by Paige Tyler
The vein in his temple pulsed so hard she thought his head might explode. But then he smirked.
“You might have won this round, but you haven’t won the war. The shifter program is headed for serious changes. It’s just a matter of time before the DCO won’t need psychos like Buchanan anymore. Sooner or later, he’s going to end up in jail where he belongs—or put down.”
What the hell did he mean by the shifter program changing? Danica wanted to ask but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Besides, he wouldn’t tell her anyway.
Danica lifted her chin. “Or maybe the DCO will finally realize they don’t need a back-stabbing little prick like you. And you’ll be the one who ends up in jail where you belong.”
Dick’s face turned an unhealthy shade of red, and for a moment Danica thought he was going to lose it right there in front of everyone. But instead, he turned and stormed off without another word. It was almost anticlimactic. She’d been waiting for him to say something like I’ll get you my pretty, and your pesky wolf, too. She had to fight the urge to cheer and shout, Take that, you dickweed.
A strong arm encircled her waist, turning her around. “I wanted to come over the minute I saw you with Dick, but Ivy and Landon told me you had this,” Clayne said. “Everything okay?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Dick just about had a cow when he realized we stole the evidence he had against you. Based on his reaction, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have backup copies, so I think we’re good.”
Clayne sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he surprised her by kissing her. Danica quickly looked around, wondering just how many people had seen their little PDA. But everyone was busy doing something else. Even John was politely looking the other way. It wasn’t as if they had to keep their relationship secret—as if they could—since she wasn’t working for the DCO now, but Clayne didn’t normally like an audience for this kind of stuff.
He brushed back some stray hair that had escaped from her ponytail just as John came over. Her old boss gave her a smile.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said.
Danica returned his grin. “You’re not. I was just about to talk Clayne into letting the medic take a look at him.”
“Ah. Well, good luck with that,” he said. “Clayne told me about the review board. I’ll take care of it.”
She shook her head. “I appreciate the offer, but I can’t let you do that.”
He waved his hand. “It’s the least I can do after what you did to help Clayne catch a pair of serial killers. And for finding your way back into his life. I only wish I could have figured out a way to make it happen sooner.”
She shot Clayne a look. He seemed just as surprised as she was. “You knew,” she said to John. “About us, I mean?”
His mouth curved. “I had my suspicions.”
“You never said anything.”
“Because I think the policy is ridiculous. If a team gets the job done, I don’t care what their relationship is outside of work.” He glanced at Ivy and Landon, and Danica wondered if he knew about them, too. Or just had his suspicions. But he turned back to her and Clayne before she could decide. “You know, I heard there’s an opening in the Bureau’s DC office, if you’re interested. Though I’d like to borrow you every now and then for an odd job, if you don’t mind working with Clayne again?”
She laughed. “I’d love to.” And Clayne looked thrilled. “Dick might have an issue with it, though. It’ll be hard to look the other way now that Clayne and I are living together.”
John’s mouth tightened. “Like I said, you’ll be working for the FBI. It’s none of Dick’s business.”
“Deal,” she said. “Thank you, John. For everything.”
John nodded and told them to take some time off, then gave Ivy and Landon a wave and left.
“I guess that’s John’s way of saying we have some vacation time coming.” Clayne flashed her a grin. “So, what do you think we should do with all that time off, partner?”
Danica liked the word partner almost as much as she liked the word mate. She gestured to his arms. “First, we’re going to the training complex to get those looked at since you refused to let the medic look at them.”
The medic looked like he’d tried to bandage the worst of them, but no doubt Clayne had been his normal fussy self and scared the poor man off. The wounds on his arms had stopped bleeding, but they still looked horrible to her. The DCO had a medical facility out at the training complex—people were always getting themselves hurt out there. Maybe Clayne would accept medical attention if she were there.
She braced herself for resistance—this was Clayne they were talking about. But he surprised her by nodding. “Okay, whatever you say.”
He took her hand and started toward the exit, but she hung back. “Are you okay?”
She wasn’t kidding. This wasn’t like him. And he had hit his head really hard during the fight with the other shifter.
“Yeah, I’m okay. I was just agreeing with you—about getting looked at.”
“But you never listen to me about stuff like that.”
“That was before.” He took her hands in his. “Things are different now.”
She thought she understood, with this whole mate thing and all, but she still had to ask, just to make sure he wasn’t loopy from a concussion.
“Different how?”
“Well, when you’re in love with someone, you have to do things they want you to do, to make them happy—even if you don’t think it’s necessary.”
Now it was her turn to be surprised. “Love?”
His very sexy lips curved into a smile—a casual, confident smile. “Yeah…love. You don’t mind if I use that word, do you?”
She laughed and shook her head. “No, I don’t mind at all. I like it.”
“Good.” He pulled her close, sealing the word with a kiss. “Because I love you like crazy. It might have taken a while for us to get it right, but now that we have, I plan to tell you frequently how much I love you.”
Danica told herself she wouldn’t cry. It just didn’t seem right to cry over something so mushy, considering that she was this tough FBI agent who’d survived being kidnapped by a psychotic werecat serial killer.
