Chapter 7

“I still can’t believe he’s gone,” Abby Warner said over her shoulder to Tate as she unlocked the door of Bell’s office and pushed it open. “He was absolutely the nicest person I’ve ever worked with. I swear I’m not just saying that. I don’t think I ever heard the man complain, not even once. And he was beyond brilliant. One of our very best doctors and an even better genetic researcher.”

Tate exchanged looks with Chase as he followed the chief administrator into the office. He and the deputy had talked to several other doctors and nurses at the Scarborough Medical Center before checking in with Abby Warner, and the story had been consistent so far. McKinley Bell had been hardworking and friendly, passionate about his patients and his research, and more than willing to pull extra shifts if they needed him to. Even though he’d won a lot of awards and recognition for the work he’d done in the field of genetics, they couldn’t find anyone who’d admit having a beef with him. Tate wasn’t surprised. He didn’t think anyone there had anything to do with Bell’s death. Not unless they were using the large hospital as a cover for hybrid research, of course, which wasn’t very likely.

Still, there was always a chance he might stumble over someone who knew what Bell might have been involved in and point him in the right direction.

“Ma’am, can you think of anyone who might have wanted Dr. Bell dead?” Chase asked.

The woman frowned. “That’s an odd question. Wasn’t McKinley killed by a wild animal?”

Tate let the deputy dig himself out of the hole he’d just dug. Abby Warner had already expressed a goodly amount of suspicion, wondering why there was a deputy from a neighboring county and an agent from Homeland investigating an animal attack. Asking if the man had any enemies had definitely put her antennas up.

While Chase smoothed over the woman’s concerns by explaining that since he was assisting in a federal case, he was forced to follow the standard checklists, Tate wandered around Bell’s office. It wasn’t a big space, but it was neat and orderly and as spotlessly clean as an operating room. There were framed pictures mounted on the walls, everything from landscapes and wilderness photos to smiling people dressed up in fancy clothes. Oddly enough, there weren’t any framed degrees on the wall. Every doctor he’d ever encountered proudly displayed them.

Tate looked around again, thinking he must have missed them. Nope, there wasn’t a single degree in the entire place. Bell’s decision to leave his sheepskins in the closet made Tate’s mouth edge up. That said something about the guy. Something good.

He wandered over to the big oak desk by the window. While most people would have positioned their desk to face the door, Bell had turned his around so he could look out over the carefully landscaped lawn. The foliage on the trees was an explosion of orange and yellow with a bit of green thrown in here and there from the firs. Tate had never thought of himself as a nature lover, but even he had to admit this scene was breathtaking.

Yet another thing to like about the man.

Tate forced his gaze away from the brilliant display of colors outside the window and studied the desk. It was just as neat and orderly as the rest of the space, the handwriting on the desk calendar so legible, it almost looked like it had been printed. In addition to the computer, there was also one of those fancy pen sets mounted on a polished hardwood base. Kendra had already remotely accessed the computer, copied everything last night, and found absolutely nothing of interest, so there was no point in wasting time doing it again. Bell didn’t even have any suspicious-looking emails worth reading. From the looks of it, the man hadn’t used his work computer for anything personal.

Tate started to open one of the desk drawers but stopped as the engraving on one of Bell’s fancy pens caught his eye. Tate picked it up, turning it toward the window and the late afternoon light.

The engraving read Hearts Lost but then Found.

Tate was a guy, and even he recognized romantic crap when he saw it. Obviously, Dr. Bell had a girlfriend out there. The fact that the pen set was positioned strategically front and center on the desk so the man could see the inscription every time he looked up told Tate this secret someone must have been a pretty big deal to him.

“Was Dr. Bell in a relationship with anyone that you know of?” he asked Abby, putting the pen back in its holder.

The fact that nothing about a relationship had shown up in the DCO’s background scrub had Tate curious. The only way that happened was if Bell had gone out of his way to hide it.

Abby looked at Tate. “I don’t think so. If he was, he never mentioned it to me. You could talk to his clinical research assistant, Joanne Harvey. They worked together for years and were good friends. If anyone would know if he was seeing anyone, it’d be her.”

