“That still doesn’t explain why you didn’t tell us you were alive,” Trevor reminded John.
John exchanged looks with his wife, who in turn glanced at their daughter. After a moment, she shook her head.
“Perhaps we should take the rest of this conversation downstairs,” John said. “There’s a lot more we need to talk about, and this isn’t the best place to do it.”
Cree pressed a kiss to her husband’s cheek. “Boo and I will stay up here and play some video games.”
When Morgan seemed torn between staying with Cree and Boo and going with John, she laughed and swatted him on the shoulder. “Go downstairs. We’ll be fine up here.”
After giving her hand a squeeze and Boo a hug, John led the way out of the room and down the hall, Adam at his side. Suddenly stopping in the middle of the corridor, Adam pressed his hand to the wall. A moment later, a section of it slid back, revealing a set of stairs. Trevor followed him down the steps along with Alina and the others.
“Do the people who own the building know this is here?” Alina asked Adam over her shoulder.
“I own the building,” Adam said when they reached the bottom. “The apartments upstairs provide good cover for all the people who live here. Plus, we’re close to the DCO.”
By close, Adam meant ten blocks from the DC office.
“How long have you been here?” Landon asked when he and Ivy caught up with the rest of them.
“About five years,” Adam said. “I purchased the building shortly after leaving the DCO, but it took time to build all this.”
“All this” turned out to be a huge underground operation center that was bigger than the one the DCO had. There had to be thirty shifters manning the computers and digital map boards. One of them, a tall, slender, graceful woman who’d accompanied Morgan on the mission in Maine, walked over to whisper something in Adam’s ear. Adam nodded, then grinned at her. She smiled in return, cupping his jaw in one elegant hand before walking back over to check something on the computer.
“Who’s that?” Trevor asked.
“Milan,” Adam said before leading the way to the big conference room on the other side of the room.
“Is he always so talkative?” Alina asked as they followed.
“No,” Trevor said. “Normally, he’s worse.”
Once in the conference room, Trevor and Alina took a seat around the table with the other DCO agents, then waited for John to begin.
“First,” John said as he moved to stand at the head of the table. “It was my decision to keep you in the dark and let you think I was dead. Adam was against it from the beginning, but I insisted.”
“Why?” Kendra asked.
Of all of them, Kendra had worked the most closely with John. Keeping a secret like this from her had to hurt.
“Because I’m not naive,” John explained. “Thorn chose to take his shot at me on the DCO complex because that was the easiest place to get to me, but he could just as easily have set that bomb in my apartment building. If he had, Cree and Boo and a lot of other innocent people would have died. I simply couldn’t take that chance. As far as Thorn and the rest of the world was concerned, I was dead. I decided to let him think that, both for the safety of my family and because I thought it might finally make Thorn tip his hand.”
“I’m fine with that,” Ivy said. “But you could have told us. We’re your friends.”
John gave her an apologetic smile. “I intended to tell you eventually. As soon as the heat was off you or when we figured out what Thorn was up to.”
Trevor wasn’t thrilled with John’s decision or his explanation of it, and from the looks on the faces of his coworkers, neither were they. But he understood why John had done it. Back at that warehouse, he would have done anything to get Alina out of there safely. He hadn’t thought twice about jumping out of a second-story window, even though he hadn’t known what would be waiting for him on the ground.
“Well, since Dreya and I had to sneak back into the United States, I’m guessing we’re not here because the heat is off us,” Braden pointed out. “Does that mean you’ve figured out what Thorn is up to?”
John looked at Trevor and gave him a nod.
Trevor gave him a nod in return. “Before I get into Thorn and his insane schemes, there’s something I’d like to ask first. What started all this?”
John frowned. “All what?”
Trevor gestured around them, taking in the conference room and the command center beyond. “All this. Why is it here? What does it do? I know Thorn did something horrible a long time ago, but what was so bad that it put all this into motion and made you and Adam spend the past decade trying to put him in jail?”
On the other side of the table, Landon nodded. “I’d like to know that, too.”
