“Don’t act like you didn’t see that woman get up and walk away after having a knife shoved halfway through her chest,” Elliott said in exasperation. “And that was after getting shot at least twice judging by the holes in her dress. She shouldn’t even be alive right now.”
Sawyer was trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for that, in between breathing a sigh of relief that his teammates had apparently missed his own gunshot wounds, when Erin Nichols, their weapons and tactics specialist, let out a short laugh.
“I don’t know why you’re so worried about the woman.” Fair with shoulder-length, curly, red hair, Erin was sitting in the same chair at the conference table she’d commandeered when they’d gotten there—the one with the best view of the door. Like she was worried someone was going to kick it in and attack them. “I’m more interested in knowing how the guy who stabbed her was able to disappear from her side one second and show up again fifty feet away. That shouldn’t be possible.”
Sawyer opened his mouth to answer but was interrupted by a loud snort. He turned around again, this time to see Rory Higgins, the team’s intel analyst and resident computer geek, shaking his head. A redhead like Erin, his light skin was even paler than usual. He looked plain wrung out.
“Maybe it isn’t possible, but we all saw it happen,” Rory said. “I think we need to accept last night was about something beyond the possible.”
Erin’s gray eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Like what?”
Rory glanced at each of them in turn before looking down at the floor. In that one second of eye contact, Sawyer saw a mountain of doubt and uncertainty. “I was thinking maybe something…I don’t know…supernatural?”
Sawyer was stunned Rory had gone there. Had he had a run-in with something strange he’d never told them about? If the room had been quiet before, now they were in that hearing-a-pin-drop category.
“Supernatural?” Erin stood, moving closer to where the rest of them were, an incredulous look on her face. “Please tell me you didn’t use that word with Weatherford and the other agents during the post-mission interview.”
Rory didn’t answer, but his sheepish expression said it all.
Sawyer sighed. Clarence Weatherford was their team’s section chief at MI6. Weatherford rarely left the comfort of his London-based office, and as far as Sawyer knew, the man hadn’t been in the field for almost four years. But after the report Sawyer sent in immediately following what happened at the club, saying they’d had a run-in with an American covert team and that something unexplainable had occurred, Weatherford had been on the first plane to Paris. Sawyer hadn’t revealed that three of the Americans were werewolves, but since he knew his teammates had gotten to the garage in time to see Harley get stabbed, he had to at least mention the guy who could disappear at will. When Weatherford had asked pointed questions, Sawyer had been honest about the guy with the freaky, black eyes and all the teeth, too. There was no way he could hide that he and Harley had put more than half a dozen bullets in the guy—there was blood everywhere—or that the thing had simply walked it off afterward. Not when there was a good chance his team might end up running into the creature again in the future.
“Don’t rag on him too hard, Erin,” Sawyer said. “How else do you describe a guy who seems like he can teleport in the blink of an eye?”
Erin looked like she wanted to argue, but Sawyer cut her off. “Look. The guy with the knife wasn’t the only strange thing in the building last night. There was another man, I guess you’d call him, with flat black eyes and a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. I shot him six times and the female agent from the American team got him a couple more. Any one of those bullets should have killed him, but he shrugged them off like they were nothing.”
Elliott and Erin exchanged skeptical glances while Rory went even more ashen.
“He was probably wearing some kind of fancy tactical vest,” Erin said, the words casual, like she wasn’t implying he’d missed something so obvious. “With all the exotic materials out there these days, they can make those vests so light, it’s hard to tell someone is wearing one under their clothes.”
“That doesn’t explain the teeth,” Rory pointed out.
She folded her arms with a shrug. “Dental implants.”
Sawyer had to fight the urge not to roll his eyes. “Erin, I watched blood pour out of the guy from those gunshot wounds. I’m talking pints of it. And the razor-sharp teeth were as normal and human as yours right up until he hissed at us.”
“Hissed?” Elliott repeated, the expression on his face giving away how lost he was at the moment. “What, like a cat?”
“No, definitely not like a cat,” Sawyer said, correcting him. “And yeah, he hissed at us.”
Before his teammates could come up with anything to say to that, a familiar scent tickled his nose. The perfect combination of vanilla custard and raspberries he was quickly coming to associate with Harley. She was in the hallway and coming this way. For some crazy reason, his heart sped up a little.
Harley wasn’t alone. He picked up several other scents, including the two male werewolves from her team and Weatherford. None of their scents were as distinct—or as enticing—as Harley’s. Then again, what could compete with his favorite dessert? Or the woman herself. In some crazy way, it was like he and Harley had known each other for years. Then again, after last night, maybe he needed to recalibrate his definition of crazy.
The door to the conference room swung open, and Weatherford walked in leading Harley and her team along with an older man in an expensive suit. Sawyer didn’t recognize him, but there was something about him that screamed covert agent.
Since Sawyer hadn’t paid much attention last night to the other people Harley worked with, he figured he should probably do it now. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. She’d traded in the dress he’d seen her in last night for jeans and a simple red blouse. With long, wavy, blond hair and blue-gray eyes that locked with his the moment she stepped through the door and refused to let go, could anyone blame him? Her creamy skin was like porcelain and her bubblegum-pink lips had to be the most kissable he’d ever seen.
She wasn’t simply beautiful.
She was mesmerizing.
Sawyer regained his focus in time to see Weatherford motioning everyone toward the table. Sawyer quickly grabbed a seat, hoping Harley would sit directly across from him so he could keep gazing at her without anyone else knowing what he was doing. Bollocks, he felt like a sodding teenager.
It didn’t work.
Before Harley could pull out the chair opposite Sawyer, one of her teammates grabbed it and she had to take a seat closer to the end of the table, leaving Sawyer sitting across from the big werewolf with the dirty-blond hair. For whatever reason, the guy didn’t seem to like him. In fact, if the expression on the man’s face was anything to go by, murder was currently being considered.