Even though she was nervous about going with them, she figured she could wait for the feds to look the other way, then make a run for it. Well, until the big, mean guy from DHS—Clayne—had smiled, showing off a pair of long fangs at the same time his eyes flashed gold. She’d walked out of the police station on knees so wobbly that she would have fallen if he hadn’t been holding her arm.
He must have thought the display in the interrogation room hadn’t been scary enough, because he stopped her before they got in the car.
“I’m guessing you’re a little freaked out and planning on bolting the first chance you get. I understand that, I really do. Believe it or not, I was in your shoes a while back, so I know how you feel,” he said. “But here’s the thing. When you run, I’m going to chase you. And now that I have your scent, I can track you through a cattle stampede at the Mall of America during a Black Friday sale. So run as fast as you want. I will catch you.”
Something told her the DHS agent hadn’t been lying about the tracking thing. Her life was weird these days.
Dreya was still doing laps around the conference table and thinking about the big man with the fangs when the door opened, and an attractive older man walked in. Tall with salt-and-pepper hair, he wore an expensive suit and wire-rimmed glasses. She would have pegged him for a lawyer, if it weren’t for the fact that the female FBI agent and her DHS husband came in with him.
The older man smiled and extended his hand. “Nice to finally meet you, Dreya. I’m John Loughlin. I apologize for keeping you waiting so long, but I had an emergency to deal with this morning. Would you like some coffee or perhaps breakfast before we start?”
She’d like both, but she wasn’t going to tell this guy that. She regarded his outstretched hand and considered ignoring it. After all, it wasn’t like this was a friendly meeting. The feds had dragged her into this conference rooms hours ago with no phone call and no explanation. She’d rather kick the man in his tenders than shake his hand, but she resisted the urge. There was something going on here that she didn’t understand, and until she did, she needed to play the game.
“I’m fine. Thank you,” she said, returning his smile as she shook his hand.
Rory had taught her a long time ago that a disarming smile could be her best weapon in a tight situation, so she might as well start working this guy now.
“Then let’s get started.”
He gestured toward one of the chairs at the front of the table, close to the projection screen mounted on the wall, then took a seat opposite her as the FBI agent—Danica—dropped a pile of DVDs on the table and loaded one into the small laptop. The big guy with the fangs took a seat in a chair against the far wall, leaning his head back and closing his eyes.
Dreya’s stomach clenched as the DVD loaded. It didn’t take a genius to figure out it was one they’d confiscated from Braden.
“I’m sure you have a lot of questions about why we brought you here,” Loughlin said while they waited for the projector to warm up. “After we talk, you’ll have answers to all of them.”
Dreya frowned. She was in the custody of two organizations within the federal government. She’d assumed this would be all aboutheransweringtheirquestions, not the other way around. She didn’t have long to think about what that meant, because the projector screen lit up, and the video of her climbing out onto the balcony of that apartment on M Street started playing.
“Detective Hayes was very thorough with his surveillance,” Loughlin said. “Most of the DVDs are snippets of you casing the area around the apartment building, and while I appreciated watching how detailed you were in your preparation, this disk is the only one I’m interested in.”
Dreya’s hands shook as the video showed her jumping off the tenth-floor railing and catching the stonework with her claws, then scampering up a wall. She cast a surreptitious look in Loughlin’s direction, then Danica’s and Clayne’s. Clayne’s eyes were still closed, but the other two were watching the DVD calmly, as if seeing a person pulling a Spider-Woman routine up the side of a building was the most normal thing in the world.
She held her breath, waiting for them to say something, to call her a freak. But Loughlin and Danica made no comment, even as she ran across the steel cable to the other apartment complex and made the long jump to the glass arch.
After watching the whole video, all the way to the point where she descended the side of the building on the thin escape cable and bumped into Braden, Loughlin nodded at Danica. The FBI agent turned off the projector and ejected the disk, then handed it to him.
“Ivy told me that you were impressive, but I think she might have been holding back,” he said. “I’m not sure if I have another agent in the DCO who could have done what I just watched you do.”
Dreya had no idea who Ivy was, what the DCO was, or what kind of agents this man had if there was even the slightest chance of them being able to do what she did. Before she could ask any of the dozens of questions that popped into her head, Loughlin made a quick motion, snapping the DVD in his hands in half. Then he carefully broke those two pieces in half again before sliding them across the table to her.
She blinked at the four plastic fragments lying there. “What…?”
“Consider that a gesture of trust and goodwill,” Loughlin said. “Regardless of what else happens during our conversation, the evidence of your special abilities is off the table. The threat of exposing what you are—and what you can do—isn’t something I’ll be holding over your head.”
Dreya picked up a piece of the broken DVD, still trying to wrap her head around what was happening here. “How do I know you didn’t make a copy?”
“You have my word that I didn’t, though I doubt that means very much at this moment. Suffice it to say, exposing you—or any of the special people who work for me—isn’t in my best interest.”
Dreya gave Clayne a sidelong glance. His head was still resting against the wall, but his eyes were open now. He gave her a lazy smile, as if he thought this whole thing was all very amusing. That was when it dawned on her.
“Are you like me?” she asked softly, though she thought she already knew the answer.
Clayne let out a short laugh. “It depends on what you mean. If you’re asking whether I have fangs, claws, and glowing eyes, you already know the answer. But if you’re suggesting that you’ll ever catch my ass climbing the side of a building like you were doing—hell no. In that way, we’re completely different.”
Just like that, Clayne had given her an answer she’d been waiting to hear for her entire adult life. She wasn’t the only freak in the world. This guy was one, too, and he worked for the people who’d taken her out of MPD custody. She found herself smiling at him. Amazingly, he smiled back.
Dreya turned to Loughlin. “Who are you people?”
“We’re part of a special organization called the DCO,” he explained. “We handle difficult or unusual jobs that would typically be outside the capabilities of your traditional three-letter federal agencies like the CIA, FBI, ATF, etc. Officially, we’re part of Homeland Security, but that’s a technicality. Few within Homeland even know we exist.”
