“Okay. I can do that,” she agreed.
Before she could say anything else, the start buzzer went off again.
Alina shoved open the front door with her shoulder, forcing herself to trust her partner. They moved from room to room much faster this time, dealing with pop-up targets and the occasional appearance by Jake and Jaxson. Sometimes, they missed a target and got dinged for it; other times, Jake and Jaxson got them. But throughout the whole thing, she and Trevor worked as a team and covered each other. By the time they rescued the hostage, she and Trevor were that much closer to becoming a real team.
It was crazy how good that made her feel, considering that, according to the director of the DCO, Trevor was the enemy.
* * *
Trevor hadn’t realized how hungry he was until he and Alina walked into the Pizza Place in nearby Dumfries and he breathed in the aroma of garlic and freshly made tomato sauce coming from the kitchen. Damn, he could eat a whole pie himself.
He and Alina had finished up training two hours ago, then spent another thirty minutes hanging around talking with Jake and Jaxson before getting cleaned up. Alina had been fine with grabbing something for lunch at the DCO cafeteria, but Trevor hadn’t felt like sitting there while his coworkers stared at him like he was some kind of freak. Plus, this place made fantastic pizza.
Spotting an empty booth toward the back of the dining room, Trevor pointed it out to Alina, then gestured for her to lead the way.
The excellent food wasn’t the only reason he’d wanted to get off the complex. He also wanted to talk to Alina in a setting a little more private than the cafeteria. This morning’s training had made him curious about her. Once again, he had this crazy feeling he’d pegged her all wrong.
They both ordered iced tea when their server came over to drop off their menus. Alina glanced at hers for all of five seconds before looking at him.
“You want to split a medium pepperoni?” she asked, her expression hopeful.
“Let’s make it a large,” he said. “I’m pretty hungry.”
Their server brought their drinks, then disappeared with their order, leaving an awkward silence in her wake. Trevor added sweetener to his tea, searching for the best way to start the conversation. Across from him, Alina suddenly seemed very interested in the old pictures mounted on the wall above the booth.
Damn, this was so much easier when he was teamed up with Jake and Ed. Then again, training with them had been a whole hell of a lot less difficult, too.
This morning had been ugly, at least at the start of the shoot-house exercise. He was man enough to admit that a good portion of the blame for that train wreck rested squarely on his shoulders. Yeah, he’d been thrown for a loop by Jake’s trick with the noise and cow urine, but the biggest reason they’d done so poorly was because they’d flat-out refused to trust each other. With his shifter hearing and sense of smell taken out of the equation, he’d been dependent on Alina to watch his back as they’d moved through the house, but his suspicions of her made that leap of faith impossible.
It had taken Alina doing something extraordinary, like putting her complete faith in him and risking a paintball to the side of the head, to get him to realize he was being stupid. Dick might have hired her, but that didn’t have to define her. Maybe that’s what his gut had been trying to tell him. Maybe there was more to Alina than the job she’d been hired to do. While he wasn’t ready to trust her completely, he’d at least give her a chance.
“I guess you like pizza, huh?” he asked lamely, finally breaking the silence that had gone from merely awkward to seriously uncomfortable.
Alina turned her attention away from the photos on the wall to give him a sheepish look. “Yeah. When I was growing up, Friday was pizza night at our house. Mom and Dad made a big event out of it, so I always associate pizza with family and good times.” A smile curved her lips. “Now, it’s my number one go-to comfort food. My freezer is stuffed full of them, and the front of my fridge is covered in magnets from all the local delivery places.”
Trevor sipped his iced tea. He’d always considered pizza the ultimate food. “Were you being serious yesterday when you said your parents don’t know what you do for a living?”
Alina’s eyes sparkled with mischief as she shook her head. “I was just messing with you. Of course my parents know I worked for the CIA. Though to be truthful, they refuse to talk about it.”
He was about to ask for details, but their server came over with their pizza just then. It was an absolutely drool-worthy collection of cheese, pepperoni, and excess grease. In other words, perfect. The woman placed the big pizza on the table between them along with plates, utensils, and a load of napkins.
Trevor contained his curiosity about Alina’s family while they each helped themselves to their first slices of pizza. He watched in amusement as she used some of the paper napkins to soak up the excess grease, then practically emptied half a bottle of Parmesan cheese on her slice.
“You plan on having any pizza with that?” he teased as she poked the slice a few times with a fork as if she thought that would help all the added powdered cheese stay in place.
Alina shrugged. “I like Parmesan cheese on my pizza. Is that a crime or something?”
“Nope, not a crime at all.” He picked up his slice and took a few bites. “Back to your parents. What’s the story behind them refusing to talk about you being in the CIA?”
Alina hesitated long enough to take a bite of her own pizza before answering. “My family is what you’d describe as politically active. They’ve been involved in state and city politics for generations. City council, state senate and assembly, state cabinet positions, campaign management and fund-raising—you name it, and someone in my family has done it. With my background, everyone assumed I’d go into politics, too.”
He snagged another slice of pizza and sprinkled some Parmesan cheese on it. “You didn’t want to?”
“Actually, I did. I never saw myself running for office, but I thought about doing the behind-the-scenes stuff, maybe managing a campaign or working on someone’s staff. I even went to college for political science.”
“How did you go from being a poli-sci major to joining the CIA?”
She ate a few more bites of her pizza, nibbling all the way down to the back of the slice but not eating the crust there. When she was done, she tossed the pizza bone to the side and got another piece, drowning it in powdered cheese.
