Chapter 7

Trevor couldn’t believe Alina had been concerned she wouldn’t be able to distract Shishani—and most of the other men around the craps table. All she had to do was smile and laugh at Trevor’s quips, and she had almost every person around looking her way. When Alina turned and ask the table in general why a certain bet had been made, it was insanely simple to step closer to Shishani and slip the drug in his drink.

From that point forward, it was simply a waiting game, though he had to admit he didn’t like the way their suspect kept leaning over to try and engage Alina in conversation. Yeah, she wasn’t really his wife, but Trevor still had a nearly uncontrollable urge to rip the man to shreds. And no, it had nothing to do with being this close to one of the men responsible for John’s death.

He took an almost perverse pleasure in watching Shishani squirm when the drug started kicking in. A minute later, the man excused himself from the table and made a beeline for the bathroom. Alina gave Trevor a questioning look, but he shook his head. Let the guy do his business first. They’d grab him as he was coming out of the bathroom.

Trevor purposely made a lousy bet, then announced he was going to try his hand at roulette, grabbed Alina’s hand, and headed for the nearest table. Halfway there, he veered toward the back of the club instead.

Trevor activated the bug the moment he and Alina stepped into the hallway, and Shishani stepped out of the men’s restroom. Fortunately, there was no one else in the corridor or anywhere nearby, which would make this a whole lot easier.

The man’s eyes lit up when he saw Alina, but then his face took on a confused expression when he saw Trevor, too. The crazy urge to renovate the man’s face reared its ugly head, and it was all Trevor could do not to snarl.

Keeping his inner coyote in check, Trevor walked straight up to the bomber and wrapped his hand around the back of the man’s neck, slinging Shishani face-first into the opposite wall. It wasn’t hard enough to knock the guy out, but it was enough to knock a dent in the sheetrock and send Shishani bouncing backward like a pinball. Alina had the door open by the time Trevor grabbed his arm and shoved him out into the night.

The alley behind the building butted up against a high fence that separated this part of Worchester Street from the train tracks. It was pitch-black and reeked of spoiled food, spilled beer, and nasty Dumpsters. One end of the alley led toward the parking lot, while the other meandered through trash and other junk.

Trevor dragged Shishani a little farther down the alley so no one peeking out of the club would see them. Alina hung back and kept an eye on the door just in case.

He thumped Shishani up against the wall of the building, behind a tall Dumpster that smelled like it was used to store zombie bait for the coming apocalypse, and gave the man a shake.

“Wakey, wakey, Mr. Shishani,” he said. “Time to talk about a bomb you recently made.”

The man’s eyes fluttered open, and he looked at Trevor in confusion for a moment. Then his eyes went wide.

“I don’t have any money,” he said in a damn good imitation of a Northeast accent. No wonder he’d blended in so easily after coming here from Chechnya.

Trevor wrapped his hand around the man’s neck and lifted him off the ground, holding him pinned to the wall. “Don’t bother pretending you didn’t hear what I said, Mr. Shishani. I’m not buying it.”

Shishani mumbled something that sounded like okay, but with his hand around the guy’s neck, it was hard to tell.

Trevor let the guy slide down the wall. “Talk.”

Shishani threw Alina a desperate look. “Lady, you have to help me. I was just smiling at you. I had no idea your husband was the jealous type. I swear I don’t know who this Shishani guy is you’re looking for. My name is Smith…Doug Smith.”

Trevor growled softly and picked Shishani up by the throat again, holding him there while Alina moved closer.

“You might as well kill him. He’s not going to talk,” she said calmly. “No one will find him for weeks back here. They certainly won’t smell his body, that’s for sure.”

Shishani’s dark eyes widened as Trevor continued to hold him prisoner. When Trevor dropped him this time, the man was much more cooperative.

“What do you want?” Shishani asked. “I don’t even know who you are. I haven’t done anything to you.”

“You didn’t do anything to me, but you did do something to a friend of mine,” Trevor growled. “You built a bomb that killed a federal agent near Quantico a month ago. I want to know who paid you.”

The man’s eyes bulged as he shook his head. “I can’t talk about that. It would get me killed.”

Trevor tightened his grip on the man’s throat again but didn’t lift him off the ground this time. Beside him, Alina made a show of looking down at her shoes like she was worried she was getting something nasty on them.

