by Paige Tyler
Landon held out his hand, but instead of taking it, Buchanan brushed past him and walked into the living room. Landon snorted. Ignoring Buchanan, he turned to tell Ivy he’d see her later, but the words died in his throat when he saw how stiff she was. She looked as tense as when she’d seen him earlier in the day.
“Do you want me to stay?” he asked her, leaning close and lowering his voice so Buchanan wouldn’t hear.
She shook her head. “I’m fine.”
Landon glanced at Buchanan. He was standing in the middle of the living room, his arms folded across his chest, a pissed-off expression on his face.
“You sure?” he asked Ivy.
“I’m sure. Go.”
Landon wasn’t crazy about leaving her alone with the guy, but he didn’t see a way around it without making a big deal out of the whole thing. He gave her a nod, looked at Buchanan—who was still glowering—then walked out. To say Ivy had shitty taste in friends was an understatement.
***
“Do you want something to drink?”
Clayne shook his head. He was wearing his dark hair longer. It brushed his shoulders. “I’m good. Why’d Donovan think you wanted him to stay?”
She should have known Clayne’s exceptional hearing would pick that up. “Because you look like you want to rip my head off.”
He scowled, the muscles in his square jaw flexing. “You know I’d never hurt you.”
“I know that. But Landon doesn’t.”
Clayne was silent for a moment. “How do you like him? As a partner, I mean.”
As opposed to what? Boyfriend? She flopped down on the couch, tucking her legs under her. “He seems capable.”
Clayne grunted. “I don’t like him.”
“You don’t even know him.”
“I know he’s a norm. That’s good enough for me.”
“You know, when you say things like that, you sound just as narrow-minded as the norms who hate us because we’re different than they are.”
He growled low in his throat. “I’m not anything like them.”
“Right,” she scoffed.
He clenched his jaw. “Dammit, I didn’t come here to argue.”
“Then what did you come here for?”
Clayne didn’t answer right away. “To ask if you wanted to grab dinner with me.”
“I already ate.”
His lip curled. “With Donovan?”
“Yes, with Landon.” She shook her head. “God, Clayne, you make it sound like we went out for an intimate dinner at a romantic restaurant. We ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”
He scowled. “I just don’t like the idea of you spending time with him.”
Now he was jealous, too. “He’s my partner, Clayne. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together, especially while we’re getting certified.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to hang out with him in your off-time,” Clayne argued. “Why do you want to spend time with him, anyway? He’s a human. You know as well as I do how fast their kind can turn on our kind.”
She knew, only too well. But she didn’t despise everyone who wasn’t a shifter because of it. Clayne clearly didn’t feel that way. But then his emotional scars went deeper than hers. If she so much as mentioned his ex-partner’s name, it would only piss him off even more.
“I’m human, too, Clayne,” she said softly. “And whether you want to admit it or not, so are you.”
He let out a snort. “Don’t remind me.”
She was too exhausted for this. “I’m not going to sit here and fight with you. I’m tired and all I want to do right now is go to bed. I’ve got to be up early for training.”
Hurt flashed in his eyes. He shoved his hands through his hair and blew out a breath. “This wasn’t the way I wanted this to go. I just thought we could have dinner together. Hang out like we used to, you know?”
Ivy wished they could do that, too. She missed hanging out with Clayne. But going out for something as simple as dinner was hard when one of them wanted to be more than friends and the other didn’t.
She uncurled herself from the couch. “I’ve got an early day tomorrow.”
His mouth tightened. “Which is your way of saying you’re not interested. I get it.” When she didn’t say anything, he stalked across the small apartment to the door. He yanked it open, then turned to face her. “I just want to know. Would you be willing to go out with me if I wasn’t a shifter? Say I was—I don’t know—a norm like Donovan?”
She felt her face color as she remembered the not-so-innocent fantasy she’d had in the shower. “Landon and I are partners, that’s all.”
“Yeah?” Clayne snorted. “Well, you two seem damn chummy for partners.”
Chummy? Who the heck said that? Not that it mattered because she and Landon weren’t chummy. They weren’t anything but partners. Ivy opened her mouth to tell Clayne that—again—but he was already gone.
Chapter 5
Ivy shifted in her seat, trying to get comfortable as the helicopter careened through the night sky. She might be part cat, but she felt more like a donkey with all the gear she was carrying. She wasn’t looking forward to hoofing it through the jungles of Venezuela with all this weight. Hopefully, the copter would drop them close to their target.
She’d been surprised when Kendra had called early that morning and told her and Landon to report to the DC office immediately for a mission briefing. Just minutes before, Ivy’d been filling Landon in on the weeks and weeks of grueling training they had ahead of them before they were certified for field duty. Lock picking, safecracking, electronic surveillance and wiretap procedures, computer hacking, security systems bypass, diving, weapons and demo training, close quarter combat, hand-to-hand combat. The list was long and exhausting.
