While Layla and Olek were doing that, Dylan and Mikhail were out trying to find more ammunition for the pistols he and Layla carried, as well as the AK-74 assault rifle he still had from the raid on the RSA building. Jayson felt a twinge of guilt about sending them out to hunt up ammo, but Dylan and Mikhail had a better chance of getting the task done than if Jayson attempted it.
He scanned the map, paying special attention to the perimeter walls around the house as he tried to develop a feasible assault plan. Not that he was used to coming up with plans for breaking into a heavily guarded residential estate, taking on anywhere from fifteen to twenty soldiers, and saving a group of kidnapped girls from who knew what kind of fate, all with only two armed DCO operatives and three teenaged boys. He should have been freaking out at the thought of such an impossible task, but he felt more alive than he had in a long time. Most of it had to do with the fact that he and Layla were finally truly together.
Jayson smiled as he watched her work. When she concentrated really hard on something, she had this adorable way of sticking out her tongue. It was all he could do not to walk around the other side of the table and kiss her. Of course, he couldn’t do that because kissing would definitely lead to other things, and they didn’t have time for that right now.
It was hard to believe it had been twelve hours since they’d made love on the floor a few feet away in the other room. For the first time in his life, Jayson actually understood the difference between sex and making love. Because there was no way in hell he would ever describe what had gone on between them this morning as a simple roll in the hay. It had been epic, mind-blowing, and powerful. He supposed that was what sex was like when you were completely head over heels in love with the other person.
They had lain naked together on the floor for nearly an hour afterward, her head on his chest, her hair splayed out, her body warmly wrapped around his. They’d talked about their respective pasts and collective future. Jayson found himself talking about dreams he’d long since given up and some he’d never known he had.
Layla wanted to travel the American Southwest with him, while he wanted to see France with her. She wanted to go snorkeling with him along the Great Barrier Reef, and he wanted to lay on the beach with her in Hawaii. When she talked about wanting to learn how to hang glide, he suddenly felt the urge to learn with her. She made him want to do things he’d never even thought about doing.
They’d even talked about having kids. Layla hadn’t been sure of what he would think about that since he’d been an only child, but he couldn’t imagine anything better than a whole house full of kids with Layla’s big, dark eyes and silky, black hair running around. Hopefully they wouldn’t look too much like him. He wouldn’t wish his mug on any kid.
That was when Layla had brought up subjects that were a lot harder to talk about, like Dick and all the stuff that had happened at the DCO before he’d gotten there. She told him about what had happened to Ivy, Tanner, Kendra, Declan, and Minka, and how Dick and some guy on the Committee named Thomas Thorn had been behind all of it. By the time Layla was done telling him about all the manipulative shit Dick had done, it wasn’t hard to see how the man had been able to sucker him into being a voluntary test subject for the hybrid program. It turned out that Dick was a total asshole and really good at getting people to do what he wanted.
“But as much as we’d both like to put all of the blame on Dick, we’d be lying to ourselves if we did,” Jayson told her. “He was only able to convince me to take the hybrid drug because I was so desperate. Yeah, he saw me coming, but I was the one who took the bait hook, line, and sinker.”
Layla kissed him hard before pulling back to look at him, her eyes flashing green. “None of that matters now. You survived—that’s what’s important. Just remember that Dick will always try to twist every situation to his advantage. He’s going to try to convince you that youowehim for what he’s done for you and that you need to do one more thing for him. If you go down that road, it’s never going to end.”
He caressed her hair. “Dick can say anything he wants. It doesn’t mean I’ll believe him. The only thing that matters is that we’re together and that we’re partners.”
She bit her lip. “And what if Dick—or other people at the DCO—try to get in the way of that? We’re not like Ivy and Landon. We can’t hide our relationship because everyone already knows we’re together. What if they say we can’t be partners?”
Jayson hadn’t even thought about that. “Then we’re both out,” he said. “I don’t know what we’ll do after that, but I can promise you that we’ll do it together.”
