Jayson couldn’t help but laugh. The kid definitely didn’t beat around the bush, did he? One thing was for sure: he was going to make a hell of a journalist someday—if he lived through this.
“We haven’t really discussed that yet. To be honest with you, last night was the first time we had a chance to really talk about what we mean to each other.”
“But she knows how you feel about her, right? The most important thing is that she knows you love her,” Dylan said. “My dad is divorced, but that’s one of the things he said his relationship with my mom taught him—don’t assume you have tomorrow to say something that would be better said today. Because tomorrow might not get here.”
Okay, that was sort of profound. Like fortune-cookie profound. And true too. Jayson had learned that all too well when his parents had died in the fire four years ago. One of the biggest regrets in his life was never having had a chance to sit down and tell his parents how much he really loved them. They’d been close, but his father had been a soldier, so sharing emotions simply wasn’t something his family had done very well. And now it was too late.
While he and Layla had talked a lot last night, Jayson hadn’t said the one thing that was most important. The one thing he knew Layla really needed to hear—and that he really needed to say. But that was going to change. As soon they had some privacy, he was going to tell her exactly what she meant to him and that he was completely and hopelessly in love with her. As Dylan had said, tomorrow wasn’t a given, especially in the middle of a dangerous mission in war-torn Ukraine.
Jayson was still thinking about how he might get Layla alone for a little while after they got back to the library when she and the two teens walked over to them. Jayson couldn’t tell from the looks on their face whether they had good news or bad.
“Everyone we’ve talked to has said the same thing,” Layla said without preamble. “All political prisoners are being held in the makeshift holding cells that the militia has constructed in the basement of the RSA building. If Anya is still in the city, that’s where she’s probably being held.”
Dylan nodded enthusiastically. “Excellent! So when do we slip in and get her out?”
“You don’t.” Jayson appreciated the teen’s desire to help his girlfriend, and while he had no desire to get into it with Dylan—especially here—he had to make the kid see he had no part to play in this kind of mission. “The RSA building is going to be heavily guarded and getting in there is going to be tricky. You’re not going in. None of you are.”
“But we can help,” Mikhail protested.
“If you want to help, stay outside and provide lookout for us,” Jayson told him.
“We—” Olek started, but Dylan caught his arm.
“Jayson’s right,” he said. “We’d only get in the way if we went in with him and Layla.”
Mikhail and Olek grumbled something under their breaths but fell silent at the pointed look Dylan gave them.
Shit.
“I’m serious, Dylan,” Jayson said firmly. “I know what you’re planning on doing, but slipping into that building after we go in isn’t going to help Anya at all. You might be okay with risking your life, but are you okay with risking hers too?”
The immediate look of guilt on the teen’s face told Jayson he’d been spot-on. Dylan let out a breath and shook his head. “Okay, I’ll stay outside. But you have to promise that you’ll get her out safely.”
“If she’s in there, we’ll get her out,” Jayson said, praying God didn’t make a liar out of him.
Chapter 8
“Maybe you could have picked something a little easier for our first official mission together?” Layla said in a teasing whisper as the two militia soldiers rounded the southeast corner of the big, stone RSA building and disappeared from sight.
Jayson chuckled softly as he poked his head out of the alcove they were hiding in and looked around. “Where’s your sense of adventure? Besides, how hard can it be? We’re just going to take a little stroll through the building and break out a political prisoner. We’ll be on our way to Kiev before the sun comes up. Should be a piece of cake.”
She shook her head. They’d been there since midnight trying to get a sense of the guards’ patrol schedule. If the soldiers stayed to their routine, the street that ran along the east side of the building would be empty for another twelve minutes.
Layla was doing her best to hide it, but she was more than a little worried. She was ecstatic to find Jayson alive and well, and learn that the hybrid serum hadn’t caused any serious damage she could see. Maybe it wasn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but she was also thrilled with how things were going between her and Jayson. It wasn’t like either of them had come out and confessed their undying love and devotion for one another yet, but they’d both finally admitted how much they cared about each other. The fact that both of them had been willing to risk their lives for the other had changed everything.
Romance aside though, this mission had her freaked. Dick had violated every rule in the DCO playbook by sending an inexperienced team like Jayson and Powell out on a mission with little intel, no equipment, no backup, and no plan. It was part of the reason Layla had been so worried about Jayson in the first place.
Yet here she and Jayson were. An inexperienced team on a mission with little to no intel, no equipment, no backup, and no plan. What little they did know about the layout of the four-story RSA building they’d gotten from Mikhail. As far as gear, they were limited to the small amount of stuff they’d had on them—two 9mm pistols, a few clips of ammo each, her lock pick set, and her phone. Their backup was three teenage kids armed with cell phones. And as far as a plan? Well, Jayson had just laid it out in its entirety—slip in, find Anya, get out, then run for pro-Ukrainian territory. They were making up everything else as they went.
She couldn’t even count the number of ways this whole thing could go wrong.
“Smell anything?” Jayson asked softly.
Layla pushed her negative thoughts aside, closed her eyes, and let her sense of smell kick into high gear.
People with normal senses never realized hownoisythe world really was when it came to all the external stimuli that existed around them every day. But shifters knew, and if they didn’t figure out how to deal with that stimuli, it was easy to become overwhelmed with all of the sights, sounds, and smells out there. For people like her, a walk through a quiet park could seem like a commute through Times Square during rush hour. And the actual Times Square? That was more like a walk through hell. A really loud, bright, and smelly hell.
So learning how to dial down the sensitivity of their external senses like vision, hearing, and smell was something every shifter—and hybrid too, she supposed—had to do early on after they went through their change. Unless they enjoyed living with their heads in a sight, sound, and smell kaleidoscope, of course. Layla didn’t. Fortunately, she had a sister to learn from, which had made it a lot easier and faster for her.