“You might be killed if you talk, but you definitely won’t be making it out of this alley if you don’t,” Trevor said. “Your call.”

Shishani glanced at Alina to see if there might be some help coming from that direction. When that didn’t work, he threw a quick look at the parking lot at the end of the alley. No luck there, either.

“Okay, okay. I made the bomb,” the man admitted. “But I swear I didn’t plant it. I didn’t even know who the target was. I got a call on the Sunday before the bombing and was told that I’d be given a large sum of money if I could build a powerful bomb—fast. When I said I couldn’t do it quickly because I had no explosives, I was given the address of a warehouse near Woodbridge. When I went there, I found C-4 plastic explosives, blasting caps, and electronic parts. They were all military-grade material. The best I’ve ever worked with. I didn’t sleep for three nights so I could get it done in time and finished just before I got a call early on Tuesday morning. I delivered the finished bomb in an empty copier paper box to a facility near Quantico. Then I went home. I didn’t know that the bomb had been used to kill someone who worked for the U.S. government until later the next day. Even then, the news did not say who the person was, just that it was someone who worked there.”

“Who did you deliver the bomb to?” Trevor demanded.

It had been one thing when he’d thought Shishani had made the bomb. Now that he knew for sure, it was difficult not killing the piece of shit on the spot.

“I never saw who picked it up,” Shishani said. “I dropped it off behind the visitor’s center just outside the gate. There was no one in the parking lot when I left, so I have no idea who took it.”

“Who paid you for the bomb?” Trevor asked, his voice coming out in a barely disguised growl.

Shishani looked like he was about to waffle, but whatever he saw in Trevor’s expression must have changed his mind.

“It was Thomas Thorn.” He wet his lips. “I have done many jobs for him over the years. He pays well. He would likely pay you, too, if you keep your nose out of this.”

Trevor glanced at Alina. She looked stunned. He couldn’t blame her. It was one thing to suspect a man like Thorn, but to have actual proof was something else entirely.

“Thorn won’t be paying me anything,” Trevor announced. “Because we’re going to take you straight to the nearest federal attorney’s office, and you’re going to tell them everything you just told me. Word for word.”

Smith shook his head wildly. “I’m not going to do that. It would be suicide!”

Trevor was about to point out that not testifying would be suicide as well, but before he got the chance, the back door slammed open, and heavy footsteps echoed on the ground. He cursed, pissed that he’d been so focused on Shishani that he hadn’t paid attention to what was going on inside the club. He barely had enough time to breathe before four big bouncers raced around the side of the Dumpster, their hands on the weapons holsters behind their backs, their bodies tense and ready for violence.

The sight of Alina standing there in her fancy cocktail dress slowed them for a moment, but then Shishani cried out for help.

Trevor cursed as the armed men whipped out their pistols. It would have been a lot easier if he and Alina had been carrying weapons, but there was no way they would have gotten them past the metal detectors. That meant he had to improvise.

Grabbing a handful of Shishani’s suit jacket, Trevor spun around, tossing the man at the bouncers, knocking two of them down in a tangle of arms and legs and sending the other two backpedaling to avoid going down in the heap. The two bouncers on the ground fired their weapons, sending bullets zinging around the alley.

Shit.

Knowing he had to move fast, Trevor shifted, allowing his claws to slip out a little bit so he had at least something to fight these trigger-happy psychos with. He was about to launch himself at the men on the ground when he caught sight of one of the other bouncers turning his big handgun in Alina’s direction.

Twisting that way instead, he lunged forward with a growl, slashing at the man’s arm, tearing through the suit fabric and slicing the flesh underneath open to the bone. The man cried out and immediately dropped his weapon. Trevor kicked him in the chest, sending him flying backward to bounce off the fence. The man’s head hit one of the metal support poles with a thud, and he dropped to the ground, out cold.

Trevor spun to face the other bouncer who was still on his feet, worried he’d shoot Alina, and found her kicking the guy’s ass. She’d obviously ditched her high heels at some point, because she was barefoot as she spun and lashed out with her leg, the slit in her gown making it easy for her to pull off the complex Taekwondo move. Even so, the urge to run to her defense was nearly impossible to ignore. When she planted her heel in the center of the guy’s face, Trevor decided she had the situation under control. He turned to deal with the two men he’d left sprawling on the ground a few moments earlier and found one of the bouncers pointing his weapon straight at him.

