They shook their heads.
“So do we split up?” Alina asked.
It was obvious that no one liked the idea any better than she did.
“We have to,” Trevor said. “She might be in the lab, or she might be with Frasier and Thorn.”
Milan and Morgan immediately opted to take the lab, while Adam said he’d go after Frasier and Thorn. Unfortunately, that split left her and Trevor in a tough situation. Alina would have preferred to stay with Trevor, but she wasn’t so sure about sending Milan and Morgan into the lab by themselves. She didn’t know the first thing about Milan, but the woman simply didn’t look like a fighter. Morgan might have been a big, strong guy, but would he be able to handle himself in a hostage scenario, or would he be too concerned about Boo to make good decisions?
She could tell from the look on Trevor’s face that he was thinking the exact same thing.
“I’ll go with Adam,” he said, albeit reluctantly. “Alina, you stick with Milan and Morgan. But don’t do anything crazy. If you find Boo, call out over the radio.”
Alina nodded. She had a crazy urge to kiss Trevor before he and Adam left but thought better of it. Probably not the right time and place for that. She settled for catching his eye and reaching out to give his hand a squeeze.
“Be careful,” she whispered, trying to communicate by touch what she couldn’t say out loud.
He nodded. “You, too.”
Turning, he and Adam disappeared into the shadows like they’d never been there, leaving her alone with Milan and Morgan.
“All right,” she said to them. “Let’s go get Boo.”
* * *
“You seriously think these guys are going to give themselves up simply because we ask nicely?” Clayne asked over the radio, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Tanner didn’t want to encourage the wolf shifter, but he had to admit, the guy had a point. The hybrids they were moving in on had been hand-selected by Thorn because they were killers willing to walk into a Ukrainian village and massacre people by the hundreds.
“To be honest, no,” Landon said from beside Tanner as they and Ivy headed toward the entrance on the west side of the gym. “But we have to try, because the alternative is to walk in there and start shooting people in cold blood, and I don’t think anyone here is ready to do that.”
No one said anything.
“Clayne, hang tight outside the front doors with your team,” Landon instructed. “Angelo, you and your team should be able move in through the back without anyone hearing you. If you do, try and take up position near the showers.”
Tanner tried to visualize the building’s floor plan in his head and which doors each of the teams would be using. If Angelo, Minka, Jayson, and Layla could get to the showers without being noticed, they’d only have about fifteen feet of hallway to travel before they’d get to the main part of the gym.
Clayne, Danica, Declan, Braden, and Dreya would have to cover more distance when they came in through the front doors. Since there was almost no chance they could slip in without being seen, the wolf shifter and his team would be fully exposed. Hopefully, the hybrids’ attention would be completely focused to the north and west entrances by then.
“No one moves until I give the word. Clear?” Landon cautioned. “I want eyes on the main gym floor before this goes down.”
“And then?” Clayne asked, still sounding doubtful.
“We move in and hit them from three sides at once. If these hybrids are as rational as Trevor and Alina described, they’ll realize they’re surrounded and give up without this turning into a bloodbath.”
Clayne snorted over the radio. Clearly, he wasn’t betting on the likelihood of that outcome. But he didn’t complain, which was surprising. Clayne usually liked being difficult simply because he was so good at it.
“When you give the word, then,” Clayne said. “Just keep in mind, if Evan’s count is right, there are at least a dozen hybrids who are nearly impossible to kill in there, plus maybe another dozen of Thorn’s hired mercenaries. If things go wrong with your plan, it’ll likely go very bad, very quickly.”
“If we’re lucky, Derek, Diaz, and the other guys will get here soon,” Ivy said. “That should go a long way toward evening the odds.”
“We’re not going to be able to wait,” Jayson pointed out softly. “Last we heard, their helicopter was still twenty minutes out. We have to be in position in the next few minutes in case Trevor and his team run into trouble in the lab. If the shooting starts, and we don’t have these hybrids contained…”
Jayson didn’t bother to finish the sentence, but nobody needed to hear it, including Tanner. Their best hope of dealing with these new hybrids was while they were all in one place, enclosed by four walls, with every exit covered. If they got out of the gym, and he and the others had to hunt them down one by one on the DCO complex or in the woods beyond that, it wouldn’t go well for any of them.
“We don’t wait then,” Landon said. “Move into position now. We go as soon as I get a look inside and give the word—or the moment it looks like Trevor’s team is in trouble.”
* * *
