a weapon and it had gone off. “Smoldering?”
Sawyer nodded. “Yeah. Like something—or someone—toasted him.”
Jake shared a look with Jes. “You think the girl we rescued possesses the ability to burn someone?”
Sawyer opened his mouth to answer, but Erin spoke before he could.
“Not burned as much as fried. Like the guy’d been hit by lightning or touched a high-voltage electrical line. His skin was charred, but he also had lacerations like you’d see on someone after electricity from a bolt of lightning leaves the body.”
Harley’s mind was still spinning from that horrible image when the door of the conference room opened and Tessa Reynolds, one of the STAT agents with the support team, walked in with the kidnapping victim she and Sawyer had rescued last night. Petite with wavy, dark hair and soft-brown eyes, the woman was maybe twenty-three or twenty-four. She’d been unconscious since last night thanks to whatever drug the kidnappers had given her. Harley had been a little concerned she hadn’t woken up yet and was relieved to see she was okay. Looking at her, it was difficult to picture the girl frying anyone with a bolt of electricity.