Trevor jumped to the side just as the man fired, avoiding a fatal gunshot but still feeling a line of fire cut across the right side of his rib cage as the bullet grazed him. Letting out a growl, he charged forward, closing the distance between him and the asshole before the guy could get off another shot.

He could easily have laid the man’s throat open, but he didn’t. The guy was simply out here doing what he thought was his job, even if it was for an illegal gambling operation. So instead, Trevor closed his hand into a fist and popped the guy a blow across the jaw that staggered the big man. Before the guard could collect himself, Trevor grabbed him and tossed him toward the Dumpster. The man hit the heavy metal bin so hard it slid a couple of inches, then he dropped to the ground unconscious.

The last remaining bouncer must have decided the odds didn’t look so favorable anymore, because he turned and hightailed it for the back door of the club.

Alina started to go after him, but Trevor caught her arm. “Forget it. Let’s get Shishani, and get the hell out of here before anyone else shows up.”

She nodded. But when they turned to look for Shishani, they found him lying on the ground where Trevor had tossed him earlier, a single bullet hole through the center of his chest. Their chance to put Thorn away had died along with him.

“Fuck,” Trevor growled. “A stray round from one of those trigger-happy buffoons must have hit him.”

Alina crouched to check the man’s pulse anyway. A moment later, she stood up. “Do we call the cops?”

Trevor shook his head. “We can’t. It would tip off Thorn to what we were doing. As bad as it sounds, we need to bail. Chances are the police will never find out about this. Dead bodies aren’t exactly good for business, and this isn’t the kind of establishment that can handle the scrutiny of a murder investigation. In an hour, this place will be cleaned up, and the body will be gone. It will be like none of this ever happened.”

Alina didn’t seem thrilled with the idea of leaving, but there wasn’t much else they could do. Nodding, she started down the alley, slowing only long enough to pick up her discarded heels and tiny evening bag.

Trevor looked down at Shishani’s body. He couldn’t find it in himself to care that the man was dead. His bomb had killed John. But he was pissed to be back at square one in his search to pin something on Thorn. Almost pissed enough not to notice how badly the right side of his rib cage burned.

As he turned and jogged down the alley after Alina, a realization struck him. He’d assumed he was back to square one, but after tonight, maybe it was time to start thinking about them being back to square one.

* * *

Alina reached for her door handle the moment Trevor pulled into a space in front of her apartment complex. She was still annoyed at him for hiding that he’d been shot. She’d only realized it because he’d grabbed a T-shirt from the duffel bag behind the seat and pressed it to his ribs.

“It’s just a scratch,” he’d insisted when she asked how badly he was hurt.

The amount of blood on the T-shirt said otherwise. Ignoring the fact that he was driving, she’d reached across the center console and yanked his jacket open, then pried the makeshift compress away from his ribs so she could see for herself. It was a hell of a lot more than a scratch. His white dress shirt was soaked with dark-red blood. She’d wanted to head for the first hospital they could find, but he’d refused.

“The doctors would immediately recognize it as a bullet wound and call the cops,” Trevor said. “There’s no way I could explain how I ended up this way, and even if I could, I wouldn’t want to risk word of it getting back to Dick or Thorn. I promise I’ll be fine. I’ll fix myself up once I get home.”

Then he’d told her that his idea of fixing himself up included pieces of old T-shirts and duct tape.

“No, you’re not,” Alina had said. “We’re going to my place, and I’m going to bandage you up.”

The moment Trevor put the SUV in park, she was out and heading for the driver’s side. She needn’t have bothered. He was already coming around to meet her like he wasn’t injured at all.

“Couldn’t someone at the DCO complex have looked at you?” she asked as they headed upstairs to the second floor. “They have doctors and a medical facility there, right?”

“Yeah, but again, I can’t go there without taking a risk that Dick or Thorn would hear about it.”

Alina shook her head. Trevor had some serious trust issues, bordering on paranoia. But if all this stuff they were learning about Thorn was true, maybe he had good reason to be paranoid. She only hoped she wouldn’t get him upstairs to find out that his injuries were worse than he thought. Then what the heck was she going to do?

