Authors: Paige Tyler
was the reason Dad was such an asshole.”
Ivy didn’t know what to say. She’d grown up in a wonderful family with parents who loved her and the
best sisters in the world. She sometimes forgot other people weren’t so lucky. Hearing about a stranger
coming from an abused home was different than knowing someone it had happened to.
“That must have been terrible for you,” she said when she’d finally found her voice.
“It was what it was.” He shrugged. “When I got big enough—and strong enough—to fight back, I did.
But every time I tried to protect Mom and Laci, they’d blame me for making it worse. Like it was my fault.
Finally broke my old man’s jaw when he came at me with a baseball bat. That asshole was trying to kill me
and Mom threatened to have me arrested for assaulting
him
. I walked out that day and never looked back.”
“My God.” She imagined him as a scared kid having to defend himself against his father—the person
who was supposed to love and protect him. She wanted to reach out and put her arms around him, but
didn’t. “How old were you?”
“Sixteen.”
“That made you what, a junior in high school? Where did you live?”
“On the street at first, and when it got too cold for that, I’d sneak back into the high school after class
and spend my nights there. I already had a part-time job, so I had enough money to cover food, and I had
extra clothes in my locker. It wasn’t so bad.”
It sounded bad to her. “Didn’t your parents report you missing?”
He snorted. “You kidding? They were glad to get rid of me.”
“What about the school? No one figured out you weren’t living at home?”
“I showed up to class. That was all that mattered. The only person I told was my best friend, Steve. He
finally convinced his mom and dad to let me sleep on the couch. They wanted to get child services
involved, but I talked them out of it.”
“Why?”
“Because they wouldn’t have been able to do a damn thing. It was my word against my old man’s, and
my mom and sister would have backed up whatever story he told. Knowing that bastard, he probably
would have taken it out on them. With me out of the picture, maybe he stopped abusing them.”
She frowned. “You don’t honestly think you were responsible for what he did, do you?”
“No. I’m not a martyr, Ivy.” The muscle in his jaw flexed. “But when I stopped by the middle school to
check on Laci a few weeks after I left, she said Dad hadn’t hit her or Mom since I took off. That could have
been because he was too doped up on the pain meds he was taking for his broken jaw to bother, I guess,
but who the hell knows? Laci could have been lying to protect him.”
“Or to protect you. Maybe she and your mom always took your father’s side because they were afraid
for you.”
He let out a harsh laugh. “Yeah, right.”
She knew that idea wouldn’t go over well. “It’s possible. I’m guessing you got the worst of it by always
coming to their defense. Maybe they figured if they sided with him, he’d leave you alone.”
He sat back and folded his arms across his chest. “Well, whatever. I guess we’ll never know. My old
man drank himself to death a few years after I went in the army, and my mom died last year.”
“What about Laci?”
“Last time I talked to Steve, he said she was married with two kids.”
“You don’t talk to her?”
He shook his head. “I joined the army the day after graduation and never went back. Never looked
back. That just shoots my nice guy image all to hell, doesn’t it?”
“You’re image is still intact.” She gave him a small smile. “I think it shows how strong and courageous
you are. To come from that kind of life and be where you are now says a lot about the man you are.”
“What, sitting around a decontamination tent in a bathrobe, telling my life story to a woman I’ve known
for a whole week?”
“There are worst places to be.”
“Don’t I know it.”
The pain in his voice told her the wounds were still deep even after all these years, and she hated that
she’d been the one to reopen them. Curiosity might not always kill the cat, but it could sure make her feel
bad. “So, what made you pick the military?”
“I wanted to get someplace far away from where I was. I didn’t have the money for college, so it was
either that or work on an oil rig somewhere. I figured I had a better chance of going to college if I went in
the military.”
She was glad he hadn’t chosen oil rigging. “Why Special Forces?”
“The recruiter showed me a video of these guys doing cool stuff like jumping out of planes, shooting
machine guns, and blowing shit up. What more could a guy want?”
“What more indeed?” she said dryly.
“It’s a guy thing. How about you? What made you join the DCO?”
She shrugged. “I was tired of riding a desk at the FBI.”
Landon sat back in his chair. “How long did you work for the Bureau?”
“Almost four years.”
“And they never put you in the field?”
“No. Which annoyed the hell out of me.” She rolled her eyes. “My glass ceiling was set at the first floor
in the FBI. You’re lucky you don’t have to deal with crap like that.”
He was silent for a moment. “What about family?”
“My parents live in Virginia with my three sisters.”
“Are they shifters, too?”
“Only one sister—Layla. We’re the first in my family since my great-grandmother. Something my other
sisters are still bummed about. They complain Layla and I got all the good genes.”
The tent flap opened and one of the CDC techs walked in. He’d taken off his protective suit and was
carrying their clothes. That had to be a good sign.
“You’re in the clear.” He set their clothes on the table. “At least as far as we know.”
That didn’t exactly inspire confidence.
Landon exchanged a frown with her. “As far as you know?”
The man shrugged. “Homeland Security ordered us to forward all the results from your samples directly
to them without any review on our part. They’re the ones who made the call that you’re clear.”
Because the CDC techs would take one look at her blood and know she was different. She should have
realized the DCO wouldn’t let anyone get a look at her blood.
Landon turned his back while they dressed to give her privacy. Ivy did the same, but not before taking a
quick peek at his ass. He was built, all right.
She was just sliding her feet into low-heeled pumps when her cell phone rang. She picked it up, putting
it on hands-free when John’s name came up on the call display.
“Are you out of quarantine yet?”
She slipped her gun holster on her belt. “We just got cleared.”
