But within ten minutes of tearing off after the hybrid, she and Landon both realized the task wasn’t going to be as easy as they thought.
For one thing, a handful of orderlies had showed up carrying handguns, making a buttload of noise and poking under the brush like they were looking for a lost puppy. They might be big, but they seemed better suited to intimidating helpless patients in a mental facility than chasing rogue hybrids. There was a good chance that one of them would end up shooting a coworker long before they actually found the hybrid.
The armed orderlies weren’t nearly as difficult to deal with as the hybrid was, though. The creature who’d escaped from Stillwater didn’t behave like any other hybrid she and Landon had run into in the past. If this had been one of the creatures they’d dealt with in Washington State, Costa Rica, or Tajikistan, he would have already turned around and attacked someone by now. But this particular hybrid seemed to have no interest in going after any of the people who were tracking him.
On the flip side, he didn’t seem interested in leaving the area either. Instead, he kept moving in large circles around the Stillwater facility, avoiding the orderlies—and them—with relative ease. Ivy even got the feeling that the thing knew what she and Landon were going to do long before they did.
“This hybrid is smarter and way more in control than any we’ve dealt with before,” Ivy whispered to Landon as they crouched behind some bushes to wait for the disoriented orderly to wander off. “The kid’s running us around in circles like it’s a game to him.”
“Tell me about it. Why hasn’t he escaped already?” Landon wondered. “He could have been miles from here if he’d run in a straight line. It’s like he’s afraid to get too far from the psychiatric center.”
“Maybe it’s something we can ask, when we finally catch up to him.”
When the orderly finally made his way down the trail, they took off through the woods again, Ivy focusing on tracking the hybrid’s scent while Landon worried about the hospital orderlies. She was so intent on her part of the mission that she almost completely missed it when a half dozen new scents hit her nose.
Ivy reached out and stopped Landon with a gesture. He immediately halted.
She stared into the clearing about sixty feet away from where they were, looking for movement. A few moments later, a group of men entered the area. They were all heavily armed and moved with sure, confident steps, but Ivy was only interested one of them—Douglas Frasier. What the hell was he doing here?
Frasier and the others skirted the clearing, staying close to the tree line as they moved in the same general direction Ivy and Landon had taken ten minutes earlier. She blinked in amazement as one of the men crouched to look at something in the dirt. Crap, he was tracking the hybrid by footprints—in the dark.
Beside her, Landon tensed. He must have figured out it was Frasier, too. Not by picking up his scent but from seeing the way his right arm hung slightly loose as he moved.
She held her breath as Frasier and his men disappeared into the woods after the hybrid.
“What the hell is Frasier doing here?” Landon asked softly. “When Thorn excluded him from the meeting he had with us about Mahsood, I didn’t think Frasier was even aware of what was going on up here. Now he’s out here, personally hunting hybrids?”
“I don’t understand it either,” Ivy said. “Do you think he can track down the hybrid?”
Landon shook his head. “Not a chance. That hybrid is going to be out there running laps around those guys. That doesn’t mean we don’t need to worry about them. Frasier is here for a reason, and until we know what that reason is, we’re going to have to spend half the time keeping our eyes on him.”
Ivy silently agreed. Unfortunately, that distraction could be dangerous with an unpredictable hybrid on the loose.
Chapter 12
Braden pulled the van away from the curb as the cop cars and fire engines swarmed the building. Dreya let out a breath and flopped back in the passenger seat.
“That was close,” she said.
Braden glanced in the rearview mirror, but he didn’t say anything.
She dug her cell phone out of her pocket. “I’m going to call John and make sure he got the file.”
If he didn’t, there wasn’t much she or Braden could do. It wasn’t like they could go back to the Martz Law Firm and break in again.
Before she could pull up her contacts, her phone rang. When she saw John’s name, she thumbed the button and put him on speaker.
“Did you get the file?” she asked.
“We got it. That was good work,” John said. “Is Braden with you?”
“I’m here,” Braden said.
“Good. Did either of you look at the list you sent me?” John asked.
“No.” Dreya pushed some hair that had come loose back into her braid. “We ran into a little trouble, so the moment I knew I had the right file, I copied everything and sent it to you, then we got the hell out of there. It’s the right one, isn’t it?”
Finding the file had taken her a lot longer than she’d thought it would. It was buried in with a handful of others, and she had to do some digging. It would have been nice if the cartel lawyers had labeled it “Hit List,” but no such luck.
