by Paige Tyler
“Maybe you should get cleaned up first,” he suggested.
Alina didn’t say anything, and for a moment, Trevor thought she might take him up on his offer, but then she shook her head.
“Not yet. We need to talk and get everything out in the open first. We’ve been hiding the truth from each other long enough. We can worry about cleaning up later. Right now, I just want to know what’s really going on.”
He nodded and motioned her over to the small table in the corner of the kitchen. He would have preferred the couch, but both of them were too dirty for that. They’d make a mess of her nice furniture if they sat there.
“First off, no, I don’t work for Adam. He’s a friend of John’s and had been working with him for years, trying to find something that would put Thorn in prison. When John was murdered, Adam continued to try to find that evidence.”
“Evidence of what?” Alina asked. “I keep hearing all this innuendo implying Thorn was involved in John’s death, but if John and Adam were after him for years, he must have done something else. What’s behind all this?”
Trevor shrugged. “I have no idea where it all started. I’ve heard some rumors that make me think Thorn broke the law around the time the DCO was getting started. I’m not sure what it was, but it was bad enough for John and Adam to commit themselves to putting the man away. I’ve only picked up on that kind of stuff recently, of course. John had kept most of us out of his personal war with Thorn, probably thinking it would keep us safe.”
“What changed?” Alina asked. “Why suddenly pull you into it?”
“Tajikistan happened,” Trevor said. “John called and yanked me out of the mission I was on in Jakarta, telling me to get my ass to southern Tajikistan in time to help Landon, Ivy, and some other DCO agents take down a hybrid research station. It’s a long story, but the short version is that we confirmed Thorn had been behind the hybrid program from the very beginning. He’d been funding the project with money skimmed from the DCO’s budget for years. He’s the one who gave the order to start experimenting on shifters to see what made them tick and to kidnap doctors and scientists like Zarina to further his research, and when his people came up with the first hybrid serum, he was the one who ordered they use it on innocent people. We have no way of knowing how many people died during that testing, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to say it was probably a couple hundred.”
Alina flinched. “Tajikistan? That’s where you rescued Sage, right? Thorn turned her into a hybrid?”
Trevor nodded. “Yeah. Out of all the people injected with various strains of the serum in Atlanta, Washington State, Costa Rica, and all across the globe, we know of only three who lived—Tanner, Sage, and a DCO agent named Minka Pajari.”
“I’m having a hard time believing someone so evil could still exist in the modern world.” She shook her head. “How is it possible no one has ever been able to pin anything on Thorn? I know he’s a former senator and head of a weapons manufacturing company, but still, you’d think the DCO would have been able to make something stick by now.”
Shit. She really had no idea.
“The DCO was started shortly after 9/11 by eight powerful senators and representatives who called themselves the Committee,” he explained. “The existence of the Committee and the identities of the people on it are closely guarded secrets. Those eight people control all the money that flows into the DCO and dictate what missions the organization will pursue. They’re the real power behind the scenes, and with that almost unlimited power, there’s damn near nothing they can’t do.”
On the other side of the table, realization dawned on Alina’s face.
“Thorn might be a former senator and CEO of Chadwick-Thorn, but he’s also the senior member of the Committee,” Trevor continued. “He’s pulled the strings within the organization from the very beginning. That’s why John and Adam were never able to get him on anything. Thorn is rich and powerful and has an entire covert organization full of agents at his beck and call to make sure he’s always ten steps ahead of everyone who comes after him.”
“Thorn is crooked, and he’s in charge of the DCO?” Alina asked in shock. “How the hell did that happen?”
Trevor shrugged. “Thorn is one of those assholes who does what he wants simply because he can. And as far as what he wants, that seems to be hybrids.”
“But what does he want the hybrids for?” She chewed on her lip as she considered that. “What’s he trying to gain? Is this some twisted plan to get more agents for the DCO?”
“That’s the part we haven’t figured out,” Trevor admitted. “He’s been working on creating a perfect man-made shifter all this time, spending millions of dollars and throwing lives away like they’re nothing, and we don’t have a clue why. I’m willing to bet that whatever his endgame might be, we’re getting close to it. Tonight proves it.”
“You mean Wade, don’t you?” she asked softly. “He’s Thorn’s perfect man-made shifter.”
Trevor nodded. “I think so. The other day, when I left you to take care of Sage, it was because I got a tip that Thorn was holding a classified meeting with some people. We were able to slip a listening device into the conference room and heard his scientists announce they’d solved the hybrid problem. They’re in the process of creating a whole squad of the damn things at a location they called the farm. These new hybrids are highly trained, deadly, and completely loyal to Thorn. The ones we saw during the briefing looked exactly like Wade, right down to the mouth full of extra teeth and red eyes. Wade definitely smelled different from any shifter or hybrid I’ve ever sniffed before, too. Like a blend of both. I think that guarantees Wade is one of Thorn’s new pets.”