Tate glanced at Chase, but he shook his head. Apparently, the deputy didn’t know anything about Joanne Harvey either. “I wasn’t aware that the doctor had an assistant.”

Abby waved her hand. “That’s because, technically, she wasn’t McKinley’s assistant. On all the HR paperwork, she’s a general researcher, but that’s just a formality. She’s worked exclusively for him for the past five years.”

Another quick look in Chase’s direction told him the deputy was thinking the same thing he was. If anyone knew what the doctor had gotten himself into, it would probably be Joanne Harvey. Hell, she might even be the finder of lost hearts mentioned in the engraving.

“Is Ms. Harvey here now?” Chase asked Abby. “We’d like to talk to her.”

The woman shook her head sadly. “Joanne didn’t come in today. In fact, she’s been out since we learned of McKinley’s death.”

Huh. Okay, the chances of Joanne Harvey being in a relationship with Bell just increased. “We’ll need to get her home address from you,” Tate said.

Abby nodded. “Of course. Follow me.”

Tate was halfway to the door when the photo in one of the frames caught his attention, bringing him to a standstill so fast, Chase almost ran him over. He ignored the deputy and moved closer to the photo. Damn. He wasn’t seeing things. It was Mahsood in the picture with Bell. The two men were standing with several other people, and all of them except Mahsood were proudly holding some kind of award plaque.

“Excuse me, Ms. Warner,” he said, keenly aware that Chase had taken an interest in what had caught his attention. “Do you know when this picture was taken?”

The woman slipped her reading glasses on and leaned closer. “Ah, yes. That was the award banquet last December in Portland. McKinley and his team had just won the Allan Lasker Genetic Research Award. It was the highlight of the entire evening.”

Tate pointed at Mahsood. “Was this man part of the team?”

“Dr. Mahsood? Technically, he wasn’t, and his name didn’t officially appear on the award, but he’d mentored all the doctors on the team at one time or another over the years, so they insisted he join them for the photo.” Abby’s lips curved. “He’s very respected in this part of the country for his innovative work in the field of genetic engineering. As I remember it, he’d been out of the country for some time just prior to the banquet, and McKinley was thrilled he’d made it back in time.”

Tate stifled a snort. Mahsood had been out of the country prior to that because he’d been in Costa Rica creating a group of insane hybrids. Tate couldn’t believe Mahsood had been ballsy enough to go straight from that bloodbath to a formal award ceremony, like everything that had gone on down there had been nothing more than a day at the office. Heck, maybe for Mahsood, creating monsters was just another day at the office.

Regardless, it was now a certainty that Mahsood and Bell knew each other, and the chances were getting better and better that the link was the thing that had gotten the man tortured and killed.

Tate was still considering the ramifications of that as Abby led them out of the office and toward the administrative section. Even if he went with the assumption that Bell and Mahsood had been working together on a new hybrid program, that didn’t explain how Bell ended up in a cabin in the middle of nowhere sliced and diced. The theory that they were creating a new hybrid out for revenge didn’t feel right. And he seriously doubted Mahsood had killed Bell.

He was still wondering where that left him when they walked past a brass plaque mounted on the wall with the name Brannon Memorial Wing emblazoned on it. Tate stopped to take a closer look, noticing Chase must have been catching onto how he worked, because the deputy swerved before he mowed him over.

“Ms. Warner, is this Brannon as in Rebecca Brannon?” Tate asked.

He seriously doubted it could be anyone else. How many Brannons could there be in this part of the world?

Abby beamed. “Yes. Do you know her? She’s an amazing woman, isn’t she? This whole wing of the facility was built with funding from her charitable organization.”

“Really?” Tate said. “A whole wing?”

He’d be a lot more impressed if he didn’t know the woman so well.

Abby nodded, her head bobbing like one of those toys. “She’s very generous, but that’s to be expected. The Brannons have lived in the area for generations and have always been very supportive of the local community. They’ve funded the construction of hospitals, libraries, children’s centers, as well as domestic violence and homeless shelters for decades. Everyone adores them.”

