Her Rogue Alpha (X-Ops Book 5) (18 page)

Layla expected at least one of the men to follow them into the house, but they all stayed outside, leaving her and Jayson with Victor Garin. Layla would have pegged the man standing in front of the fireplace for a former soldier-turned-cop even if Mikhail hadn’t told them what Victor had done for a living. At least sixty years old, with more salt in his hair than pepper, he still stood like he was at attention, his muscular shoulders filling out the crisp button-down shirt he wore, his blue eyes sharp.

“I expected you to be older,” he said in heavily accented English. Giving them a nod, he gestured to the floral-upholstered couch and matching chairs. “Sit, please.”

She and Jayson did as he asked, taking a seat on the sofa. The inside of the home was as neat and quaint as the outside. There were lots of framed photographs of soldiers and police officers in uniform, as well as pictures of Victor with a pretty, dark-haired woman his age that Layla assumed was his wife. There was also a big Russian flag pinned up to the wall on one side of the fireplace and another flag for the Donetsk People’s Republic on the other.

Victor sat down in a wingback chair across the coffee table from them just as his wife came into the room with a tray filled with ceramic cups and a teapot. She set the tray on the table and poured tea into each of the cups, then looked at Layla and Jayson.

“Cream and sugar?” she asked.

Layla nodded. Beside her, Jayson did as well.

Sitting down in a matching chair beside Victor, the dark-haired woman fixed their tea in silence, handing their cups to them when she was done. Then she added sugar to one of the remaining cups and milk to the other, giving the sweetened one to her husband and taking the other for herself.

“Mikhail tells me that you two are American CIA,” Victor said. “Is this true?”

Jayson answered for both of them. “We’re from an organization very much like the CIA, but you’ve never heard of it. Very few people in the world have.”

The answer seemed to satisfy the former police officer because he moved to his next question. “Did you come here to spy on the DPR?”

“No,” Jayson said. “We came to rescue the American boy, Dylan. He followed his girlfriend here, and his father at the embassy in Kiev wanted us to bring him back. Quietly.”

“You have the boy,” Victor pointed out. “Why are you still here?”

“Because Dylan’s girlfriend, Anya, is from Kiev,” Jayson told him. “She was grabbed by militia soldiers outside the RSA building almost a week ago. We’re not leaving until we get her back.”

Victor’s wife regarded them thoughtfully. “Why do you care about the girl if she is not American?”

“Because Dylan cares about her,” Layla said. “He won’t leave without her, and we won’t leave without him. When we learned that there were other girls about the same age as Anya who were captured, we realized we couldn’t leave without rescuing them too.”

The woman considered that for a long time, then turned to give her husband a nod. Victor asked how they had broken into the RSA building and how they managed to free all the prisoners held there on their own.

Jayson and Layla answered each question honestly, not leaving anything out. Well, except for the part about her being a shifter.

“And what will you do if you find out where the girls are located?” Victor asked.

“Get them out,” Jayson said simply.

“No matter where they are?” his wife pressed.

“No matter where they are,” Jayson affirmed.

The woman exchanged looks with her husband, then nodded. Victor set his cup down on the table and stood.

“Come with me,” he said. “I have something to show you.”

Layla and Jayson put their cups down on the table as well and followed him into a modest kitchen. She thought at first that he was going to take them outside, but instead, Victor shoved aside a set of shelves along one wall to reveal a hidden door.

He led them down a set of old, wooden steps into a darkened basement, yanking a chain dangling from the ceiling as he went. Layla blinked as light flooded the room. Now she saw what all the secrecy was about. Half of one wall was covered with dozens of surveillance photos of militia soldiers. The other half was filled with pictures of eleven teenaged girls. And in the middle was a poster-size print of a dark-haired man wearing the same uniform as the militia. Big and muscular with cold eyes that seemed to bore right through you even in a photograph, he didn’t look like someone you’d want to mess with.

