by Paige Tyler
Besides, there were injured people to worry about.
He and the others checked the four shifters lying on the floor. The three guys were dead from multiple gunshot wounds to the chest, but the woman was still alive.
“Her pulse is weak, but it’s there,” Alina announced.
Ivy was already on her phone, calling for an ambulance.
A commotion from down the hall suddenly caught Trevor’s attention.
“Shit,” he muttered.
Jumping to his feet, Trevor ran down the hall to the room where Cree and Boo had been, Alina at his heels.
He slid to a halt when he saw John kneeling on the floor, his wife in his arms. Cree had been shot, but she was alive…barely. John’s face was as pale as a ghost as he leaned over so she could whisper something in his ear. Morgan stood protectively nearby, looking just as torn up as John.
A moment later, Zarina wedged her way between him and Alina, hurrying to Cree’s side. Trevor only prayed there was something the Russian doctor could do. There was a lot of blood. Boo had nearly lost her father, and now she might lose her mother. For real, this time.
Trevor frowned. Where was Boo anyway?
He and Alina looked around the room, under tables, in closets, anywhere the little girl might be hiding. Trevor tried to pick up her scent, but it was harder than it should have been. It wasn’t that her scent was cloaked like the hidden shifters, but every time Trevor thought he had a lock on her, it would disappear again.
“They took her,” John said.
Trevor turned and saw John staring around in near shock, his shirt and hands covered in his wife’s blood. He was still kneeling on the floor, Cree in his lap, her eyes closed, her body limp. For a moment, Trevor was sure she was dead. Then he heard a heartbeat. It was so faint, he almost missed it. But she was trying to hold on.
“It was Frasier and his men,” John said quietly. “Cree heard them say they used traffic cameras to track Declan, Kendra, and the others from the bed-and-breakfast. They thought they’d ambush everyone but left when they couldn’t find anyone.”
Ivy dropped to her knees beside John. “What about Boo?”
John’s eyes were wet with tears. “When Frasier shot Cree, Boo shifted and attacked Frasier. The fucking bastard knocked her unconscious, then told one of his men to take her. That Thorn’s doctors might want to experiment on her.”
Trevor stared, stunned. They’d all gone through their first change during their mid to late teens. Boo was barely ten. It shouldn’t have been possible for her to shift.
He was still trying to wrap his head around that when Declan came in with the injured girl from the front room so Zarina could monitor both of them. Then they all stood there while Adam tried to convince John that Cree was going to make it—and that they’d get Boo back.
“We’ll worry about Thorn and his hybrids later,” Adam said firmly. “Boo comes first.”
John looked like he was going to say something, but then Minka came in leading the paramedics and their gurneys.
“There are a lot of cops out there,” she whispered to Trevor. “Angelo, Landon, Clayne, and Danica are trying to control the situation, but this is going to get complicated fast.”
Telling Alina he’d be back, Trevor went outside to help. With the wall to the secret command center back in place, the loft appeared to be nothing more than an office that had been shot up by a bunch of crazies.
Outside, he took lead selling that exact story to the cops, telling them men with automatic weapons had shot up the place while he and the other Homeland operatives had been in a nearby office holding a budget session. The fact that neither Trevor nor any of the other operatives had fired a round only supported the story.
A few minutes later, the paramedics rushed out with two gurneys. Cree and the small, hidden shifter had oxygen masks on their faces. John hurried after, followed by Adam and Morgan.
“I have to go with her,” John told Adam. “Cree…might not make it. I need you to get Boo back and stop Thorn.”
Adam opened his mouth to protest, but John cut him off. “If you don’t stop him, there could be millions of deaths. We can’t let that happen.”
Without another word, John climbed into the ambulance with Cree and pulled the door shut behind him. Morgan stared after the disappearing taillights, his face ashen. But then he took a deep breath, regained his composure, and turned to face Adam.
“You stop Thorn,” he said. “I’m with whichever team is going after Boo.”
Adam nodded.
While the cops continued to investigate the scene, Adam pulled Trevor and the others into a back room so they could make plans. Except now, they’d split up and hit both the farm and the DCO complex.
“We didn’t have enough people to hit the hybrids to begin with,” Clayne pointed out. “If we split up, I don’t think we’re going to be able to do it.”
“Then we don’t split up,” Jayson said. The former Special Forces lieutenant gave them a fierce look. “We get Boo back first, and we worry about stopping the hybrids second. Because I sure as hell don’t like the idea of leaving John’s kid in the hands of Thorn’s wacko doctors. Not to mention Frasier.”
While Trevor agreed, it would be like sending up a flare. Any chance of catching the hybrids by surprise would be gone. He opened his mouth to say just that when his damn phone rang. Cursing, he dug it out of his pocket. Evan’s number flashed on the screen.
“The frigging hybrids are here!” Evan said the moment Trevor answered.
“What are you talking about?” Trevor asked, holding the phone a little away from his ear so Alina could hear.
“The hybrids we saw on the video during the briefing. They’re here at the DCO complex. I just saw them heading into the gym.”
“Are you sure?”
