by Paige Tyler
As the helicopter banked, the woman made a small noise of complaint and dug her fingers into his camo overshirt even more. Across from Angelo, Derek’s eyes followed the move, but he didn’t say anything.
Minka had been like that since leaving the little mud building back in the village, clinging to him like he was the only thing keeping her afloat in a world gone mad. Before she fell asleep, he’d gotten her to tell him her name—Minka Pajari. Looking at her now, sleeping so soundly, it was hard to think of her as anything other than a scared, beautiful young woman. She certainly didn’t look like a monster.
The people back in that village would probably argue the point with him, of course. They’d been gathered around the building when Angelo had come out with Minka in his arms. They’d thought she was dead at first and had cheered him for his bravery. When they discovered she wasn’t, the crowd had turned ugly fast, demanding he turn her over so they could kill her themselves. A few of the men who’d run out of the building screaming in terror after Minka had defended herself were there, much bolder with half a village of armed men behind them. They were the ones pushing hardest for Minka’s blood.
Fortunately, Angelo and the rest of the guys on the team could be quite persuasive when they wanted to be. Even the LT had backed him up. But any goodwill they’d gained by repairing the clinic was gone by the time Angelo had led the way out of the village with Minka still sleeping like a baby in his arms.
Angelo thought Minka would wake up when the Black Hawk touched down, but she didn’t stir. Around him, the other guys got to their feet and grabbed their gear. Derek picked up Angelo’s rucksack without him having to ask, then followed the rest of the team out. Angelo waited until they’d all left before getting to his feet and carrying Minka off the helicopter.
He was a little surprised to see an armed Air Force Security Police detail waiting to meet them at the edge of the hot pad. They escorted his team to the fully prepped C-17 Globemaster cargo aircraft a short distance away, then stood guard. The pilot, a major named Falk, and a full-bird colonel named Janzen that Angelo was pretty sure was the airbase commander were both near the cargo ramp of the plane.
Falk took one look at Minka, then frowned in confusion. “That’s my classified cargo?”
Janzen lifted a bushy brow in Angelo’s direction. “Sergeant?”
Angelo nodded. “Yes, sir. This is her.”
Janzen was clearly curious but didn’t ask. “Let’s get her on board then.”
After holding Minka for six hours straight, he should have been relieved to hand over the hybrid to someone else, but there was a crazy part of him that didn’t want to let her go.
Aware of Janzen, Falk, and everyone else watching him, Angelo looked down at the beautiful woman in his arms. “Minka. We’re here.”
She blinked sleepily, gazing up at him with big, brown eyes that were full of trust. “Here?” she repeated in Tajik.
Angelo nodded and slowly set her on her feet. Holding on to one of her hands, he started to lead her into the plane. But Minka wrapped the fingers of her other hand in his overshirt and yanked him back, her eyes wide with terror.
“It’s okay,” he said softly. “These men are going to take you somewhere safe.”
She shook her head wildly, pressing herself up against his side and wrapping her arm around his like a clamp.
“Now I know why we needed a medic on the flight,” the pilot muttered, motioning to someone inside the plane. A big, blond guy appeared, a black bag in his hand. “Can you give her something to calm her down for the flight?” he asked the man.
“Yeah, sure.”
The medic set down his bag, then dropped to one knee. At the sight of the syringe he pulled out, Minka went from a confused, frightened woman to a hissing, snarling hybrid in the blink of her glowing red eyes. Claws and fangs came out, and she lunged at the medic. If Angelo hadn’t wrapped his arms around her waist and held her back, the guy would have been in big trouble.
Even with Angelo holding her, the results of her display were pretty awesome. The medic, the pilot, the colonel, and the whole Security Police detail took about five steps back really fast. The SPs recovered first, yanking out their Berettas and aiming them straight at Minka—and Angelo. That just provoked his team to do the same, and within seconds, everyone had their guns pointed at someone.
Shit.
Angelo ignored them and focused on Minka. “It’s okay. No one is going to hurt you. I promise. You don’t have to be afraid.”
