by Paige Tyler
“You didn’t think we’d let you come back here and handle this situation on your own, did you?” the lieutenant asked, sticking out his hand in greeting.
Angelo grabbed Watson’s hand, but instead of shaking it, he yanked his lieutenant forward and gave him a man hug. Then he did the same to Derek and Diaz. By the time he was done, they were all laughing¸ asking him how the hell he’d been and what the fuck he’d done to get them pulled into this mission.
In the interest of full disclosure, he had to admit he wasn’t the one responsible for bringing them in. “But I’m damn glad to see you guys anyway.”
Before they could ask him anything more about the mission, Angelo took Minka’s hand again and led her forward.
“You guys might not recognize her, but this is Minka Pajari, the woman we rescued in Tajikistan,” he said softly, smiling as she eyed the guys shyly. “She’ll be joining us on this mission.”
Derek extended his hand. “I’m glad to see you’re doing okay. When you and Angelo got on that C-17, I wasn’t too sure how it was going to turn out.”
Minka shook his hand with a smile and would have replied, but a sharp voice interrupted her.
“These people aren’t cleared to be on this operation,” Powell said as he glared at Derek and the other guys. “Who the hell called them?”
“I did,” Landon said as he shouldered past Powell to greet Derek and the other guys. “And don’t get your panties in a bunch, Powell. They’ve all been briefed and cleared on both the shifter and hybrid programs.”
“Damn, Diaz, are you getting taller?” Landon asked as he man-hugged the smallest member of his former A-team. “I swear it seems like you’ve grown two or three inches since I saw you last.”
Diaz chuckled. “Sorry, Captain. I hate to tell you this, but I think you’re shrinking. I’ve heard that happens when you get old.”
As everyone laughed, Angelo took the opportunity to introduce his new lieutenant to Landon.
“I’ve heard a lot about you, Captain Donovan,” Watson said as they shook hands. “I’m looking forward to working with you.”
Landon grinned. “Same here. And call me Landon. My army rank is sitting on my uniforms back in DC.”
Angelo snorted. Like people were going to forget Landon was an officer. As soon as the shit started flying, he’d be shouting orders, and no one would care if he were wearing a pink tutu. Soldiers followed the person who knew what the hell he was doing.
“I’m guessing the guys have told you about the things you’re probably going to see when we get there?” Landon asked Watson.
“Yes, sir.” Watson shook his head. “I have to tell you, I was pretty sure they were pulling my leg, even after seeing Minka back in that village—until one of those shifters showed up and convinced me.”
Angelo was about to ask what the lieutenant meant by that when Watson jerked his head at something behind him. Angelo turned to see a wiry guy with short, black hair casually leaning against one of the Humvees parked near the edge of the runway. He was dressed in a military-style uniform similar to what all the other DCO operatives were wearing.
“Trevor! I thought I picked up your scent,” Ivy said with a big smile. “What are you doing here?”
Trevor gave Ivy a cocky grin. Maybe Angelo had been hanging out at the DCO for too long because he would have known Trevor was a shifter even if Watson hadn’t told him. Angelo couldn’t put his finger on what tipped him off. There was just something about the guy.
“My team and I were working in Jakarta and finished up our mission early,” Trevor said. “John called and asked if I could stop by and help out. It sounded like fun, so I hopped on the first flight over. I’ve been hanging out with the lieutenant and his team since this morning.”
Beside Angelo, Powell swore under his breath. “This mission doesn’t have anything to do with industrial espionage or looking for spies, so I don’t know what use you’re going to be on this op.”
Trevor gave Powell an eat shit and die smile. “This job doesn’t involve sitting on your ass, eating donuts, and brownnosing your way to another pay raise either, yet here you and Moore are.”
Powell’s face darkened and he took a step forward. Trevor pushed away from the Humvee, his eyes flashing yellow-green, long, sharp canines extending. Angelo had seen this same kind of display before, but while Trevor had the same doglike fangs and squared-off claws as the DCO’s resident wolf shifter Clayne Buchanan, he didn’t have the same bulky muscles and his teeth weren’t nearly as long. That said, he was clearly just as dangerous.
Powell must have thought so too, because he stopped midstep. He and Trevor stared at each other for so long that Angelo wondered if things were about to get violent. Guys in military units got into it all the time. But it was obvious there was more than a little dislike brewing between Trevor and Powell. If they came to blows, it was going to get ugly.
Landon stepped between the two men and pushed them apart with a hand on each of their chests.
“Knock this shit off,” he ordered. “We have a lot of gear to unload and prep before we head out, so stop your bitching.”
Trevor and Powell stared at each other for a few more moments before they finally took a step back from each other and moved away. But Angelo noticed that while Trevor headed toward the cargo ramp of the plane to start grabbing gear, Powell stormed off in the opposite direction. No way in hell this wasn’t going to end badly.
“I thought we were all supposed to be on the same side?” Minka’s voice was soft beside Angelo.
He turned to see her standing there with a worried look on her face. He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t worry about them. I’m guessing they’re here for reasons of their own. You just stick close to me, Landon, and Ivy. We’ll make sure you’re okay.”
