Interesting. Was Thomas Thorn the man Trevor had been talking about? The one John Loughlin had been trying to put in jail for years? If so, no wonder Trevor hadn’t wanted to say anything. The previous director of the DCO had been chasing a man who was not only the CEO of one of the biggest and most politically connected defense contractors in the world, but also a former senator? There was something scary big going on here.
She was still thinking about that interesting tidbit of information when she realized Trevor was asking something else. Alina forced herself to focus on what her partner was saying.
“You mentioned that you were near the admin building forty-five minutes before the…incident…getting coffee. Did you see anyone else around?”
Larson thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. I mean, it was still dark at that time, but I saw three or four people around the main building.”
“Did you recognize them?” Trevor asked.
“I hadn’t worked there long enough to learn almost anyone’s name outside the IT section,” the man said. “Sorry.”
Trevor frowned, but Alina wasn’t ready to walk away from the potential clue just yet. “Do you think you could ID the people you saw if we gave you some photos to look through?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Larson said. “But do you think you can bring the photos here or email them to me so I don’t have to leave Cody with my mom?”
“Of course,” she agreed.
While Alina added his name and email to the contact list in her phone, Trevor scribbled something in his notepad. She thought he was writing down notes on what they’d talked about, but then he tore the paper out of the pad and held it out to Larson.
“Give this guy a call in a few days,” Trevor said. “I think he can set you up with some IT work you can do from home. Tell him I sent you. I put my number on there, too, just in case you need anything.”
Alina glanced at Larson’s little boy as she stood. “Bye, Cody.”
Since Cody didn’t look up from his coloring book, she thought he hadn’t heard her, but just as she and Trevor followed Larson to the front door, the boy jumped up and ran over with one of the pictures he’d made. When he held it out to her, she saw it was the one he’d been working on when she and Trevor had first gotten there, the one with the yellow sky and the orange clouds. She took it very carefully.
“Is this for me?” she asked.
Cody didn’t say anything. Instead, he turned and went back to his coloring book, starting another page.
“Thank you,” she said, but he was already lost in his work.
She glanced at Trevor as they headed outside to their SUV. “What was that all about?”
He pushed the button on the key fob to unlock the doors. “What was what all about?”
“That number you gave Larson. Do you always give suspects the name and number of prospective employers?”
Trevor shrugged. “I think it’s obvious that guy isn’t a suspect. He’s just someone who might have seen something. Besides, he could use a little help.”
Alina couldn’t argue with any of those things. “It was a nice thing to do.”
He only grunted in answer.
They didn’t talk much as they headed north on Highway 2 back toward Fredericksburg and the interstate. It wasn’t dark yet, but the sun was low on the horizon. It would be nightfall by the time they got back to the DCO complex.
As the last few beams of the sun’s light slipped through the trees lining the road, Alina replayed the day’s events. To say she was confused about everything she’d seen and learned was an understatement. Her new partner wasn’t anything like Dick had described. Other than the fact that he was very closed-mouth when it came to sharing information, Trevor seemed like an okay guy. Well, there were the fangs, claws, and glowing gold eyes. Those were going to take a while to get used to. Even so, she wasn’t ready to brand him the traitor the director of the DCO claimed him to be—yet.
Chapter 3
“Keep your eyes closed and just relax.”
Tanner Howland frowned even as he said the words. He wasn’t sure he was the best person to help another hybrid get a handle on their inner animal, especially since he was still trying to figure it out most of the time himself, but Sage Andrews, the woman the DCO had rescued from a lab in Tajikistan a while back, was in a really bad way. Besides, he couldn’t say no to anything Zarina Sokolov asked him to do. Meeting the beautiful Russian doctor had been the only bright spot in his dark existence since he’d been captured and turned into a beast over a year ago. If not for her, he probably wouldn’t even be alive right now.
He, Zarina, and Sage sat on the floor in the small living room of Sage’s dorm room/prison cell on the DCO complex while two armed men stood guard outside the door.
“That’s it,” he said. “Breathe in and out, nice and slowly.”