Tate wondered if people would revere the Brannons as much if they knew how many people had died at the hands of Rebecca’s hybrid research projects or that she’d abandoned her own daughter in a mental institute for most of her life, almost certainly because she didn’t want the girl getting in the way of her political career.

He reached into his jacket pocket and took out his notebook, then flipped through it until he found the picture of Ashley he’d taped in it that morning before leaving his hotel room. It was a crappy photo, taken from a cheap convenience store camera a few hours after the shifter had escaped the mental institution. It was a grainy, black-and-white image, but it was the best shot they had of her.

“Have you seen this woman around by any chance, possibly with Dr. Bell?” he asked Abby.

This was Rebecca Brannon’s hometown. Maybe Ashley had come back here looking for Mommy Dearest instead of Mahsood, and Bell had simply been collateral damage.

Abby frowned at the picture and shook her head. “I’m sorry. She looks familiar, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her. Who is she?”

Tate slipped his notebook back into his pocket. “Just a person of interest on another case.”

The woman nodded and continued leading the way down the hall, but one look in Chase’s direction suggested the cop wasn’t so gullible. While Tate doubted the deputy recognized Ashley as a relative of Rebecca’s, he was smart enough to know Tate wouldn’t flash her picture if she wasn’t important.

“So, you going to tell me yet what the hell all that was about in there?” Chase asked when they left the research center a little while later. “Who the hell is this Mahsood guy, and what’s his involvement in all this? Don’t try to tell me he’s not involved, because your face lit up like a Christmas tree when you saw him and Bell in that picture. And how do Congresswoman Brannon and that woman in the surveillance photo fit into this?”

Tate came to a halt beside the passenger side of the police car, trying to figure out how much of the story to get into. He didn’t want Chase walking into a situation totally blind, because confusion at the wrong moment could get the guy—and possibly him—killed. But full disclosure wasn’t an option, either.

Ultimately, he decided to tell Chase enough to give him a clue what kind of crap he was wading into without revealing details that would completely freak him out.

“Mahsood has been involved in some extremely unconventional medical research both here in the United States and abroad,” he said after they’d both climbed in the police cruiser. “Research that has led to a lot of people ending up dead—or worse.”

Chase regarded him thoughtfully. “Does this research Mahsood is doing have anything to do with the way Bell was killed?”

Damn, this guy was dangerously good when it came to his gut.

“Yes,” Tate said, not elaborating further.

Chase didn’t push for more on the subject. “Okay. What about the woman in the photo?”

“The picture came from the security camera of a convenience store a few hours from here. She stumbled in there a little while after escaping from one of Mahsood’s research facilities.”

“Escaping? She was held there against her will?”

Tate inclined his head.

Chase sighed. “And Brannon? How is she involved in this?”

“You sure you want to know?” Tate asked. “And before you answer, stop and seriously think about this. Brannon is a powerful woman. You get on the wrong side of this, and kissing your career goodbye will be the least of your concerns.”

“I’m sure,” Chase answered without hesitation. “If I only wanted to walk down the safe paths, I never would have joined the marines, become a cop, or gotten involved in this case. I said I’d trust you. Now, it’s time for you to start trusting me.”

Tate took a deep breath, knowing he was taking one hell of a big leap of faith. But his gut was telling him it was the right thing to do. “Rebecca Brannon has been funding Mahsood’s research. The woman in the picture from the security camera is her daughter. Mahsood was experimenting on her, almost certainly with Brannon’s full knowledge and support.”

If Chase tried to hide his surprise, he wasn’t able to pull it off. “You have any proof of this? Proof solid enough to go after a woman this powerful?”

Tate shook his head. “No. And to be truthful, I doubt I’m going to be finding any up here. Which is fine, because that’s not why I was sent here.”

“Then why are you here?”

“To figure out what killed Bell and make sure it doesn’t kill anyone else,” Tate said. “Let’s get over to see this research assistant and see if she can help with that.”

Chase started the car and put it in gear but then hesitated. “You mean who killed Bell, right?”

It took Tate a moment to realize exactly what he’d said, and by then, it was too late to worry about it. He turned to gaze out the passenger window. “Yeah, sure. That’s what I meant.”

