notebook he was reading. “So if Klaus and Renard didn’t make these hybrids, who did?”
Kendra explained about the research files that Harry and the other doctors had been given. “The way Harry described those documents makes me think they came from the DCO.”
Tate’s eyes widened. “The DCO? Seriously?”
Kendra nodded.
He dropped the notebook on the table with a curse. “First, someone in the DCO purposely put my team in the middle of a hybrid ambush, for reasons we haven’t figured out yet. Now, you’re telling me it’s possible that this same someone in the DCO set a group of doctors up here and gave them the research necessary to create the hybrids? Someone like John?”
Kendra didn’t answer. Even after everything that had happened, she flat-out refused to believe John was involved. Ivy, Landon, and the others hadn’t known John as long as she had. They hadn’t seen how hard he worked to keep the Committee and people like Dick from turning the organization into something that would be capable of doing exactly what it seemed to be doing now. But how was she going to convince them of that?
“Maybe,” Landon said, answering Tate’s question.
Tate’s face fell as Landon filled him in on what had been happening on the hybrid front, specifically their fear that Dick and others within the DCO were trying to replace shifters with hybrids, as well as what Landon had found while searching the DCO’s classified records repository a few months ago.
“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