X-Ops Exposed Page 32

  She walked out of the bathroom to see Tanner sitting on the couch, flipping through the channels. His hair was still damp from the shower, and he was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt.

  “Why do you keep watching that stuff?” she asked. “You know it’s only going to make you mad.”

  “I’m hoping to hear something about Cam.”

  He continued flipping through channels, ignoring the ones that were talking about him, Spencer, Diaz, or Clayne. There’d been more than enough news coverage on them, and Zarina could understand why Tanner didn’t want to hear any more of it. Most of the media outlets were making him and the others out to be monsters, even after the details of what Ryan and the Asian gang had done with their fighting cage had come out. Few seemed to care that Ryan had been the real monster. They only wanted to talk about the guys with the claws and fangs.

  That was why they were hiding out in this hotel an hour north of Seattle. Right after the raid, they’d talked about crossing the border into Canada, but they’d decided to stay where they were for the time being so she could be close to help Bryce and Spencer, and Tanner could keep up with what was going on with Cam. Both of them had been hoping all this would blow over, but it looked like things were getting worse.

  Zarina sat down on the couch beside Tanner, praying they wouldn’t see anything about Cam but knowing they almost certainly would. Cam’s part in the raid, as well as Tate’s and Chase’s, had already come out. They hadn’t received the same attention as Tanner and the others, but the press kept poking around and found out that Cam was Tanner’s brother. Then the digging had really started.

  She tensed as Tanner stopped on a local channel showing a photo of his brother in his Seattle PD uniform. A moment later, they showed a video clip from earlier that morning of Cam walking out of the police station as cameras flashed in his face, reporters shoving and jostling to get a word from him.

  “Damn,” Tanner muttered, sinking back on the couch, his shoulders slouching like the weight of the world was on them. “I knew it was going to be bad, but I’d hoped he could somehow avoid being suspended.”

  She rested her arm on the back of the couch and ran her fingers through his thick hair. “Cam knew what he was getting into when he decided to help us. I can guarantee he doesn’t regret his decision for a second.”

  Tanner looked at her doubtfully. “Maybe. But what about Chase? It’s one thing for my brother to destroy his career for me, but a cop from Maine who I’d never even met before? You don’t think he regrets his decision to come out here to Washington and get involved in this crap?”

  Zarina sighed. Tanner had blamed himself for everything that had happened at The Cage since they’d gotten to the hotel, which was stupid. None of it was his fault.

  “Give Chase some credit, Tanner. He came to help because Tate asked him to. Once a person learns about shifters and hybrids and how the world really works, it’s difficult for them to go back to their old lives. When he and Tate left a few days ago, he didn’t seem the least bit upset. In fact, I get the feeling he’d been looking for a change anyway. I have no doubt we’ll be seeing him working at the DCO soon.”

  “Okay, maybe so. How about Diaz then? Do you think the DCO is going to be able to hide him now that the army knows he’s a shifter?”

  Zarina winced. That one was going to be tougher. While Spencer and the preppers had slipped back into their mountain camp, and Clayne, Danica, Tate, and Chase had all disappeared to some safe house in the middle of nowhere, Diaz had gone back to Fort Campbell to accept whatever the army was going to throw at him. She liked to think the DCO would be able to cover it up, but she didn’t know for sure. The knowledge that there were shifters like Diaz in the world was already bringing out a lot of ugliness in people. Zarina had no idea where it was going to end.

  “Somehow, Diaz is going to be okay,” she told Tanner. “Landon and Ivy aren’t going to abandon him, even if they have to go break the guy out of a military prison. And if Landon decides he needs our help to do it, that’s what we’ll do. Because that’s what they did for us.”

  Tanner wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close, pressing a kiss to her hair. “You’re amazing, you know that?”

  She laughed. “No, but feel free to keep telling me. I’m sure it will sink in at some point.”

  He grinned, but his amusement quickly faded. “Okay, let’s assume you’re right and that Cam and everyone else will make it out of this okay. What about us? I know you want to stay close to Wenatchee in case Bryce or Spencer have a setback, but we can’t stay here forever.”

  He was right. The longer they stayed at the hotel, the greater the odds were that someone would figure out Tanner was here. Bryce and Spencer were both doing fine, so there was really no need to stay. Bryce was currently in a nearby hospital under a fake name, recovering from the gunshot wounds he’d sustained, while Spencer had awakened this morning. Zarina wouldn’t be sure until she got a sample of his DNA into a lab, but from everything Lillie told her when she’d called, the antiserum had done exactly what it was designed to do. Spencer was no longer a hybrid. Even better, the side effects weren’t nearly as severe as Zarina had feared. There were some memory gaps to be sure, but most importantly, Spencer remembered Lillie and that he loved her.

  “You’re right,” Zarina said. “Bryce and Spencer are out of danger now, so there’s no reason we can’t leave. But where do we go?”

  Tanner tipped her face up and kissed her. “What about Russia? We could see your family. If the place you grew up in is still as rural as you said, I doubt anyone would recognize me. What do you think?”

