“I’m having a hard time believing someone so evil could still exist in the modern world.” She shook her head. “How is it possible no one has ever been able to pin anything on Thorn? I know he’s a former senator and head of a weapons manufacturing company, but still, you’d think the DCO would have been able to make something stick by now.”
Shit. She really had no idea.
“The DCO was started shortly after 9/11 by eight powerful senators and representatives who called themselves the Committee,” he explained. “The existence of the Committee and the identities of the people on it are closely guarded secrets. Those eight people control all the money that flows into the DCO and dictate what missions the organization will pursue. They’re the real power behind the scenes, and with that almost unlimited power, there’s damn near nothing they can’t do.”
On the other side of the table, realization dawned on Alina’s face.
“Thorn might be a former senator and CEO of Chadwick-Thorn, but he’s also the senior member of the Committee,” Trevor continued. “He’s pulled the strings within the organization from the very beginning. That’s why John and Adam were never able to get him on anything. Thorn is rich and powerful and has an entire covert organization full of agents at his beck and call to make sure he’s always ten steps ahead of everyone who comes after him.”
“Thorn is crooked, and he’s in charge of the DCO?” Alina asked in shock. “How the hell did that happen?”
Trevor shrugged. “Thorn is one of those assholes who does what he wants simply because he can. And as far as what he wants, that seems to be hybrids.”
“But what does he want the hybrids for?” She chewed on her lip as she considered that. “What’s he trying to gain? Is this some twisted plan to get more agents for the DCO?”
“That’s the part we haven’t figured out,” Trevor admitted. “He’s been working on creating a perfect man-made shifter all this time, spending millions of dollars and throwing lives away like they’re nothing, and we don’t have a clue why. I’m willing to bet that whatever his endgame might be, we’re getting close to it. Tonight proves it.”
“You mean Wade, don’t you?” she asked softly. “He’s Thorn’s perfect man-made shifter.”
Trevor nodded. “I think so. The other day, when I left you to take care of Sage, it was because I got a tip that Thorn was holding a classified meeting with some people. We were able to slip a listening device into the conference room and heard his scientists announce they’d solved the hybrid problem. They’re in the process of creating a whole squad of the damn things at a location they called the farm. These new hybrids are highly trained, deadly, and completely loyal to Thorn. The ones we saw during the briefing looked exactly like Wade, right down to the mouth full of extra teeth and red eyes. Wade definitely smelled different from any shifter or hybrid I’ve ever sniffed before, too. Like a blend of both. I think that guarantees Wade is one of Thorn’s new pets.”
“And you honestly don’t have a clue what Thorn’s going to do with these new hybrids?”
“No. But if he felt it necessary to get John off the playing field—and go to all the effort he’s expended trying to wipe out almost every shifter the DCO has—it must be big.”
“What can we do to stop him?”
Trevor lifted a brow. “You sure you want to get involved in this, now that you know who—and what—you’ll be facing? You’ve probably figured this out, but Thorn isn’t exactly the kind of man you want to piss off unless you’re ready to go all in. You take a swing at him and miss, and you probably won’t get another chance. John found that out the hard way.”
He’d known from the first day he met Alina that she wasn’t the kind of woman to run from a fight, so he wasn’t surprised when she nodded.
“After seeing Sage and understanding what Thorn did to her—and people like her—I’m ready to take my chances against him,” she said. “If that’s not enough, the asshole has Wade working for him. No way in hell I’m walking away from that.”
His gut reaction was to tell her there was no way in hell he was letting her walk into it. But he couldn’t do that. She was a trained field agent, the same as he was. Even so, the thought of her being in danger like she was tonight made it suddenly hard to breathe.
“Okay,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure you were going into this with your eyes wide open.”
She reached up to push her hair behind her ear. “So what do we do first?”
“Mostly, it’s a waiting game at this point. I have a lot of people working on this, and we’ve given them a lot to work with.”
“What do you mean?”
“Adam and the analyst you saw the other day—Evan—are looking into the Russian ammo angle, Wade’s involvement, and Thorn’s new hybrid squad to see if they can come up with anything to tell us what he’s planning,” Trevor said. “While they’re doing that, Tanner is trying to learn where Thorn’s hybrid farm is located. Plus, we still have Larson going through the DCO employee files to see if he recognizes anyone from the morning of John’s murder. In addition to that, I have an FBI contact named Tony Moretti out in Sacramento doing forensic work on the remains of the bomb I sent out there. With all those people digging, someone is going to find something soon. We just have to give them a chance.”
Alina gazed at him thoughtfully. “You realize that I’ve just learned more about the DCO and what’s going on around here in the past ten minutes than I have in the past four days, right?”
Trevor winced. “Yeah, sorry about that.”
She shook her head. “Don’t be. Dick hired me to spy on you. And even though my a-hole radar was pinging on high alert every time he said something, I still bought his crap. So if one of us owes the other an apology, it’s me.”
Trevor’s mouth edged up. “There’s enough blame to go around, so let’s just call it even and go from here, okay?”
Alina smiled, and he felt something stir in his chest. Damn, the woman had a strange effect on him.
She leaned forward a little, resting her chin on her hand. “What changed? What made you start trusting me when you were so sure I was on Dick’s side?”
He opened his mouth to answer, then realized he didn’t know.
