Her Rogue Alpha (X-Ops Book 5) (4 page)

She was about to turn around and go back, but before she could, her phone rang. She dug in her purse to glance at the screen and cursed when she saw the number for the DCO operations center.
Crap
.

“Halliwell.”

“Agent Halliwell, this is control,” the man on the other end said. “Your mission is a go.”

Great
.

She sighed. “When and where do I report?”

“Your flight is already waiting for you at the Andrews MIL-AIR terminal. You need to be there in an hour.”

She wasn’t sure how the hell she was going to make it all the way to Andrews AFB at this time of night. Just getting through the gate could take fifteen minutes sometimes.

“Where am I going?” she asked.

“That information will all be provided when you get to Andrews.”

Layla looked back at Jayson’s door as she hung up. She wished she didn’t have to leave things like this, but she didn’t have a choice. She just prayed Jayson wouldn’t do anything stupid before she got back.

“We won’t let him do anything stupid,” Ivy promised her sister. “Now stop worrying about Jayson and focus on your mission, okay?”

Ivy could barely hear her sister over the roar of the C-5’s engines in the background as Layla promised she’d be careful. Sighing, Ivy put her phone away. She still hated the idea of her sister being a field agent, but she understood why Layla was doing it. And if Layla had to go out on her first mission with anyone other than her and Landon, Ivy was glad it was Clayne and Danica. She just wished her sister wasn’t preoccupied with Jayson.

“What was that about?” Landon asked from the driver’s seat of the DCO-issued sedan they were using for tonight’s op, his night vision binoculars glued to the huge house they were surveilling.

She and Landon had been sitting outside the home of Thomas Thorn, former senator and current member of the DCO Committee, as well as owner-slash-CEO of Chadwick-Thorn, for the past two hours. Well,
home
was a poor choice of words. Manse, mansion, estate, small zip code—all those terms were more accurate. The immense Mediterranean-style house occupied a coveted chunk of Washington, DC, property positioned near Embassy Row and the Naval Observatory.

“Layla’s on her way to meet Clayne and Danica for her mission. She’s worried about Jayson because Dick is trying to convince him to take a drug made from the latest hybrid serum, claiming it can heal his back.”

Landon lowered his binoculars to give her a shocked look, his dark eyes wide. “Are you frigging kidding me? Please tell me Jayson isn’t seriously considering doing it.”

Ivy shrugged. “It sounds like he might be. When Layla tried to talk him out of it, Jayson got so upset, he practically tossed her out.”

Landon cursed, digging in his pocket for his cell phone.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m going to call Jayson and tell him to stop being a dumbass.”

Ivy reached out and caught his arm. “Don’t do that.”

“Why the hell not?” Landon demanded. “Someone needs to tell him that he’s going to kill himself with that damn serum.”

Ivy glanced at Thorn’s place, checking to make sure nobody was moving around outside. She and Landon were there to get an idea of how many security people Thorn employed, how often they walked the grounds, and if there were any obvious weak spots in the estate’s security before they came back to break in. It would end up being a wasted trip if they missed something because they were arguing about how to deal with Jayson.

“You can’t call Jayson because it won’t do any good,” she said. “You’re not his A-team commander anymore—you’re his friend. You can’t order him around. Besides, you know Jayson well enough to realize you can’t keep him from doing something he wants to do—especially once he’s gotten it into his head to do it. If you call him and tell him he’s being stupid, you’re going to push him into making the worst possible decision even faster than he normally would.”

Landon’s jaw tightened. “Well, I have to do something. I can’t just stand by while Dick pumps that crap into Jayson’s body.”

Ivy slid her hand up to his heavily muscled shoulder and squeezed. “We are going to do something. We’re going to call John and let him know what’s happening. He’ll tell Zarina and she’ll figure out a way to stop this.”

Landon looked doubtful as he shoved his phone back in his pocket. Ivy didn’t blame him. While the Russian doctor Zarina Sokolov had single-handedly done more to stop the DCO’s secret hybrid research than anyone, this was a tall task to ask.

“She might be able to stop it for now,” Landon agreed. “But like you just said, it’s hard to keep Jayson from doing something he really wants to do. If we stop him this time, what’s to keep him from going back to Dick next time, or the one after that? How do we protect him from himself?”

Even though Jayson’s injury wasn’t Landon’s fault, he blamed himself anyway. He’d sent his friend on the mission that had ended with Jayson getting blown up and ultimately chaptered out of the army. But while Landon wanted to help his friend so badly it hurt, it seemed that every time he tried, it usually resulted in Jayson getting pissed off.