* * *
“The place where I was held should be right over that mountain ridge,” Minka said with more confidence than she felt as she placed her hands on the rough boulder by her side and strained her eyes to see even farther through the gathering gloom of approaching evening.
Minka hadn’t realized the land where she’d grown up had such a distinctive smell and feel to it until she’d left Tajikistan and come back. But now, the scent of sunbaked rock and dirt and the feel of the mountain breeze on her face reminded her that this place was her homeland.
Angelo stood at her side, silent but supportive as everyone else farther down the hill unloaded the gear from the strange plane that had brought them here. They couldn’t fly any closer to the facility, not without someone hearing the plane. So they’d have to hike the rest of the way in from there.
Angelo had told her the plane was called an Osprey, and she’d been amazed to learn that it could land and take off like a helicopter, or it could fly like a normal plane. That had come in really useful, as they’d been leapfrogging across this particular part of southern Tajikistan for most of the day, landing every few dozen kilometers so she could get out of the tight confines of the plane and look around.
No one could understand why she couldn’t guide them from the air, but she simply couldn’t. The only way she was able to know for sure that they were on the route she’d used to escape the lab was to get out and walk around so she could smell the air and feel the rocks under her boots. When she did that, it almost seemed like she could remember running and walking this way—maybe.
“What if this isn’t the right mountain ridge?” she asked Angelo softly. “What if we shouldn’t be unloading the plane here?” She knew Ivy and the new shifter, Trevor, would still hear her, but they weren’t the ones who’d been complaining.
Angelo gently turned her around to face him. “What are your instincts telling you right now? Do you think we’re going the right way?”
It was such a simple question, but the answer was so complicated.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It was dark when I went through so many of these places, and I don’t remember what everything looked lik
e. I could be leading us completely in the wrong direction.”
Angelo lifted a finger to her temple. “Don’t worry about what you remember up here. I want you to tell me what the other part of you, the hybrid part, is saying. What does it remember in here?” He moved his finger down and placed the tip just above her heart.
Even though she and Tanner had talked about doing this, Minka was terrified at the idea of letting the monster out long enough to learn what it remembered. She’d been working so hard to keep the doors inside her locked tight, desperately hoping the beast would never break its way out again. Now Angelo was asking her to willingly open the door and invite the thing out. This was far more than simply letting out her claws or listening in on a conversation that was too far away for a normal person to hear.
Angelo put his hands on her shoulders and moved closer. As his scent wrapped her in its warm embrace, the fear that threatened to overwhelm her disappeared.
Minka took a deep breath. With her angel here next to her, she could do it.
She closed her eyes and relaxed like Ivy and Tanner had taught her, then focused on Angelo’s hands on her shoulders. They felt so warm, so strong. She let that heat and strength envelop her.
When she was completely calm, she reached into that place inside her where the beast sat caged and waiting, ready to rip and tear into anything and everything around her, and slowly opened the door. Instead of stopping after a few centimeters, like before, she let it swing almost halfway open.
She knew the image of the beast inside a cage existed only in her head. That beast, that rage, was a part of her. The rage hit her fast and hard, like she hadn’t felt since she’d gone a little crazy at the DCO, when Dick had come at her with that needle. Her claws and fangs extended so suddenly it hurt, and she winced. Just when she thought she might have let her control slip too far, she felt Angelo take her small hands in his bigger, more powerful ones. She latched on to the comfort and strength of his touch, using it as an anchor as the beast raged and fought to slip out of her control.
For a time—she wasn’t sure how long—his touch was all she thought about. Inside, the animal wasn’t fighting as hard as it had been.
Minka slowly opened her eyes to find Angelo smiling down at her.
“You’re doing great. Stay nice and relaxed just like that,” he said. “Now, look around and take in where we are. Use your nose, your instincts. Tell me if this place feels familiar.”
She looked around, not realizing until then that letting the beast out had taken longer than she’d realized. It was almost completely dark now. She scanned the slope. The plane was nowhere to be seen. She hadn’t even heard it leave. The team was still there, and everyone was just sitting or lying around, apparently waiting for her to tell them which way to go.
Minka started to turn toward the ridge when something grabbed the animal’s attention and snapped her focus back to the camp below. It took several moments before she—and the beast—could figure out what had distracted her, but then she picked up a strange scent coming from Diaz’s direction. She tilted her head from side to side, sniffing the air.
What she smelled made no sense. At first, she thought she was simply picking up on Trevor’s shifter scent. But he was on the far side of the pile of gear, and the part of the beast that was in control told her the wind shouldn’t be moving the shifter’s scent in Diaz’s direction.
The animal part of her mind mused curiously over why Diaz smelled like Trevor, but then Minka exerted her control and forced the creature inside her to dismiss the distraction. She didn’t have a lot of experience with this, but she supposed that if the two men had been sitting next to each other on the plane, there might be a scent transfer, or perhaps the two of them had gotten close with each other at some point. She knew men sometimes did that. Regardless, it meant nothing to her.
Getting back to the question Angelo had asked her, she turned and swept her gaze across the ridge. Without being told to do it, the beast began to look for details Minka had missed—a fresh tumble of rocks here, a trace of old scent there, a scrub bush broken and crushed.