But she failed miserably as tears started trickling down her cheeks.
Clayne reached up to gently wipe them away. Considering that his were the hands of a man who could do such an extraordinary amount of violence and harm when he wanted, his touch was incredibly tender.
“Come on. Let’s get me fixed up so I can take you home and show you exactly how much I love you,” he said.
Danica let him lead her toward the stairs, but after a few steps, she tugged him to a stop. “I almost forgot. I love you, too.”
Chapter 14
“Do you have any more ice?” Kendra asked, sticking her head around the corner into the kitchen. “The guys dumped the last of the stuff from the ice bucket into their beer cooler.”
Danica shook her head. She had the feeling that was going to happen. Considering that beer didn’t taste any better cold than it did warm, she didn’t know why they bothered.
“There’s a cooler of fresh ice hidden behind the shower curtain in the guest bathroom. I put it there when Clayne wasn’t looking. There’re more wine coolers in there, too.”
Kendra grinned. “Thanks, Danica. You’re brilliant.”
Danica laughed and checked on the chicken wings in the oven. They had another few minutes, so she leaned back against the counter and caught her breath.
Things had been crazy since she had moved back, and this thank-you party she and Clayne had ended up hosting was just the start. Their lives were probably a little too busy to be trying to pull this kind of party off, but they owed Kendra, Ivy, and Landon big time for getting that evidence Dick had on Clayne. If they hadn’t, she and Clayne might be living in Bora Bora right now under assumed names.
Danica would have invited John if she thought he would h
ave accepted the invitation. She and Clayne owed him just as much for their newfound happiness, not to mention getting her a job at the FBI’s DC office. Tony had told her Carhart just about popped a blood vessel when he’d found out she’d been transferred. She would love to have seen the look on his face. Then again, she’d rather not deal with that idiot.
“Too bad you couldn’t tell him you killed the Hunter twice,” Kendra said when the subject came up after Danica joined the rest of the party out on the deck.
“No, thanks,” Clayne said, answering for her as he reached for another chicken wing. “Let’s just keep that hidden in the DCO files forever.”
Danica nibbled on a chicken wing as she listened to Clayne tell their guests how hard it had been to take down the shifter who’d kidnapped her. He’d told them the story before, but they listened anyway. Well, Ivy and Kendra were listening—Landon was staring off into space.
“Everything okay, Landon?” she asked when Clayne paused to take a breath.
It took a second for her question to get through to the soldier-turned-covert agent. He gave himself a shake. “What?”
Ivy whacked him on the shoulder. “You zoned out.”
He gave them a sheepish look and swigged his beer. “Sorry. Clayne was putting me to sleep. I’ve only heard the story about five times now.”
His wife frowned. “Nice try. You were thinking about that stuff you found in the repository again, weren’t you?”
Clayne reached for his beer. “What stuff?”
“Nothing.” Landon sat back and put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “Just some old records.”
“Bullshit,” Clayne said. “If you’re still thinking about it, it’s more than just some old records. Spill it—what’d you see?”
Landon exchanged looks with Ivy. “Tell them,” she urged. “If you’re right about this, they should know.”
He took another swallow of beer while he thought about it. “I found a bunch of files on Stutmeir.”
Danica vaguely remembered Clayne mentioning the name when he’d told her about Ivy’s capture and the off-the-books-rescue effort he, Landon, and Kendra—along with Landon’s Special Forces buddies—had mounted to get her back.
“So?” Clayne said. “The DCO probably has a whole wing of the repository set aside for the guy and his damn hybrids.”
Landon shook his head. “That’s the problem. The files I read weren’t new. They were at least two years old.”
Kendra’s eyes went wide. “What?”
“Wait a minute.” Clayne frowned. “You’re saying the DCO was previously involved with that psycho and forgot to mention it?”
Ivy nodded. “There’s more.”
“I didn’t have a chance to read it while I was there, so I stole the file. Since then, Ivy and I have been poring over every word,” Landon explained. “The scariest part is a funds transfer document that makes it look like the DCO gave Stutmeir an assload of money. Maybe enough to fund his hybrid research.”
Danica was speechless.
“Well, crap,” Kendra said.
“No kidding,” Clayne agreed. “I know I don’t trust most of the people in charge at the DCO, but I have a hard time believing they’d do something like this. Not even Dick is that screwed up.”
“We don’t know that they did,” Landon said. “All I can say for sure is that we have a document showing the DCO transferred a large sum of money to Stutmeir, but it didn’t say what it was for. We’re guessing on a lot of this.”
“But you have to admit, the timing is damn coincidental,” Danica pointed out. “Clayne told me about the hybrids. It would have taken a lot of cash to get a program like that up and running.”
Landon didn’t say anything.
Ivy tilted her head to look at him. “Tell them the rest.”
The muscle in his jaw ticked.
Okay, that had Danica even more worried.
“The funds transfer document had three approval signatures on it. Dick’s, some member of the Committee we didn’t recognize, and…John’s.”
