“How’s she handling the fact that her father is going to be locked up for the foreseeable future?” Jake asked, doing his best to knock a respectable dent in the four burgers on his plate.
“Extremely well, considering that the alternative is him being dead,” Brielle said, picking up her cheeseburger. “But she’s gotten a chance to Skype with him a few times. She’s pinning a lot on the agreement he made with STAT to use his gift to try and prevent this nuclear holocaust he’s so worried about. If things go well and the leads he provides to STAT pan out, he could be set free at some point.”
“How’s Kiara’s relationship with your brother?” Misty asked. “He’s not on the verge of bailing and leaving her wondering where he’s disappeared off to, is he?”
Everyone groaned at that. Brielle couldn’t blame them. While she’d been fairly sure the feelings Julian had for Kiara were real, it still hadn’t kept her from expecting him to ditch her at some point. It was what he did. He might be in love, but that didn’t buy him much benefit of the doubt. That had to be earned.
“You may not believe this, but he’s living with Kiara,” Caleb said. “In addition to being her boyfriend, he’s her full-time personal bodyguard now.”
More than one of Brielle’s new teammates seemed stunned at that, and, once again, she couldn’t blame them. Brielle hoped for the best, praying Kiara hadn’t made a decision she’d come to regret.
As they continued to eat, the topic of conversation slowly drifted away from Kiara and Julian to revolve mostly around the unexpected outcome from the New York mission.
“McKay told me that almost half of the people he’d brought in as backup for the mission have requested a transfer to STAT,” Jake said. “Since seeing everything that happened down in those tunnels, they all want to work with a supernatural—or more precisely Caleb, for some reason. McKay’s been interviewing each of them and says there are a handful with some real promise that he could easily put together on another three or four teams. Of course, the problem is that he doesn’t have enough supernaturals to go around.”
“I guess you don’t find a lot of supernatural résumés on LinkedIn, huh?” Hudson said with a chuckle. “I’m guessing it might take him a long time to find those willing to sign up with STAT.”
“Probably,” Jake replied. “Until then, let’s assume we’re going to be really damn busy. We’re the only supernatural team McKay has.”
After that, Jes called a moratorium on shop talk for the rest of the night. Instead, they talked about personal stuff, laughing about family and their various romantic exploits. Brielle relaxed on the couch, her fingers casually playing with Caleb’s shaggy hair as he sat on the floor, one shoulder resting against her leg. She took great pleasure in the fact that he was practically purring at her touch—did wolves purr?—and in the fact that this was the first time in her life she was surrounded by people she truly thought of as friends.
After all the excitement of the past few days, combined with all the driving they’d done, Brielle soon found herself zoning out, minutes away from falling asleep. That was probably why she completely missed the sound of a phone ringing until Jake dug his cell out of his pocket.
“McKay, what’s up?” he said as he walked into the kitchen to take the call.
As everyone in the room fell silent to listen to the one-sided conversation their pack leader was having, Brielle forced herself back to full awareness and sat up straighter.
“Is it another mission?” Jes asked when Jake walked back into the living room.
“Actually, we have two of them this time, which means McKay is going to need us to be in two places at once,” Jake said.
Brielle was trying to figure out what he meant by that when Jake continued.
“Caleb, McKay has you Brielle, Hudson, Genevieve, Forrest, and Misty booked on a plane for Oslo, Norway, tonight. There’s a radical group in the area that has all the makings of a developing terrorist organization with supernatural indicators. We have no idea what their target might be, but the intel analysts feel sure they’re moving soon.”
Brielle wanted to ask if all their missions started out this vague, but before she could, Caleb spoke.
“Okay,” he said. “So where are you and everyone else going?”
“Jes, Harley, Sawyer, and I are heading to Manaus, Brazil. It seems they have some kind of reptilian shifter near the Amazon River that drags people off to sacrifice them—when it doesn’t simply eat them. Since he doesn’t know a lot about what’s going on in Oslo, McKay wanted to give you more resources to deal with that situation, figuring the four of us can handle the mission in Brazil.”
No one said anything, and Brielle could only guess that they were all thinking about what it was going to be like without having the whole team together. But soon enough, the ribbing started, as everyone tried to convince each other that they’d gotten the better mission.
“Any mission that takes me to a major European city instead of the Amazonian rainforest is a big win for me,” Genevieve said. “Nothing against rainforests, but my hair and humidity don’t get along.”
From where she sat on the floor on the other side of the coffee table, Misty nodded her head in complete agreement.
“Well, you can keep your wannabe terrorists,” Jes said, popping a potato chip in her mouth. “I’d much rather tangle with man-eating reptile shifters any day.”
The teasing continued, but Brielle ignored it as Caleb took her hand and urged her off the couch and onto his lap. “You ready for this?” he asked softly.
Brielle draped an arm around his shoulders and kissed him, then shrugged. “It would have been nice to get in a little practice with those shiny new weapons McKay issued me, especially since I’ve already borrowed abilities from you, Forrest, Misty, and Hudson.”
He chuckled and kissed her back. “I wouldn’t worry too much about that. I’m sure I can find a supernatural terrorist or two to toss your way. Until then, Genevieve will do just fine. Besides, the most important part is that we’re doing this together.”
She smiled. “Then in that case, I’m definitely ready for this.”
Caleb gazed at her, his sensuous mouth curving into a grin she was becoming familiar with. “Think we have time to go back to the apartment before we head to the airport?”
“To pack some clothes?” she teased. “I hope so.”
“Oh, yeah,” he murmured, kissing her again. “We should probably do that, too.”
Read on for a sneak peek at the next book in Paige Tyler’s SWAT series, Kat and Connor’s story.