Page 19 of Covert Affections (Shadow Agents/PSI-Ops #5)

Chapter Seventeen

Jesse

The stench of hybrid rot burned Jesse's nose as he moved silently in cat form through the Colorado mountains. Moonlight filtered through the pines, creating strange patterns on the rocky terrain. His paws weren’t bothered by the rocks, but his sense of smell was greatly offended by the scent he was tracking.

The combination of decay and chemicals shouldn't exist in nature, yet it came off those he was hunting in waves, leaving his cat side agitated for weeks. That’s how long Jesse had been trailing the pack of hybrid coyote-shifters across the country.

His mission had been straightforward. Track the group of rogue were-coyote hybrids who had escaped their holding cells at one of his employer’s many black sites.

They were another in a string of failed experiments.

This lot differed from the human trials they’d been conducting as of late.

Not that one was better than the other. Jesse didn’t get a vote on what The Corporation said or did.

The one time he’d taken a big stand against them had resulted in months of torture and then reprogramming.

That wasn’t something he wanted to go through again if he could help it.

The other times he’d acted against their interests, like when he’d been sent with a team of men to retrieve Samuel, Benat, Charley, and the Outcast, Jesse had been smarter about how he’d handled his defiance.

They hadn’t known of his duplicity. He intended to keep it that way and to stay on their good side.

Don't question the process.

Obey orders.

Keep your head down.

Had he still been in human form, Jesse would have shouted that he already knew the mantra by heart.

He didn’t need his fucking brain throwing reminders at him—yet again.

He was doing exactly what he’d been instructed to do.

Track the hybrids and shadow them. Watch but not interfere.

Here he was, traipsing through the Colorado mountains in the middle of the night, annoyed, hungry, and ready to get some rest.

He'd had his scheduled check-in with The Corporation, which had resulted in him losing visual of the hybrids and having to track them.

But missing check-in could have a snowball effect that Jesse wanted nothing to do with.

While he used to be part of a team, one that consisted of Samuel, Benat, and Nick, he was now a solo operative for The Corporation.

He preferred it that way. Less of a chance his friends would turn on him or come up with a crazy scheme to release test subjects and decide against clueing him in on it all. Like what had happened in the past.

From the moment they’d turned on him, subjecting him to torture at the hands of Peters, Efren, and their fucking coyote buddies, some of which Jesse was currently tracking, Jesse had made it his personal mission to learn all he could about the people he worked for.

Never again did he want to wander into an area at one of the many facilities he bounced around between and find children being tested on.

Jesse was totally fine with the coyote shifters being tested on.

Those fuckers deserved everything they got and more.

So had the group of humans Jesse had recently discovered had been tested on.

They were the worst of the worst in society.

They were murderers, rapists, and more. They were proud of their crimes, owning up to them as if they were badges of honor.

Many had been on death row and offered an out that they took.

He didn’t know what, if anything, The Corporation promised them.

All he did know was the outcome had been gruesome.

They’d not turned into the super soldiers The Corporation had been hoping for.

No. The shitstorm of testing left most of them dying within days of it starting and the rest breaking down rapidly.

Jesse had hacked footage from one of the labs that was in a facility in North Carolina.

He’d sat in stunned silence as he saw a man burst into what could only be described as goo.

The drugs used in those tests had been used on the coyote shifters.

They’d fared slightly better. None of them had died instantly or burst into goo, but they weren’t all right.

No. Their systems were breaking down at an alarming rate and they weren’t healing it, regardless of the fact they were supernaturals.

The hybrids were unstable and violent, and they needed to have a close eye kept on them.

Previous attempts at creating the perfect supernatural super-soldiers had resulted in shifters who degenerated into horrific forms, their bodies mutating grotesquely before melting into piles of reeking goo.

The memory made Jesse’s skin crawl, especially knowing they’d tested similar serums on him years ago.

The Corporation’s record of creating superior supernaturals and super soldiers wasn’t great.

The hybrid coyotes were proof positive of that.

The Corporation had known they were unstable and had locked them away in a secure facility, only for them to waltz right out under everyone’s noses.

That was when Jesse had been called in. He’d watched the footage of their escape and pointed out the obvious—that they’d had inside help—only to be ignored.

Don't question the process.

Obey orders.

Keep your head down.

The stupid fucking mantra still played in Jesse’s head over and over.

He was no closer to having answers as to why than he had been twenty-seven years ago when it started.

Digging around in his brain for clues didn’t seem wise.

