Her Lone Wolf (6 page)

Beth picked up a slice of garlic bread and nibbled on it. “I heard you. But if you ask me, that just means he still cares about you.”

Danica wished. “Let’s just agree that it’s complicated and leave it at that. Suffice to say, the things keeping Clayne and me from getting back together are the same things that split us up in the first place. And it was more than some stupid policy about not getting involved with your partner.”

“Like what?”

“Nothing that I want to talk about. I’m going to focus on this case and catch this psycho so Clayne can go back to DC and I can go back to my life.”

Beth nodded. “That’s very mature of you. But you’re forgetting one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“That six-foot-six ripped Adonis you mentioned. You seriously think you’re going to be able to stay away from him?”

“I have to,” was all Danica said.

Not for her sake, but for Clayne’s.

“Have you heard from Landon and Ivy yet?”

Kendra looked up from her computer to see John poking his head in her office. “Yeah. Ivy called me last night. Their whole return trip was a nightmare. They got hung up in Manila for two days. They’ll be in later this morning.”

John shook his head. “I’m starting to think they’re cursed. I’ve never heard of anyone having so many problems. If their plane isn’t breaking down, they’re getting bumped from the flight. Remind me to never travel with them.”

Kendra laughed, but as soon as her boss left, she immediately felt guilty about lying to him. Again. But what was she going to tell him? That his two best covert agents were running their own operation behind his back, and that his senior behavioral-scientist-slash-training-officer-slash-personal-assistant was helping them do it?

John had Ivy and Landon, along with a dozen other agents, looking into any lead that might tell them where Klaus and Renard, the doctors who’d developed the hybrid process, might be hiding. But as far as Ivy was concerned, they weren’t doing it fast enough. So she and Landon were slipping away in between legit missions to check out possible sites that John thought weren’t strong enough to waste DCO assets on. John would freak out if he knew, but Kendra couldn’t refuse to help her best friend. Especially since Ivy would do the same for her if some demented doctors were using samples of her DNA to create whacked-out hybrids. So Kendra did what she could by slipping into the agency’s intel databases and sniffing out leads on possible labs, then getting Ivy and Landon into those places without the DCO knowing about it. It was dangerous work—well, not as dangerous as actually going to those places—but it made her feel like she was contributing to the cause.

It was also a hell of a lot more exciting than observing training exercises and analyzing data. She loved her job, but after ten years, she was tired of sitting on the sidelines. She wasn’t asking to become a full-fledged operative, but she wouldn’t mind going on a few missions now and then. Unfortunately, John wouldn’t even think about sending her into the field.

All that being said, her job was still more satisfying than her social life. Which—thanks to her epic fail of a date with Clayne Buchanan—sucked right now.

After years of crushing on the big, handsome wolf shifter, she’d been thrilled when he’d finally asked her out. So she’d put on her sexiest little black dress and gone to the steak house determined to seduce him.

She should have realized they weren’t going to hit it off when Clayne gave her one-word answers to every question she asked during dinner—even the ones that required more than that. She’d told herself that wasn’t unusual—he’d never been much of a talker. Hoping he’d loosen up if they were alone, she’d invited him back to her place. She’d been sure the moment they hit the sheets, they’d be on fire.

She’d been wrong. It hadn’t been the worst sex she’d ever had, but it definitely hadn’t been the earthshaking experience she hoped it’d be. Maybe she simply set unrealistic expectations no man could live up to. If Clayne, the man she’d been sure was The One, didn’t rock her world—in bed or out—that didn’t give her much hope for the rest of the male species. Then again, maybe she just had lousy taste in men. But that wasn’t fair. Clayne was a great guy. They simply hadn’t connected.

Kendra sighed as she turned back to her computer. But instead of working on the report she was writing, she opened the matchmaking program she’d created—the one she’d used to pair up Ivy and Landon. She almost typed in her own name, hoping to find her perfect mate, but chickened out. What if it said there wasn’t a guy for her? She cringed as she remembered writing the default response the program was supposed to give if it couldn’t find one:
Sorry, no match found. It’s hopeless.
She typed in Clayne’s name instead.

After a few minutes of sorting, the software spit out a name—Danica Beckett. Well, damn. Clearly, the program wasn’t as foolproof as Kendra thought. It had been dead-on with Ivy and Landon, but had missed by a mile with Clayne and Danica. Because, in Danica’s own words, she and Clayne had been a train wreck.

