He tilted his head to the side again—Meadows had said that people with schizophrenia sometimes held themselves in strange positions—before he answered. “Didn’t think about it, I guess.”
Brand definitely took note of the head tilt thing but didn’t comment on it. Instead, he nodded and wrote something on a pad.
“Do you ever hear voices, Miles?”
“I hear your voice, Doctor. Does that count?”
Brand looked up at him over the rim of his reading glasses. “No, actually, it doesn’t. I’d like to know if you hear voices when there’s no one else in the room.”
If Trevor really wanted to screw with this guy, he would have asked if TVs and radios counted, but that might be pushing his luck. The whole purpose of this mission was to get himself put into the facility’s general population, or whatever the hell they called the place where most of the people here got to wander around. From there, he needed to get into the isolation ward Ivy and Landon had described and find out what Mahsood was up to and whether there were actually any hybrids around. Saving the shifter Ivy had smelled was pretty high on his list of priorities, too. He couldn’t do any of those things if he pissed off Brand so bad, they tossed him out of the place for being a smart-ass—or if they put him in some kind of solitary confinement. So instead, he went with the pat answer that he and Meadows had talked about.
Trevor shrugged. “Sometimes my penis talks to me, but I’m pretty sure that everyone’s penis talks to them. Does your penis talk to you, Dr. Brand?”
Brand looked up again, clearly intrigued. “No, Miles, it doesn’t. But I’d love to hear what you and your penis talk about.”
* * *
Braden thought the first day of training had been crazy, but now he was convinced the DCO was trying to get Dreya killed.
“Dreya, stop!” he shouted. “Don’t move another step.”
She stopped instantly, her body swaying slightly on the narrow metal beam positioned twenty feet above the gym floor. She turned her head his way slightly, as if trying to pinpoint his location by sound, which she probably was, considering the fact that she was wearing a frigging blindfold at the moment.
Braden was running a little late this morning, because he’d been trying to reach Mick to find out what was going on at the MPD and whether anyone was asking questions about where he was yet. His partner hadn’t answered the phone, so Braden had left a quick message, then hurried over here to the gym in time to hear Michael convince Dreya that she should jump across ten feet of open air and grab onto one of the horizontal bars in front of her. Thank God, she hadn’t been crazy enough to try it.
“Hang tight for a second, Dreya,” Braden called as he jogged across the gym.
The jungle gym she was navigating was similar to the one Lucy had been swinging around on the first morning they were here, but some of the bars and beams had been moved around so it wasn’t the same configuration.
“Something bothering you, Detective?” Clayne asked, sounding pissed at the interruption.
Like Braden gave a shit. “Yeah, something’s bothering me. It’s the fact that you people seemed bound and determined to kill Dreya before she has a chance to decide if she even wants to work here.”
Clayne stiffened, clearly not liking anyone up in his grill, but Braden didn’t back down. He’d held his tongue up to now, because he didn’t want to screw up Dreya’s chances with the DCO, but he was becoming more and more uneasy with all the bizarre crap they’d been asking her to do, from the outlandish obstacle courses to the combat assault shit. Today, they were trying to get her to jump around a circus contraption while wearing a blindfold. What they had Dreya doing wasn’t training; it was insanity. These idiots were going to get her seriously hurt—or worse—and he was putting a stop to it right now.
“We’re not trying to kill her,” Danica said as she smoothly slipped in between him and Clayne and subtly moved them apart. “This exercise should be easy for someone with her abilities. She just has to trust what Michael is telling her.”
Easy?These people were delusional. “Dreya,” he called, turning to look up at her. “Do you trust what Michael is telling you enough to leap off that beam?”
Dreya hesitated, but then shook her head. “No, not really,” she said, then added, “Sorry.”
Braden could tell from Michael’s expression that Dreya hadn’t said anything the man didn’t already know. At Danica’s nod, the guy walked over to the door and left the gym.
When the hell was the DCO going to realize that Dreya was a thief who’d worked alone her whole career? She didn’t have it in her to trust someone enough to throw herself off a beam twenty feet in the air simply because some guy told her to.
“Dreya, would you be able to jump off that beam if Braden were giving you directions?” Danica asked.
Braden snapped his head around to ask Danica what the hell she was messing with, when Dreya’s response floated down to him.
“Yeah. I think that would work better.”
He blinked. “What? Whoa, wait a second. You want me to lead her through this?”
Danica and Clayne both smiled.
Shit.These two had just manipulated the hell out of him, and he hadn’t even seen it coming.
“It’s obvious she’s more relaxed when you’re around,” Danica pointed out. “She seems to trust you, and unless I’m missing something, you seem to have made it your business to watch out for her. So what’s the problem?”