Evan cursed. “Of course I’m sure. Fourteen of them are frigging impossible to miss. Thorn, Dick, and those asshole doctors are here, too.”
It was Trevor’s turn to let out an expletive. “What are they doing?”
“I don’t know for sure. I got close enough to see them setting up map boards, projectors, and big terrain planning tables. I tried to see what was on the maps, but Dick intercepted me.”
Sounded like they were doing some last-minute planning. “Are you still at the complex? Is Jaxson there with you?”
“Yeah. Jaxson is keeping an eye on Sage. She started flipping out the moment she smelled the hybrids. I’m watching the gym to see if I can figure out what’s going on. I’ve been trying to reach Jake, but he’s not answering his phone. Do you know where he is?”
Trevor glanced at Alina. She shook her head. Yeah, too complicated to get into over the phone.
“Don’t worry about Jake right now,” he told Evan. “Do me a favor? If you see Frasier show up with a little girl, give me a call ASAP, okay?”
“Um…yeah, okay.”
Trevor hung up. “It looks like our issue resolved itself,” he said to his friends. “We don’t have to split up, because everything is going down at the DCO complex.”
Chapter 17
As Alina moved slowly toward the DCO medical lab on the back side of the complex, she attempted to mimic Trevor, Milan, Adam, and Morgan, hoping to tread as quietly as they did. They were like ghosts compared to her. She didn’t feel so badly about not being able to move as gracefully as Milan. The tall shifter was all legs and looked like she was made for this stealthy stuff. But it turned out that Morgan—who was six five and probably weighed close to three hundred pounds—was a frigging ballerina compared to Alina.
Sometimes, the world was so unfair.
Evan had called while they were on the way to the complex to tell them Frasier and two other men just arrived, an unconscious little girl slung over Frasier’s shoulder. Frasier had headed straight for the medical labs. Alina shuddered at the tho
ught of what they were doing to Boo. If what Trevor said was true, it didn’t bode well for her.
Alina would have liked to bring more people with them, but since the other DCO agents had to deal with the majority of the hybrids as well as Thorn’s men, it had made sense for more of them to go to the gym. She only hoped her team could get in the lab and grab the girl without much of a fight. If it turned into a shoot-out, the numbers weren’t on their side.
So far, their luck was holding.
Just before they reached the double glass doors of the lab, Trevor held up his hand, stopping them.
“We might have a problem,” he whispered. “I just picked up Frasier’s scent heading that way.” He pointed toward the main admin building several hundred yards away. “Thorn and at least one hybrid are with him.”
Getting Thorn and Frasier out of the picture was a good thing, wasn’t it? Unless…
“Wait a minute,” she said. “Are you saying you don’t know if Frasier still had Boo with him?”
Trevor shook his head. “I can’t explain it, but the moment that little girl went through her shift, her scent changed so completely, I can’t recognize it.”
Alina looked at Adam, then Milan, and finally Morgan. “None of you can pick up her scent?”
They shook their heads.
“So do we split up?” Alina asked.
It was obvious that no one liked the idea any better than she did.
“We have to,” Trevor said. “She might be in the lab, or she might be with Frasier and Thorn.”
Milan and Morgan immediately opted to take the lab, while Adam said he’d go after Frasier and Thorn. Unfortunately, that split left her and Trevor in a tough situation. Alina would have preferred to stay with Trevor, but she wasn’t so sure about sending Milan and Morgan into the lab by themselves. She didn’t know the first thing about Milan, but the woman simply didn’t look like a fighter. Morgan might have been a big, strong guy, but would he be able to handle himself in a hostage scenario, or would he be too concerned about Boo to make good decisions?
She could tell from the look on Trevor’s face that he was thinking the exact same thing.
“I’ll go with Adam,” he said, albeit reluctantly. “Alina, you stick with Milan and Morgan. But don’t do anything crazy. If you find Boo, call out over the radio.”
Alina nodded. She had a crazy urge to kiss Trevor before he and Adam left but thought better of it. Probably not the right time and place for that. She settled for catching his eye and reaching out to give his hand a squeeze.
“Be careful,” she whispered, trying to communicate by touch what she couldn’t say out loud.
He nodded. “You, too.”
Turning, he and Adam disappeared into the shadows like they’d never been there, leaving her alone with Milan and Morgan.
“All right,” she said to them. “Let’s go get Boo.”
* * *
“You seriously think these guys are going to give themselves up simply because we ask nicely?” Clayne asked over the radio, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Tanner didn’t want to encourage the wolf shifter, but he had to admit, the guy had a point. The hybrids they were moving in on had been hand-selected by Thorn because they were killers willing to walk into a Ukrainian village and massacre people by the hundreds.
“To be honest, no,” Landon said from beside Tanner as they and Ivy headed toward the entrance on the west side of the gym. “But we have to try, because the alternative is to walk in there and start shooting people in cold blood, and I don’t think anyone here is ready to do that.”
No one said anything.
“Clayne, hang tight outside the front doors with your team,” Landon instructed. “Angelo, you and your team should be able move in through the back without anyone hearing you. If you do, try and take up position near the showers.”