Layla smiled. “We stay together,” she said fiercely. “In the DCO or out.”
Then she’d given him a kiss that was well on its way to leading to lots of other distracting activities when Dylan and the others returned. The teens were too excited about the possibility that Victor might know where Anya was being held to notice that he and Layla had barely finished getting dressed before they’d bounded down the stairs.
Jayson stifled a groan as he tried to get the sexy image of a half-naked Layla wiggling into her jeans out of his head. He leaned forward, pretending to look at a detail on Layla’s side of the drawing, hoping the move would hide the bulge in his jeans. While it did that, it also reminded him how tight his left hamstring was. Making love to Layla had been incredible, and having her draped over his chest afterward had been heavenly too, but it had also hurt like a son of a bitch. His back was throbbing, his left leg was numb all the way down to the knee, and his butt felt like one big muscle cramp.
He was finally starting to realize that while the aches and pains were a nuisance, they weren’t anything he couldn’t deal with. That was a serious epiphany in itself, but the bigger one involved the fact that he’d come to the conclusion that Dick’s hybrid serum treatment had been a bust.
When he’d first gotten to Donetsk, he told himself it was the serum that allowed him to run all over the place when the militia soldiers had been chasing him. That his new hybrid abilities had allowed him to make the leap onto the steel pipe and run across it after Powell had tried to kill him. That he never could have swum across that river without the help of a magic cure-all drug.
Hell, for a time, he’d even convinced himself it was the serum that allowed him to be a man worthy of Layla.
Looking back, he realized none of those things had been true. He’d run all over Donetsk because he was being chased by men trying to shoot him and the teens, and he hadn’t been willing to let either of those things happen. He’d made the leap to that pipe out of necessity because not making it would have meant falling to the ground with a loud and painfulsplat. Likewise, he’d swum across the river because the idea of drowning had scared the hell out of him.
And as far as the serum making him good enough for Layla, he knew now that was bullshit. He’d always been good enough for her. He’d just needed to get to a place in his head where he could see and believe that.
If the serum had made any changes to his body, they weren’t monumental. It definitely hadn’t healed all his injuries, and it certainly hadn’t turned him into some kind of lean, mean animal machine. But that was okay. Because he didn’t need a magical hybrid drug to let him do the things he needed to do to feel alive—he just needed Layla.
Jayson turned his attention back to the drawing and was just starting come up with a plan for breaking into Zolnerov’s estate when Dylan and Mikhail jogged down the rubble-filled steps. The two teens reached into the gray sports duffel that Mikhail had been carrying and came out with three boxes of 9x18mm ammo for their pistols, and two boxes of 5.45mm cartridges for his AK-74. Two thirty-round boxes of ammo for an automatic weapon wasn’t much, but then again, if he ended up having to shoot that many rounds, it meant they were in deep shit and were probably screwed anyway. With what he already had, it should be enough.
Mikhail dumped the boxes on the desk to the side of Olek and Layla’s drawing, then pulled out three battered and abused-looking Makarov pistols and placed them on the table too.
“What are those?” Jayson asked as he saw Layla look at the weapons from the corner of her eye.
“Those are Makarov pistols,” Mikhail said.
Jayson arched a brow, wondering if the Russian kid was trying to be a smart-ass or if he were just clueless. “No shit. The question is why do you have them? I sent you out for ammo, not more weapons.”
Dylan was the one who answered. “They pretty much came with the ammo. This might be a big town, but word gets around. People have heard about what we’re trying to do, and when we talked to one of Victor’s friends about needing ammo, he gave us the weapons too.”
“He said he knows one of the missing girls.” Mikhail shrugged. “He just wanted to help.”
Jayson opened his mouth to tell them to ditch the weapons, but Dylan interrupted. “Look, I know you don’t want us getting involved in any shooting, but we may not have a choice. What we’re doing is going to be dangerous, no matter how much you try to protect us.”