They made it upstairs without running into anyone. Once on the second floor, she practically tiptoed passed Kathy’s door, praying Molly didn’t smell her and want to come right over. That was all Alina needed, a curious Kathy asking all kinds of complicated questions while Molly jumped around like a crazy dog, wondering who the hell this new guy in her apartment was.

“Take off your jacket and shirt,” she ordered as soon as they were inside. “I’ll get the first aid kit.”

Trevor headed into the kitchen, shrugging out of his jacket as he went, while she darted into the bathroom. Her supplies weren’t anything a military medic would be impressed with, but there was definitely a lot more stuff than would be found in a typical home first aid kit.

When she hurried into the kitchen a few moments later, she found Trevor over by the table, attempting to wipe the worst of the blood off his torso with the remains of his expensive button-down.

Alina stopped, transfixed by the sight of her partner standing there with his shirt off, blood oozing from a long horizontal gash along his right side. For a second, she flashed back to an image of Fred lying in her arms, blood soaking through his shirt as he bled to death. That visual shook her so hard, she could barely breathe. Cursing under her breath, she got a grip on herself. Her partner was bleeding, and she needed to help him.

“Don’t bother with that,” she said.

Taking the bloody shirt out of his hands, she dropped it in the trash can. It was ruined beyond all possible repair.

She grabbed a hand towel off the hook by the fridge and soaked it under the faucet, then pulled a chair out at the kitchen table and sat.

“Move closer,” she instructed. “Let me get you cleaned up and see how bad this wound is.”

“I’m fine, Alina. The guy barely nicked me,” Trevor protested but obeyed. “Most of this blood is from right after it happened. It’s probably already stopped bleeding.”

“Right,” she muttered as she gently began cleaning the skin around the gash across his ribs with the washcloth.

Damn, it looked more like he’d been torn open with a dull chainsaw blade than hit with a bullet. It must have skipped along the muscles and bones instead of going straight through. She supposed that was a good thing. Still, the slice seemed deep. Any rational person would have been in an emergency room right now, demanding sutures and pain meds.

Trevor was right about one thing, though. The worst of the bleeding had stopped. If anything, it looked like the gash was actually starting to seal itself with new flesh. That was hard to believe, considering how severe the wound had been. She’d never been one to get queasy at the sight of blood, but since her partner was the one bleeding, it got to her a little more than usual.

“Talk to me,” she said as she used the towel to wipe up a fresh dribble of blood running down his lower ribs. “So I don’t have to think about what the hell I’m doing.”

“What would you like to talk about?” he asked. “Other than my inability to avoid getting shot, I mean.”

She couldn’t believe he was cracking jokes. “I don’t care. Anything.”

When he didn’t respond, she decided to ask him about something that had been on her mind ever since she’d seen the way he moved tonight.

“Why don’t you tell me about what else you can do as a shifter? I’m not sure why, but I’d assumed that your abilities were limited to keen senses, claws, and fangs. But after seeing you fight, I’m guessing there’s more to it than that?”

He shrugged, making the gash start bleeding again. “You’ve pretty much seen the majority of what I can do.” He paused as she tossed one bloody towel in the trash and grabbed a fresh one. “Beyond all the enhanced senses, I’m faster than a normal person, both in speed and reflexes. I’m stronger than someone twice my size, and I can take a lot more punishment as well as heal faster. Within a couple of hours, this”—he pointed at the wound—“will be closed up completely, and in a few days, it’ll look like it’s months old. It won’t be long before you’ll have to know it was there to even find it.”

“That must come in handy,” she said, wishing like hell her teammates in the CIA had been shifters. Maybe some of them would still be alive.

“I won’t lie and say my healing ability hasn’t saved my ass a time or two,” he admitted. “But I try to use my coyote instincts to keep from getting into screwed-up situations in the first place. Trust me, I’d much prefer to be clever and tricky and not get shot at all.”

“I’m all for that,” she agreed.

Thankfully, the gash had stopped bleeding for the most part. It was still painful looking, but she breathed a sigh of relief knowing he was going to be okay.

“So what happened tonight?” She tossed the second towel in the trash and picked up a third to clean off the dried blood from the rest of his torso. “Why didn’t your coyote instincts for trouble keep you from getting hit?”

“I don’t know. I guess I was a little distracted.”