* * *

“What is this place?” Zarina asked as she set down her pack and knelt beside him on the ground.

Tanner didn’t answer her question. They were a dozen feet from a deep, slow-moving stretch of the Entiat River, less than an hour’s hike from the camp. Tanner could hear the crunch of tires on gravel as a heavy vehicle moved along the forest access road a couple hundred yards away. He remembered that rough, narrow road well, even if he’d only been semiconscious the last time he’d traveled over it.

He closed his eyes, vividly remembering the smell of the humid summer air the night Stutmeir’s men had brought him here. He could almost feel the hard bed of the pickup truck digging into his spine as the vehicle bounced and jounced along the unpaved route that was little more than a firebreak through this section of the forest. It had been a night he’d never forget. The weight and scent of the four dead bodies that had been piled on top of him in the back of the vehicle guaranteed that.

As much as he’d never wanted to come back here, there was a part of him that always knew he would. In the privacy of his own mind, he could admit that the place terrified him. But at the same time, it called to him. He had a history with this stretch of riverbank.

Opening his eyes, he reached out and scooped away some of the pine needles that had collected in the shallow depression in front of him, making it easier to see the outline. There were even a few telltale sections of dirt as evidence that the soil had been broken up and pushed to the side.

“This is the place Stutmeir’s men brought the bodies after the hybrid experiments,” he said softly. “This spot right here was my grave. As things go, it wasn’t bad, I guess. It had a nice view of the river.”

Zarina stared at him, understanding and horror crossing her face in equal measures. “Oh God. You were…?”

“Buried?” Tanner finished, because he knew she wouldn’t be able to. Her beautiful, amazing mind simply couldn’t envision something that terrible. “Yeah, I was buried here, along with Spencer, Bryce, and all the other homeless people and hikers Stutmeir’s doctors experimented on.”

Zarina’s head whipped around as she took in the dozen or so other shallow depressions scattered around the clearing. “Are the bodies still here?” she asked hesitantly, her voice low as if she was worried about disturbing them.

“No. At least I don’t think so. The DCO cleaned the place up after taking down Stutmeir so no one would stumble over the remains and draw attention to the area.”

Even though the bodies weren’t there, the thought of them was enough to make him remember Stutmeir’s men dragging him out of the back of the pickup truck along with the others and tossing him into the holes they’d dug. Then they’d started dumping dirt on him. They’d buried him alive, and there hadn’t been a damn thing he could do to stop them.

He remembered everything so clearly because the drug Zarina had injected him with to trick the doctors into thinking he was dead had made his heart rate drop and trapped his fully functioning mind inside a nearly comatose body. He’d been completely aware the whole time the men had buried him, and the sensation of the dirt hitting his face and covering his helpless body had taken him back to the very worst day of his life and almost crushed his soul.

Kneeling there now, reliving the memories, was enough to send his pulse racing and make his fangs extend. He didn’t realize how close he was to completely losing it until Zarina reached out and rested her hand on his forearm.

Tears filled her eyes, spilling over and running down her face. “I’m right here, Tanner. You’re not alone.”

His pulse slowed at the sound of her voice, his fangs retracting. For about the millionth time, he wondered what it was about Zarina that gave her the ability to pull him back from the edge with nothing more than a touch or even a whispered word or two. He’d never fully understood how she did it, but it had been like that from the very first moment she’d spoken to him mere hours after Stutmeir’s doctors had given him the first dose of hybrid serum.

He wanted to reach up and wipe her tears away, but his hands were too dirty. Literally and figuratively. Sometimes he didn’t think he’d ever be clean enough to touch her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I never knew what they were planning. I thought they were going to dump you in the woods. If I’d known they were going to bury you, I would have never given you that drug. I should have tried to stop them from taking you.”

“If you hadn’t given me the drug, they would have kept giving me dose after dose of that serum until my body ripped itself apart,” he said hoarsely. “And if you tried to stop them from taking me, you probably would have found yourself in one of these graves without the possibility of ever crawling out. So don’t be sorry. You saved me. That’s all that matters.”

Zarina shook her head, her mouth opening but no words coming out.

