Mahsood turned around, a big syringe in his hand.
“What the fuck are you going to do to me?” Trevor growled.
He let his fangs slip out and his eyes flash, but while Brand seemed to be a little taken aback, Mahsood didn’t even bat an eye. He simply slammed the syringe into Trevor’s thigh, right through the material of his pajama bottoms, and pushed on it until the plastic barrel wouldn’t let it go any deeper. When Trevor howled in pain, Brand shoved a leather wedge in between his teeth and strapped it into place behind his head.
“What are you going to do with these samples?” Brand asked as he reached over to the nearest tray for another syringe.
Mahsood didn’t answer at first, too busy withdrawing the plunger of the syringe in his hand and filling the barrel with Trevor’s blood.
“I hope to be able to use them to recreate the serum we produced from Ashley’s DNA. It’s helpful to have such a compliant subject as her, but it’s likely the effects we see in our test subjects are a direct result of her chemical imbalance. If this subject’s serum works better, we might not need Ashley any longer.”
“Really?” Brand asked, handing Mahsood the other syringe. “When do you think we can test the serum?”
Mahsood shrugged and jabbed the second needle in Trevor’s thigh, drawing more blood. “Not long. The process is getting more refined every time I do it. We could be trying it out on the young girl within the hour.”
Trevor felt his stomach drop. Oh, hell no. He struggled again against the restraints, harder this time, his teeth trying to shred the leather wedge in his mouth while his claws extended to reach for Mahsood. But it did no good.
“Don’t you think you should wait until the antipsychotic meds in the girl’s system have cleared?” Brand asked. “We don’t want the drugs to mess up the test results.”
Mahsood laughed. “Peter, that girl hasn’t been taking her meds for years, no more than the boy Ian was. Don’t you have a clue what’s happening in your own facility?”
Before Brand could say anything, Mahsood grabbed another syringe off the cart. This time, the needle on the syringe was shorter but as thick as pencil lead.
“Hold him still, Peter. I need a sample of cardiac tissue, and I don’t want the needle to bend again like it did the last time we did this. We get this, and Ashley isn’t nearly as important to us anymore.”
Trevor had been shot before—several times, in fact—but none of those times had hurt as bad as when Mahsood shoved that big bore needle in his chest. His whole body went rigid in pain, and he tried to move away from it, but he couldn’t. White-hot fire shooting through him, he turned his head away until he was looking at Ashley, standing at the door of her cage, her face twisted in rage.
What the fuck was she so pissed about? He was the one lying here with a metal shiv shoved in his heart.
* * *
“Okay, here’s the deal,” Ivy said softly, her eyes glowing green in the dark shadows of the forest where Dreya and Braden had met up with her and Landon. “You can find a way to sneak into the secure psychiatric facility, slip past the heavily armed guards in there, and find the isolation ward, so you can rescue Trevor, Brooklyn, and the shifter. Or you can stay out here and fight off Frasier and his heavily armed killers when they storm the place, which should be sometime in the next ten or fifteen minutes. Your choice.”
Dreya swung her gaze to look at Stillwater and groaned as the reality of the situation hit her. This was really happening. She and Braden were about to break into a hospital full of mental patients that was protected by quasi-military guards armed with automatic weapons, who were probably much better trained than they were. Well, better than she was, for sure. Oh, and if that weren’t enough, the building they were planning to sneak into was almost certainly going to be attacked by a group of extremely violent military types, with more automatic weapons, looking to get inside the isolation ward ahead of them.
This was an impossible situation that only someone insane would attempt.
She and Braden had met up with Ivy and Landon ten minutes ago. The signal that Trevor was supposed to give them letting them know he and Brooklyn were okay was forty-five minutes past due. She might be a former cat burglar and Braden a cop, but there was no time to waste worrying about how unprepared they were for this kind of scenario. This was going to happen. Now, it was just a matter of what part she and Braden were going to play in it.
If it came down to breaking into a secure facility and sneaking around or standing toe-to-toe and shooting it out with a bunch of trained killers, Dreya knew which option she’d rather take.
“Braden and I will rescue Trevor and the others,” she told Ivy and Landon. “You keep Frasier and his guys off our backs.”
Braden gave her a nod. “Good choice. Now we just have to find a way in there when Ivy and Landon couldn’t.”
That part had Dreya a little concerned, but she’d rather look for a way into a building than run through the woods fighting. She wasn’t a fighter.
Neither Ivy nor Landon second-guessed Dreya’s decision. They just checked their ammo pouches, then Landon slipped off into the darkness so quietly, Dreya would have thought he was a shifter if she didn’t know better.
“Be careful in there,” Ivy warned. “And don’t try to be a hero. Just get Trevor, Brooklyn, and the shifter out of there, then get out to the woods behind the facility. When Ian smells Brooklyn, he’ll find you—I’m almost sure of it.”
Then Ivy disappeared into the woods, making even less noise than her partner. Dreya knew she and Braden were good together, but they weren’t even in Ivy and Landon’s neighborhood of talent.
“You ready for this?” Braden asked. When she nodded, he gave her a nod back. “You lead the way, and I’ll back you up.”
The thought of him watching her back firmed her resolve, and she took off across the dark grounds of the psychiatric facility.
While Braden was concerned about how she was planning to get them in, she already had an idea about that. It was so crazy, though, that she hadn’t wanted to bring it up in front of Ivy and Landon.