There was no telling what he’d find. Not with everything The Corporation had put him through over the years.

Plus, Jesse was on a good streak with his employer and didn’t want to blow it.

He’d not gotten into any real trouble with them since the lab incident.

At least none that they knew about. They’d never figured out that he’d had a hand in protecting Charley on her father’s ranch or that he’d run into Efren in Colorado thirteen years ago.

Jesse had been a little worried Efren would pop out of the woodwork with The Corporation and tell them about the fight they’d had.

About how Jesse had protected a young supernatural and tried to kill him.

But Efren had vanished from the face of the earth.

Jesse had feelers out in every country, with paid informants keeping an eye out for the man, but so far, they’d turned up nothing.

Part of Jesse wanted to hope Efren’s wounds from their fight behind the grocery store had proven to be fatal and that he’d succumbed to them at a later date, but he doubted it.

The fucker was too evil to go out that easily.

Jesse came up and over a ridge and paused, looking for any more tracks from the hybrids he was shadowing.

The area had seen a decent amount of rain as of late, which was unusual, seeing as how it was fire season in Colorado.

It was a time that was notoriously dry. Softer ground made for easier to find paw prints.

The hybrids weren't even trying to mask their presence.

Their prints were everywhere, sunk deep in the mud near a stream crossing.

No natural coyote, shifted or not, left marks that size.

Jesse's beast cataloged their movements, noting how they used the terrain.

Ridge lines, drainage patterns, rock outcroppings.

They avoided game trails completely, choosing routes that spoke of tactical planning rather than animal instinct.

He caught the scent of a campfire and hoped it was the hybrids and not some poor, unsuspecting hiker or camper.

The hybrids had already left more than one dead body in their wake since Jesse had been following them.

Jesse had come across the first dead human in a motel off the interstate in Kansas.

The smell of blood had been so strong that Jesse had smelled it miles before he’d found the source.

The image of the crime scene was still etched into his memory.

It had been nothing short of a massacre.

The victim, Jesse later learned, had been a young maid who had been working the night shift at the motel.

If the other scents Jesse had picked up on at the crime scene were right, the hybrids had played with their food.

Fear had a certain smell. The room had been covered in it. So had the smell of sex.

He didn’t want to think about everything the poor young woman had gone through before her death.

He’d reached out to The Corporation, wanting guidance on how they wanted him to handle the situation, which had gone from escaped test subjects to murderers.

The Corporation had instructed Jesse to do nothing.

To stay out of it.

To let their cleanup teams handle the matter.

He’d asked if he should eliminate the hybrids when he caught back up to them. That had been a hard and firm no from his superiors. If his guess was right, they were using this escape to see what their creations were capable of.

The bastards had left dead bodies in three more cities along the way to Colorado, where they’d been hiding out in the mountains, periodically changing their campsite for days now.

The first night he’d found their original campsite, Jesse had considered dumping the bottle of lighter fluid they’d had near their campfire all over their tents and them while they slept and setting them ablaze.

He’d have been doing the world a favor and removing a group of psychopaths from it.

The sheer number of check-in calls The Corporation had done since the escape told Jesse they were far too invested in these hybrids to let him get away with killing them.

He followed the smell of the fire, and before long, he spotted a fallen log where hybrid prints suddenly became human footprints.

Scattered clothing marked their change points. Multiple sets of boot prints emerged, all heading in the same direction. Jesse counted the distinct patterns. Twelve. More than he'd anticipated. His beast urged him to retreat, to reassess. Taking on that many hybrids alone would be suicide.

He needed to get a visual on them, mark where their newest campsite was, and then make his way back to civilization—to his truck and Airstream—where he’d regroup and report his findings.

Jesse continued, stopping when he saw the faint glow of their campfire’s light through the trees.

Dawn was around the corner, and he wanted to be clear of the area by then.

Jesse circled downwind, finding an observation point that offered clear sight lines while maintaining cover.

The hybrids had chosen their location well.

They’d picked a spot that blocked the wind and offered multiple escape routes.

Their military training was showing. A sign they weren’t totally broken mentally.

There were a little over a dozen of them, lounging by the fire in various stages of undress. A few were totally naked. All of them had beers in their hands. There was already a pile of smashed beer cans not far from the fire. They’d clearly been at it a while.

The rot scent grew stronger in their human forms, mixing with wood smoke and fresh blood. The blood smelled human, not animal.

Dammit.

They’d killed again.