Before he could stop himself, he reached out and grabbed the hand she had resting on his forearm, giving it a firm squeeze. “When those men grabbed me that day in the forest, I was sure I was dead. When they gave me those two doses of hybrid serum, turning me into a monster, I prayed I would die. And when things were at their darkest, you came and risked everything for me. I can’t put into words how much that means to me, because you did more than save my life that day. You gave me a reason to keep going.”

She wiped the wetness from her cheeks with her free hand, blinking at him in confusion. “Keep going? What are you saying? That you’d given up on living? Why?”

He shook his head, opening his mouth to tell her that wasn’t it. But the truth was, at that point in his life nearly eighteen months ago, he had been close to giving up. He’d pulled so far away from the rest of the world, there wasn’t much left other than ending it all.

Zarina’s hand tightened around his. “Tanner, talk to me. Please.”

He regarded her silently for a moment. Maybe it was time he got everything out in the open. Maybe then she’d understand why he couldn’t take her antiserum and why she was wasting her life staying out here trying to help him.

“This isn’t the first time I ended up flat on my back in a shallow depression, getting dirt dumped in my face,” he said quietly. “The other time it happened, I was pretty sure I was going to die, too.”

He ran his free hand over the grave he’d clawed his way out of after Zarina’s drug had worn off. As the loose, earthy soil shifted between his fingers, he vividly remembered the sensation of the rich dirt getting sucked up his nose and into his lungs as he’d fought to get out of the hole. It had seemed to take forever, and he’d almost given up. But it was the memory of the beautiful Russian doctor with the voice of an angel that had kept him clawing for the surface. At the time, he remembered thinking that he had to make it out so he could find a way to help her.

Zarina didn’t say anything, didn’t prompt him. Instead, she knelt there in the dirt beside him, holding his hand and waiting for him to get the courage to say the things that needed to be said.

“Ryan and I were in northern Afghanistan on our last deployment with the 2nd Ranger Battalion,” he said, the pain of thinking back to the last battle he’d fought with his friend making it hard to get the words out. “It was in a little place called the Kunduz Province that I doubt ninety-nine percent of the world could find on a map, even with the help of Google. The mission was supposed to be easy. All we had to do was babysit a bunch of Afghanis as they picked up a local warlord. But everything fell apart, and we ended up in a meat grinder. All three members of my fire team died right in front of me. Ryan’s guys bought it, too. In the span of ten minutes, our entire squad was wiped out.”

Thinking about Chad, Vas, and Danny dying was enough to push him to the edge of his control again. His fingers tingled and his gums ached. He breathed through it, focusing on Zarina’s warm scent and her gentle touch until the urge to run—or tear something apart—passed.

“I was almost taken out by a Taliban fighter with a rocket-propelled grenade and ended up getting flipped through the air,” he continued. “I came down in an artillery crater and immediately got pelted with falling dirt and rocks. It felt like I was being buried alive.”

Zarina looked down at the depression in the ground in front of them, her face going pale as she recognized the similarities to what had happened here.

Tanner swallowed hard as he remembered what it had been like lying in that hole over in Afghanistan, every part of his body hurting while he wondered if he was going to die. Wondering if anyone would ever find him in that damn crater. They were exactly the same feelings and emotions he’d experienced here.

“Going through something like that once was bad enough, but having the same thing happen to me again here?” He shook his head. “I…I didn’t handle it well.”

Zarina took his other hand in hers, and he used the strength she gave him to keep talking, to get the rest of the story out.

“I thought I’d get over everything that happened over there, all my guys dying, you know?” He shrugged. “I’d seen other men in the battalion die in combat before, and it hadn’t shaken me up too bad. I mean, I’d be upset about it for a couple of weeks but then get right back into the job. That’s what soldiers are supposed to do. It’s what I’d done for years. But for some reason, that time was different. I couldn’t shake the memories. The images of my guys dying were there every time I closed my eyes. I stopped sleeping at night and couldn’t concentrate on anything. Everything became a haze, and I barely remember coming home from Afghanistan after the deployment. The only clear memory of that time I have is what happened to my guys, and I had the crystal-clear knowledge that I couldn’t be a Ranger anymore. When it came time to reenlist, I couldn’t do it. So I walked away.”