  She smiled. He was the amazing one in this relationship. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? I don’t care where we go as long as we’re together. If you want, I’ll happily go live in the Wenatchee Mountains with you again. I’m sure Chad wouldn’t mind us staying with them.”

  He chuckled. “I appreciate the offer, but I’ve seen how much you enjoy hot water. I’m not taking you anywhere without indoor plumbing.”

  She was about to insist that wasn’t necessary—even though it really was—but just then, he jerked his head around to look at the door. He sniffed the air, a sure sign that someone unexpected was approaching their room. A moment later, there was a knock at the door.

  Zarina tensed as Tanner stood and walked over to the door. She followed, her stomach clenched into a knot. What if it was a reporter? Or the cops?

  Tanner opened the door without looking through the peephole. Cam stood there, a petite girl with a colorful pixie hairstyle beside him. An older couple stood behind them, as well as a blond woman about Tanner’s age. Between the stunned look on Tanner’s face and the obvious family resemblance, it was easy figuring out who their visitors were.

  No one said anything, not even Cam. Everyone simply stood there staring at each other. Clearly, Zarina was going to have to make the first move. Reaching out, she took Tanner’s hand in hers as she motioned his family forward.

  “Come in,” she said, giving them a smile.

  When they hesitated, Cam stepped back and herded them into the room. He peeked down the hallway, like he was worried someone might have followed them, then closed the door.

  “We’re clear,” he said, as if reading her mind. “I still have a few friends on the force, and they made sure we weren’t followed.”

  Zarina thought after they had come inside that someone would say something, but no one made a peep. She was just about to speak when Tanner’s youngest sister closed the distance between them and enveloped Tanner in a big hug, burying her face against his chest with a sob. Tanner wrapped his arms around her, his eyes filling with tears.

  “Hey there, Jelly Bean,” he said softly. “I see you’re still coloring your hair to match your socks.”

  The girl laughed, and just like that, the tension in the room disappeared. Eyes misting with tears,
each family member hugged Tanner one by one.

  “These are my sisters, Kellie and Raquel,” Tanner said to Zarina when they were done. “And this is my mother, Madeline, and my father, Cedric.”

  Madeline seemed to be one of those women who never showed her age. While she had to be in her fifties, her hair was still dark blond and her face had few lines. Cedric was a big man and still carried a lot of muscle on his broad frame even though he was probably at least sixty. His hair was mostly gray, but there were still stray strands of blond showing up here and there.

  “Everyone,” Tanner continued, “this is Zarina Sokolov, the woman I love and the reason I’m alive today.”

  Madeline’s smile broadened as she gave Zarina a warm hug. “Cam has told us a lot about you. I have to admit, at first it sounded like he was describing Wonder Woman, but after he told us what you’ve done for Tanner, I’m starting to think he’s right.”

  Blushing, Zarina motioned everyone to the couch and chairs around the TV. “I was about to go out and get something to eat, but since you’re here now, why don’t I order takeout instead? That way, we can sit around, and you can ask all the questions I’m sure you have.”

  “Takeout would be fine,” Cedric said before offering Tanner a small smile. “And while we do have a lot of questions, we don’t want to push. If you’re not ready to talk about it, Son, we’re okay with that. The only thing that matters to us is that you’re safe.”

  Tanner glanced at Zarina, then gave his father a nod. “I’m ready to talk, but I’m warning you in advance, it’s a long story.”

  “Long stories are the very best kind,” his mother said, taking a seat in one of the chairs across from the couch. “Take all the time you need. We’re not going anywhere.”

  Tanner caught Zarina’s hand and squeezed it, then moved over to sit on the couch while she grabbed the menu from the pizza place they’d ordered from a couple of times already.

  “You probably think the story started in that compound in the Kunduz Province of Afghanistan during my last tour in the Rangers, but the real beginning was in a ski lodge in the Wenatchee Mountains,” Tanner said. “That’s where I met Zarina and where everything changed.”

  His gaze drifted to hers, his mouth curving into a smile that made her heart sing, then he turned back to his family and started from the beginning.

  Epilogue

  “How the hell did this happen?” Rebecca Brannon demanded, flipping through the contents in the folder in front of her on the table.

  “They pitted two hybrids against each other in a cage in front of a room full of cell phones,” William Hamilton said. “The results were inevitable.”

  His gaze was locked on the CNN news feed playing on the projection screen at the front of the conference room. The volume was turned down, but she didn’t need to hear the sound to know what the panel of so-called experts were saying. It was the same crap they’d been rehashing for days.

  “I wasn’t talking about the fiasco out in Washington State,” she said with a sigh. Why the hell had she appointed him director of the DCO? Then she remembered. Because he was easy to control and relatively loyal. Valid reasons, she supposed, but possibly shortsighted. “I was referring to what happened in Maine. How is it possible that Tate Evers just happened to be in the same part of the country as Mahsood and our daughter, and you didn’t know about it?”

  William dragged his gaze away from the news to lift a brow at her. “You don’t believe it was coincidence he was on vacation and merely thought he’d stumbled onto a hybrid experiment gone wrong?”

  Rebecca didn’t believe for a moment that William bought that ridiculous story. “That would be easier to believe if he and that local deputy hadn’t made such a mess of your team of highly trained mercenaries. The ones you insisted were the best money could buy.”