Tanner tried to visualize the building’s floor plan in his head and which doors each of the teams would be using. If Angelo, Minka, Jayson, and Layla could get to the showers without being noticed, they’d only have about fifteen feet of hallway to travel before they’d get to the main part of the gym.
Clayne, Danica, Declan, Braden, and Dreya would have to cover more distance when they came in through the front doors. Since there was almost no chance they could slip in without being seen, the wolf shifter and his team would be fully exposed. Hopefully, the hybrids’ attention would be completely focused to the north and west entrances by then.
“No one moves until I give the word. Clear?” Landon cautioned. “I want eyes on the main gym floor before this goes down.”
“And then?” Clayne asked, still sounding doubtful.
“We move in and hit them from three sides at once. If these hybrids are as rational as Trevor and Alina described, they’ll realize they’re surrounded and give up without this turning into a bloodbath.”
Clayne snorted over the radio. Clearly, he wasn’t betting on the likelihood of that outcome. But he didn’t complain, which was surprising. Clayne usually liked being difficult simply because he was so good at it.
“When you give the word, then,” Clayne said. “Just keep in mind, if Evan’s count is right, there are at least a dozen hybrids who are nearly impossible to kill in there, plus maybe another dozen of Thorn’s hired mercenaries. If things go wrong with your plan, it’ll likely go very bad, very quickly.”
“If we’re lucky, Derek, Diaz, and the other guys will get here soon,” Ivy said. “That should go a long way toward evening the odds.”
“We’re not going to be able to wait,” Jayson pointed out softly. “Last we heard, their helicopter was still twenty minutes out. We have to be in position in the next few minutes in case Trevor and his team run into trouble in the lab. If the shooting starts, and we don’t have these hybrids contained…”
Jayson didn’t bother to finish the sentence, but nobody needed to hear it, including Tanner. Their best hope of dealing with these new hybrids was while they were all in one place, enclosed by four walls, with every exit covered. If they got out of the gym, and he and the others had to hunt them down one by one on the DCO complex or in the woods beyond that, it wouldn’t go well for any of them.
“We don’t wait then,” Landon said. “Move into position now. We go as soon as I get a look inside and give the word—or the moment it looks like Trevor’s team is in trouble.”
* * *
Hearing over the radio that the other teams were moving on the gym, Alina picked up the pace, slipping into the med bay with Milan and Morgan. Alina wanted to be in a position to grab Boo—if the girl was there—in the event the shooting started early.
Trevor hadn’t given an update since heading after Frasier and Thorn a few minutes ago. While that made Alina nervous as hell, she took it as a good sign. Hopefully that meant he and Adam hadn’t run into any serious trouble. Her stomach clenched at the idea of him getting into a shoot-out without her there to back him up.
She also hoped that meant Boo was still in the med lab.
Alina didn’t need a shifter’s nose to pick up the antiseptic smell the moment she stepped inside the lab. The scent of disinfectant, alcohol, and the tangy, metallic odor of blood were hard to miss. She only prayed it wasn’t Boo’s blood.
They hadn’t gone more than a few feet when Alina heard a series of sharp snarls and grunts from a room at the end of the hall. She froze. Beside her, Milan and Morgan did the same. Had one of the hybrids smelled them? Were they all about to come running out of the room with guns blazing?
Alina tensed, ready for the possibility, but the growls immediately subsided. She glanced at the two shifters with her. They nodded and motioned her forward.
She moved as slowly as she could, treading carefully and trying hard not to make any noise. She wished she knew for sure one way or the other how well these new hybrids could hear and s
mell. For all she knew, the hybrids were blissfully unaware there was anyone else in the building with them. Or conversely, they were waiting for them with guns pointed straight at the door of the room they were hiding in.
When she heard another low snarl, Alina decided it sounded more like someone grunting in pain. She didn’t think Boo could make a sound that deep or that loud, but then again, she didn’t know what kind of noise a child shifter made. The fact that Milan and Morgan still looked worried as hell didn’t make her feel any better.
Alina stopped outside the door to the last lab on the right, the two shifters right on her heels. She took a deep breath, then peeked around the jamb to look inside.
There were two of Thorn’s men and two hybrids in the room, along with a doctor. She recognized one of the hybrids as the guy she’d shot three times in the warehouse earlier that day. He was sitting on an exam table while the doctor dug around in his chest for the bullets. That explained what the snarls of pain were all about.
Movement on the other side of the room caught her eye, and she looked that way to see Wade leaning against the far wall. Part of his attention was on the doctor and his hybrid teammate, but mostly, he was focused on Boo.
Alina was relieved to see the little girl alive. She was also furious at the way her captors had treated her. Boo was strapped down to an exam table while two doctors stood over her with eager expressions on their faces, as if they couldn’t wait to cut into her. Boo seemed to realize that, too. Her small claws and fangs were fully extended, and she looked completely terrified as she struggled against her restraints.
Alina pulled back and motioned Milan and Morgan back down the hall. Then she pulled her radio mic close.
“Trevor, we found Boo. There are three hybrids and two of Thorn’s men in the room with her,” she said softly. “But there are also two doctors who look like they can’t wait to start experimenting on her. We need to get her out of there.”
