“What could I do?” He transferred another slice of pizza from the tray to his plate, then reached for the Parmesan cheese. “I dropped out of football and started hitting the science classes pretty hard, hoping to figure out what the hell was happening to me. When that didn’t work, I made the decision to get the hell out of town before anyone noticed how much I’d changed. I joined the army and headed to basic training the day after I graduated from high school. I signed up to be an MP, which was something of a consolation prize for my dad. My mom was a little freaked out, though. This was back when everyone thought Iraq was hiding nuclear and chemical weapons and the UN inspectors were being denied access to all kinds of suspicious facilities. Mom thought we’d be going back to war any day and was sure I’d get pulled into it. That didn’t happen, but she was a mess at the time anyway.”
“I think it’s nice that your mother worried about you so much.” Alina’s voice took on a wistful tone. “My mom knows what I do is dangerous, but since we don’t talk about it, she treats it like a tree that falls in the forest.”
“If there’s no one there to hear it, did it really make a sound?” Trevor finished for her.
“Exactly.” Alina sipped her tea. “How did you manage to keep your shifter side hidden in a whole unit full of MPs?”
“It wasn’t as difficult as I thought it’d be.” He took a bite of pizza, chewing before answering. “Being completely exhausted throughout basic training helped, but mostly, I got better at controlling both my abilities and my emotions.”
“How long were you an MP?”
“A few years,” he said. “As I got better with my abilities, I started getting good at figuring out when people were lying to me. They start sweating, their breathing gets all erratic, their heart rate spikes, their muscles tighten up—stuff like that. When I was assigned to Fort Carson in Colorado, I ended up catching a couple of high-vis bad guys, including a contractor who was trying to drive out the gate with a trunk full of classified documents. My commander put my name in for a transfer to CID—the army’s criminal investigative command—and the next thing I knew, I was reassigned as an investigator at Redstone Arsenal, a big R&D base in Alabama, where they had me watching for civilians and contractors trying to steal government secrets.”
“O-kay. Don’t take this the wrong way, but that sounds boring as hell.”
“Some of my coworkers thought it was,” he admitted. “But for me, it was always about getting into that other person’s head and trying to figure out what they were going to do before they even decided to do it. Besides, my dad was over the moon about it. He figured I’d get out of the army soon, and he’d be seeing a detective in the Maxwell family in the very near future.”
“I hear another but coming,” she said.
Trevor chuckled. “You’re getting good at this. Yeah, my skills got me noticed by some people in DC, and I was transferred to the Defense Intelligence Agency without ever being asked whether that was something I wanted to do. I was put on a team responsible for tracking down traitors selling military intelligence and the foreign agents trying to recruit them.”
“So basic counterespionage and counterintelligence?”
He nodded. “Yup, spy versus spy.”
She continued eating. “What did your dad think of that?”
“He wasn’t thrilled. I liked it, though. Up until that point, I’d been limited to one little base, waiting for a government employee to do something stupid. But with the DIA, I went all over the world, anywhere there was a threat against the Department of Defense. I enjoyed the freedom to pursue just about anyone I wanted. And as a shifter, I was very good at finding those people.”
“What changed?” she asked. “How did you end up in the DCO?”
“What changed? Nothing really. That was the issue.” He shook his head. “No matter how many criminals I caught, no matter how much good I did, I knew in the back of my mind that I could never be myself. I was a freak, and I could never let anyone know it. I was alone in a sea of people. That was a shitty thing to have to live with, and there was a part of me that was unhappy as hell. I was seriously close to saying screw it and moving back to Portland to be the cop that my parents always wanted me to be.”
“And then?” Alina prompted.
“And then John Loughlin found me.” Trevor tried to ignore the stab of sorrow that came with saying his boss’s name but wasn’t very successful. “He found me and helped me realize that I wasn’t a freak, that there were other people like me, and that I didn’t need to keep living in secret. It was the most amazing thing anyone had ever done for me.”
Alina’s face clouded. “And then someone killed him.”
He swallowed hard. “Yeah. Someone killed him. The only reason I’m still at the DCO is so I can figure out exactly who did it and make sure they pay.”
Chapter 6
Alina fidgeted in the passenger seat of the big Suburban as Trevor waited for an opening in traffic, then changed lanes. It was well after rush hour, but I-95 was still packed.
“Does the dress fit okay?” he asked, glancing at her.
She fought the urge to squirm again. “Yeah. It fits fine. It’s just that this is the first time I’ve worn a dress like this on a mission. I’m so used to working in pantsuits that wearing a dress feels…odd.”
Not that she was complaining about the dress. A shimmery, black evening gown with a sexy neckline and a little slit up the side that showed off just enough leg to be interesting without being over the top, it was probably the most gorgeous dress she’d ever seen. Normally, she would never have worn anything like it on a mission, but Trevor said she needed to look the part for the undercover role they were playing that night, so she’d agreed, even though she didn’t have a clue what the hell they were up to this evening.
All she knew for sure was that they were heading to Baltimore and that almost no one else in the DCO—most especially their boss—knew what they were doing. Why the hell she trusted Trevor so much was a shock to her, but the shoot-house training they’d done yesterday had demonstrated they could be good together—when they trusted each other.
Trevor looked over at her, eyeing her up and down before turning his attention back to the freeway with a shrug. “If it helps, I think you look frigging awesome.”
She appreciated the compliment probably more than she should have, but that didn’t keep her from pointing out the obvious. “Mind telling me why you get to wear a suit and tie while I have to wear something that shows off more than it covers?”