“I am a loyal Russian citizen of the DPR, but what is happening now with the militia is not the Russian way. Something must be done to stop them.” The words seemed hard for Victor to say, but he took a deep breath and straightened his spine, then pointed at the picture in the center of the wall. “This is Colonel Grigori Zolnerov. He’s the senior commander of most of the militia forces on this side of Donetsk. He has been responsible for the fighting that has gone on here. He is the one who has kidnapped these girls.” The old man swallowed hard as he lovingly touched a photo of a smiling girl with dark, curly hair and big dimples. “This is my granddaughter Larissa. My wife and I raised her since her parents were killed. She was one of the first taken.”

“How do you know Zolnerov grabbed them?” Jayson asked.

“I’ve talked to several witnesses who saw some of the girls get abducted,” Victor said. “In each case, it was Zolnerov’s personal bodyguards who either kidnapped them or picked them up from another holding facility.”

“What is he doing with them?” Layla asked, almost afraid of the answer.

Victor shook his head. “I don’t know. The only thing I can say with certainty is that Zolnerov’s personal guards have all left the city and are now in a dacha—forgive me, a luxury home—north of the city that the colonel took over shortly after he arrived here. They’ve been on nearly constant alert since then.”

Victor took a photo off the wall. With all the other pictures, Layla had completely missed this one. It was of a huge brick house surrounded by a high wall. Even in the limited view offered by the picture, Layla could count six heavily armed guards. Her stomach clenched. She tried to think of some other reason a man like Zolnerov would keep a dozen girls captive in that house, but her imagination failed to come up with anything that wasn’t depraved.

Victor handed the picture to Jayson. “The dacha is about thirty miles outside of town, due west. The address is on the back, and I will let you use one of my trucks to get there. Mikhail will know the way. He is a smart kid, never afraid to stand up to people when it is necessary. Try not to get him killed.”

Jayson regarded the Russian thoughtfully. “If you’ve known where your granddaughter is all this time, why haven’t you tried to rescue her? Those men out there who searched us look capable enough.”

Layla wondered the same thing.

Victor didn’t say anything for a long time. “We tried,” he finally said in a sad voice. “But they are police officers, not soldiers. The team of men I sent in four days ago were killed before they even made it through the front gate. They never had a chance.” His gaze went from Jayson to her. “I am praying you two can do better because there’s no one else who can stand up to Zolnerov and his guards, and I fear what he has planned for my granddaughter and those other girls.”

* * *

Jayson leaned over a table in one of the few areas of the library that hadn’t been bombed to pieces watching as Layla and Olek added details to the map they were drawing of the large estate where Victor believed the girls were being held.

When they had come back from their meeting with Victor, Layla had immediately called Kendra and asked if she could find out anything about the layout of the house as well as dig into Zolnerov’s background. It had taken a few hours, but Kendra emailed a ton of information. And none of the intel on the colonel was good.

The man had been booted out of the Russian army two years ago for corruption and had taken over leadership of the militia forces in the area when the more senior officers had died during a supposed terrorist attack. No one thought the senior officers’ deaths had been a coincidence and most doubted that pro-Ukrainian loyalists had been responsible.

Since then, Zolnerov had developed a reputation as an ambitious man willing to do whatever it took to gain more money and power. He’d been leaning on many of the local businesses and charging them protection fees while doing as little actual fighting along the regional borders as he could get away with. According to Kendra, it looked like he was positioning himself for a run at president of the DPR if and when it became an independent country. While there were quite a few other political figures in the race ahead of him, Jayson doubted they’d be around long enough to claim it. People who stood up to Zolnerov seemed to disappear.

“I wish I could get you guys some more help, but it looks like you’re on your own for a while longer,” Kendra had said before hanging up. “I still haven’t heard a peep out of Clayne and Danica. And Trevor and his team had a hell of a time getting out of South America. It could take them another twenty-four hours to reach you.”

The thought of waiting around another twenty-four hours didn’t sit right with Jayson. His gut told him they needed to get to those girls sooner rather than later. To do that, they needed a solid plan. That was why Layla and Olek were transferring the drawings of the house Zolnerov had commandeered from Layla’s iPhone to a large sheet of paper. Jayson needed the layout of the place before they tried to slip in there. He had no desire for this rescue mission to end up like the one Victor had attempted.

