11. Crypt Keeper
CRYPT KEEPER
Hack didn’t call me down to his room often. He’d text or call me. Usually, if he wanted me there in person, it was because whatever he found was either illegal, disturbing… or both. Since he was specifically looking into things for me, this made it especially concerning.
Judging by the look on his face when I walked into the tech room—this morning was definitely both. I was glad Lily was able to watch Zara again today.
The glow from six different monitors painted the room blue and white, cables hanging everywhere like vines. Empty energy drink cans littered the desk beside dismantled hard drives and enough surveillance equipment to get him arrested in at least four states.
“Jesus, when was the last time you slept?”
Hack barely looked up when I came in, and he didn’t reply to my attempt at a joke. Which meant he was deep in something.
“That bad?” I asked.
His fingers kept moving across the keyboard. Suddenly, he stopped, dragged his hands down his face, and met my gaze. “You ever get the feeling the universe is telling you to mind your own damn business?” he muttered.
“Constantly.” I shrugged. “I usually ignore it."
“Yeah,” he muttered darkly. “Might wanna start listening.”
Glancing into the hall, I shut the door behind me. The clubhouse hummed with distant noise—music, laughter, pool balls clinking—but in here, it felt isolated.
Heavy.
Hack finally turned in his chair.
“I started with the aunt,” he began. Grounded. Simple. That was how this often started. Just another background check. Maybe another fake identity, or maybe another ghost. One never knew.
“What’d you find?” I asked when he didn’t continue.
“Nothing.”
That wasn’t unusual. Most people had no record. They were law-abiding citizens and stayed off the radar of the darker side of society.
“What kind of nothing?”
“I mean nothing. The kind of nothing meaning this woman appeared out of thin air,” Hack replied. He tapped a key, and one of the monitors shifted to a driver’s license photo of the woman who’d dropped Zara at the clubhouse.
“Okay? Gray hair. Nervous eyes. Forgettable. Purposefully so?” I guessed. “But she has a driver’s license that passed our initial scans. So where did that come from? Because if it’s a fake, it’s incredibly good.”
“This identity was definitely fabricated,” Hack explained.
“Social security number belongs to a dead woman in Alabama. Driver’s license was issued three years ago through an actual Louisiana driver’s license office that’s now closed, from an employee who never continued on at another facility.
Or any other business. They died in a car accident shortly after this was issued.
Oh, and the address on the driver’s license is a shell office that doesn’t technically exist anymore. ”
My jaw tightened.
“Employment records? Surely she was earning money somewhere for her to pay rent.”
“That’s where things got weird.” Hack leaned back. “She had a listed employer. Small accounting firm outside Baton Rouge.” He snorted softly. “Only it’s not an accounting firm.”
“What is it?” I crossed my arms, bracing myself for whatever bullshit Hack had uncovered.
“Another shell.”
Of course it was.
“But they had a real phone number,” he continued. “So I called it.”
I frowned slightly. “You called them?”
Hack grinned without humor. “I figured what the fuck? It was worth a shot. Pretended I was from a hospital.”
That got my attention. “What’d you say?”
“Told them I was trying to reach her about her cancer results.”
My brows raised as I stared at him.
Hack shrugged. “People panic when you say cancer.”
Fair.
“So?” I prompted.
His expression darkened. “She didn’t show up for work two weeks ago.”
Something cold slid through my chest.
“That was before Zara showed up,” I said quietly.
“Yeah,” Hack agreed.
The room seemed to tighten around us.
“What else?” I asked.
“The woman on the phone sounded concerned,” Hack told me. “Too concerned. Like she was trying very hard to sound normal and sincere.”
I crossed my arms.
“And?”
“And it felt fake,” he replied. “She asked when Ms. Parker was in for her testing. I told her that was a HIPAA violation to reveal that. The woman said if they heard from her they would tell her to call. Then she said if I reached her, to tell her they missed her. That they hoped she was okay.”
My wolf stirred uneasily. Not concern. Monitoring. Tracking. Containment.
“They were looking for her too,” I deduced.
“Exactly.” Hack turned back toward the screen, typing again.
“And then I decided to dig into Zara.”
Something in his tone made my stomach tighten.
“What’d you find?”
He hesitated. Which I didn’t like. At all.
“I hacked the hospital records listed on her birth certificate,” he confessed carefully.
My body went still. Despite Hack’s talent behind the keyboard, we didn’t make a habit of hacking into things that could get us caught.
