She was hoping he’d say a little bit more than that, but okay. “If you’re all friends, why is Sage running from them? More importantly, what’s the big deal if someone sees her?”
Trevor passed several cars on the four-lane road before answering. “Did Dick tell you about hybrids?”
Alina shook her head. “Not really. He mentioned them, but from the way he said it, I assumed it was another word for shifter. He also used the acronym EVA once, but he never said what it meant.”
Trevor grunted. “Figures. Dick likes to paint all of us with the same brush. EVA means extremely valuable asset. It’s the bureaucratic term the DCO came up with to describe shifters. As you can imagine, it’s not a term we think much of.”
She could understand that. “Okay. So what’s a hybrid, then?”
“Hybrids are man-made shifters. It’s an attempt by some evil people to create shifters in a laboratory by giving normal, everyday people a chemical cocktail to twist their DNA around and force their bodies to exhibit the same traits shifters possess. It’s a violent, dangerous, and incredibly painful process that can have a ton of unintended side effects, especially when it comes to a person’s self-control.”
Alina already knew she wasn’t going to like where this was going. It sounded like something out of a horror movie.
“Sage was kidnapped from her home in Canada and given who knows how many different hybrid drugs,” Trevor continued. “On top of that, she was shuffled all over the world from one clandestine lab to the next, where she was experimented on. Sage isn’t the first person to fall victim to those psychopaths, but she’s by far the most unstable one we’ve been able to rescue. She’s hanging on to her sanity by a thread. We hate doing it, but we have to keep her locked up in a small apartment-slash-cell on the complex.”
“The most unstable one you’ve been able to rescue?” Alina repeated, getting a sinking feeling in her stomach. “Do you mean there have been others that you couldn’t rescue?”
Trevor nodded. “Unfortunately, there have been a lot. Many never survive the hybrid serum to begin with. Most of those who do live become so violent and insane we’ve had no choice but to kill them.”
Alina shook her head. “Who would try to play God like that?”
Trevor didn’t say anything, the same impenetrable wall shutting her out.
“Answer me,” she said. “Who did this?”
He gave her a quick glance before focusing again on the road they were speeding down.
“It was Thorn,” he growled. “That asshole has been trying to build a hybrid army for years, and Sage is just one of the many casualties that have occurred along the way.”
Chapter 10
Jaxson and Tanner were waiting for them outside a tiny Catholic church located on the outskirts of Independent Hill.
“She’s inside,” Jaxson said the moment Trevor and Alina got out of the SUV.
Trevor muttered a curse. The hope that they’d catch up with Sage before she reached the town had evaporated when Tanner had called a few minutes ago to say she’d already jumped the fence and that he’d tracked her to the church.
“Please tell me she’s alone,” Trevor said.
Secretly, he didn’t think they could possibly get that lucky, but hey, this was a church, so maybe his prayers would be answered.
Tanner shook his head. “Afraid not. The good news is that there’s only one other person in there with her. I assume it’s the priest.”
Trevor glanced at Jaxson. “Did you bring them?”
“Yeah.”
Jaxson opened the back of his SUV and took a hard plastic case from the backseat. Placing it on the hood, he lifted the lid to reveal four dart guns. It was amazing how much these things looked like the paintball guns he and Alina had used the other day. All things being equal, Trevor would much rather have been back in the shoot house getting shot with green-dye rounds.
“We’re going to tranquilize her?” Alina asked, looking back and forth between Trevor and the other guys.
“None of us want to, but we might not have a choice,” Trevor told her.
He appreciated the fact that even though she’d never met Sage, Alina was clearly uneasy about the idea of shooting her with a tranquilizer dart. It made him feel a little better about bringing Alina on this rescue mission.
When she’d first confessed to spying for Dick, he’d just about lost it. But after she’d admitted Dick had made it seem like he was a traitor and a murderer, Trevor had cooled off a bit. He’d known Dick for a long time, so he knew what kind of manipulative SOB the man could be. That said, he still wasn’t ready to trust Alina completely. They had a way to go before they could get there. But his gut told him they were on the right track. That was good enough for now.
