Her Rogue Alpha (X-Ops Book 5) (22 page)

“What you’ve accomplished on your own is far more impressive than anything you could have done with hybrid abilities,” Layla said. “I couldn’t be prouder of my partner—or the man I love.”

At those words, Jayson felt a surge of pride unlike anything else he’d ever experienced. He kissed her again, then pulled back. “Let’s go get those girls and bring them home.”

As if on cue, an explosion from the front of the estate shook the ground beneath them and a big, red fireball rolled up through the night sky. Seconds later, the popping sound of small arms fire filled the air like someone was hosing down the front of the estate with a half-dozen machine guns.

Shit
. If they blew this because he was too busy throwing a pity party for himself to stay focused on the mission, he was going to be pissed.

“Go!” Jayson urged.

Trusting the teens’ distraction would get everyone’s attention turned the other way, Layla took off running for the back of the house, Jayson at her side. Dropping to one knee, he put his back to the rough stone and cupped his hands in front of him. He tensed, knowing it was going to hurt, but doing it anyway. Layla read his mind, launching herself at him, her booted foot thumping into his outstretched hands on the fly. He shoved up at the same time she jumped, propelling her to the top of the wall.

She stretched out on her stomach, then threw one of her legs over the top and reached down with her free hand. Jayson didn’t know how the hell a woman her size could hold his weight even if she was a shifter, but he leaped up and grabbed her outstretched hand anyway. The moment their palms clapped together, she gripped tightly, pulling him up as he kicked with his legs. Considering they hadn’t practiced this particular move, they executed it amazingly smoothly, and within a few seconds, they were both dropping down to the far side of the high wall and were inside the estate.

Jayson pulled the AK-74 off his back as Layla drew her pistol. He waited while she tested the air inside the compound with her nose and ears to make sure there weren’t any guards hanging around back there.

After a moment, Layla gave him the all-clear signal.

“Let’s head for the main section of the house, then hope that you pick up Anya’s scent from there,” Jayson said.

Layla nodded and took point. Jayson followed her across the property as she tried to stay in the deep shadows as much as possible. They moved fast but carefully, too. It wouldn’t do Anya or anyone any good if they ran into a group of armed guards.

As they ran past a big swimming pool artfully surrounded by raised flower beds made of stacked stone and shaped concrete, Jayson had a hard time not gawking. The place looked more like something you’d see on a private island getaway in the Mediterranean than an estate in Ukraine.

He followed Layla around the loungers and outdoor bar as she led the way to the large french doors that led into the main house. Jayson expected the gunfire from the front of the house to start to taper off—surely there couldn’t have been that many rounds of ammunition in the trunk of a car—but as he and Layla reached the heavy glass doors, the sound of weapons fire actually got heavier.

“Dylan and the others better not be out there in a gunfight with the guards,” he whispered to Layla. “If they are and they live through this, I’m going to kill them.”

“A concept only a man could understand because yeah, that makes sense,” Layla muttered as she opened one of the french doors.

They slipped inside a large space that looked less like a living room and more like a rest area if you got tired going from the west side of the estate to the east side. A central hallway branched off left and right, toward the two separate wings of the huge home, while ahead of them a monstrously large sectional couch made out of some kind of dark wood and marble sat in front of an equally large brick fireplace. Just past that, Jayson saw another hallway that looked like it led to another living room.

Layla took Anya’s scarf out of her jacket pocket, pressed the fabric to her nose, and breathed deeply. Eyes closed, she sniffed the air, searching for the scent. A moment later, her eyes flew open, revealing that they were greener than Jayson had ever seen them.

“I have her,” she announced.

Stuffing the scarf back in her pocket, she turned and ran toward the east wing.

Now that Layla had the scent, she moved fast, and it was all Jayson could do to keep up with her and provide some kind of cover. Running that fast through a house when you didn’t know if there were bad guys around every corner was reckless as hell, but he was still damn glad he had Layla and her nose leading him. They ran past more rooms, doorways, and corridors than he bothered counting. If he’d had to go down every hallway, open every door, and search every room to see if the girls were there, he’d have been there until tomorrow.