He hoped that would calm her down, but she didn’t shift back. If anything, her eyes glowed more brightly. Okay, talking her down wasn’t going to work. Wrapping one arm around her, he slipped the other under her legs and lifted her into his arms, pulling her close. Minka immediately wrapped her arms around his shoulders and buried her face in his neck, her claws and fangs disappearing.
Angelo looked at the medic. “The syringe probably isn’t a good idea.”
Major Falk scowled from the opposite side of the cargo ramp. “Well, we’re going to have to do something. It’s a long ride back to the States, and I can’t have her running around the cargo hold like a lunatic. And no, my crew chief isn’t going to be responsible for her. Hell, my mission didn’t even say anything about a person. They told me I’d be carrying a top secret asset. What am I going to do with a psychotic two-legged saber-toothed tiger? What the hell is she anyway?”
Colonel Janzen ignored the pilot, eyeing Angelo and Minka appraisingly. “She seems to be content in your arms, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir,” Angelo agreed, only then realizing he’d been slowly rocking Minka gently in his arms. “She’s been like this since I picked her up six hours ago.”
“Then we don’t have a problem.” Janzen jerked his chin at the plane. “Get on the bird.”
Angelo did a double take. “Sir?”
Lieutenant Watson lowered his pistol and moved forward to stand beside Angelo. “Sir, Sergeant Rios can’t just leave the country without orders. He’d be court-martialed.”
The colonel narrowed his eyes at Watson. “Lieutenant, I wasn’t told much about this operation, but the orders I was given were very clear: get whatever the fuck your SF team is carrying back to the States—ASAP. So it’s simple. This”—he gestured at Minka—“woman is going to the States, one way or the other. Your platoon sergeant carried her all the way here, and if he has to carry her the rest of the way, he will.” He pinned Angelo with a hard look. “Now, get the fuck on the plane, Sergeant.”
When a colonel told you to jump, you usually said, “How high?” But leaving the area of operation? Angelo glanced at the lieutenant.
Watson shrugged. “You heard the colonel, Sergeant. Get on the bird. I’ll clear it with HQ when I get back…somehow.”
“Hooah, sir.” Giving the other guys on the team a nod, Angelo curled his arm more tightly around Minka and climbed up the ramp.
Derek tossed Angelo’s rucksack into the back of the plane, and the engines were winding up before Angelo even got situated on the nylon bench seat with Minka. Even though the engine noise grew to uncomfortable levels, she was already falling asleep, as if she couldn’t care less about anything now that she was in his arms again.
* * *
Landon and Ivy arrived at the DC offices of Chadwick-Thorn exactly at nine. The red-haired receptionist smiled and told them to have a seat in the immense lobby.
“Mr. Thorn will be with you in a few minutes.”
That had been fifteen minutes ago.
Landon tossed the latest copy of Fortune 500 on the table and looked out the expansive row of windows lining one whole side of the lobby. From there, he could not only see all the way across I-295 and the Potomac River, but he could also easily make out the shops and restaurants of Old Town, Alexandria.
“I wonder how often they have to clean these windows,” Landon mused.
Ivy gave him a look. “Seriously? With everything going on right now, you’re worrying about how often
they clean the windows?”
That wiped the smile right off Landon’s face. Ivy was still freaking out about that female hybrid his old team had captured…and with good reason.
“Hey,” he said softly. “It’s going to be okay.”
Landon knew it was a lame thing to say, but he couldn’t think of anything better, and he hated to see his wife scared.
Her expression softened. “How, Landon? You know as well as I do that the hybrid Angelo and the other guys found was almost certainly created using my DNA. And if Derek was able to recognize the link between me and this hybrid just by looking at her for a few minutes, how long do you think it will take the doctors at the DCO?”
Her normally dark eyes swirled with green like she was about to shift…or lose control. Landon moved in his chair, pressing his arm up against hers. It was nothing overt enough for someone to notice, but it was contact all the same. They’d become very adept at using subtle signs of affection like this since they’d gotten married, and the effect of the simple touch was amazing.