“And?”
Hack slowly glanced up at me. “There were no baby girls born there that day.”
Silence. I simply stared at him.
Hack swallowed once before continuing. “Crypt…” he quietly murmured. “I know we suspected it, but I’m certain now.”
My pulse slowed. Dangerously calm.
“That woman wasn’t family,” he continued. “And I have a feeling she stole something important from whoever she worked for.”
Something. Or someone.
Hack’s eyes met mine.
“I believe she was hiding that something.”
Zara.
My jaw clenched so hard pain shot into my temple. My wolf surged violently beneath my skin. That child had been stolen. My mind was racing with the possible story.
“Crypt…”
“What else?” I asked between clenched teeth. My voice didn’t sound like mine anymore. Too deep. Too rough.
Hack exhaled slowly. “Zara’s birth certificate and social security card?
Also legit. Yet in both cases, at both the social security office and the county clerk’s office, the person who filed the forms died within months of their issue.
This goes way beyond a missing kid. I went down a rabbit hole I didn’t even know was possible. ”
He pulled up another screen. Folders. Photos. Maps. Most of them grainy surveillance images. Medical facilities. Warehouses. Shipping manifests. Bodies. Missing persons.
Supernatural missing persons. My stomach dropped.
“What the fuck is this?” I asked.
Hack’s voice lowered. “Off-book research sites.”
My eyes narrowed. “Meaning?”
“Black sites,” he confirmed grimly. “Unofficial labs. Human trafficking routes. Underground medical facilities.”
Every word made the room colder.
“From what I found, they’ve been snatching supernaturals for years,” Hack continued. “Most disappearances were written off as clan disputes, rogue hunters, territorial shit… things like that.”
“But?” I pressed.
“But the patterns lined up too clean. So I kept digging.”
Hack pulled up another file.
“What the fuck is all that?” I asked as I leaned forward, resting my knuckles on the desk to look over his shoulder.
“Experiment logs. Most heavily encrypted, some partially corrupted. Within them, species classifications. Breeding viability. Genetic adaptability.”
My blood ran cold. “Someone is playing God?”
“Looks that way,” he confirmed.
“No,” I denied quietly.
Hack nodded grimly. “Yeah.”
I stared at the screen. My wolf snarled violently inside me.
Not rage. An icy cold desire for blood.
“They’re experimenting?” I asked, my hackles raised. “You’re sure?”
“Looks like it.” His face was solemn.
“On supernaturals.” It still didn’t seem possible that I’d understood him correctly.
Hack looked sick now. “Cross-breeding. Genetic manipulation. Trying to create new species combinations.”
Zara.
Female Rougarou. I was sure of it now. It would explain the “crazed” killing of the “aunt’s” chickens on the full moon. A simple shifter didn’t have that instinct.
The room suddenly felt too small. I stepped back from the desk slowly.
“Who the hell is doing this? Who are they?” I demanded, ready to take this to the table to request an all-out search and destroy mission. This touched all of us. Everyone in the club was some breed of supernatural being.
“No female Rougarous have ever existed,” I muttered.
Hack’s expression tightened. “Maybe not naturally.”
The silence after that nearly crushed the room.
Then Hack spoke again. Quietly this time. “The paternity test you took…”
My eyes snapped to him.
He looked genuinely sorry.
“I had them run a few additional tests on Zara’s DNA,” he admitted. “And yours.”
When I glared at him, he raised a hand and continued. “These people owe me favors and they’re discreet. I use them for a reason.”
“What tests?”
“Genetic irregularities. Species markers. Hybridization indicators.”
A bad feeling crawled down my spine. Hack swallowed once. Then said the words that changed everything.
“Whatever Zara is…” He paused, and fury flashed in his gaze. “…someone made her.”
The room went dead silent. No music downstairs. No voices. Nothing. Just the violent pounding of my pulse in my ears. And beneath it—my wolf.
Awake.
Territorial.
Furious.
Because suddenly every instinct inside me was screaming the same thing.
They didn’t just create Zara. They made her for something. Now it was up to me to find out who… what… and why.
“You know I have to tell Boomslang and Killswitch. This is too big. Stretches so far beyond us that it’s not even slightly funny,” he regretfully announced.
Teeth clenched, I nodded. “I know.”
Then I turned on my heel and walked out of the room. I had a few things to take care of for the club today, then tonight, I would pay a little visit to my little demonic prisoner.