Kendra had always suspected the two had been more than partners, but she didn’t know for sure until Danica confessed during the exit debriefing that she and Clayne had violated department policy by getting involved with each other and that it had ended badly. Kendra tried to persuade Danica to stay, explaining she could get John to team her up with someone else, but the woman had refused, saying it would be too painful for both of them.

Which was why Kendra supposed the DCO had a nonfraternization policy. The downside to having partners get romantically involved was that you ended up losing one of them when things didn’t work out.

“Promise me you’ll keep an eye on Clayne,” Danica had said before she left.

Kendra blushed. Somehow, she doubted the other woman had meant keeping an eye on Clayne’s naked body while they had sex.

A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts. She looked up, smiling when she saw Ivy and Landon. Both tall and dark-haired, they were dressed casually in jeans and T-shirts. With Ivy’s exotic beauty and Landon’s rugged good looks, they made a very attractive couple.

“Hey!” She closed the matchmaking program with a quick click. “Man, am I glad you’re back. John’s been looking for you and I was starting to run out of excuses.”

Ivy’s dark eyes filled with alarm as she exchanged looks with her husband.

“Don’t worry,” Kendra added. “I told him you got hung up in Manila. He doesn’t suspect anything.”

Her friend visibly relaxed. “Thanks for covering for us. Again.”

“I’ll go talk to him,” Landon said. “He’s probably interested to know what happened in Japan.” He glanced at his wife. “Stay and catch up with Kendra.”

Kendra smiled as the two newlyweds went through their little I-love-you-ritual before Landon left. When they were at home or on a mission, the two could act like any other couple in love, but it was a different story at the DCO offices. They had to stay in their we’re-just-partners mode every second because if anyone suspected anything, they’d both be fired. Or at the very least, split up.

So the feline shifter and her ex–Special Forces husband had come up with some simple coded gestures to say “I love you” without anyone else knowing it. Ivy would touch the engagement and wedding rings she wore on a necklace under her shirt. And Landon rubbed his ring finger on his left hand, as if he were rotating an invisible wedding band around and around in circles. There were some people who’d probably think it was mushy, but Kendra thought it was romantic.

“Did you and Landon find anything in Batan?” Kendra asked as Ivy sat down in the chair beside her desk.

The small island in the Philippines was the latest in a string of locations where Klaus and Renard, the creeps who’d kidnapped Ivy and harvested her DNA all those months ago, had supposedly set up a lab.

Ivy threw a quick glance out the open door, her waist-length hair swinging over her shoulder.

“Dick’s at the DC office this week,” Kendra said.

Hiding stuff from John was one thing, because he was a trusting man. Dick wasn’t. He’d been suspicious of Ivy and Landon from the moment they’d teamed up, and his suspicions had only gotten stronger after what had happened with the hybrids. Dick refused to believe events had gone down the way Ivy and Landon claimed. He’d stopped one step short of accusing them of lying about it—at least in front of the rest of the DCO. But whenever he cornered them alone, he made sure to let them know he was watching.

“Yeah,” Ivy said in answer to Kendra’s question. “Dead bodies of people they experimented on and an empty lab.”

Kendra felt as much as heard the despair in her friend’s voice. She hadn’t seen the makeshift labs the doctors set up, but from what Ivy and Landon described, she knew they were horrific places. Rooms with metal beds and bug-infested mattresses with shackles to hold the test subjects in place while they were injected with the serum that was supposed to turn them into hybrids. Blood on the floor and sometimes the walls. Implements that looked like they’d be better suited for torture than medicine.

“They dumped the bodies in a mass grave.” Ivy’s eyes shimmered with tears. “I couldn’t even bring myself to look at them this time. I felt awful making Landon do it alone, but every time I see the twisted things Klaus and Renard turned those poor people into, I feel like I’m going to be sick.”

“At least this lead wasn’t a dead end like the other places.” There’d been a lot of those. Kendra leaned forward and covered Ivy’s hand with hers. “We’re going to find those doctors and we’re going to stop them.”

Ivy wiped her cheeks with her free hand. “It’s just that we never seem to get any closer. We’re not a step behind them; we’re a whole mile back. Sooner or later, they’re going to get the hybrid formula right.”

By “getting it right,” Ivy meant using her shifter DNA to create the perfect hybrid—one who would have all the attributes of a feline shifter, but with none of the nasty side effects, namely the uncontrollable rage that made them all but useless—and a potential liability.

“They’ll slip up long before that,” Kendra said. “When they do, you and Landon will be there to take them down.”