“Anya’s scent is strong, which means she was in this hallway recently,” Layla said. “I can smell the other girls, too.”

Layla picked up speed, forcing him to keep up. The gunfire from outside was getting even worse and from the sounds of it, there was now shooting coming from the outlying buildings where Clayne and Danica had gone. Jayson cursed, looking for other exit doors in case he and Layla ran into problems and couldn’t get out the way they’d come. Because this plan seemed to be going wrong fast.

He was so focused on developing an alternate escape route that he almost ran over Layla when she suddenly hit the brakes and came to a sliding stop. “What’s wrong?”

She backtracked a few dozen steps until she came to a marble-lined arch that opened up onto a set of spiraling stairs leading downward. Then she leaned out over the railing and sniffed.

“The girls are down there somewhere,” she whispered. “There are three men, too. Do you think we can get away with me distracting them like I did at the RSA building?”

Jayson shook his head as he slipped his rifle over his back and took out his pistol. “Those guys are going to be tense as hell from all the shooting going on. If you pop down there and say hi, they’ll likely put a bullet in you.”

“So what do we do?”

“We put a bullet in them first,” he said. “Depending on where they’re standing, I can probably take down two of them before they return fire, but three would be pushing my luck. Can you handle one of them yourself?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Yes. If you asked me a week ago, I’m not so sure what I would have said, but if it means saving Anya and those other girls, I can do it.”

He gave her a nod. “We’ll slip down and get as close as we can before we step out. Before we do, try to use your nose and ears to help me understand where the men are positioned. No talking—just finger and hand signals.”

Layla nodded and descended the stairs. Halfway down, she stopped cold, testing the air again with her nose.

“What is it?” he whispered in her ear.

She turned to him, her eyes wide. “I smell Powell. He’s not down there now, but he was down there recently. I can smell his blood. He didn’t die up on that roof. Zolnerov has him.”

Shit.
Now they had someone else to rescue.

* * *

Ivy headed straight for John’s office the moment she walked into the operations building at the DCO training complex, but Kendra intercepted her before she got more than ten feet.

“Dick hasn’t been around since he sent Jayson and Powell to Donetsk, but John doesn’t want him showing up out of the blue and figuring out that we’re onto something with Thorn,” Kendra said, taking Ivy’s arm and turning her back around. “Come with me.”

“Are Layla and Jayson on their way back yet?” Ivy asked as they crossed the central quad area of the complex and headed toward the building where the DCO’s tech wizards maintained all the servers and databases the covert organization depended on for intelligence gathering operations.

“Not quite.” Kendra gave her a sidelong glance. “The diplomat’s son was in Donetsk with his girlfriend. Long story short, she got kidnapped along with some other girls and is being held by one of the militia leaders. Layla and Jayson are going in to rescue them.” She glanced at her watch. “In fact, with the time difference, they should be hitting the place right now.”

Ivy halted in midstep. “What?”

Kendra stopped too, turning to face her. “Layla is going to be fine. She’s more like you than you think. Besides, Jayson loves her like crazy. He would never let anything happen to her. They’re going to be an amazing team. I think they can handle a little pervert warlord who’s kidnapping girls so he can build his own harem.”

Ivy sighed. She didn’t like the idea of Layla going up against a militia leader, but at least her sister was with a partner who would watch her back. “You’re right. And while Powell is a jackass, at least he’s there to back them up. That has to count for something.”

Kendra turned and started across the quad again, walking faster than before. Ivy followed. Her friend’s heart rate was spiking and it had nothing to do with the vigorous exercise.

“What aren’t you telling me?” Ivy asked sharply.

Kendra didn’t answer. Ivy thought she might have to circle around in front of her friend and get in her path when Kendra stopped abruptly and turned to look at her.

“Powell isn’t going to be helping them on the rescue mission because he’s dead,” Kendra said. “He and Jayson got into a gunfight with the local militia shortly after they arrived in Donetsk. Powell apparently decided that he needed to off Jayson to keep the locals from getting their hands on a hybrid, and Jayson didn’t go along with the idea.”