“Good. I need you two on a plane to New York five minutes ago. Evan got a hit on a geneticist in
Pittsburgh who was killed a week ago during what was assumed to be a kidnapping gone bad. She fits our
profile of the kind of expert Stutmeir would be after.”
Landon shrugged into his suit jacket. “Then we were right about Stutmeir looking for a replacement for
Dowling.”
“Looks like it. Evan and his team have generated a list of the top twenty candidates, and all teams not
already in the field are on their way to secure and protect the targets. Your assignment is a biologist from the
Genetic Institute of New York City by the name of Phil Bosch. Your plane leaves from Hartsfield-Jackson in
an hour. I’ll dump all the information we have on Bosch to your phone.”
Landon picked up his gun. “An hour isn’t a lot of time to get to the airport from here. Making our flight
is going to be tough.”
“Kendra already instructed them to hold the plane for you.”
Ivy almost laughed at the surprise on Landon’s face. “Another perk of working at the DCO.”
“So I see. New York City here we come.”
Chapter 11
It took almost an hour in New York City traffic to get to Bosch’s Manhattan apartment, then another ten
minutes to find a place to park.
“This is insane. How the hell does anyone live here? Look at that psycho over there.”
Landon jerked his head at a car as he and Ivy walked up the steps and into the apartment building. The
driver had parked practically perpendicular to the street, one front wheel up on the sidewalk, the back of
the car still sitting out in the street.
He glanced around as they crossed the fancy lobby to the elevator. “Can you believe a place this nice
doesn’t have a doorman? I reckon a couple thousand dollars a month in rent doesn’t buy what it used to.”
She shook her head, but didn’t smile at his joke.
He pressed the button for the fifth floor. “What? I’m just saying.”
They stepped out on the fifth floor just as the doors to the other elevator closed. Ivy stopped, her eyes
narrowing at the barely discernible thump coming from inside. Landon stopped, too.
“Problem?”
She stared at the second elevator for another moment, then shook her head. As they headed for Bosch’s
apartment, she kept glancing back at the elevator.
“Something’s not right,” she said.
Landon didn’t ask for clarification. He pulled his pistol and ran down the hallway. The door of Bosch’s
apartment was ajar, the frame splintered. Beside him, Ivy pulled her weapon and gave him a nod.
He pushed the door open the rest of the way and moved quickly into the room, covering the far left and
right corners of the living room. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ivy checking the blind spots behind
him. He was about to say the room was clear when he heard sobbing coming from the other side of the
couch. He exchanged looks with Ivy, then crossed the room, gun lowered but still at the ready.
A young girl kneeled over an unconscious woman. Bosch’s wife and daughter. The girl—What was her
name? Ivy had read it off her phone on the way—Abigail—was trying to stanch the flow of blood from a
head wound near the mother’s temple with her hand. She lifted her head, letting out a piercing scream when
she saw him and Ivy.
“It’s okay. We’re with the police.” Ivy holstered her gun and hurried to the girl’s side to check the
mother’s pulse. “Where’s your father?”
Abigail stared at Ivy in confusion. Was she so traumatized she couldn’t talk? Couldn’t even remember
what had happened? He’d seen it often enough in combat zones.
But the girl wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Men broke in and took him. Why did they take him? Why
did they hurt my mom?”
Ivy put a gentle hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Your mother’s going to be okay, and we’re going to get
your father back. I need you to be calm and call the police for me. Can you do that?”
Abigail nodded, her blond curls bouncing.
Ivy pulled out her iPhone and handed it to the girl. “Do you know how to use this?”
A sniff. “Yes. I have one just like it.”
“Good. Call the police and tell them what happened.” There was a cardigan on the back of the couch.
She grabbed it and pressed it into Abigail’s free hand. “Hold this against the wound until the paramedics get
here, okay?”
The girl nodded.
Ivy got to her feet and came over to him. “That must have been who was in the other elevator.
Dammit!”
“It’s okay.” Landon was careful to keep his voice low so Abigail couldn’t hear. “They only have about
thirty seconds on us. If we hurry, we might get lucky and stop them down on the street.”
“Get downstairs. I’ll try to cut them off if I can.”
Cut them off? “How…?”
But Ivy had already opened the sliding glass door to the balcony and was vaulting over the railing. His
gut clenched. Shit, they were five floors up. He started for the railing to make sure she was safe, but
stopped himself. Ivy wasn’t suicidal. She wouldn’t have jumped if she didn’t know she could handle the
fall. Besides, she was depending on him to get downstairs and cover her.
Landon swore under his breath and turned for the door, only to stop at the shocked expression on
Abigail’s tear-streaked face. The girl had seen Ivy jump. People didn’t do things like that. Not normal
people anyway.
“She’s going to get your dad. I promise we won’t let anything happen to him.” He jerked his chin at the
iPhone in her hand. “Call the cops like she asked, okay?”
At the girl’s nod, he left, hitting the hallway at a dead run.
He took the stairs instead of the elevator. On the bottom floor, he discovered why there hadn’t been a
doorman in the lobby when he and Ivy had come in earlier. The guy was slumped in one corner of the
stairwell, out cold. At least Landon hoped he was only out cold—he didn’t have time to check. It had been
at least twenty seconds since Ivy jumped from the balcony. That was a long time to go without backup.
Especially when they had no idea how many bad guys they were up against.
Landon heard a gunshot the moment he raced out of the stairwell. He swore and ran across the lobby
but slowed when he got to the glass doors. Across the street, two men crouched behind the sedan he’d seen
on the curb earlier. They were firing their weapons toward someone out of Landon’s field of vision off to
the right.
Ivy
.
She was hiding behind a parked Escalade half a block down the street, and as he watched, she put a