“Did you talk to Ryan at all during this time?” Zarina asked. “He’d gone through the same thing. Was he having problems dealing with it, too?”

“Yeah, but most people probably didn’t notice it. I knew him well enough to recognize he was hurting, too, just in a different way.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Before what happened in Kunduz, Ryan and I were like brothers. But after that, we both changed. It was like there was this big pink elephant in the room, but both of us acted like we didn’t see it. I pulled away from everyone, Ryan included.” Tanner sighed. “As for Ryan, he bought a big motorcycle and started street racing and staying out in the clubs around Seattle until the early morning hours, stumbling in hungover just in time for morning physical fitness training. It wasn’t long after that we stopped talking to each other altogether. It was like we woke up one morning and realized we didn’t know each other anymore. I didn’t even tell him when I made the decision to walk away from the Rangers.”

“Didn’t anyone in your unit notice what was happening?” Zarina asked, frustration clear in her voice.

He shrugged. “Sure they noticed. The army really tries, but as a general rule, soldiers tend to stay out of one another’s heads. If you show up to work on time and do your job, the thoughts rolling around in your bean are your own business. But I had to talk to a few docs in order to get out-processed, and they figured out I’d had my brain bucket rattled a few times. That’s where the VA disability came from. I didn’t want to take it, but it’s pretty standard in the military now. Get blown up a time or two, get a few bucks from the Veterans Administration. I’m not even sure if there’s a way within the VA bureaucracy to give it back.”

Zarina scowled. “That’s crazy! Why the hell wouldn’t you want to take the money? Traumatic head injury is serious, and it’s a common side effect of concussive blasts.”

Tanner couldn’t refute that. Zarina was a doctor, so she was probably right. But for him, getting money simply because you’d been knocked unconscious a few times didn’t feel right. Not when there were soldiers out there coming home with body parts missing. His problems were nothing compared with that.

“Regardless,” he said. “After I filled out a few forms and watched a couple of videos about dealing with stress, I was done with the army, and they were done with me.”

That answer didn’t seem to make Zarina very happy if the look on her face was any indication, but she let it go. “Okay, so you got out of the army and went back to see your family?”

“Yeah. I thought spending time with them would fix everything.” He winced at how incredibly stupid and naive that sounded. “My family had always been close, so I assumed being with them was what I needed to get me out of the fog I was in after getting out of the army.”

“But it wasn’t?”

He shook his head. “It was like I didn’t know how to fit into their world anymore. They wanted to hear stories about what I’d seen and done, but I wanted to forget it all. They tried to help, but they couldn’t understand the mood swings, the anxiety, the strange sleep patterns, the hypervigilance, the hours I spent staring up at the ceiling. Hell, I didn’t understand it, either, but it was tougher on them. I was someone wearing the face of the man they knew as their son, their brother, their friend, but I wasn’t the person they’d known all their lives. It scared the hell out of them.”

Zarina was quiet for a moment. “Did you try to get professional help?”

“Sure. I wasn’t stupid. I knew there was something wrong with me. I tried to get an appointment to talk to someone at the VA in Seattle, but the waiting list was insane. There are way too many vets needing help and way too few people helping them.” He shrugged. “I made the appointment even though part of me knew I’d never show up. I felt like I was a car flying down the interstate at a hundred miles an hour with one lug holding each tire on. I knew it was only a matter of time until a wheel fell off and I crashed and burned. I was right.”

“What happened?” Zarina asked in a hesitant voice, as if she really didn’t want to know.

Tanner took a deep breath, shame and embarrassment nearly overwhelming him. “Dad came downstairs one morning and found me sitting at the kitchen table where I’d been the night before when he and Mom went to bed. I was staring out the window at the sun coming up. He said good morning, then started to make coffee like he always did. When I just kept sitting there without saying anything, he figured out pretty damn quick something wasn’t right with me.”

Tanner raked his hand through his long hair, wishing he didn’t have to tell Zarina about what happened next, but he needed to.

“He wanted to know what the hell was wrong. I know Dad meant well, but I couldn’t explain the things I was feeling. I don’t know what happened. One second, we were shouting at each other, and the next, my hands were around his throat, and I had him pinned against the wall.”

