Clayne growled.
Danica shook her head. “If you need us, yell really loud. Clayne will hear and we’ll come running.”
A few moments later, the other two DCO agents were gone, leaving Layla and Jayson alone in the forest with the occasional thud of artillery in the distance to keep them company.
“We’re going to have to figure out a quiet way to get over the wall,” Jayson said. “Maybe you can show me how to do one of those shifter jumps of yours so I can see if I have it in me.”
Layla bit back a groan.Crap. She couldn’t put off telling Jayson about Zarina’s antidote any longer. He seriously thought he might have the ability to jump up and grab the top of a fourteen-foot-high wall. She had to tell him the truth. She couldn’t let him go in thinking he had some kind of miraculous abilities he didn’t. She had to tell him, no matter how much it hurt him to hear it.
“Before we go over that wall, there’s something important you need to know,” she said.
He grinned. “I already know you love me—remember?”
She couldn’t help smiling in return, even if her heart was thudding so hard in her chest it was almost painful. “I do love you, but this is something different. Something I should have told you long before now.”
He must have picked up on the urgency in her tone because the smile left his face. “What is it?”
She took a deep breath, wishing she could come up with a better way—a better time—to say it. But there was no better time or place. There was just now, only minutes before Dylan and the others created a distraction and kicked off the mission. She had to trust that Jayson’s love for her was enough to get them through this.
“Jayson, do you remember Zarina giving you a shot before Dick’s doctors injected you with the hybrid serum?”
He looked confused for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. It was a gamma globulin. She said it would boost my immune system.”
Layla shook her head. “It wasn’t a shot to boost your immune system. It was an antidote that Zarina had developed for Tanner in the hope that it could change him back into a regular person. She wasn’t planning to give it to you, but she had no choice. She was terrified you’d end up like all the dead hybrids the DCO has found, so she gave you the antidote hoping to save your life.”
Jayson looked stunned. “What are you saying?”
She knew her eyes were now glowing vivid green, reminding him of exactly what she was—and what he wasn’t.
“I’m saying you’re not a hybrid and you’re not indestructible. You need to know that before we go over that wall.”
Chapter 13
Ivy was sitting in a comfortable chair in Dreya Clark’s living room waiting for the feline shifter to come home when she heard footsteps heading down the hallway. She breathed a sigh of relief as she picked up the other shifter’s scent. After seeing what had happened in Columbia Heights with Thorn’s goons, she wasn’t sure Dreya would come back to her apartment in Foggy Bottom. There had been an equally good chance she’d bolt and find another place to hide. Hell, there was still a chance the shifter would bail when she smelled Ivy and realized there was someone in her apartment. Ivy hoped not. The woman was scared enough already and chasing her wouldn’t help.
Ivy drew her SIG 9mm and rested it on the table beside the chair, keeping her hand on the grip. She hated the idea of having the gun out in plain sight when Dreya walked through the door, but Ivy wasn’t sure how this meeting was going to go down or if the other shifter had a weapon.
Once they’d gotten Dreya’s name, Adam’s people had been able to track her down within a couple hours. Ivy had swung by the thief’s jewelry shop first, but it had been locked up tight. She’d been heading to her apartment next when she got a call from a man with a deep voice who told her that Dreya Clark had a safe house under another name in Columbia Heights and that was where Ivy would find her.
Ivy had gotten there just in time to see Thorn’s men corner Dreya in the alley. Ivy had been about to jump in when a huge guy charged in like a bull and crushed both of them. Even though she couldn’t pick up his scent, the man was too big and fast to be anything other than a shifter. She suspected he was one of Adam’s people but didn’t have a chance to confirm it. She couldn’t let Dreya get away. She only hoped Dreya would let her talk before the inevitable fight-or-flight instinct kicked in.
Dreya opened the door and was ten steps into the living room before catching sight of Ivy. The blond shifter stopped short, eyeing Ivy—and the gun—suspiciously. Her blue eyes darted around the room, as if calculating the odds of reaching cover before Ivy could shoot her.
She must have decided her chances weren’t that good because she didn’t move. Dreya was nervous, no doubt. Two men had just tried to Taser and kidnap her.
“Are you the one who’s been torturing and killing all my friends?” Dreya asked.
“No.” Ivy stood, then slowly picked up her gun and made a show of putting it back in its holster. If Dreya had a weapon, she would have pulled it out already. “That would be Thorn’s personal security, a man named Douglas Frasier. Those two men who cornered you in that alley in Columbia Heights worked for him, too.”
Dreya’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know anyone named Thorn. I think you’ve made a mistake.”
Ivy almost smiled. She didn’t know why, but she liked Dreya. Maybe because she reminded her of Layla—whom, according to Kendra, had found Jayson and would be on her way home soon. Dreya seemed to have that same kind of clever innocence about her that Layla possessed. Too bad she’d gotten herself involved with stuff that put her on Thorn’s bad side.
“I know you have absolutely no reason to believe this, but I’m here to help you,” Ivy said. “You stole something from a very powerful person and if we can’t figure out a way to get him off your trail, you’re going to end up dead like your friends.”
Dreya folded her arms and lifted her chin. “It wasn’t me. I’ve never stolen anything. Like I said, you have the wrong person.”
“Wrong person, huh?” Ivy snorted. “That wasn’t you who broke into Thomas Thorn’s mansion over near Embassy Row a few nights ago? It wasn’t you who came over the back wall and climbed the side of the three-story structure like it was nothing? Or ran along the ridgeline of the roof, somehow walking on those terracotta tiles without breaking any of them, then slipping in through a third-story window?”
