She reached up and gave his hand a quick squeeze before dropping her hand with a glance at the receptionist. "I know that."
"If you know, what has you so worried?"
She was silent as she looked back out at the water again. In the distance, one of the harbor's water taxis plowed up a white froth, and Ivy seemed transfixed by it.
"If this hybrid was made with my DNA, it will mean I'm responsible for yet another woman being experimented on and tortured," she finally said. "Knowing Stutmeir's doctors did it once already with that precious teenage girl from Canada was hard enough to deal with. But another woman, one that has almost certainly been horribly mistreated for months? I don't know if that's something I can go through again."
Landon remembered the weeks right after they'd found that girl like it was yesterday. Ivy had been a mess. He'd tried to tell her over and over that what had happened to the girl wasn't her fault, that the blame laid squarely on the shoulders of those sick assholes trying to use science and medicine to create man-made shifters. But his words hadn't helped. She blamed herself for every minute of suffering she imagined that girl enduring, and nothing he said would ever change that.
He almost reached out to pull her into his arms, then stopped himself. He finally settled for touching her knee out of sight of the receptionist. "Ivy, I don't know what we're going to find when we get back to the DCO complex, but one way or another, we'll get through it together."
Ivy nodded, but he could see in her eyes that she was already imagining the worst.
Landon glanced at his watch. Obviously, former senator Thorn wasn't big on punctuality. He would have said as much to Ivy, but right then, Thomas Thorn and another man walked into the lobby and toward them. Landon stood and buttoned his suit jacket. Ivy rose as well, running her hands down the jacket of her pantsuit.
According to his file, Thorn was fifty-nine years old, but he could have easily been mistaken for a man ten years younger. He was clean shaven and extremely fit, with a head of dark hair that didn't even have a sprinkling of gray in it yet. He was impeccably dressed, too. His suit probably cost more than Landon made in a month. Hell, his paycheck probably couldn't cover the man's shoes.
Thorn moved with a confident stride and a casual smile on his unlined face. No surprise that he'd won so many elections as a senator, all by landslides. He exuded pure charm and charisma. But while his face and smile were open and inviting, his eyes were as sharp and intense as a hunter's. Thorn was studying Landon and Ivy as he closed the distance between them, taking in every detail. Landon reminded himself again to be careful around this guy. He was dangerous.
"Agent Donovan. Agent Halliwell. Thank you for stopping by," Thorn said as he shook first Landon's hand, then Ivy's. "John has told me so much about your team's exploits that I thought I should meet you in person."
Landon smiled. "It's a privilege."
The former senator turned to the tall, blond man beside him. "This is Douglas Frasier, my head of security."
Landon didn't need an introduction. According to the file John had on forty-two-year-old Frasier, the man had been an operative for the DCO back in 2003 but had been injured in the line of duty and left due to medical reasons. The file had been sketchy on the details, but Landon got the feeling it had something to do with Adam. Landon quickly figured out what kind of injury had ended the man's career at the DCO when Frasier reached out to shake hands. He could barely lift his arm. His grip wasn't very firm, either.
"Shall we tour the facility as we talk?" Thorn asked.
"Sounds good," Landon said.
Thorn led the way while Frasier followed a good ten feet behind. While Landon was sure that at least some portion of the complex conducted serious design and engineering work, the areas of the building Thorn showed them seemed more suited to impressing visiting politicians and dignitaries. There were lots of mock-ups and models of weapons systems, advanced communication gear, and general fluffy, feel-good stuff about how much great work the company was doing for America's defense.
Thorn stopped in front of a wall mural halfway down a long hallway. It was a stylized world map with labels and pins stuck all over the place. There were half a dozen pins in the DC area, but there were ten times that many scattered across the rest of the states. Most were associated with major military installations, but some seemed to be out in the middle of nowhere. Landon couldn't think of anything of military or industrial significance in those areas, but since it wasn't like Chadwick-Thorn would show a secret hybrid facility on a map in the hallway, he muzzled his curiosity.
He took a quick glance in the area around Tajikistan though, on the off chance that Chadwick-Thorn had a pin near the place where his old team had found the female hybrid, but no such luck.
After nearly an hour of what amounted to nothing more than a dog and pony show, Landon was wondering why the hell he and Ivy were there. Other than a little personal chitchat, Thorn hadn't said anything to them he wouldn't have said to a congressional aid from Ohio.
But then Thorn took them to his fancy office on the top floor of the building with more expansive windows overlooking the river, the Pentagon, and the Washington Monument off in the distance.
Landon glanced at Ivy out the corner of his eye as they slipped into the two chairs in front of Thorn's desk. He didn't have to look over his shoulder at Frasier posted by the door to figure out that the tone of the meeting had gone from casual to intense.
Thorn stood gazing out the window for a time, his hands behind his back. "I was in the gallery in the DCO's conference room behind the one-way glass when you two were being debriefed after that mission in Washington State," he said. "While the written report of the events I read after the fact was quite impressive, hearing you two describe the operation in person was even more so. It's quite obvious that you two make a very good team."
Landon didn't say anything, and neither did Ivy. They both stared at Thorn's back, waiting to see where this was going.
"I couldn't help feeling that the situation on the ground might have been a bit messier than your report let on," Thorn added.
Landon exchanged looks with Ivy. If John was right, the former senator was sniffing around to see if they were the type who didn't mind getting their hands dirty. While he and Ivy had been forced to make the tough call more than once, it had always been because it was the right thing to do. But Thorn wasn't asking whether they knew the difference between right and wrong-he was wondering if they'd do the wrong thing if they were ordered to do it.
"Things on the ground are always messier and more complicated than most people care to hear about," Landon said carefully. "We simply focused our report on the critical facts we thought most pertinent to the people attending the debriefing."
Thorn didn't turn away from the window, but Landon expected he was smiling. "And I'd imagine that most of those listening to your briefing that day appreciated the discretion. But I'm a man who's comfortable with details that might make others cringe. In your report, I remember reading a brief line or two about you killing Keegan Stutmeir, Agent Donovan, while Agent Halliwell dealt with Jeff Peters. However, there were no details on the exact circumstances of either death. Would you mind telling me exactly how they died?"
Landon glanced at Ivy. She smoothed an imaginary stray hair back into the neat bun at the nape of her neck. She wasn't thrilled with where this was going. Neither was he. But they'd thought the conversation might detour in this direction. As long as Thorn didn't try and bring up the subjects of Ivy's DNA, her torture, or the months they'd spent chasing after Klaus and Renard on their own, they'd be fine. If Thorn tried to dig into any of those areas, the conversation was over.
"I chased Stutmeir down as he tried to escape. When he ran out of ammo, he pulled a knife on me. I got it away from him and shoved it through his chest," Landon said with a quiet fury he didn't have to fake. The man had been the one ultimately responsible for Ivy getting tortured. A knife through the heart had been too good for him.
Thorn turned to look at him. "Stutmeir only had a knife? And there was no way you could have taken him alive?"
Landon had asked himself the same thing. "I suppose I could have tried to take him alive, but some people are too dangerous to let live. I killed Stutmeir because he needed to die."
Thorn regarded him in silence for a moment, then turned his hawklike gaze on Ivy. "And the former DCO operative Peters? How did he die, Agent Halliwell?"