Danica almost choked on her wine cooler. “John?”
“I can’t believe that,” Kendra said. “John would never be involved in something like that.”
“I don’t like to think so, either,” Landon said. “Look. I’m not saying I know what it means. All I’m saying is that his name and what looks like his signature are on a document giving money to someone named Stutmeir.”
Clayne shook his head. “Damn, Landon. You really know how to throw a wet blanket on a party.”
“Maybe the money was for something else,” Danica suggested.
John had done so much for her and Clayne. She couldn’t believe he was involved in something so underhanded.
“Maybe,” Landon agreed, but he didn’t sound convinced.
Or maybe not. “The other day Dick said something odd to me when he found out he wasn’t going to be able to put Clayne in prison. He said the shifter program is going to change and that the DCO wouldn’t need shifters like Clayne anymore. If the DCO did fund the hybrid research, maybe that’s what he meant.”
Ivy grimaced. “I guess the real question is, what do we do about all this stuff we think we know?”
“There isn’t anything we can do,” Landon said. “We don’t know enough right now. We could break into the repository again and look for more information, but now that Dick knows we broke in, they’re going to put in a whole new security system that we don’t know anything about. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if Dick goes in and gets rid of anything he thinks might be incriminating. I think we’re just going to have to watch our backs and make sure we know who we can trust.”
“I know who I trust.” Clayne laced his fingers with Danica’s, his thumb brushing the diamond engagement ring he’d given her the same day he rescued her from a demented serial killer. “Danica and the three of you.”
Danica sighed. Five people in an organization as big as the DCO wasn’t much, but for now, it would have to be enough.
Ivy, Landon, and Kendra stayed a little while longer, but after that bombshell, no one seemed to be in the mood to hang around and party. Clayne had a pensive look on his face as they cleaned up.
Danica set the chip and dip bowl on the counter and took his hands in hers. “Hey. I know you’re worried about that stuff Landon told us, but we’re finally back together, and that’s the important thing. If the DCO is making hybrids, we’ll deal with it. Right now, we have more important stuff to focus on—like planning our wedding.”
Clayne grinned. “I was thinking about that. If we leave now, we could be in Vegas by morning. We could get married in the Elvis chapel as the sun comes up.”
She laughed and went up on tiptoe to kiss him. “That’s not bad as a backup plan, but I have something else in mind.”
“Like what?”
“Like a big church wedding.”
He made a face. Danica laughed. She might have to talk him into it, but he was going to look so damn sexy in a tux. Just like he had on that mission in Mexico all those years ago when she’d first realized she was falling in love with him.
Epilogue
Somewhere South of Khorugh, Tajikistan
Minka refused to scream anymore.
She sat on the floor with her back against the wall of a small, cold, concrete room while three men threw sharp stones at her. The doctors who had made her into the animal she was stood behind them, writing down their observations in little notebooks and recording her reactions with their cameras.
“Hit her harder,” one of the doctors said in his strange accent. “We need to see her instinctive reactions. Force her to respond.”
She covered her face and head with her arms, turning into the wall to protect herself. But the stones found vulnerable spots anyway, drawing blood, causing pain. She bit her lip and tried to make herself a smaller target. She would not scream anymore, no matter how hard they hit her. Because when she did, the men would laugh. And when the
y did that, something in her would snap and she wouldn’t be able to stop the thing inside her from coming out.
Minka knew because she had tried with all her heart and soul to keep the beast contained. But it was hard. Most of time, it was impossible. When she was scared, in pain or angry, it simply came out.
The doctors knew this and used it against her. To test her, they said.
So, as hard as she tried, this time proved to be no different.
A large stone clipped the back of her head, smashing a finger at the same time. The pain was so intense she screamed. As it morphed into a hissing snarl, she whipped around, catching the next incoming rock in mid-flight and flinging it back at the man who had thrown it.
The stone struck him between the eyes, knocking him to the floor. She leaped across the room before he’d even hit the floor, intending to slash and tear with her long, sharp claws, but the chain around her ankle snapped taut and she crashed to the floor like she had every other time before.
The pain in her leg paled in comparison to the pain of failure.
She looked up and growled her hatred at the four remaining men. The man she had struck with the stone would not be getting up—ever. His two friends looked at her with undisguised hatred on their faces, but the doctors were smiling and praising her instincts, her reaction time, and her aggression.
Minka lowered her gaze to the dead man on the floor and wished it was her lying there instead. She didn’t want to kill anyone, not even these men who hurt her. But she had no choice. The animal inside her wanted to kill all the time.
“Why did you do this to me?” she demanded, the sound of her own voice still strange to her when she was like this.
One of the doctors—the older one who seemed to be in charge—stepped closer. He stayed behind the two men who had been throwing stones, careful to stay well out of her reach.
“We told you before,” he said. “We did this to make you better.”
Better? How was this better? “But I did not want to be like this!”
The other doctor came closer. He was younger, braver, and more foolhardy. Minka did not like the way he looked at her.
