He glanced at the side mirror this time. “Yeah, I did.”
There was a lot of stuff he wasn’t telling her, including who he thought was following them. She decided not to push on those two subjects…yet. He was talking, and she wanted to keep that going. Time to move on to a different topic and see what else he’d tell her.
“Back to the shifter thing for a minute,” she said, trying to sound casual. “Dick said something about you having animal DNA, but that’s just an expression, right? Like when someone says a person is as mean as a junkyard dog or strong as an ox.”
Trevor didn’t say anything for a long time, and Alina thought she’d pushed too far.
“I’m a coyote shifter,” he finally said. “I have canine DNA mixed with my own. When I shift, I take on certain physical characteristics of a coyote.”
All Alina could do was stare. What could she say to a man who’d just claimed to be part coyote?
“Are you serious, or are you just messing with me?” she demanded.
In answer, Trevor took one hand off the wheel and placed it on the center console between them. As she watched, his fingernails extended until they turned into five sharp claws almost an inch long and deadly looking as hell.
Alina stared. It had to be a trick.
She opened her mouth to ask how a human could possibly have claws but stopped cold as he turned to look at her with eyes that were glowing yellow and a pair of elongated canines protruding out over his lower lip.
Crap on a stick.
She jerked back so hard, she almost snapped her neck, then immediately regretted her reaction at the flicker of disappointment that crossed his handsome face. Before she could say anything, the claws, fangs, and glowing eyes disappeared.
Trevor put his hand back on the wheel and focused once again on the twisting, turning country road. “Enough about me,” he said casually, as if having long claws poking out from under his fingernails was an everyday occurrence for him. Hell, maybe it was. “Now that I’ve told you where we’re going and demonstrated the shifter stuff isn’t BS, let’s get back to you. Why was your heart beating so fast before?”
Alina didn’t answer. She didn’t like confiding in a stranger, even if he was supposed to be her partner. But he’d answered her questions, so she supposed she owed him something.
“A mission went wrong a couple of years ago in the CIA. I try hard not to think about it, because when I do, I get upset. That’s probably why you heard my heart racing.”
She tried not thinking about the fact that her heart was probably racing all over again simply from making that confession, and she prayed he wouldn’t push for more details.
“Are you wondering if you made a mistake getting out of the CIA?” he asked.
Her first instinct was to say no. Then again, that was always her first instinct. But instead, she nodded.
“Yeah. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t wondering that. But then I realize I did the right thing. It was time for me to leave,” she said.
She looked out the passenger window, waiting with a slight sense of dread for his next question, the one where he asked her exactly why she’d left the Agency.
Nothing had been the same after the operation in Turkey. In the immediate aftermath of the ambush that had killed her entire team, she’d been so furious that all she could do was think about spending the rest of her life hunting Wade down and making him pay. The need for revenge was like a fever that raged day and night.
The Agency had done everything they could to help her find Wade at first. But after about a year of scouring the globe, the search had started to lose steam as other events took priority. The Agency moved Wade’s cold-blooded betrayal to the back burner, he was placed on a watch list with thousands of other high-value targets, and Alina was told to let it go. She hadn’t, and it had cost her.
Initially, the Agency had allowed her to stay in the field, but over time, her fixation with finding the man who’d killed her team had made her coworkers and supervisors uncomfortable. They began to think she was unstable, obsessive, and a risk to other agents. To some degree, maybe she was. Because for a long time, all she cared about was getting revenge.
Finally, the big shots at Langley had decided to put her zeal for catching traitors to good use and transferred her to the CIA’s version of Internal Affairs. Instead of chasing after bad guys, she’d been chasing dirty agents. It wasn’t something an agent should ever be asked to do, and Alina had hated it. So when the director of the DCO had approached her out of the blue about a new job—one that included a promise to jump-start her search for Wade—she’d hadn’t even had to think about it. That brilliant move had gotten her a partner who had claws and glowing yellow eyes.
Well, she’d wanted a chance to get out and do something different. From now on, maybe she should be more careful what she asked for.
“You going to be able to focus on what we’re doing here?” Trevor asked, pulling her out of her reveries.
Alina gave herself a shake and realized they were in the parking lot of a nice little apartment complex with well-trimmed hedges and perfectly manicured lawns. Around them, the other spaces were filled with electric cars. It wasn’t exactly a place that screamed “cold-blooded killer hideout.”
“I’ll be fine,” she assured Trevor, then added, “assuming you’re actually planning to tell me what we’re doing here. Who’s this guy we’re looking for, and do you have anything linking him to the bombing besides the fact that he happened to come into work early that day?”
If Trevor was involved with the people who’d murdered John Loughlin, why act like he was hunting down the killer? And if he wasn’t involved with the rogue agents and honestly wanted to find who’d done it, why was he so reluctant to talk to her?
“His name is Seth Larson,” Trevor said and shut off the engine. “The DCO brought him in to specialize in cybersecurity and data protection. Like I said before, he was hired three weeks before the bombing and quit two days later.”
