She closed the folder and tossed it in the backseat. “You’re supposed to be a shifter, right? So show me what the heck the big fuss is all about.”
Trevor’s jaw flexed. “I’m not a trained monkey at the circus. I don’t do tricks.”
Okay, maybe demanding he perform for her had been uncalled for. She would have said as much when she caught him checking the rearview mirror again. She wanted to ask him who he thought was following them but decided that would be a waste of time. Trevor obviously didn’t trust her enough to tell her what time of day it was, much less who might be following them.
That was okay, because she wasn’t sure she could trust him much either.
It was one more thing that had her once again questioning her decision to leave the CIA. Taking a job in a classified department of Homeland Security she’d never heard of was bad enough, but chasing rogue government agents with a partner she didn’t know the first thing about and couldn’t trust was completely insane.
But then she remembered how much she’d hated her job at the Agency. She’d gotten so burned out on the crappy work they’d had her doing lately it was a miracle she hadn’t gotten herself—or someone else—killed. That’s when she took a breath and told herself that while her first day at the DCO was going a little rocky, she’d made the right choice leaving the CIA. She probably should have done it a long time ago, right after Jodi and the rest of her team had been killed.
“You okay?” Trevor asked suddenly as he drove down the tree-lined rural road.
Alina looked at him, not sure where his question had come from. “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, but your heart rate just shot through the roof, so I figured I should ask.”
All she could do was stare at him in confusion, not sure what the hell he was talking about. “How do you know how fast my heart is beating?”
“It’s a shifter thing,” he said casually, as if he were talking about the weather. “My hearing is good enough to pick up the beating of your heart, and it’s going a little crazy about now.”
She eyed him skeptically, wondering if he was messing with her. Dick had tried to explain the basics of the shifter genetics, but he’d made it sound like they were part animal. None of it made any sense to her. Now she wished she’d asked more questions.
She and Dick had talked for quite a while about Trevor before he’d shown up for the meeting. While Dick hadn’t gone into great detail about what a shifter was, he’d told her repeatedly that she couldn’t trust Trevor and that there was a good chance her new partner was in league with the rogue DCO agents who’d murdered the previous director. After hearing that, she’d expected Wade’s double to walk through the door.
But Trevor wasn’t anything like her old teammate—at least not physically. Wade had been average in every way possible. Trevor was anything but. He was tall and athletic with a wiry build and short, black hair that seemed to be in a permanent state of casual bedhead. Alina had met men who spent a lot of money to get their hair to look like that, but Trevor’s seemed to be completely natural. With lips that quirked constantly, a little scruff covering his jaw, and mischievous, hazel eyes, he seemed like a man who rarely took things very seriously. He’d definitely vexed the crap out of Dick, and even if he was supposed to have been part of a conspiracy to kill the former director, Alina had had a hard time keeping the smile off her face as he’d poked and prodded his boss.
By the time the meeting was over, she was ready to admit that Trevor was an attractive man with a nice body, an infectious grin, and a razor-sharp, wry sense of humor. While she had no idea what the shifter was about, she’d had a hard time seeing him as a traitorous, cold-blooded killer. Then again, she’d never seen a traitorous, cold-blooded killer when she used to look at Wade either, and he’d betrayed the entire team and killed Jodi in the most vicious manner he could. All in all, she was a crappy judge of character.
“Your heart’s beating faster again,” Trevor murmured as he drove past the same gas station they’d passed twice already. “You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” she snapped.
Dammit, he was right. Her heart was thumping harder than normal. It always did when she thought about Wade.
“I’m just going to toss this out there,” Trevor said. “But can I assume you’re nervous about being in a vehicle with someone like me?”
Alina did a double take. “No, that’s not it at all. I don’t have a problem with you.”
He arched a brow and gave her a look that said she was full of crap. “So you’re telling me your heart starts racing at random moments for the heck of it?”
She opened her mouth to tell him it was none of his damn business, but closed it again. There was a good chance they could be walking into a dangerous situation when they got to wherever they were going. She’d rather not do that while in the middle of an argument. But she also wasn’t in the habit of giving up personal info without getting anything in return.
“Why should I tell you anything?” she demanded. “It’s not like you’ve been exactly forthcoming with me. You still haven’t told me where we’re going or what a shifter is. For all I know, you could be making up this stuff about being able to hear how fast my heart is beating.”
Alina expected Trevor to say something suitably snarky, but he surprised her.
“Fair enough,” he agreed. “We’re going to talk to a guy who lives in Bowling Green. He worked in IT at the DCO training complex and went into work two hours before his normal duty time on the day of the explosion.”
“You think he was working with the rogue DCO agents who killed John Loughlin?”
While the idea made sense, it wasn’t exactly in line with what he’d told Dick.
“I think it’s possible the guy might have brought the bomb onto the complex,” Trevor said.
Alina waited for him to say something else about the man, but he fell silent. That left her with a lot of questions, the first one being why no one had already talked to this guy. Surely, the people investigating the bombing would have done that right off the bat. More importantly, why had Trevor lied to his boss about where they were going and what they’d be doing?
“You told the director you wanted to talk to some people who’d gotten into a scuffle with two men you thought might be the rogue agents,” she reminded him.