“We can’t,” she said softly. “The only person who has any chance of doing that is Layla.”

“If he’ll even listen to her,” Landon muttered. “It doesn’t sound like things are going too well between them right now.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Ivy’s heart went out to Layla. Her sister had fallen really hard for Jayson. She didn’t even want to think how badly Layla would be crushed if the two of them broke up. “We just have to hope they can make it work, for both their sakes.”

Landon picked up his binoculars and went back to watching Thorn’s place. She and Landon had been immersed in the former senator’s world ever since getting back from Tajikistan two months ago, looking for evidence that would tie him to all the illegal crap that had been going down at the DCO for years, especially with the hybrid program. Unfortunately, they hadn’t found anything in his offices or the dozens of research facilities they’d slipped into over the past few weeks.

The only other place left for them to check was Thorn’s home. Normally, breaking into a private residence wouldn’t be a big deal for her and Landon. B and E was their area of expertise. Unfortunately, getting info on the layout of Thorn’s place had turned out to be harder than they’d thought. They didn’t want to walk in there and set off an alarm on a security system they didn’t even know was there.

“I guess John was right about Thorn’s new hybrid serum being further along than we’d guessed,” Landon said, not taking his eyes off the house.

Ivy frowned as she scanned the roofline. The tile-and-slate roof was seriously steep, and she wasn’t crazy about the idea of traversing it. Hopefully they’d be able to find a better way in.

“Did you really doubt it?” she asked. “If that mysterious shifter Adam told John that Thorn and his new collection of mad scientists got their hands on samples from those hybrids we went up against in Tajikistan, I’m sure they did. That would have given them a big head start.”

A muscle in Landon’s jaw flexed. If he were a shifter, he probably would have growled. They’d been so sure that all the research from Tajikistan—with the exception of the intel they’d collected for John and the one nearly feral female hybrid they’d brought back and put into Zarina’s care—was gone. Powell and Moore must have managed to get Thorn blood samples from those totally badass hybrids over there without anyone knowing it.

“Yeah, well, I get the feeling John knows a lot more than he’s telling us,” Landon muttered.

Ivy didn’t disagree. John had been working closely with Adam and his crew of hidden shifters to find hard evidence on Thorn. Even with Adam around to watch out for John, Ivy wasn’t comfortable with the idea of the director of the DCO putting himself at risk. Thorn wasn’t the kind of man you wanted to mess with.

Movement out of the corner of her eye suddenly caught her attention. She snapped her head around just in time to see someone moving quickly across the rooftop. The person was too lithe and graceful to be anything other than a woman.

“Someone’s on the roof,” she said. “Just to the left of the big chimney.”

Landon turned his binoculars in that direction, immediately locking on the woman as she ran straight up the steep roof without disturbing a tile, then scurried along the top ridge. In less than ten seconds, she’d made it all the way across the mansion and was sliding down the slate toward one of the third-floor windows, through which she promptly disappeared.

“I’ll be damned,” Landon whispered. “I think Thorn is about to get robbed by a shifter.”

Ivy didn’t argue about the shifter part. Even from a distance, the woman’s grace and confidence made it obvious. Ivy wasn’t sure she was a criminal though. “Do you think Adam sent her?”

Landon didn’t take his gaze off the house. “Maybe, but wouldn’t he have told John? Think we should move in for a closer look?”

“No. Let’s watch and see what happens. If she’s one of Adam’s shifters, we’ll get a report on what she finds. If she’s really a thief trying to rob Thorn, we’ll get a chance to see how good his security actually is.”

Ivy only hoped they didn’t shoot first and ask questions later.

* * *

Dreya Clark couldn’t believe how easy it had been to get into the Thorn mansion. After sneaking past perimeter security, cameras, motion and thermal sensors, and the occasional guard, breaking into the house itself had been a joke. Then again, people usually didn’t bother with security alarms anywhere but the first floor. Not that she was complaining. She liked when rich people made it easy for her to steal things. It made taking them that much sweeter, like she was only doing what these rich snobs were begging her to do.

She slipped through the third-floor window and landed lightly on the dark hardwood floor, then stood there, checking the place out with her nose. She immediately pinpointed the location of Thorn and three security guards. They were all on the first floor. Good. Even though that rich bastard had an office downstairs, she was more interested in the private study up here.

