He didn’t take his eyes off the scene in front of him. “You probably can’t see the writing from here, but I can. It’s Russian. Mostly infantry type stuff—small arms ammo, hand and rocket-propelled grenades, and explosives.”
Okay. That didn’t seem right. “What’s Russian ammo doing in an American depot?”
“The army stores lots of foreign ammo at Aberdeen,” he explained. “It’s held for intelligence exploitation, to train Special Forces teams, even to support overseas operations conducted by our allies in places like Syria and Iraq.”
Huh. She’d never thought about where ammo like that was stored.
They moved closer, but after a few dozen feet, Trevor put out his hand to stop her.
“What is it?” she asked softly.
Trevor sniffed the air, then looked at her, his eyes glowing yellow again.
“I swear I smell shifters, but the scent isn’t quite right.”
Her jaw dropped. “Crap! If you’re smelling them, do we have to worry about them smelling us, too?”
He shook his head. “We’re approaching from downwind, so we should be good. But stay quiet. If I’m right and there are shifters here, we have to be worried about them hearing us.”
Up ahead, several of the men climbed into two of the trucks. As she and Trevor ducked down in the grass along the edge of the road, the vehicles cranked up with a loud rumble and headed toward the gate of the ammo area.
“We have to move,” Trevor whispered. “Before the other two trucks get loaded up and take off.”
Alina pulled her pistol out as she rose to her feet. She and Trevor picked up the pace, closing the last twenty feet between them and the nearest truck. It sounded like there were still at least half a dozen men on the other side of it. Maybe this was even crazier than she’d thought. What the hell were they going to do against six men, especially if one—or more—of them were shifters?
“Move a little closer, and see if you can get a good look at these guys while I plant a tracking device on the truck,” Trevor said. “Then we’ll pull back and follow them.”
She was in complete agreement with that plan. She made her way to the front of the big five-ton truck while Trevor headed for the rear of the vehicle. She was just about to lean down and poke her head around the high bumper when a tall figure stepped out from around the front of the truck right into her path.
She froze, her blood going cold.
Wade.
He was taller and broader than she remembered, but it was him. A hundred different emotions rolled through her all at once—shock, denial, anger, fear.
Wade seemed just stunned as she was, and they stood there for what seemed like forever, staring at each other. Then a slow smile spread across his face, revealing a mouthful of long fangs.
“I was wondering when we’d see each other again,” he said, his eyes flaring red.
Her eyes widened as his arm came up and he aimed his gun at her. She tried to get her weapon up in time, but Wade was so much faster than she was. Faster than she could imagine anyone being.
Something slammed into her side, knocking her off her feet just as Wade pulled the trigger. The bullet missed her, hitting the asphalt where she’d been standing.
She braced for impact, expecting to hit the pavement, but instead, Trevor tucked her to his chest and hit the ground rolling.
They ended up in the shallow ditch alongside the bunker access road. Trevor immediately came up to return fire against Wade and the other men who had raced to join him. Alina quickly got her act together and came up on one knee. For a second, everything flashed back to that same desperate and futile stand she and her old team had made in Turkey so many years ago. Even the zing of the bullets zipping right past them sounded the same. Any moment, Trevor would go down, just like Rodney and Fred and Jodi.
No, dammit! Things weren’t going that way. Not again.
Firing a few more rounds in Wade’s direction, she turned and put several bullets through the big gas tank mounted beneath the cab of the truck. Fuel sprayed everywhere, quickly followed by a whoosh of flames.
The men near the truck scrambled away as fire engulfed the vehicle. Wade pulled back, too, but kept shooting in her direction. She heard him growling in anger as he yelled at the other men not to kill her.
“She’s mine!”
Alina stood and moved toward him, climbing out of the slight protection of the ditch, screaming right back at the man who had killed her teammates three years ago. She had no idea what she was shouting. All she knew was she couldn’t let this man—this monster—get away.
Strong arms wrapped around her, yanking her off her feet and carrying her away from the burning truck. Some part of her mind recognized that it was Trevor, but she fought against him anyway, not understanding why he was trying to stop her from getting to Wade.
