Her Wild Hero

“Wait a minute.” Tate looked like someone had pulled the floor out from under him, then hit him with an axe handle. “Stutmeir was on the DCO’s payroll? We funded his frigging research? How is that even possible? Stutmeir and his doctors were torturing people.”


Landon traded a quick look with Ivy, but she shook her head. Kendra knew what that look meant, and Kendra couldn’t blame her. There were obviously some things that Ivy wasn’t ready to share, and the fact that she’d been one of the people Stutmeir’s doctors had tortured was one of those things.

Tate dropped into the cheap, swivel desk chair. “And now, these same people have started a whole new hybrid program?”

“Or maybe some other group within the DCO,” Ivy said. “We just don’t know for sure.”

Landon leaned back against the counter and crossed one booted foot over the other. “It can’t be a coincidence that this is the exact part of Costa Rica where the DCO decided to send you guys. If there was a single rogue group within the DCO doing all this, they wouldn’t have sent you down here.”

Kendra understood where Landon was heading at the same time Tate did.

“Shit,” he muttered. “So, the traitorous group of bastards in the DCO who employed Stutmeir got wind that a second group of traitorous bastards had a hybrid lab in this general area, then manipulated events to get us sent here.”

“You and Declan said you thought someone had us conducting a grid search for something,” Kendra pointed out. “Now we know what it was.”

Tate nodded. “This lab.”

“They were probably hoping the doctors would get nervous and abandon ship,” Ivy said.

“But instead, the second group of traitorous bastards at the DCO decided to accelerate their program, and used your team to test their hybrids,” Landon added.

“But the commander of the security force went nuts and took over the operation,” Kendra finished. “God, that sounds absolutely crazy.”

The muscle in Tate’s jaw flexed. “So, what the hell do we do now?”

“First, we search every inch of this compound,” Landon said. “I want to see if there’s anything here that might tell us who from the DCO funded this program. Next, we collect information for Zarina. She’s going to want to have details on these hybrids—pictures, blood and tissue samples, copies of any important-looking research. Maybe it will tell her who stole it from the archives. Last, we collect up everything that’s left—every scrap of paper, every piece of equipment, and all the bodies—then we burn this place to the ground. I don’t want anyone being able to use this particular hybrid process again. These hybrids weren’t perfect, but they were better than the first group we ran up against. If these were second-generation hybrids, I don’t ever want to face a third generation.”

Kendra had to agree with that. “What do we do when we get home? There’s going to be a debriefing.”

“We tell the truth, or as close to it as we can get, anyway. That the camp and everything in it went up in flames during the fight with the hybrids,” Landon said. “Until we know for sure that we can trust John, he gets nothing.”

She hated lying to John. But if Landon was right about her boss, telling him what they really learned could get a lot of people killed. “And after that?”

“We figure out who really pulls the strings at the DCO,” Landon said. “This hybrid program might have started with John or Dick—or hell, maybe both of them—but my gut tells me that someone on the Committee is involved, and we need to find out who.”

Kendra’s stomach churned. Going after the Committee made sense, but it was also the nearest thing to suicide she’d ever heard.

Kendra continued to pore over everything in the lab alongside Ivy and Landon while Tate rounded up the other guys so they could search the rest of the buildings. Landon was just calling John for a pickup when Kendra heard Clayne’s voice outside. She hoped that meant Declan was back, too.

Tossing Ivy the flash drive with everything she’d found in her section of the lab, Kendra ran for the door. She sagged with relief when she saw Declan standing with Clayne…and Tanner? She hadn’t expected to see him as part of this op. At the moment, though, she was too focused on Declan to wonder what the DCO hybrid was doing there.

Pulse racing, she closed the distance between them in record time and threw her arms around him in front of everyone. She was so happy that he was back safe, she didn’t realize he hadn’t put his arms around her. She immediately stepped back to search his face.

“What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Maybe you should let Derek take a look at you.”

“I’m fine.”

“But he’s a medic,” she insisted. “He can—”

“I said I’m fine!” Declan growled.

Kendra jumped. From the corner of her eye, she saw Clayne give her and Declan a curious look. She bit her lip. “Okay. I just thought…”

Declan’s expression softened. “I know. And I’m sorry. But I’m fine, Kendra. Really.”