Ivy’s lips curved into a small smile. “You should really think about adding shrink to your list of duties.”

Kendra laughed. “And kick poor Marlon out of a job?” she asked, referring to the DCO’s resident psychologist.

That got a laugh out of her friend. Ivy hadn’t done much of that since the mess in Washington State. “So, what did I miss while Landon and I were away?”

Kendra picked up a stack of papers from her inbox and thumbed through them. “Nothing.”

Ivy lifted a brow. “Nothing, huh?”

Sometimes, Ivy’s feline intuition was annoying as hell. “Not a thing.”

“Did you and Clayne ever go on your date?”

Kendra tossed the stack of papers back in the inbox and straightened her desk. Unfortunately, she was a neat freak when it came to her desk, so there wasn’t much that needed straightening. “We did.”

“And?”

“And nothing. We went out to dinner, then he took me home.”

She hoped that would be enough to satisfy Ivy’s curiosity. She should have known better. Her friend sat there with her arms folded and a look on her face that said she’d stay there all day if she had to. Kendra opened her pencil drawer and began reorganizing it.

“Seriously?” Ivy said. “You’ve been fantasizing about Clayne for years, and that’s all you’re going to say?”

Kendra didn’t answer as she carefully picked up the thumbtacks that had been rolling around in the drawer for ages and put them back in the container from which they’d escaped.

“I think Marlon would call this avoidance,” Ivy mused.

Kendra dropped the last thumbtack in the container and pushed the drawer closed with a curse. “You aren’t going to let this go, are you?”

“Nope.”

Kendra was afraid of that. “The fact is, Clayne and I didn’t hit it off that well.”

“Oh.” Ivy looked taken aback. And more than a little chagrined that she’d pushed. “Well, first dates are always kind of rough. Maybe when you sleep together…” Her voice trailed off as Kendra shook her head.

“We already slept together. That’s what I meant when I said we didn’t hit it off that well.” Kendra blushed. Ivy might be her best friend, but admitting she and Clayne were dullsville between the sheets was embarrassing.

Ivy’s dark eyes went wide. “You and Clayne had sex on the first date?”

“You don’t have to say it like that. This isn’t the eighteen hundreds, you know. You and Landon had sex on the first date.”

“Actually, our first date was in a tent in South America, and we just kissed.”

Kendra pinned her with a look.

“Okay. I get the point, and I didn’t mean it that way,” Ivy said. “I just didn’t think things would move that fast. I figured Clayne would need some persuading before he jumped into bed.”

“He did, and I provided it.” Kendra picked up a pen and doodled in the bottom corner of her desk calendar. “Turned out not to be one of my best ideas ever.”

Her friend regarded her thoughtfully. “So, you two didn’t…you know…spark at all?”

“Not even a little. After all this time chasing him, I finally catch him, only to find out we’re completely incompatible in the sex department. Talk about a downer.”

“That means he isn’t the right guy for you.” Ivy chewed on her lower lip. “You know, you could think about saying yes when Declan asks you out again.”

Kendra fought the urge to roll her eyes. Ivy’d been trying to get her to go out with the bear shifter for months. While Declan was cute in a cuddly sort of way, and she was sure his dark blond hair and electric blue eyes made some women melt, he just didn’t do it for her. She kind of wished he did, since he clearly had a crush on her—as was evident by how many times a week he asked her out.

“You know he’s not my type, Ivy. He’s so quiet and shy.”

“It’s the shy, quiet ones they say you have to watch out for.” Ivy winked. “Maybe Declan does all his talking in the bedroom.”

Kendra laughed. She tried to imagine the big, gentle bear that was Declan turning into an animal in bed, but couldn’t.

Fortunately, Landon chose that moment to return and save her from any more embarrassment.

“Who does his talking in the bedroom?”

“No one,” Ivy told him. “Everything cool with John?”

Landon leaned back against the filing cabinet. The casual pose made his muscles flex under his shirt. “Yeah. He just wanted to debrief me after Japan.”

Kendra completely forgot to ask about the real reason they’d gone overseas. She’d get the details from John later.

Ivy nodded. “Does he have anything else for us?”

“Other than training, no.”

“Good.”

Kendra reached for her coffee mug. “You guys doing something special?”

Ivy made a face. “Not unless you count laundry. Although we might repaint the bedroom.” She gave her husband a teasing smile. “For some reason, Landon isn’t crazy about the lavender walls. Oh, and we’ll probably go visit Jayson. We haven’t been to see him in a while.”