Ivy stood there stunned. “Jayson killed him?”

“I don’t have all the details,” Kendra said. “It’s more likely that the local militia killed Powell, but I got the feeling that Jayson played a part in it. The important thing I’m trying to tell you isn’t that Jayson had anything to do with Powell’s death—that jerk tried to kill Jayson in cold blood and got exactly what he deserved—it’s that Layla and Jayson are a real team out there, and they’re good enough to get this done.”

Kendra turned and started walking again. Ivy fell into step beside her. As they crossed the quad, Kendra brought her up to speed on everything she knew about what had happened over in Donetsk. “Jayson jumped off a three-story building and swam across a river at least half a mile wide. Does that sound like something the Jayson we know could do?”

“No,” Ivy admitted, a little shocked.

If Powell tried to kill Jayson, that meant the serum must have worked. The idea that Layla was out there on the mission with another shifter—or hybrid or whatever Jayson was—made Ivy feel a lot better about the danger her sister was in. That said, she still wouldn’t sleep until they were both back home.

When she and Kendra got to the IT building, her friend led her through the maze of cubicles that filled the front half of the building and into a big room. All four walls were lined with computer servers while worktables filled the center of the room.

John was waiting for them, along with Evan Lloyd, an analyst from the intel branch Ivy had worked with several times, as well as two techies she didn’t recognize. One was a woman in her midthirties with her black hair pulled back into a very businesslike bun, while the guy looked like he’d just graduated from college the week before. John introduced them as Lisa Marino and Karl Thomas.

“So what do you have?” John asked her.

Ivy reached into her coat pocket and pulled out both the diamond and the strange black box, setting them on the nearest table. Lisa immediately snatched up the box and examined it with Karl, leaving the rest of them alone with the diamond.

“This is absolutely spectacular.” Kendra picked it up by the chain, watching the light bounce off the facets of the gem. “Can I keep it? I promise to take good care of it, take it out on walks every night, and clean up behind it when it makes a mess.”

Ivy laughed. “I don’t think even you would be able to clean up the kind of mess that follows something like this thing around. I think we’d better just send it back home.”

Kendra looked disappointed but set the diamond down on the table again. “Yeah, I guess so. Besides, I have nothing that would go with it. I’d have to buy a whole new wardrobe.”

“I don’t know,” Ivy said. “I’m pretty sure Declan would be okay if you walked around the house wearing nothing but that.”

John let out a polite cough, gesturing to Evan, then himself. “Two men standing right here.”

Ivy opened her mouth to tease John, but Lisa cut her off.

“It’s a solid state drive, but it’s way more advanced than anything either of us have ever seen.”

“So it’s a hard drive?” John clarified, his eyes lighting up.

Ivy shared his excitement. Considering the fact that this thing had been locked up in Thorn’s private safe, it had to have some really juicy stuff on it. Ivy doubted it was just his taxes.

“This is so much more than a hard drive,” Karl said. “It’s one big, solid silicon-based integrated chip. There’s no moving disk like a normal hard drive.”

He and Lisa started babbling about nonvolatile NAND flash memory, unpowered storage, fully integrated circuit design, and seamless controller chips, completely oblivious to the fact that no one else in the room understood a single word they were saying.

“There are plenty of solid state drives out there right now, of course,” Karl added, as if everyone knew that. “Price has kept them mostly on the fringes though, so they’re mostly in toys. This thing looks to be light-years ahead of anything I’ve ever heard of. It would have cost a small fortune to make, but the storage capability must be insane.”

“What kind of storage are we talking about?” John asked. “How much information could be stored on here?”

Lisa exchanged looks with Karl, who shrugged.

“Well, it’s all just theory at this point since this seems like a prototype, you know?” Karl said.

“How much information?” John asked again, firmer this time. “Five terabytes or something?”

The woman shook her head. “Definitely not. If all he wanted to do was store five terabytes, he could have used a normal hard drive. Heck, he could have used a flash drive for that. No, this thing is probably in the petabyte range, maybe a lot more.”