Yet here they were sitting on a Black Hawk helicopter flying over Colombian territory about to embark on what was essentially a final certification exercise in Venezuela. This was unheard of. John had told them that due to her experience and Landon’s demonstrated military expertise, senior management decided they were more than ready to handle this challenge. She hadn’t bought it and, from the look on their faces, John and Kendra hadn’t either. That meant only one thing—Dick Coleman, the DCO’s resident rat, was up to something.
Dick was the DCO’s deputy director under John. At least that’s how it showed up on the organizational flowcharts. But everyone knew his real job was to be a mole for the Committee. As far as she and every other operative knew, the Committee was a subpanel of the House and Senate Intelligence Oversight Committees. Like everything in Washington, it was full of politicians with their own agendas, and Dick made sure they got what they wanted. Ivy didn’t know why John put up with his crap.
Right now, she didn’t have time to worry about the man or his machinations. She was more concerned about being out in the field with Landon so soon. If things went wrong on the op and she got compromised, would he try to help her or just carry out orders and kill her? Heading out on a mission with that big unknown hanging over your head wasn’t a comforting thought.
Their mission was simple enough—retrieve evidence linking several high-ranking officials in the Venezuelan government to the Colombian drug trade. The DCO wasn’t exactly sure what form the evidence would take—though they suspected it was most likely on a laptop. But they knew for certain that said laptop was in the home of Julien Calballero, a man famous in the drug trade. He had a well-established system in place for moving drugs from Colombia through Venezuela to the Caribbean and to the United States. He’d accumulated a lot of money and power over the years, and killed a lot of people to keep it. And he had a small army of men guarding his compound.
Ivy’s stomach lurched as the helicopter suddenly tipped and she had the pleasure of watching trees pass by below her. This was one of those rare times she really did
n’t appreciate her perfect night vision. She gripped the side of the open door more tightly. She could barely stay on the flimsy nylon seat with the way the pilot was flying, even with her seat belt on. Either the Colombian pilot was trying to show off for the hot American chica—his words, not hers—by cavalierly flying a hairsbreadth above the top of the tree canopy, or he was trying to make her puke.
Then she saw the tracer rounds zipping past the Black Hawk, and the crazy flying technique suddenly made a lot more sense. Landon had told her this part of Colombia was completely overrun with FARC fighters. Apparently, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia enjoyed shooting at helicopters in the middle of the night. Even if they didn’t know who was on them.
Landon’s head was lolling from side to side as he slept through the combined roller-coaster ride and fireworks display. He’d come in late last night and looked like shit during the mission briefing. If she had to guess, she’d say he’d been out with a woman all night, though she never smelled anything on him.
She cringed as a bullet hit the Black Hawk.
The shooting only got worse, or maybe just more accurate. The pilot went into overdrive, zigging and zagging to keep the chopper from getting hit again.
Beside her, Landon was awake now. Or maybe he’d never been asleep. He tightened a few straps that had come loose on his backpack.
“We might be getting off early,” he shouted over the deafening noise in the cabin.
The original plan was to get as close to the Venezuelan border as they could, but that didn’t look like it was going to be happening now. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the pilot yelled something in Spanish over his headset to the crew chief, who gestured alternately at the jungle below and the fast-rope bag sitting on the floor near him.
Landon leaned close. “You good?”
She nodded. Unbuckling her seat belt, she scooted closer toward the open door and fast-rope line.
The Black Hawk stopped jerking and dropped to hover a few feet above the top of the trees. The crew chief tossed the fast-rope bag out and she watched it disappear into the jungle, laying out their descending line as it went.
Fast roping out of a helicopter wasn’t so bad—definitely not as bad as jumping out of a plane. All she had to do was slide down the line and let go once she reached the ground. But in this jungle? The idea of getting dragged through the trees while she was halfway down because the helicopter started taking fire didn’t thrill her. Worse, she’d have no way of knowing if the line was all the way down to the ground. It could be too short or it could get hung up in the tree branches on the way down.
She reached for the line, but Landon caught it first. “We don’t know what’s waiting for us down there. Let me go first.”
Ivy opened her mouth to tell him she didn’t need protecting, but he was already gone, sliding down the fast-rope line into the trees below. That pissed her off. Typical military grunt—didn’t think a woman could handle herself.
Tracers zipped past the Black Hawk from a nearby ridgeline, and the helicopter bucked as the pilot tried to avoid them. Ivy tightened her hold on the doorframe. If Landon were still on the line, he could get seriously hurt thanks to this jerk.
Ivy shot the pilot a venomous look. “Hold it steady!”
She had no idea if the man could understand English, but the Black Hawk steadied. The crew chief smacked her on the shoulder, yelling something in Spanish. Taking that as her cue to get off, she grabbed the thick rope in her gloved hands, then clenched her booted feet around it and slid down the line.
Bullets whistled over her head as she dropped, and she swore under her breath, instinctively ducking. She hoped the rope went all the way down to the ground and wasn’t wrapped around a tree branch. Unfortunately, she couldn’t see anything in the branches, even with her shifter night vision.
The rope suddenly swung wildly through the air, flinging her sideways through the trees. The pilot was freaking out. Any second now, he’d pull up—dragging her back up through the trees—or just say the hell with it and release the entire fast-rope assembly.
She wasn’t going to wait for either.
