It was Kendra who answered. “You’ve been living with these abilities since you were a teenager, and even with everything you can do, you’re only scratching the surface. With training, you can do so much more.”
“Like what?” she asked, curious despite herself.
“I have a friend who’s a cat shifter like you,” Kendra said. “Ivy’s so dialed in to her abilities that she can practically smell when people are lying to her, open a safe based on which keys on the pad get touched more often, and can even figure out when something bad is about to happen based purely from her kitty senses. Plus, she can kick butt like nobody’s business.”
Kendra made Ivy sound like a freaking superhero. “Can I meet her?”
“Ivy and her partner are on a mission in Maine, but I know she’ll be psyched to see you the second she gets back,” Kendra said. “There are other feline shifters in the DCO besides Ivy, but both of them are out of the country doing training. Lucy Kwan is here, though.”
Dreya sat up straighter. “She’s in this building?”
Last night, she’d been afraid to let herself get too caught up in what John and the DCO had to offer, but she’d learned more about her freaky—no, her shifter—nature in the last thirty minutes than she had in the entire rest of her adult life. She was so geeked, she was practically squirming in her seat.
“No.” Kendra grabbed her computer mouse and clicked on it. “According to the training schedule, she’s supposed to be in the gym doing some aero training. Want to meet her?”
Dreya nodded eagerly.
She had to force herself to walk slowly as she and the others followed Kendra to a gym. The pregnant woman couldn’t move very fast, and Dreya felt like a kid on Christmas who’d been told she had to wait to open her presents until she ate her oatmeal.
“What did you guys talk about?” Braden said as he strolled beside her. He and Clayne had met up with them outside Kendra’s office.
Dreya shrugged. “Nothing much. Mostly about Kendra and when her kid is due. A little about what it’s like to work for the DCO.”
Braden didn’t look like he believed her, but what was she going to say?
“I just found out I’m not a complete freak after all. I’m a feline shifter, which means I share DNA with a primitive feline. So you can relax. The claws and fangs are completely normal.”
Dreya almost laughed. Braden seemed like he was so stubbornly stuck in the real world that discovering something like that would probably send him straight into cow-birthing mode.
Proof of that came the moment they walked into the big gym and saw a petite woman flipping and climbing her way through a two-story collection of horizontal bars and vertical poles that looked like something out of Cirque du Soleil. The woman was moving so fast, even Dreya could barely track her. And the woman was doing it with a blindfold on.
“You’ve got to be effing kidding me,” Braden murmured.
At first, Dreya couldn’t focus her attention on anything but the woman and the hypnotic way she weaved and spun through the obstacles, her long black ponytail bouncing behind her. The only sound in the whole spacious gym was the creak and rattle of the bars, the slap of skin on metal, and the occasional small grunt of effort.
Movement below the bars caught Dreya’s eye, and she looked down to see a big, dark-haired guy precisely following the woman. The man’s gaze was locked on her, his hands poised as if to catch her. He was clearly worried the woman was going to fall and seemed determined to make sure he’d be in position to catch her if she did.
“Is that Lucy’s partner?” Dreya asked Kendra softly.
Kendra’s eyes never left the woman. “No. Lucy doesn’t work with any one team. She’s something of a free agent, meaning she works with whichever team most needs her talents. The guy with her is Jaxson West. He runs security for the DCO. He’s here spotting her for this exercise. They’ve never worked together in the field.”
Dreya wondered what talents Lucy possessed that allowed her to be a free agent. She liked the sound of that.
She watched in fascination as Lucy finished up her work on the obstacle course and took a swan dive off the last horizontal bar, flipping in midair so Jaxson could catch her before she hit the ground. Once in his arms, Lucy pulled off her blindfold, revealing exotic Asian features. She smiled at Jaxson, who chuckled and shook his head as he set her on the floor.
It was only when Lucy stood next to the big man that Dreya realized how small the woman was. Then Dreya noticed something else. Jaxson’s hand was still resting on Lucy’s back, gently moving back and forth.
Dreya glanced at Kendra out of the corner of her eye, wondering if the woman was aware that while Lucy and Jaxson might not be anything other than coworkers at the moment, they would like to be more—if they weren’t already.
Finally noticing them standing there, Lucy and Jaxson came over.
“Dreya is considering joining the DCO,” Kendra told them after she made the introductions. “I was hoping you might have a few minutes to talk privately with her, Lucy. She has a lot of questions that I think only someone like you can answer.”
Jaxson chuckled. “I’m not sure, but I think that was Kendra’s subtle way of saying she wants the rest of us to make ourselves scarce.”
“Yeah, I’m getting used to that,” Braden said, his voice laced with amusement.
Braden wandered over to the far side of the room with everyone else, leaving Dreya alone with Lucy. The other woman regarded her thoughtfully as she removed the fabric wrappings that were weaved around her fingers. They looked a lot like the kind boxers use to protect their hands. Dreya couldn’t help but notice the multitude of small scars across the woman’s knuckles and the back of her hands.