She ran down the hallway in that direction, her soft-soled shoes soundless on the floor. Letting herself into the room, she quietly closed the door behind her. As she caught sight of historic Georgetown and the White House just beyond through the big picture window, she had to admit that the view was spectacular.

The room was dark, but her freaky eyes let her see as clearly as if the lights were on. Dreya would have loved to pull an old book off the shelf that covered one wall and curl up in one of the comfy-looking chairs, but she wasn’t there for that. She was there to steal something. Even so, she couldn’t help running her gloved fingers along each book as she made her way past the bookcase. Man, it would have been nice to swipe some of them. Unfortunately, none of her regular fences worked with rare books.

She moved over to check out Thorn’s desk but didn’t find anything interesting, unless you counted a little black book full of names, addresses, usernames, and passwords.

“Mr. Thorn, you silly man. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that you’re not supposed to write down your passwords?” she said softly. “It’s very bad for security.”

Even though she didn’t give a crap about credit card pins and bank account numbers, she flipped through the book anyway. She broke into places to steal stuff for the fun of it, not to transfer money to a Cayman bank account. She stopped when she came to numbers related to access doors and security systems. Those she memorized. Sometimes it was nice being a freak, like now, when she could store dozens of different numbers in her head like a computer.

In the very back of the book was a long alphanumeric code. There was nothing to indicate what it was for, but it looked interesting, so she memorized that one too. Then she put everything back exactly the way it had been and turned her attention to the real reason she was there—the diamond.

Dreya surveyed the room, taking in the hardwood floors, marble accents, and old paintings mounted everywhere. She sniffed the air, letting her nose lead her to the painting on the far wall—a large, fancy portrait of George Washington sitting on a horse. She leaned closer and inhaled deeply. The scent lingering on one side of the frame told her that Thorn handled the picture too frequently for it to be anything other than a cover for a safe.

She swung the painting aside and studied the exposed safe behind it with a smile. People like Thorn didn’t buy cheap crap, that was for sure. But this same model had been in the last two houses she’d hit, so she knew it well. She shrugged off her small backpack, keeping an ear open for movement from downstairs as she took out her tools.

The safe had an electronic keypad designed to lock out anyone who punched in the wrong combination of numbers three times in a row. Luckily, she had equipment that allowed her to bypass the entire keypad interface and communicate directly with the computer chip that controlled the locking mechanism. Thank God Thorn wasn’t the old-fashioned type who liked those twirling combination dials. Those things could be a real bitch to deal with.

Pulling the electronic safe cracker out of her bag, she attached it to the side of the safe and flipped it on, then let it do its thing. If Rory Keefe—her best friend, mentor, and fence—was right, she’d open the door to find the biggest honking diamond she’d ever seen. That was saying something, since she’d stolen a lot of big diamonds in her time.

After the lights on the box turned green, she double-checked to make sure all the alarms were deactivated, then yanked open the safe.

Inside, there were two black boxes. One was a standard velvet jewelry case. The other was made of plastic. Knowing the diamond had to be in the jewelry box, she took it out and opened it. She almost gasped at the sight of the enormous, pear-cut diamond pendant set in gold. The stone was flawless and had to be close to forty-five carats. Dreya couldn’t imagine what it was worth or how the hell a man like Thorn had gotten his hands on it. Diamonds this size always carried a story with them. She wondered what one this rock had.

Telling herself there’d be plenty of time to look up the stone’s pedigree while she was figuring out how much to sell it for, she closed the jewel case with a snap and dropped it in her backpack. She swung her gaze back to the safe, tilting her head a little as she considered the other box inside. Curiosity getting the better of her, she took it out and opened it. Or tried to, anyway. Frowning, she held it up, inspecting it more closely, and realized it wasn’t a box at all. It was a solid, rectangular piece of metal with a pencil-sized hole in one end and a small, narrow slot that looked suspiciously like a computer connection of some kind on the other.

She chewed on her lip, weighing the piece of metal in her hand and wondering if she should take it. If it weren’t valuable, it wouldn’t have been in Thorn’s safe. And while it wasn’t something she’d probably ever be able to sell, the reality was, she liked taking valuable crap from rich people.

Shrugging, she tossed the funny box in her backpack along with everything else. Then she slipped her arms through the straps, gave the place a once-over, and headed for the door. She could have closed and locked the safe, then put the painting back into place. But why do that? It was no fun stealing stuff if the person you took it from didn’t know it.