Taking a deep breath, she let go of the rope and immediately felt dizzy from falling.
She caught sight of the ground a split second before she hit. Not tensing was hard, but she forced herself to roll through her points of contact—calves, thighs, butt, back—just like she would if she was doing a parachute drop. The big backpack she’d complained about earlier sucked up a lot of the impact, making her fall a lot less painful than it might have been.
Landon was at her side before she came to a stop. “You okay?”
She did a quick self-check. Everything felt like it was in working order. “I’m good.”
She ignored the hand he offered and got to her feet. The muscle in his jaw flexed, but he said nothing. Instead he focused his attention on the helicopter above them.
“Damn jackasses,” he muttered. The helicopter disappeared in the distance, but the sounds of gunfire remained. “We better get out of here. They’re going to come looking for whoever the helicopter was dropping, and we don’t want to be here when they do.”
He had that right. She could already hear the faint sound of soldiers moving through the brush. They were still at least a mile away, but they were getting closer.
“Avoiding these assholes might be good for our health. Are your kitty cat talents any help in this situation?”
Ivy blinked. Her first partner hadn’t been as guilty of it as Dave, but even Jeff hadn’t liked to rely on her shifter abilities, especially in a potentially dangerous situation. And they definitely hadn’t called her shifter skills by such an endearing name.
“I can pick up scents if I’m downwind of people, and I can hear them moving from a pretty good distance no matter where they are. Sometimes I get a…”
He frowned in the darkness. “You get what?”
She chewed on her lower lip, not sure if she wanted to mention this part. It was sort of supernatural. The bullets whizzing through the trees decided it for her. “Sometimes I get a…hunch, I suppose you’d say. I just know when things are going to go bad.”
Landon regarded her in silence, as if debating whether he wanted to put his faith in something as flimsy as a hunch.
“Okay,” he said as he strapped on his NVGs. “Sounds like you’re on point then. Get us out of here without a firefight and I pay for the first beer when we get back.”
Landon was actually going to let her take the lead. That was an absolute first for her. Not waiting for him to change his mind, she took off into the jungle, heading due east.
Landon followed twenty feet behind as she navigated the dense jungle. It would have been hard enough moving quickly through the thick foliage during the day. At night—with a heavy pack—it was even more difficult. But Ivy ignored the weight and concentrated on hiking as fast as she could. She glanced over her shoulder frequently, checking to make sure Landon was keeping up. He never wavered from his position behind her.
An hour later, Landon let out a soft whistle. Ivy immediately stopped and turned around.
“You hear anyone behind us?” he asked when he caught up.
“Not in the last thirty minutes.”
He handed his canteen to her, then got out the map and GPS so he could figure out where they were. He swore under his breath.
“How bad?”
“Bad.” He put his finger on the map. “We’re here, more than thirty miles from the Venezuelan border. In this thick crap, it’s going to take probably more than twenty hours to get to the border, then another two or three hours to get to the compound. That puts us at the target early in the morning day after tomorrow. Too late to hit Calballero’s place, so we’ll lose more time waiting for dark so we can go in.”
Ivy groaned. They’d be worn out before they even got t
o their target. Worse, they’d miss their rendezvous with the tourist group that was supposed to be their cover for getting out of the country. If she and Landon didn’t make that pickup, they were going to have to hike through the jungle all the way back to Bogotá.
Landon folded the map and put it away. “If we want to stick to the plan and get to Calballero’s place by midnight tomorrow, we’re going to have to lighten our load and haul ass.”
Landon pulled out extra gear and put it in a pile. Ivy didn’t complain about the extra energy rations he unloaded. They tasted like crap and wouldn’t be needed if they didn’t have to hike back to Bogotá. They could find something in the jungle to eat. The sleeping net was another matter.
“We’re going to get eaten alive by mosquitoes while we sleep if we don’t have that,” she said.
“I doubt we’re going to sleep much, plus I know of some local plants we can smear on us to repel the bugs.” He looked at her questioningly.
At least he’d asked. “Toss it,” she said with a sigh.
The blocks of plastic explosives were a little more difficult for Landon to part with. Ivy almost laughed at the forlorn look on his face as he set most of them aside. He’d wanted to have plenty in case they had to take down the wall around the compound. They’d just have to make do with less.
She had to sacrifice most of the concussion grenades, leaving all but two behind. The plan was for her to go into the house on her own while Landon provided cover with his silenced sniper rifle. If anything went wrong, she could have tossed half a dozen of those high-blast babies in her wake and dived out a window in the confusion. Guess they’d have to make sure nothing went wrong.
Landon wrapped the abandoned gear in the sleeping net and buried it, then locked in the location on the GPS.
“If everything goes to hell in a handbag and we have to come back this way, we can stop and grab it,” he told her.
Good thinking. But she really hoped they didn’t have to do that.
***
Landon hadn’t spent much time agonizing over dropping their excess gear. It had been necessary. By midmorning of the next day, he knew they’d made the right decision. It was only 0900 and it already felt like a sauna under the stifling canopy of trees. By midafternoon, it’d be like they were in a convection oven.