  William shrugged. “They are. They ultimately succeeded in the task we hired them to do. They took care of Mahsood. That’s what we sent them there to do, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, but they missed the opportunity to deal with our daughter,” she pointed out. “Leaving her free to cause problems later.”

  William ran his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, his brow furrowing. “They’ll find her. Now that they know she’s back in the States, it shouldn’t be difficult for them to track her down again. They said she’s little more than a wild animal.”

  Rebecca wasn’t so sure of that last part. The mercenaries he had hired obviously wrote their report to make their minimal accomplishments out to be more than they were, while implying that Ashley had simply gotten lucky. Reading between the lines suggested their daughter had been completely in control of herself and in the process of tracking Mahsood down, almost certainly to gain information. What information, Rebecca wasn’t sure. She didn’t doubt it was somehow connected to a mother-daughter reunion in the very near future.

  She shuddered at the thought.

  “So, beyond your disappointment with the situation in Maine, do you have any idea how we’re going to deal with this crap out in Washington State?” William asked.

  Rebecca glanced at the image of Tanner on the screen, his red eyes and three-inch long fangs on full and obvious display. Damn, he was terrifying when he looked like that.

  “I was hoping the media would have moved on to something else by now,” she admitted. “That some terrorist attack in Europe or an embarrassing tabloid article involving some idiot politician would distract them. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened. I’m considering planting a few false sightings of these ‘monsters’ around the U.S., then making sure they turn out to be fake. By the time the dust clears from that, no one will remember the events that started all this, much less think shifters and hybrids are real.”

  William opened his mouth to say something, but whether it was to agree or not, Rebecca didn’t know, because Landon Donovan and Ivy Halliwell walked into the conference room.

  “I think it may be too late for that,” Ivy said.

  Rebecca cursed silently. She’d forgotten that shifters could pick up a quiet conversation from half a building away. What else had the woman heard? Did it really matter? Landon and Ivy already knew more than they should. In fact, they were the ones who’d almost certainly sent Evers up to Maine. She’d have to deal with those two as soon as this current crisis was taken care of.

  “What do you mean by that?” she asked, hating having to drag it out of them.

  Landon might be the deputy director, but Rebecca didn’t like the idea of the man knowing something she didn’t.

  He reached over and grabbed the TV remote from the table, flipping through several channels until he reached some footage of a reporter standing in front of some kind of security gate with a microphone in her hand and the bright lights of a camera in her face. The sound was still turned down, but the big banner across the top reading “Breaking News” was impossible to miss.

  “What am I looking at?” Rebecca demanded.

  Ivy folded her arms. “Recognize the gate behind her?”

  It took Rebecca a few moments, but then it hit her. She frowned. “Isn’t that the main gate here at the training complex? What the hell are they saying?”

  Landon turned up the volume, and she and William sat there stunned as the reporter described how she was standing in front of the entrance to a secret federal organization known as the Department of Covert Operations, also known as the DCO.

  “How the hell…?” William started.

  Landon’s jaw tightened. “It gets worse.”

  Rebecca couldn’t imagine how that could be possible, but then the eager reporter began talking about how the DCO paired animal-like shifters and hybrids with military and law enforcement agents to conduct dangerous, even illegal, missions all over the world, including places like Washington State. As the woman spoke, a collage of personnel records of various field agents, human a
nd shifter alike, appeared on the screen. Tanner’s was first in line, followed by Landon’s and Ivy’s and at least a dozen other operatives who were currently in the middle of classified operations.

  Those photos disappeared to be replaced with ones of William Hamilton and the members of the Committee. Rebecca gasped as the reporter named her as the leading force behind the DCO and its effort to siphon off millions in taxpayer’s dollars for at least a decade to run the unsanctioned government organization.

  “Oh God,” she whispered. All the work she’d done over the past twenty years to get here was falling apart in front of her eyes. “How could they have uncovered all this information so fast?”

  “The intel section is still trying to figure that out,” Landon said. “They think the information was leaked by someone in human resources.”

  William cursed. “How much more info do they have?”

  Rebecca noticed he was looking a little pale. She couldn’t blame him. She’d pulled him into this to be little more than a figurehead, and now it looked like accepting the position was going to cost him more than he’d ever imagined.

  “We don’t know, but I think we can expect it to get worse,” Ivy admitted, looking a little worried herself.

  Rebecca took a deep breath. “What do we do to get in front of this? How do we contain it?”

  The grim expression on Landon’s face told her everything she needed to know before he said a single word.

  “Over the past few days, we’ve watched the country lose its collective mind over the existence of shifters and hybrids and the fact that the world they thought they knew is a lie,” the former Special Forces soldier announced. “Tonight, they’ve learned a covert government organization not only knew about shifters and hybrids but has been using them to conduct missions in secret around the globe.” He snorted. “There’s no getting in front of this, Rebecca, and there’s no containing it. Every secret this organization has fought to keep hidden has been exposed. The only thing that matters now is what happens next. And we’re going to have to deal with the fact that it won’t be us deciding how this plays out. It’s going to be those people out there.”