“I thought we were going to Fredericksburg?” Alina asked as they passed straight through the town and kept going until they hit Highway 2 and headed south.
After leaving Dick Coleman’s office, Trevor had told her he’d meet her in front of the admin building, then disappeared. When he showed up fifteen minutes later in a black Suburban, she’d noticed he’d changed out of the black tactical uniform he’d been wearing and into cargo pants and a button-down.
Trevor glanced at his rearview mirror before giving her a smile. “We did go to Fredericksburg—and now we’re leaving. I figured since it’s such a nice day, why not enjoy ourselves with a leisurely drive through the country?”
She lifted a brow. “That’s what this is all about…a nice drive in the country?”
“Yup.”
“Yeah right,” she muttered as he checked the mirror again.
Sighing, Alina turned her attention back to the fat file folder on her lap. It was stuffed full of reports related to all the places Ivy, Landon, and the rest of the rogue shifters had supposedly been sighted. Dick had told her they were a slippery bunch, but she found it difficult to believe they could move from location to location as fast as the DCO agents trying to track them down claimed. It was like they’d put a map up on a wall somewhere and thrown darts at it.
She flipped the page, frowning as she read over the various performance records of the operatives Dick had called “shifters.” To say it read like something out of a movie was putting it mildly.
“Okay, I’m just going to come out and say it,” she told her new partner. “I’m not so sure I buy all this shifter crap. Dick made it seem like it was the real deal, but I gotta tell you, it sounds like BS to me.”
“It’s real,” Trevor said.
Alina waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. “Show me.”
He slanted her a look. “Excuse me?”
She closed the folder and tossed it in the backseat. “You’re supposed to be a shifter, right? So show me what the heck the big fuss is all about.”
Trevor’s jaw flexed. “I’m not a trained monkey at the circus. I don’t do tricks.”
Okay, maybe demanding he perform for her had been uncalled for. She would have said as much when she caught him checking the rearview mirror again. She wanted to ask him who he thought was following them but decided that would be a waste of time. Trevor obviously didn’t trust her enough to tell her what time of day it was, much less who might be following them.
That was okay, because she wasn’t sure she could trust him much either.
It was one more thing that had her once again questioning her decision to leave the CIA. Taking a job in a classified department of Homeland Security she’d never heard of was bad enough, but chasing rogue government agents with a partner she didn’t know the first thing about and couldn’t trust was completely insane.
But then she remembered how much she’d hated her job at the Agency. She’d gotten so burned out on the crappy work they’d had her doing lately it was a miracle she hadn’t gotten herself—or someone else—killed. That’s when she took a breath and told herself that while her first day at the DCO was going a little rocky, she’d made the right choice leaving the CIA. She probably should have done it a long time ago, right after Jodi and the rest of her team had been killed.
“You okay?” Trevor asked suddenly as he drove down the tree-lined rural road.
Alina looked at him, not sure where his question had come from. “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, but your heart rate just shot through the roof, so I figured I should ask.”
All she could do was stare at him in confusion, not sure what the hell he was talking about. “How do you know how fast my heart is beating?”
“It’s a shifter thing,” he said casually, as if he were talking about the weather. “My hearing is good enough to pick up the beating of your heart, and it’s going a little crazy about now.”
She eyed him skeptically, wondering if he was messing with her. Dick had tried to explain the basics of the shifter genetics, but he’d made it sound like they were part animal. None of it made any sense to her. Now she wished she’d asked more questions.
She and Dick had talked for quite a while about Trevor before he’d shown up for the meeting. While Dick hadn’t gone into great detail about what a shifter was, he’d told her repeatedly that she couldn’t trust Trevor and that there was a good chance her new partner was in league with the rogue DCO agents who’d murdered the previous director. After hearing that, she’d expected Wade’s double to walk through the door.
But Trevor wasn’t anything like her old teammate—at least not physically. Wade had been average in every way possible. Trevor was anything but. He was tall and athletic with a wiry build and short, black hair that seemed to be in a permanent state of casual bedhead. Alina had met men who spent a lot of money to get their hair to look like that, but Trevor’s seemed to be completely natural. With lips that quirked constantly, a little scruff covering his jaw, and mischievous, hazel eyes, he seemed like a man who rarely took things very seriously. He’d definitely vexed the crap out of Dick, and even if he was supposed to have been part of a conspiracy to kill the former director, Alina had had a hard time keeping the smile off her face as he’d poked and prodded his boss.
By the time the meeting was over, she was ready to admit that Trevor was an attractive man with a nice body, an infectious grin, and a razor-sharp, wry sense of humor. While she had no idea what the shifter stuff was about, she’d had a hard time seeing him as a traitorous, cold-blooded killer. Then again, she’d never seen a traitorous, cold-blooded killer when she used to look at Wade either, and he’d betrayed the entire team and killed Jodi in the most vicious manner he could. All in all, she was a crappy judge of character.
“Your heart’s beating faster again,” Trevor murmured as he drove past the same gas station they’d passed twice already. “You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” she snapped.
Dammit, he was right. Her heart was thumping harder than normal. It always did when she thought about Wade.
