“Dreya, if I were you, I’d take that thing down to the Potomac right now and chuck it in the river. Then I’d get out of town for a while. And when I came back, I’d never breathe a single word of this to anyone ever again.”
Of all the things Dreya thought Rory might say, that hadn’t been one of them. “You want me to throw a diamond worth millions in the river, then just walk away. You’re kidding, right?”
Rory held her gaze.
She considered arguing with him but changed her mind. He was obviously really worried, which meant she probably should be too.
With a sigh, she flipped her long hair over her shoulder and grabbed her backpack from the floor beside her chair. Reaching inside, she pulled out the weird black box she’d stolen from Thorn’s safe and put it on the desk in front of Rory.
“If you won’t fence the diamond, how about this?”
He picked up the rectangular object and studied it with interest. Then he frowned. “What the hell am I looking at?”
She shrugged. “I was hoping you could tell me. It was in the same safe as the diamond, so I figured it had to be valuable.”
Rory handed it back to her. “I don’t have a clue what it is, so I couldn’t even hazard a guess as to what it might be worth. But if a man like Thorn had it locked up in his safe, it probably isn’t something you want to mess around with. My previous advice still applies—toss it in the river with the diamond and walk away.”
Dreya opened her mouth to tell him she’d think about it when the doorbell chimed, letting them know a customer had come into the shop.
“Duty calls,” Rory said. “I’ll be right back.”
Dreya stared at the diamond and the funny-looking black box that might be worth even more—or could be a piece of junk. Should she take Rory’s advice and toss them? She didn’t care about the black box, but the diamond was too beautiful to throw away. Hell, she’d rather take it and put it back in Thorn’s safe.
She was just wondering how long Rory was going to be when a familiar voice drifted her way from the front of the shop. Oh yeah, she recognized those deep, sexy tones all right. Detective Braden Hayes, Metro PD. Unfortunately, she’d heard it too many times, most of them in an interrogation room down at the police department.
Dreya had never been arrested for any of her crimes because she was too good to ever leave any evidence, but Hayes had brought her in for questioning several times. That cop somehow knew she was a thief. He just couldn’t get anyone else to believe him. That didn’t keep him from trying though.
She stood and walked out of the office, heading down the hall until she could peek into the front of the shop. Rory and Hayes were standing in the center of the room, talking like they were old friends. As the two men chatted about stolen diamonds, Dreya leaned her shoulder against the wall and pondered the general unfairness of the world. Hayes was a handsome guy, with an athletic build, eyes the color of her favorite espresso, a strong jaw, and hair that just made you want to run your fingers through it. Why did he have to be a cop, and one who worked robbery at that?
Then again, maybe she was only attracted to him because he represented something dangerous and thrilling. Something told her that her other half—the one that liked heights and growling—would love to play games with him. She ignored the purr her freaky side let out and dismissed that thought immediately, having no desire to see where it led.
Since it seemed like Hayes wasn’t going to be leaving anytime soon, she decided to go. She definitely didn’t want to be in Rory’s office with Thorn’s crap in the event the detective decided he wanted to see what was back there.
Hurrying into Rory’s office, Dreya scribbled a quick note, then slipped the diamond and the black box into her pack, grabbed her helmet, and headed for the back door. For now at least, she’d keep them. There was always the possibility that Rory would change his mind and help her find a place to unload the stuff. Maybe she just needed to give him a little time to think about it.
Chapter 6
The butterflies that had been fluttering in Layla’s stomach since she’d left DC only got worse as she worked her way west across Ukraine in the back of the military vehicle that Kendra had arranged. By the time she reached the outskirts of Donetsk, they’d turned into angry birds.
She kept telling herself that Jayson was fine, that he wasn’t going to have a bad reaction to the hybrid serum, and that his Special Forces training would keep him safe. But every time she thought she had her fears under control, she had visions of Jayson getting a delayed reaction to the hybrid serum and convulsing in pain, or his back giving out completely, or Powell abandoning him in the middle of a fight. They scared her so much, she found herself shaking in terror, her claws and fangs fully extended.
It hadn’t helped when Kendra called on the satellite phone and told her that both the intelligence communities and the Internet were alive with the news that a good portion of the Donetsk militia forces had gone on high alert over an insurgent attack in the same area where Jayson and Powell had been heading. Kendra didn’t know anything more than that, but she warned Layla to be careful. If the militias were looking for outsiders, it was going to make her task even harder. To make matters worse, Kendra hadn’t heard from Clayne and Danica yet, so she didn’t know if they’d gotten the message to head to Donetsk.
Layla forced herself to take a deep breath. Kendra’s news didn’t mean Jayson was hurt—or worse. Since he and Powell had been there to rescue a diplomat’s kid, it wasn’t surprising that they’d probably gotten into it with the locals. If either of them had been captured or killed though, the chatter on the Internet would have included that.
Her plan to find Jayson went out the window the moment she hopped off the military vehicle and slipped across the border into the DPR region. The whole area was crawling with militia soldiers. Most of them were patrolling the streets, but some were going from house to house, knocking on doors. Layla’s grasp of Russian wasn’t great compared to a native speaker, but she’d learned enough during her training to get by. The soldiers were looking for someone. It wasn’t hard to figure out whom.
As she moved through the nighttime streets, she could hear explosions in the distance followed by the distinct sound of artillery fire. She expected it to send the civilians around her running for cover, but no one paid any attention to it. With all the fighting in Ukraine lately, she supposed they were used to it.
She kept her head down and walked faster to catch up with the group of people ahead of her so she could ask if they knew whom the soldiers were looking for. They were already talking about it among themselves, and fifteen minutes later, she had not only learned what happened to put the militia on alert, but, more importantly, that it had also happened in a Russian Orthodox Church down the street where a priest had been “harboring spies.” While no one said they were Americans, her kitty-cat instincts told her they had to be talking about the diplomat’s kid.
Her instincts were right. Layla was so grateful she almost fell to her knees and gave thanks right on the spot when she picked up Jayson’s scent outside the church. She followed his trail, picking up Powell’s as well as three other people’s along the way. Their combined scents led her on a roundabout path through the outskirts of the city and into an industrial section, then down to an aqueduct near a river. The scents got muddied a bit there because three of the people had ducked into a tunnel that led under the river while Jayson and Powell had gone back toward the warehouses.
Her stomach lurched as she followed the trail up to the roof of the building. She didn’t even want to imagine how bad the situation must have been for Jayson to willingly head up there. Her dread only increased when she found all the spent cartridges scattered around the rooftop.
She balled her hands into fists, ignoring the claws digging into her palms as his scent led her to a shattered chimney in the center of the roof. Jayson and Powell must have tried to take cover behind it—and it must not have worked because she saw blood to one side of it. One sniff told her it was Powell’s. The DCO agent was nowhere in sight though. There were scuff marks on the roof where it looked like someone had dragged him away.
She ignored them and focused on Jayson. His scent led away from the chimney, toward the side of the building closer to the river, but disappeared at the edge of the roof. She frowned and leaned over the edge. There was no way he could have jumped from all the way up here unless…
