Trevor shook his head. “Not really. I tried to hide that I was investigating Thorn’s involvement in John’s death, but the fact was probably impossible for her to miss. She handled that revelation better than I thought she would, though, so I’ll have to admit, I’m torn. Part of me thinks I should trust her, but there’s another part that’s just as sure she’s playing me. I don’t suppose there’s anything in that file you have on her that suggests one way or the other whether I can trust her?”
“Unfortunately, nothing written on a piece of paper can answer that question. You’re right to worry about Alina,” he said. “Dick actively pursued her and brought her in to be your partner. We have no idea what he said to her or what he’s asked her to do. All I can suggest is that you protect yourself and not trust her any more than you have to, at least until she earns it.”
“How am I supposed to know when that is?” Trevor muttered.
Since coming to work at the DCO, Trevor had had two partners—Ed and Jake. Trust had never been an issue with either of those men. It had just come naturally.
It was funny. He’d spent a good portion of his adult life living the life of spies and espionage, going undercover for months at a time to sniff out other people who were living the same way. Now his new teammate might be someone he couldn’t trust.
“I’m not sure how you know when it’s time to trust somebody,” Adam admitted quietly. “I trusted my partner years ago when I worked for the DCO, and he ended up shooting me in the back. John trusted a lot of people, and it got him killed.”
Trevor didn’t know what the story was with Adam and his partner, but he certainly understood the reference to John’s murder. The implications were clear. If he put his faith in Alina, and that faith ended up being misplaced, he was probably going to end up dead, too.
“I’ll be in touch,” Adam said.
“You might get a call in the next day or so from Seth Larson,” Trevor said as the shifter headed for the door. “He’s good with computers and security systems. In fact, I think he set up the security system at Chadwick-Thorn that Ivy and Landon had a problem with.”
Adam lifted a brow, like he was waiting to see what any of that had to do with him.
“Anyway, the guy’s in a tough situation, and I mentioned that you might be able to find him some work he could do from home,” Trevor continued. “He has a kid with special needs he has to be around to take care of, you know?”
Adam regarded him for a long time before finally nodding. “I’ll see what I can do to help him, but stop giving my number out like I’m your cousin who does plumbing work on the side, huh?”
With that, Adam turned and walked out.
As Trevor took another drink from his bottle of beer, he toyed with the idea of calling Adam in the middle of the night and leaving a message about a leaky toilet.
Chapter 5
“I don’t care if Dick said you’re already certified for fieldwork.” Sabrina Erickson pinned Trevor with a look before turning her glare on Alina. “The two of you need to spend some time training together as a team before you get into the field and find out you have zero chemistry, because it’ll be too late to do anything about it then. You’re going to sweat now so you don’t have to bleed later.”
Beside Alina, Trevor grabbed his paintball gun from the table and grumbled something under his breath about hating training officers who spouted clichés. Alina hid her smile as she loaded her own paintball gun. Sabrina was a force of nature, that was for sure.
The woman had intercepted her and Trevor in the cafeteria an hour ago and joyfully informed them they’d be training all morning. Trevor had protested, saying he had some leads related to the bombing he needed to run down. Alina noticed he hadn’t said we have leads to track down, which confirmed her assumption he planned to bail on her. Even though she knew there was a serious trust issue between her and Trevor, it still bothered her anyway. She hated not being trusted. It made her feel like the enemy. Like Wade.
The trim, athletic training officer hadn’t batted an eye but simply smiled sweetly at Trevor and informed him that he could hunt down leads to his heart’s content—after she was done with them. Something told Alina she was going to like this woman.
So they’d spent an hour at the pistol range, where Sabrina had each of them blaze through almost five hundred rounds of ammo with their issued sidearms, then come over here to the shoot house.
“You’ll be doing a scenario involving a hostage,” Sabrina explained.
Alina glanced up from loading another paintball. The black-and-silver gun had a long, slender barrel sticking out the front, a plastic tube full of bright-pink paintballs attached to the top, and a small bottle mounted below the handgrip. It looked like something out of a Star Wars movie and probably cost more than her car.
In all the time she’d been in the CIA, she’d never fired a paintball gun as part of her training. Hell, while she’d done a lot of tactical room clearance, she’d never taken part in any kind of hostage-rescue training either. That wasn’t part of her normal CIA mission, so she’d never spent any time on it.
“Jaxson and Jake will be playing the part of the opposing forces,” Sabrina continued. “You’ll need to deal with them as well as any pop-up targets in the house in order to reach the hostage. The pop-up targets will make the alarms on your vests go off if you fail to take them out in time.”
Trevor snorted, earning him a frown from the training officer.
“Something funny?” Sabrina asked.
He shrugged as he slipped a few extra tubes of paintball ammo into the cargo pocket of his uniform pants. “You realize I’m a shifter and that I can get through this scenario easily, right?”
Sabrina’s lips curved. “Maybe, maybe not. We’ll see. Besides, the objective for this training is for both you and your partner to make it through and rescue the hostage. If you get through but Alina doesn’t, you start over. Teamwork—remember?”
Trevor scowled at that but didn’t say anything.