While Layla and Olek were doing that, Dylan and Mikhail were out trying to find more ammunition for the pistols he and Layla carried, as well as the AK-74 assault rifle he still had from the raid on the RSA building. Jayson felt a twinge of guilt about sending them out to hunt up ammo, but Dylan and Mikhail had a better chance of getting the task done than if Jayson attempted it.

He scanned the map, paying special attention to the perimeter walls around the house as he tried to develop a feasible assault plan. Not that he was used to coming up with plans for breaking into a heavily guarded residential estate, taking on anywhere from fifteen to twenty soldiers, and saving a group of kidnapped girls from who knew what kind of fate, all with only two armed DCO operatives and three teenaged boys. He should have been freaking out at the thought of such an impossible task, but he felt more alive than he had in a long time. Most of it had to do with the fact that he and Layla were finally truly together.

Jayson smiled as he watched her work. When she concentrated really hard on something, she had this adorable way of sticking out her tongue. It was all he could do not to walk around the other side of the table and kiss her. Of course, he couldn’t do that because kissing would definitely lead to other things, and they didn’t have time for that right now.

It was hard to believe it had been twelve hours since they’d made love on the floor a few feet away in the other room. For the first time in his life, Jayson actually understood the difference between sex and making love. Because there was no way in hell he would ever describe what had gone on between them this morning as a simple roll in the hay. It had been epic, mind-blowing, and powerful. He supposed that was what sex was like when you were completely head over heels in love with the other person.

They had lain naked together on the floor for nearly an hour afterward, her head on his chest, her hair splayed out, her body warmly wrapped around his. They’d talked about their respective pasts and collective future. Jayson found himself talking about dreams he’d long since given up and some he’d never known he had.

Layla wanted to travel the American Southwest with him, while he wanted to see France with her. She wanted to go snorkeling with him along the Great Barrier Reef, and he wanted to lay on the beach with her in Hawaii. When she talked about wanting to learn how to hang glide, he suddenly felt the urge to learn with her. She made him want to do things he’d never even thought about doing.

They’d even talked about having kids. Layla hadn’t been sure of what he would think about that since he’d been an only child, but he couldn’t imagine anything better than a whole house full of kids with Layla’s big, dark eyes and silky, black hair running around. Hopefully they wouldn’t look too much like him. He wouldn’t wish his mug on any kid.

That was when Layla had brought up subjects that were a lot harder to talk about, like Dick and all the stuff that had happened at the DCO before he’d gotten there. She told him about what had happened to Ivy, Tanner, Kendra, Declan, and Minka, and how Dick and some guy on the Committee named Thomas Thorn had been behind all of it. By the time Layla was done telling him about all the manipulative shit Dick had done, it wasn’t hard to see how the man had been able to sucker him into being a voluntary test subject for the hybrid program. It turned out that Dick was a total asshole and really good at getting people to do what he wanted.

“But as much as we’d both like to put all of the blame on Dick, we’d be lying to ourselves if we did,” Jayson told her. “He was only able to convince me to take the hybrid drug because I was so desperate. Yeah, he saw me coming, but I was the one who took the bait hook, line, and sinker.”

Layla kissed him hard before pulling back to look at him, her eyes flashing green. “None of that matters now. You survived—that’s what’s important. Just remember that Dick will always try to twist every situation to his advantage. He’s going to try to convince you that you
owe
him for what he’s done for you and that you need to do one more thing for him. If you go down that road, it’s never going to end.”

He caressed her hair. “Dick can say anything he wants. It doesn’t mean I’ll believe him. The only thing that matters is that we’re together and that we’re partners.”

She bit her lip. “And what if Dick—or other people at the DCO—try to get in the way of that? We’re not like Ivy and Landon. We can’t hide our relationship because everyone already knows we’re together. What if they say we can’t be partners?”