Tanner didn’t look at Zarina, afraid to see the horror in her eyes. But when he risked a glance in her direction, he saw that she didn’t seem horrified at all. Maybe because she’d seen him lose it so many times that nothing he did shocked her anymore.

“That wasn’t even the worst of it,” he continued. “When Cam jumped out of bed and ran downstairs, I thought it was gunfire. I went into total combat mode and tossed my dad across the kitchen right as my mom and brother hurried in. I’ll never forget the look on her face. It was like she’d seen a monster. That’s when I realized what the hell I’d done.” Tears blurred his vision, and he forced them back. “That’s when I left. I knew if I didn’t, I’d end up hurting someone at some point, so I bailed.”

“Was that when you went to the homeless shelter?”

He nodded. “Yeah, but that didn’t work out any better than being at home. Too many people and too much noise. That’s actually where I met Spencer. He’s the one who suggested coming out here, that the solitude of the forest might help. I didn’t realize he’d taken his own advice until Stutmeir captured me and I saw Spencer in the cell next to mine.”

Zarina’s lips curved into a small smile. “You must have been thrilled when you came back out here and discovered he was okay.”

“Yeah, it was good seeing him,” Tanner agreed. He’d been freaked out when he’d first caught the hybrid scent on the breeze and followed it all the way to the prepper camp. He’d been sure he was losing his marbles. “But if we’re being honest, there was some baggage that came along with finding them, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“I expected that seeing Spencer and the others would bring back some bad memories from my time in the lodge, and they did. But after I’d found them, I started having flashbacks about the battle in Kunduz again.”

“That’s not surprising.” Zarina rubbed her right thumb back and forth over his hand. “I’m not an expert in psychology, but I’ve read enough to know that when it comes to PTSD, flashbacks can be triggered by anything that pulls you back into those horrible moments when the trauma first happened. Hearing Spencer and the other guys talk about crawling out of the same kind of shallow grave you were in put you right back in that crater in Afghanistan. All these horrible events are interconnected in your mind, and they’re not going away until you find a way to deal with them.”

“That’s easy to say but hard to do.” He knew Zarina was right, but he wasn’t sure how to deal with them. “At some level, I blame myself for the death of the guys on my team as well as the Afghanis working with us. In my gut, I know that’s crazy. There was nothing I could have done differently that would have prevented their deaths. Every one of us was living on borrowed time the moment we went on that mission. That doesn’t do anything to change the feelings of guilt I have, though.”

“Guilt.” Understanding slowly dawned on her face. “Is that why you don’t want to take the antiserum? Because you’re beating yourself up about being alive when everyone else on your team in Afghanistan died?”

He dropped his gaze to their intertwined hands. “I suppose that’s part of it. Part of me keeps thinking I have no right to be alive when men who depended on me to bring them home didn’t make it. But it’s more than that.”

She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

He was so screwed up, he barely understood himself most of the time.

Tanner didn’t say anything for a moment, using the time to figure out how to put into words what he’d kept hidden in the darkest, most private corner of his mind for a very long time.

“I’ve lied to myself from the day those doctors turned me into a hybrid,” he finally admitted. “I allowed myself to believe the beast inside me was entirely to blame for me being an out-of-control monster. That it wasn’t me doing all those things but the animal inside me.”

She sagged a little, her body relaxing as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. “You’re scared to take the antiserum because if it works and you’re still out of control, you’ll have to face the fact that it was never the beast inside you. You’ll have to accept that it’s your PTSD and a past you’ve never wanted to deal with.”

There it was. Out there for the world to see. Or Zarina at least. As far as he was concerned, she was the whole world.

“Stupid, huh? Especially since I had violent episodes way before I ever became a hybrid.” He snorted. “I guess I’d rather hide away and lie to myself by blaming the corrupt part of my DNA than face the fact that I’m broken.”