Even though the green glimmer faded from Ivy’s eyes, Landon still glanced out the corner of his eye at the receptionist across the room, just to be sure she hadn’t overheard. But the woman was on the phone not paying any attention to them.
He turned his attention back to his wife, using one finger to caress her forearm. “Zarina will do everything she can to cover it up like she did with that girl we found in Canada, the one the doctors experimented on with your DNA. She was able to contaminate the evidence so no one could make a connection between that girl and you.”
Ivy didn’t say anything as she stared out the big windows at the wind-roughened surface of the Potomac.
The hell with whether the receptionist saw or didn’t see. Landon gently turned Ivy’s chin until she was looking at him. “And hey, if the DCO does figure it out and wants to fire us over the fact that we broke their damn rule that said I was supposed to kill you if you were about to get captured because we fell in love with each other, screw them. We’ll be just fine on our own.”
She reached up and gave his hand a quick squeeze before dropping her hand with a glance at the receptionist. “I know that.”
“If you know, what has you so worried?”
She was silent as she looked back out at the water again. In the distance, one of the harbor’s water taxis plowed up a white froth, and Ivy seemed transfixed by it.
“If this hybrid was made with my DNA, it will mean I’m responsible for yet another woman being experimented on and tortured,” she finally said. “Knowing Stutmeir’s doctors did it once already with that precious teenage girl from Canada was hard enough to deal with. But another woman, one that has almost certainly been horribly mistreated for months? I don’t know if that’s something I can go through again.”
Landon remembered the weeks right after they’d found that girl like it was yesterday. Ivy had been a mess. He’d tried to tell her over and over that what had happened to the girl wasn’t her fault, that the blame laid squarely on the shoulders of those sick assholes trying to use science and medicine to create man-made shifters. But his words hadn’t helped. She blamed herself for every minute of suffering she imagined that girl enduring, and nothing he said would ever change that.
He almost reached out to pull her into his arms, then stopped himself. He finally settled for touching her knee out of sight of the receptionist. “Ivy, I don’t know what we’re going to find when we get back to the DCO complex, but one way or another, we’ll get through it together.”
Ivy nodded, but he could see in her eyes that she was already imagining the worst.
Landon glanced at his watch. Obviously, former senator Thorn wasn’t big on punctuality. He would have said as much to Ivy, but right then, Thomas Thorn and another man walked into the lobby and toward them. Landon stood and buttoned his suit jacket. Ivy rose as well, running her hands down the jacket of her pantsuit.
According to his file, Thorn was fifty-nine years old, but he could have easily been mistaken for a man ten years younger. He was clean shaven and extremely fit, with a head of dark hair that didn’t even have a sprinkling of gray in it yet. He was impeccably dressed, too. His suit probably cost more than Landon made in a month. Hell, his paycheck probably couldn’t cover the man’s shoes.
Thorn moved with a confident stride and a casual smile on his unlined face. No surprise that he’d won so many elections as a senator, all by landslides. He exuded pure charm and charisma. But while his face and smile were open and inviting, his eyes were as sharp and intense as a hunter’s. Thorn was studying Landon and Ivy as he closed the distance between them, taking in every detail. Landon reminded himself again to be careful around this guy. He was dangerous.
“Agent Donovan. Agent Halliwell. Thank you for stopping by,” Thorn said as he shook first Landon’s hand, then Ivy’s. “John has told me so much about your team’s exploits that I thought I should meet you in person.”
Landon smiled. “It’s a privilege.”
The former senator turned to the tall, blond man beside him. “This is Douglas Frasier, my head of security.”
Landon didn’t need an introduction. According to the file John had on forty-two-year-old Frasier, the man had been an operative for the DCO back in 2003 but had been injured in the line of duty and left due to medical reasons. The file had been sketchy on the details, but Landon got the feeling it had something to do with Adam. Landon quickly figured out what kind of injury had ended the man’s career at the DCO when Frasier reached out to shake hands. He could barely lift his arm. His grip wasn’t very firm, either.