“And you honestly don’t have a clue what Thorn’s going to do with these new hybrids?”
“No. But if he felt it necessary to get John off the playing field—and go to all the effort he’s expended trying to wipe out almost every shifter the DCO has—it must be big.”
“What can we do to stop him?”
Trevor lifted a brow. “You sure you want to get involved in this, now that you know who—and what—you’ll be facing? You’ve probably figured this out, but Thorn isn’t exactly the kind of man you want to piss off unless you’re ready to go all in. You take a swing at him and miss, and you probably won’t get another chance. John found that out the hard way.”
He’d known from the first day he met Alina that she wasn’t the kind of woman to run from a fight, so he wasn’t surprised when she nodded.
“After seeing Sage and understanding what Thorn did to her—and people like her—I’m ready to take my chances against him,” she said. “If that’s not enough, the asshole has Wade working for him. No way in hell I’m walking away from that.”
His gut reaction was to tell her there was no way in hell he was letting her walk into it. But he couldn’t do that. She was a trained field agent, the same as he was. Even so, the thought of her being in danger like she was tonight made it suddenly hard to breathe.
“Okay,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure you were going into this with your eyes wide open.”
She reached up to push her hair behind her ear. “So what do we do first?”
“Mostly, it’s a waiting game at this point. I have a lot of people working on this, and we’ve given them a lot to work with.”
“What do you mean?”
“Adam and the analyst you saw the other day—Evan—are looking into the Russian ammo angle, Wade’s involvement, and Thorn’s new hybrid squad to see if they can come up with anything to tell us what he’s planning,” Trevor said. “While they’re doing that, Tanner is trying to learn where Thorn’s hybrid farm is located. Plus, we still have Larson going through the DCO employee files to see if he recognizes anyone from the morning of John’s murder. In addition to that, I have an FBI contact named Tony Moretti out in Sacramento doing forensic work on the
remains of the bomb I sent out there. With all those people digging, someone is going to find something soon. We just have to give them a chance.”
Alina gazed at him thoughtfully. “You realize that I’ve just learned more about the DCO and what’s going on around here in the past ten minutes than I have in the past four days, right?”
Trevor winced. “Yeah, sorry about that.”
She shook her head. “Don’t be. Dick hired me to spy on you. And even though my a-hole radar was pinging on high alert every time he said something, I still bought his crap. So if one of us owes the other an apology, it’s me.”
Trevor’s mouth edged up. “There’s enough blame to go around, so let’s just call it even and go from here, okay?”
Alina smiled, and he felt something stir in his chest. Damn, the woman had a strange effect on him.
She leaned forward a little, resting her chin on her hand. “What changed? What made you start trusting me when you were so sure I was on Dick’s side?”
He opened his mouth to answer, then realized he didn’t know.
“I’m not sure,” he finally admitted. “I guess it’s one of those instinctive kind of things. I kept getting the feeling you weren’t the person I thought you were. And after seeing you risk your life to go after Wade, that’s when I knew it was time to trust you.”
Alina gazed at him for a long time, and he felt his heart pound faster. Did she realize he was holding back a good portion of the story, that it wasn’t just the way she’d thrown herself into a fight that had tipped the trust scale in her favor but the fact that he’d started feeling something for her? Or that it was the most powerful thing he’d ever felt and growing stronger by the minute?
“Well, thanks, whatever the reason.” Alina reached across the table to cover his hand with hers. “Knowing that you trust me is more important to me than you can imagine.”
Trevor looked down at her hand. She had beautiful fingers. Long and graceful, like the rest of her. She casually ran them back and forth over his knuckles, then slowly laced them through his. His heart thudded so hard in his chest, he could hear it.
He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Trust is pretty important to me, too.”
Suddenly, his gums and fingers started to tingle like they did whenever he was on the verge of an uncontrolled shift. Shit, that hadn’t happened to him since those early days in high school.
He probably should have pulled his hand away. That would have been the smart thing to do. But at that moment, he wasn’t worried about doing what was smart. He was only interested in doing what his instincts told him was right.
What the hell was it about Alina that had him acting like this? And more importantly, did she know the effect she was having on him?
He lifted his head to see her smiling at him.
“Trust is definitely a two-way street,” she agreed. “I think it’s time I tell you everything.”
Chapter 13
Alina was shocked at how fast everything had changed between her and Trevor. Then again, almost getting blown up could force two people to set aside their differences surprisingly fast. Trevor had taken a huge risk telling her everything. If she’d actually still been a spy for Dick—or Thorn—her partner had given her more than enough to hang him and his friends. Trust like that deserved trust in return.
She hadn’t realized she’d taken his hand in hers, not until the strength and warmth in his strong, sexy fingers seeped through her palm and all the way down to her toes. She marveled that something as simple as two hands touching could have such a profound effect on her, but the contact made her feel warm all over.
