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.
What the bloody hell is that about?
As soon as they were all seated, Weatherford introduced everyone on both teams, finishing with the man in the expensive suit and glasses standing beside him.
“This is Nathan McKay, head of the joint FBI-CIA Special Threat Assessment Team—aka STAT. The FBI part handles domestic missions while the CIA portion focuses on international ones. The special part of the moniker is because they tackle cases involving supernatural creatures.”
Even after everything he and his teammates had been talking about moments before Weatherford had arrived, Sawyer could tell their boss’s words caught them off guard. As the silence stretched out, he noticed Harley and the other two werewolves—Jake and Caleb—were regarding him curiously. They probably couldn’t understand why Erin, Rory, and Elliott were so freaked out over the term supernatural considering they had one on their team. That was because Erin, Rory, and Elliott didn’t know he was a werewolf, something he spent every day making sure they never found out.
While the American werewolves mentally chewed on that, Sawyer took the opportunity to size up the rest of the STAT team. Dark-haired Jes Ridley was human and carried herself like an experienced field agent. Interestingly enough, her scent was intertwined with Jake’s, which could only mean one thing—they were a couple.
They weren’t the only ones. Clean-cut Forrest Albright and the very unique-looking Misty Swanson were also clearly a couple. Sawyer was pretty sure Forrest was human, but he couldn’t say he was as confident about Misty. Her violet eyes and long, purple hair—which something told him were natural—made him think she was some kind of supernatural, though he wasn’t sure what.
Beside Sawyer, Erin let out a derisive snort.
“No offense,” she said in a tone that plainly suggested something offensive was on the way. “But I don’t buy any of this bloody supernatural stuff. And if anyone in this room does, they’re barmy. I’ll admit, last night was a little out of the ordinary, but everything in that parking garage can be explained rationally.”
McKay pinned her with a hard look. “Normally I wouldn’t care about your opinions on the existence