“Shall we tour the facility as we talk?” Thorn asked.
“Sounds good,” Landon said.
Thorn led the way while Frasier followed a good ten feet behind. While Landon was sure that at least some portion of the complex conducted serious design and engineering work, the areas of the building Thorn showed them seemed more suited to impressing visiting politicians and dignitaries. There were lots of mock-ups and models of weapons systems, advanced communication gear, and general fluffy, feel-good stuff about how much great work the company was doing for America’s defense.
Thorn stopped in front of a wall mural halfway down a long hallway. It was a stylized world map with labels and pins stuck all over the place. There were half a dozen pins in the DC area, but there were ten times that many scattered across the rest of the states. Most were associated with major military installations, but some seemed to be out in the middle of nowhere. Landon couldn’t think of anything of military or industrial significance in those areas, but since it wasn’t like Chadwick-Thorn would show a secret hybrid facility on a map in the hallway, he muzzled his curiosity.
He took a quick glance in the area around Tajikistan though, on the off chance that Chadwick-Thorn had a pin near the place where his old team had found the female hybrid, but no such luck.
After nearly an hour of what amounted to nothing more than a dog and pony show, Landon was wondering why the hell he and Ivy were there. Other than a little personal chitchat, Thorn hadn’t said anything to them he wouldn’t have said to a congressional aid from Ohio.
But then Thorn took them to his fancy office on the top floor of the building with more expansive windows overlooking the river, the Pentagon, and the Washington Monument off in the distance.
Landon glanced at Ivy out the corner of his eye as they slipped into the two chairs in front of Thorn’s desk. He didn’t have to look over his shoulder at Frasier posted by the door to figure out that the tone of the meeting had gone from casual to intense.
Thorn stood gazing out the window for a time, his hands behind his back. “I was in the gallery in the DCO’s conference room behind the one-way glass when you two were being debriefed after that mission in Washington State,” he said. “While the written report of the events I read after the fact was quite impressive, hearing you two describe the operation in person was even more so. It’s quite obvious that you t
wo make a very good team.”
Landon didn’t say anything, and neither did Ivy. They both stared at Thorn’s back, waiting to see where this was going.
“I couldn’t help feeling that the situation on the ground might have been a bit messier than your report let on,” Thorn added.
Landon exchanged looks with Ivy. If John was right, the former senator was sniffing around to see if they were the type who didn’t mind getting their hands dirty. While he and Ivy had been forced to make the tough call more than once, it had always been because it was the right thing to do. But Thorn wasn’t asking whether they knew the difference between right and wrong—he was wondering if they’d do the wrong thing if they were ordered to do it.
“Things on the ground are always messier and more complicated than most people care to hear about,” Landon said carefully. “We simply focused our report on the critical facts we thought most pertinent to the people attending the debriefing.”
Thorn didn’t turn away from the window, but Landon expected he was smiling. “And I’d imagine that most of those listening to your briefing that day appreciated the discretion. But I’m a man who’s comfortable with details that might make others cringe. In your report, I remember reading a brief line or two about you killing Keegan Stutmeir, Agent Donovan, while Agent Halliwell dealt with Jeff Peters. However, there were no details on the exact circumstances of either death. Would you mind telling me exactly how they died?”
Landon glanced at Ivy. She smoothed an imaginary stray hair back into the neat bun at the nape of her neck. She wasn’t thrilled with where this was going. Neither was he. But they’d thought the conversation might detour in this direction. As long as Thorn didn’t try and bring up the subjects of Ivy’s DNA, her torture, or the months they’d spent chasing after Klaus and Renard on their own, they’d be fine. If Thorn tried to dig into any of those areas, the conversation was over.
“I chased Stutmeir down as he tried to escape. When he ran out of ammo, he pulled a knife on me. I got it away from him and shoved it through his chest,” Landon said with a quiet fury he didn’t have to fake. The man had been the one ultimately responsible for Ivy getting tortured. A knife through the heart had been too good for him.