As if following a line, her eyes traced the path she’d taken down from the ridge many weeks before like it was lit with small torches. They were on the right path. In fact, she’d passed no more than a few rock throws from this very place.
She turned and smiled at Angelo, only then realizing that her fangs were out. She lifted her hand to hide them from him, but he caught her fingers in his, stopping her. Then he grinned.
“This is the place, isn’t it?”
Minka nodded, both amazed and relieved that Angelo never shied away from her hybrid half. She briefly wondered if her eyes were glowing green or red at that moment but then decided it didn’t matter. They glowed, and yet he didn’t look away. That was the important part.
“Yes.” She wasn’t very good at estimating distances, so she related the distance in a term that she did understand. “This is exactly the way I came. The place I was held is only three or four hours’ steady walking from here.”
Angelo’s grin broadened. “I knew you could do it. You ready to change back on your own now, or do you need Ivy’s help?”
She smiled. “No, just yours.”
Chapter 14
Minka crouched behind the rocks at the top of the hill overlooking the hybrid research facility she’d escaped from, less than thrilled at the plan Angelo and Landon had come up with—mostly because the plan involved her staying up there by herself while everyone else was putting themselves in danger down below.
Angelo, Ivy, Derek, Powell, and Moore would enter the big building where she’d been held. That was where they thought the doctors would almost certainly be, so they wanted to put the most people on it. Landon and Diaz would take the building they thought were the guards’ sleeping quarters, while Watson and Trevor would take the much smaller building that looked like an office of some kind. According to what Angelo had told her earlier, Trevor and Watson were supposed to check out any computers they found for evidence. Once they had that, they’d circle back and help Landon and Diaz keep the guards occupied. After Ivy and Angelo’s team captured the doctors, everyone would meet back up on the top of the ridge; then they’d head to the location where the Osprey was supposed to pick them up.
Minka didn’t know enough about military tactics to say whether the plan was a good one, but regardless, she didn’t like the idea of her angel being down there without her. Angelo said she wasn’t trained for this, though. She understood it, but that didn’t mean she liked it.
She pulled her braid to the side and nervously ran her hand down it, watching as the teams slipped down the hillside in the darkness, moving quietly from rock to rock like ghosts. Even knowing they were there, it was hard to see all of them, especially Angelo and the other Special Forces soldiers. She was tempted to try to shift her vision so she could see Angelo better but stopped herself, worried she wouldn’t be able to keep the beast under control.
Instead, she listened in on the radio earpiece Diaz had given her. She didn’t have a microphone to talk into like the rest of them, but at least she’d be able to hear what was happening. Unfortunately, at the moment, nobody was saying a word.
The facility was a lot bigger than she’d remembered. Then again, she hadn’t looked around much when she’d escaped. In addition to the three main buildings, there were nearly a dozen smaller ones, including one that Angelo had told her likely held ammunition and explosives and another that probably held fuel.
Below, the three groups split up and went their separate ways. Minka took deep breaths as a sense of panic she didn’t understand began to build inside her. It felt like every hair on the back of her neck was tingling and standing on end. Worse, her instincts screamed that something was wrong.
But she had no idea what it was or what she could do about it. It had only been a few minutes since Angelo and the others had left her on the hilltop, but she could already see him, Ivy, and the others
darting from shadow to shadow as they ran for the building where she’d been held captive. Just thinking about what the doctors had done to her in there made the beast start growling inside her, and she had to focus on thoughts of Angelo to get the rage back under control.
Even from where she was hiding, it was easy to pick out Angelo from the others. He was simply bigger. Ivy was easy to spot, too. She moved like a cat—quick, quiet, and deadly. Minka was so focused on them that she didn’t realize the attack had started until there was a blinding flash from the guards’ barracks and the office building as the front doors blew in.
Through the smoke and fire, she saw Landon and the others rush into the buildings. A moment later, the shooting started. Minka knew nothing about guns, but even to her inexperienced ears, it sounded like there was more than one kind of weapon being fired in there. The skin on her neck tingled even more.
Then, Minka’s ears picked up a sound worse than any automatic weapon fire—deep, rage-filled, growls. And they were coming from the building Trevor and Watson had gone into. Her heart raced. Oh God, no. From the sounds of it, there were at least five or ten hybrids down there. How could there be so many of them on the same compound with her and she had never known?
She jumped to her feet, not sure what she was going to do, when she caught fast movement out of the corner of her eye. She whipped her head around toward the building Angelo, Ivy, and Derek had entered just in time to see a half-dozen fast-moving figures racing toward it. They were all big, but the one in the lead was head and shoulders taller than the others. He was even bigger than Angelo.
From where she was, she could clearly see the red glow of their eyes. But even if she hadn’t, she would have known what they were. They moved too fast and too aggressively to be anything other than hybrids. And they were heading straight for Angelo and his team.
Cursing at Angelo for not leaving her a way to call him with a warning, she raced down the hill. She didn’t know what she was going to do when she got there, especially since she didn’t have a weapon. But she sure as hell wasn’t staying up on a hill while Angelo was about to be attacked by a group of monsters he didn’t even know were coming.