“I used to run a CIA direct action team,” she said quietly. “There were five of us—Fred and Rodney, two guys I’d worked with my whole career, and Jodi, a new agent fresh out of Quantico and probably the closest friend I’d ever had in the Agency. Then there was Wade, a piece of crap the big shots at Langley put on my team, not because he was a good agent, but because he’d always talked a good game and knew the right people.”
She hesitated, but Trevor didn’t interrupt. Instead, he sat there and let her collect her thoughts, not seeming to mind that she was still holding his hand.
Once she started, the story flowed, and she told him everything. How her team had been sent to southern Turkey to stop a group of terrorists from getting the chemicals necessary to make sarin gas. How Wade had taken the lead setting up the raid. And how Fred and Rodney had died in the ambush.
Talking about Jodi was harder, simply because it hurt to think about how young the woman had been when she’d been so viciously murdered. But for some reason, Alina found it easier to talk to Trevor about it than she had other people, even Kathy. Maybe because he never pushed her to keep going but instead allowed her to get the story out however she had to.
“You know what sucks nearly as much as losing my three best friends in the world?” she asked. “It’s that less than five months after my team was wiped out, the Syrian town of Ghouta was hit with a sarin rocket attack. Over fourteen hundred men, women, and children died.”
Trevor frowned. “I read about that but never heard who did it. Are you sure it was the same people you’d gone into Turkey to stop?”
She shrugged. “The UN investigated, but nothing formal ever found its way into the reports. Everyone in the CIA knew what happened, though. There were a handful of rockets loaded with military-grade sarin used in the attack, but the majority of the civilian deaths were contributed to lower-grade gas spread with several improvised explosive devices. That was the stuff my team was supposed to keep off the battlefield, and we failed. My team, and all those people, died because I didn’t realize what Wade was up to until it was too late.”
Alina appreciated that Trevor didn’t pull out the standard it’s-not-your-fault-you-shouldn’t-blame-yourself crap. She’d heard that more than enough over the years. She didn’t need it from him, too. But he seemed to sense she needed to talk about it without him trying to introduce logic into it. She was well aware all those deaths lay squarely at Wade’s feet. That didn’t make it hurt any less, though.
“I spent years looking for Wade,” she admitted. “You could say I became obsessed with it. That obsession made it easy for Dick to recruit me into the DCO. All he had to do was promise to help me find Wade again, and I was hooked. It’s kind of sad how easy I made it for him.”
“Don’t beat yourself up over that part,” Trevor said. “Dick might look like a moron, but he’s actually a master when it comes to manipulating people.”
Maybe so, but she was still mad at herself for buying into his crap. On the flip side, it was amazing how good it felt to talk to someone who genuinely seemed to get it. It was like a weight had been taken off her shoulders.
“You want something to drink?” she asked.
After almost getting blown up and talking for two hours straight, he had to be as parched as she was.
“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks.”
Realizing she was still holding on to his hand, she reluctantly released it and got up from the table. Instead of waiting for her there, Trevor followed her over to the fridge and leaned back against the counter beside it.
“Thanks for listening to me vent,” she said as she handed him a bottle of water. “I never realized I had so much baggage until I started unloading all of it on you.”
Trevor grinned. Damn, he had a sexy smile.
“No problem,” he said. “I’m glad you feel comfortable enough to talk to me.”
She returned his smile, wondering exactly why she was able to talk to him so easily. They hadn’t been working together that long, but she felt like she could tell him anything.
“I don’t know why, but I’m more comfortable with you than anyone I’ve ever been around,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this close to a guy.”
That admission came out soundi
ng a lot more serious than she’d intended, and in the silence that followed, she found herself gazing into Trevor’s eyes for what seemed like a really long time.
“Is it just me, or is there something more going on here than just the beginning of a really good working relationship?” he asked softly.
Not trusting herself to speak, Alina could only nod, ridiculously glad she wasn’t the only one having these thoughts. But was she ready to risk her partnership with Trevor simply because he made her feel all tingly when he looked at her?
“I’ve noticed that.” She wet her lips. “And if we’re being truthful, I suppose I should go ahead and admit I’ve been feeling something building between us for a while.”
His eyes glinted gold, another smile spreading across his face. “Since we kissed up in Baltimore?”
Her lips curved. “The kiss, and what came later at my apartment when I helped clean you up. That was…interesting.”
He chuckled. “Interesting is one word for it, though I probably would have gone with arousing.”
She liked the sound of that. “Arousing, huh?”
He nodded. “Especially your scent.”
She had no idea what that meant, and her confusion must have shown clearly on her face, because Trevor laughed again. Setting his bottle of water on the counter, he reached out and gently ran a finger down her arm. That simple touch made her skin tingle like a brush with electricity. Talk about arousing.
“You probably didn’t realize it, but my sense of smell is good enough to pick up any strong scent your body puts off,” he said.
“Strong scent?” she asked, still not sure what he was getting at but thinking she might be in trouble.
He nodded. “Sweat, fear…arousal. I can smell those and more.”