Zarina’s eyes flashed. Tightening her grip on his hands, she stood and tugged him to his feet. “You are not broken! You’re a man who went through one horrible event after another. But you’ve kept going, fighting against your inner demons as hard as you fight to protect the people you care about. Instead, all you see are those moments when you’ve lost control. You forget that every time you lost control, you regained it before you hurt anyone important to you. If you choose not to take the antiserum, that’s your decision, and I’ll support it. I won’t push you to take a drug you don’t want to take. But I refuse to stand around for one more second and watch the man I care about wallow in this pain by himself.”

Tanner opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off.

“I won’t let you push me away, and I won’t let you deal with those issues alone anymore. If you don’t want to talk about your PTSD with anyone else, then you’ll have to talk about it with me. If you want to isolate yourself from the rest of the world, that’s fine, too, but we’ll do it together.”

Zarina’s heart was beating a hundred miles an hour. He’d never seen her get this upset before. Suddenly, a little bit of the weight he’d been carrying on his shoulders disappeared. He was still carrying an ass load of baggage, but by standing up to him and refusing to let him go it alone anymore, Zarina had somehow taken some of it herself.

He gave her a lopsided grin. “So, you care about me, huh?”

She seemed taken aback for a moment, eyeing him like she thought he was up to something. Or stupid. “Yes, but that should be obvious. I’ve chased you all the way across this very wide country and hiked alone through the wilderness to find you. Of course I care about you. You’re the most important person in the world to me.”

His inner lion let out a soft hum of contentment. “Then I guess I should admit one other reason I had for not taking the antiserum.”

“What’s that?”

“A part of me was worried you wouldn’t be interested in me if I wasn’t a hybrid anymore. That I wouldn’t be the same scientific challenge I am now.”

She regarded him thoughtfully for a moment. “Tanner, I’m interested in you because of who you are, not what you are. I thought that was obvious.”

He shrugged. “I’m a guy. Sometimes we miss the obvious stuff. It’s genetic.”

“I know for a fact it isn’t,” Zarina said. “You’re simply a stubborn man who would rather be alone than let a woman put herself at risk for you or share your pain. It’s time to let me in.”

Tanner suddenly realized the feelings he had for her weren’t one-sided—she felt the same way about him as he felt about her. It was insane to believe. She was a beautiful, intelligent woman who could have any man in the world, while he was an unemployed, damaged veteran with a moody personality and claws that came out at the worst possible time. He didn’t see the attraction on her part, but maybe it was time to accept it. That was why he stopped thinking so damn much and let instinct take over.

Cupping her face in his hand, he lowered his head and covered her mouth with his, kissing her like he’d wanted to kiss her since the day she’d swept in and risked her life to save his. Her taste nearly made him delirious, and he groaned in appreciation.

Zarina sighed and weaved her fingers into his hair, urging him to kiss her harder. He grasped her waist, tugging her close even as he pulled her ponytail holder off with his other hand and buried it in her silky tresses.

His body responded immediately, desire rippling through him as his tongue found hers, his cock hardening, his gums and fingers starting to ache. For once, he ignored the signs of a hybrid episode and simply lost himself in Zarina. This moment was exactly the way he’d dreamed it would be, even if he’d never imagined it would happen.

She glided her tongue along the tip of his, teasing it and making him chase her. Tanner pursued with a soft growl, fitting her more snugly against him. She was all womanly curves against the hard planes of his body.

He’d just about caught her tongue when she pulled away.

The move yanked Tanner out of the moment so quickly, it was painful. Breathing ragged, he gazed down at her, terrified he’d done something wrong. Pushed too fast. Nicked her tongue with his fangs.

But Zarina was regarding him with a drowsy, languid expression, a fire burning in her eyes so bright, he wondered if she possessed shifter DNA of her own.

“Maybe we should finish this back at the cabin,” she suggested.

He would rather have gone to someplace that had a big, luxurious bed made with soft sheets, fluffy blankets, and mountains of pillows. But the cabin would do just fine. Unless…

“Unless you think we should wait until later,” he said. “For a better time and place?”

Zarina went up on tiptoe to press a gentle kiss to his lips. “There will never be a better time or place to be with you.”

Stepping back, she took his hand and gave it a tug. He reached down and scooped up her pack, falling into step beside her and praying he was doing the right thing.