Trevor didn’t elaborate. Then again, he didn’t need to. Alina was well aware of the fact that he’d taken a bullet because he’d been worried about one hitting her. She’d seen him jump to take out that big guard as the man had been about to shoot her.

“Thanks for covering my back,” she said softly. “I know you got hit because you were more worried about me than yourself, so…thanks.”

He shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. We’re partners.”

Trevor might have been making light of what he’d done, but Alina appreciated it more than she could put into words. She hadn’t had a real partner since Turkey, and it wasn’t until now that she realized the biggest thing she’d missed was knowing she had someone who’d watch her back.

Tears suddenly filled her eyes, and she forced herself to finish cleaning off the dried blood on Trevor’s stomach. It was while she was absorbed in the meticulous task of wiping down every square inch of exposed skin that she became aware of the fact that he was an extremely fit man. It was hard to miss when her face was only inches from his very well-defined abs.

Well, she’d been looking for something else to focus on so she wouldn’t start crying, and Trevor was definitely a distraction. Her partner had the body of a Roman god, with shoulders, pecs, and arm muscles that made it obvious he worked out a lot. But he also had that lean, ripped look to him that make her think more of Tarzan than a weightlifter. And the way those rippling abs disappeared into his beltline, showing off just the sexiest hint of happy trail was definitely interesting.

As she lightly traced the wet towel back and forth across his lower abs and that absolutely mouthwatering trail of manliness, it dawned on her that she was in a somewhat compromising position. Seated in front of Trevor, her hand inches from his belt buckle and the very obvious bulge in his dress pants, thoughts of tending to his wound suddenly took a backseat to the memories of what it had been like kissing him tonight. And the stuff she was remembering weren’t the kind of thoughts she should have been having about her partner.

Alina knew it was supposed to have been a fake kiss as part of their cover, but if it had been fake, then her real sex life clearly sucked, because she’d never been that turned on from a kiss in her life. She’d actually gotten excited from a thirty-second make-out session in the middle of a crowded club, which was completely crazy. She wasn’t a teenager. She wasn’t supposed to get all tingly from a simple kiss. If they hadn’t been on a mission, she could only wonder how far she would have been willing to take things.

Crap, she was getting tingly all over again, simply thinking about Trevor’s lips on her. Not to mention the feel of his strong, muscular body under her fingers.

Strong, muscular body under her fingers. Say what?

Alina gave herself a shake and discovered that at some point, she’d tossed the last washcloth in the trash and was running her hands back and forth across Trevor’s drum-tight abs, getting damn close to the danger zone around his belt buckle.

“I’m pretty sure you’ve gotten all the blood off,” Trevor said from above her.

She jerked her hands away as if he were on fire. Which, she guessed, he kind of was. Because she was definitely going to get burned if she kept playing this game. And he definitely hadn’t missed her unprofessional grope fest.

She didn’t dare look up at him as she took out a handful of sterile pads and a roll of gauze bandage from her first aid kit. Knowing she was probably blushing furiously, she kept her head down and focused on wrapping the stretchy gauze tightly around his ribs. But focusing was harder to do than she imagined, because she was getting turned on as hell. She was more aroused than she’d been in a really really long time.

What the hell was wrong with her?

She’d never been the kind of woman to go all gaga over a guy, no matter how hot his abs happened to be. Yet here she was in front of her partner, telling herself it wasn’t okay to hump his leg or yank open his belt buckle.

She determinedly forced her hormones back under control. Thankfully, Trevor had no idea what he was doing to her. She would have been mortified if he’d known how turned on she was.

Alina finished the wrap, then added some surgical tape to keep everything in place. Whether she wanted to or not, it was time to stand up and look her partner in the eye.

“I think we’re good here,” she said softly as she rose to her feet.

Trevor stood there, barely a foot of space between them, his naked chest and shoulders so close that it was hard not reaching out and touching them. His dark eyes were thoughtful, and Alina waited for him to say something snarky…or teasing.

He didn’t do either of those things. Instead, he stepped a little closer so all those spectacular chest muscles were mere millimeters away from her breasts.

“We certainly are good here, aren’t we?” he said, his voice warm and smooth, like melted chocolate, almost making her melt in return.

Alina’s breath hitched. Trevor was going to kiss her. Just like he had back in that club in Baltimore. Except this time, there wasn’t anything to interrupt them.