Clayne snorted. “Understatement.”
Considering how the DCO treated shifters, Angelo wasn’t surprised Ivy didn’t want her sister involved with them. Angelo had two sisters he was extremely protective of, so he knew where Ivy was coming from. He didn’t say anything as he followed Landon and Clayne down the hall, though.
Halfway down, Landon stopped at one of the offices and knocked on the already open door, then walked in.
The director of the DCO wasn’t at all how Angelo’d pictured him. He expected a slick, politician type, but instead the man fit the bill of a battalion or group commander. He might dress like the head of a Fortune 500 company, but he looked like he could definitely handle himself in a fight if he had to.
The man’s gaze lingered curiously on Angelo briefly before settling on Landon. “What’s the problem? Ivy said there was something important you wanted to see me about that couldn’t wait until Monday.”
“It can’t,” Landon agreed, then glanced at Angelo. “John, this is a good friend of mine, Sergeant First Class Angelo Rios from my old A-Team. Angelo, my boss, John Loughlin.”
John held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Sergeant. Would it be too presumptuous to hope you’re here because Landon recruited you to join our ranks?”
Angelo smiled. “I’m happy where I am, sir, but thank you.”
“I thought you might say that.”
John regarded Landon with a calculating look in his eyes, and Angelo suddenly had the feeling that the director wasn’t a man you screwed with. He had enough clout to grab Landon out of Special Forces in the middle of a deployment. He hoped Landon knew what the hell he was doing.
John gestured to the small conference table. “Have a seat.”
If the director of the DCO was behind the ambush in Costa Rica, he was a damn good actor because he looked genuinely stunned—not to mention concerned—when Landon outlined the situation.
“Why am I hearing this from you and not from Tate?” John asked when Landon finished.
“Because Tate thinks you sold them out and walked them right into that hybrid ambush,” Clayne said.
Shit.Subtle wasn’t in Clayne’s vocabulary. Now John would get pissed off, then Clayne would go into beast mode, and they’d never get anywhere. But instead John regarded them calmly.
“And what do you think?” John asked, looking at Landon.
“I don’t think anything. I just know the facts,” Landon said. “You sent a DCO team on an exercise. They were ambushed. Tate, Brent, and Gavin barely escaped with their lives, and Kendra and Declan are missing, maybe even dead. And a pack of hybrids are at the center of it.”
A muscle in John’s jaw flexed. “This exercise has been on the schedule every year for the past decade. Other than choosing the team the DCO sends, I don’t have any involvement.”
Clayne’s eyes flashed gold. “You expect us to believe that Tate’s team just stumbled into those hybrids by chance?”
Angelo frowned. Okay, what hadn’t Landon told him? Because there was way more going on here than his friend had let on. Landon and Clayne wouldn’t be leaning on their boss this hard if they didn’t already have a reason to distrust him.
“I don’t believe in coincidences any more than you do, Clayne,” John said. “Someone obviously set this whole thing up, but I can assure you it wasn’t me.”
Landon and Clayne exchanged looks, though Angelo’d be damned if he could tell whether either of them believed their boss.
John swore under his breath. “I can see that nothing I say is going to sway you one way or the other. What’s important right now is getting Declan and Kendra out of that jungle in one piece. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Landon said.
“Then let’s table the discussion of whether you trust me or not for another time, and get down to business. What do you need from me to get a search-and-rescue mission going?”
“Weapons and equipment for an eight-person team, not counting Tate, Gavin, and Brent, as well as immediate transport and entry into Costa Rica,” Landon said without hesitation. “According to Tate, politics down there are dicey, so I’m going to need you to make sure no one tries to stop us.”
John’s gaze went from Landon to Clayne to Angelo, then back again. “Eight?”
Landon didn’t flinch. “If you expect us to trust you, you need to trust us.”
John regarded Landon in silence for a long time before the corner of his mouth edged up. “I knew bringing you into the DCO was going to change everything.”
Angelo’s mouth twitched. He and Landon had a lot of conversations over the years while sitting out in the middle of nowhere wondering if they were going to die. But one topic that kept coming up over and over was Landon’s self-doubt about whether the men he led would follow him into danger. Landon might be like a brother to him, but sometimes he was freaking stupid. Men would follow him anywhere, anytime, into any kind of danger. Because he was a leader, born and bred.
