Trevor could believe it. While Evan might be on the verge of passing out, Vivian seemed cool as a cucumber as she led them down a deserted hallway. Considering the leggy blond had never done anything other than receptionist work for the DCO, that was a little surprising. Then again, maybe she was a ninja receptionist? He could see John hiring someone like that to work the desk of the organization’s clandestine headquarters.
“Who’s in there with him?” Tanner asked.
“I don’t recognize them,” she said over her shoulder. “No one from the Committee or the DCO, that’s for sure.”
“Not even Dick?” Trevor asked.
The DCO’s new director was rarely far from Thorn when anything important was going down.
She shook her head. “No. They’re all scientist types.”
“How do you know that?” Tanner asked.
“Trust me,” Vivian said. “I know a nerd herd when I see one.”
Trevor frowned. If Vivian was right about them being scientists, this meeting could very well be about another hybrid project—or whatever Thorn had decided was the next step in hybrid evolution.
“Man, am I glad to see you guys,” Evan said when they walked into the office where the analyst was waiting for them. “I was able to delay the start of the meeting for a few minutes by popping the circuit breakers, which made all the computers in the conference room have to reboot, but I couldn’t get away with that more than once.”
“Sorry about that. Traffic was a bitch, as usual,” Trevor said. “Did you get the wire I asked for?”
Evan nodded and held out a small plastic and metal device that looked kind of like a miniature flash drive, except the USB adapter on the end of it didn’t look quite right.
“Who’d you get it from?” Trevor asked.
“Karl in IT tech support.” Evan handed it to him. “He said all you have to do is press the base in and hold it for a few seconds to turn it on. Then just get it somewhere in the room, and it will do the rest. It’ll pick up anyone talking as well as capture the video feed going into the overhead projector. And before you ask, I didn’t tell him what we needed it for, and he didn’t want to know.”
“Which conference room are they in?” Trevor asked.
Evan’s eyes widened. “You’re not going to be able to just walk in there.”
“Why not?” Trevor shrugged. “I’ll act like I walked into the wrong room, drop the device under a table, then be out of there before they even realize I slipped a bug in the room.”
Evan exchanged looks with Vivian. “It’s not that,” he said. “Thorn put two guards on the door, and one of them is Frasier.”
Trevor cursed. His plan would be infinitely more difficult with someone guarding the door, but Douglas Frasier’s presence made it damn near impossible. Frasier flat-out hated his guts. Then again, it seemed like Frasier hated everyone’s guts, but especially shifters’.
In addition to being Thorn’s head of security, Frasier also ran certain special projects for the former senator. Which was a nice way of saying the man killed people his boss wanted dead. Trevor didn’t know a lot about the guy, but he knew Frasier had worked for the DCO years ago and that he’d been paired up with the first shifter the organization had ever discovered—Adam. Trevor wasn’t sure what happened between the two of them, but considering what Adam had said about his partner shooting him in the back, Trevor had a pretty good idea. Whatever it was, it forced Adam to go off the grid while Frasier had landed a cushy job working for Thorn. The man was never going to let him get within ten feet of the conference room his boss was in.
Trevor glanced at Tanner. The hybrid had even less chance of getting past Frasier than he did. That left only one option.
He stared at Evan, trying to come up with something to say to convince the analyst he had it in him to bluff his way past Frasier and the other guard and figure out how to slip the device into the room.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Evan asked suspiciously. Then his eyes widened as it dawned on him. “No way! I can’t go in there. Frasier would know I’m lying. He’d shoot me.”
Shit. Evan looked like he was about to start hyperventilating at the mere thought of going in the conference room. Trevor opened his mouth to point out it was highly unlikely Frasier would kill him, but Vivian cut him off.
“I’ll do it.”
Well, damn. He hadn’t even considered suggesting she do it. Which was rather sexist, he realized. “You sure about this?”
“Will this help catch the people who killed John and Olivia?” she asked.
Trevor nodded.
“Then I’ll do it. Olivia was my friend long before I started working here. She even got me the job interview. As for John, he was the best boss I’ve ever worked for and an even better person. If putting a bug in that room will get me a little revenge, I’m in. I want those bastards to pay for what they’ve done.”
“How are you going to get it in there?” Trevor asked as he handed the device to her.
