Chapter 28
Maxim worried. He’d chosen to head downstairs in his casual clothes, and they felt much less like armor than his hunter’s blacks.
So, as the elevator doors opened, he straightened, steeled himself, and settled into the knowledge that he had saved his prisoners’ victim from whatever they’d had planned for him.
As he headed toward Bryan’s desk, Maxim spotted the doctor’s blue hair with the white tips, and watched as the detective brushed it back behind his mate’s ear in casual intimacy.
Bryan was watching too as he reached for a tangerine from his fruit bowl while biting his bottom lip.
Hmm, what is this, embarrassment? Not jealousy, that much I know. Then…longing?
Maxim cleared his throat before addressing the vampire and werewolf couple. “Gordon, Detective, how have you been?”
Adler frowned, and Gordon turned. He’d brought his medical bag, held loosely in his left hand.
“Fine, fine,” Gordon said. “How’s Raven? Is he doing okay?”
Maxim smiled, concentrating on keeping his voice even. “He’s resting upstairs.”
Adler’s arm wound a tad tighter around Gordon’s waist in a reflex the detective was likely not aware of. “Do you think we can interview him? If he knows anything, it might help us figure out what Highgate was involved in and how it relates to Pearson.”
Maxim’s pleasant expression was getting strained.
He knew and understood the impulse to ask a survivor questions, knew that the detective was not looking to inflict a new hurt on top of one that was barely healed, and yet, Maxim couldn’t allow this.
He wouldn’t force Raven to speak of what had happened before he was ready.
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible right now, Adler, but if he remembers anything of use to our cause, I’ll let you all know. Say, where is young Milea?”
Gordon sighed. “School. They start way early.”
Maxim nodded. “Well, it’s best to begin when they’re still little.”
Adler chuckled and pulled Gordon against his side, shooting him a look of such loving adoration that Maxim was certain most artists would have paid them outrageous sums to get them to model.
“He means early in the day.”
Maxim nodded. “Yes, that too can be an issue. You might want to consider private tutors, like I did with Heath when he was small. So, Doctor, are we ready to head downstairs?”
Adler frowned. “Do you really think that’s necessary, Maxim? I mean, what can Gordon do? No offense, sweetheart, but you’re a rockstar with the corpses, and the problem with that day shifter is that he isn’t one.”
Gordon leaned his head against Adler’s shoulder. “I do have medical training, Detective. And I ain’t afraid of no wolf. Not when you’re there.”
Adler seemed to brighten with an inner glow, as though his heart was a candle and someone had held a match to the wick. Behind him, Maxim heard Bryan let out a long breath.
Maxim cleared his throat. “I shall be backup, then. Bryan, anything we should know before we head downstairs?”
He turned to look at Bryan, who immediately straightened and shook his head. “No. It’s all like you wanted it. The werewolf hasn’t been doing much of anything, just like before.”
Gordon crossed his arms and nodded. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”
It was silent from the brightly lit cell at the end of the hallway. Maxim appreciated that, though it was not a silence he would trust. Highgate deserved no such thing, and Maxim had a sense that the man was foul in ways he hadn’t revealed yet.
There was a keypad with a fingerprint sensor on the cell door, behind which the shifter was lying on his side on the thin blanket that covered the bunk. There was a manual override too, and Maxim knew that Bryan wouldn’t ever let the door open unless he was down here or some other emergency struck.
“Doctor?” Maxim asked when he saw the tense lines around Gordon’s mouth, much like that day when he’d come here to seek advice about how to handle a possible relationship with Adler.
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
Maxim gave the scanner a code and a fingerprint, and the door opened. He could hear what he’d seen through the shatterproof glass—shallow breathing. The werewolf still hadn’t touched his food, and he didn’t move, not even when Maxim approached him.
“Daniel, we have questions for you,” Maxim said, coming to a halt near the foot of the bunk. “Can you sit up?”
The shifter’s eyes blinked open, but it didn’t look like he was seeing anything.
Gordon cocked his head. “Did you give him a sedative? Anything?”
“No.” Maxim gestured. “Just the food. And it doesn’t look like he’s touched that.”
Gordon nodded. “I want to look at his eyes and his mouth. His fingers too. And then I’m taking some blood, saliva, and hair.”
Adler snorted. “Well, he’s already drooling.”
He was. Maxim commenced manhandling his captive into an upright position.
I know how to control violent prisoners without having a weapon at my disposal, but he more so resembles a drunk.
Maxim had to hold the shifter’s head up by the hair when he had him in a sitting position.
Gordon approached and grabbed the stool by the metal board in the wall that served as a desk.
Adler was perhaps an inch away from Gordon, his gaze focused on the other werewolf. “He doesn’t look sober. Is it possible he had something on him and took that?”
Maxim shook his head. “Not without Bryan knowing.”
Gordon hummed. “So, for werewolves, to get these symptoms through either a drug or withdrawal, you have to use a lot of whichever drug you’re using. Like, a lot a lot. It’s why you always have to have a specialist there if and when you need to administer any kind of anesthetic to one.”
Adler nodded. “If it’s nothing too serious, we usually just tough it out.”
Gordon made an incredulous voice. “Not on my watch you don’t. Anyway. Daniel, I’m going to shine a light in your eyes.”
They were back in the elevator, and out of the corner of his eye, Maxim watched Adler hold Gordon’s hand, his thumb caressing the doctor’s skin.
It’s as if he needs to self-soothe by touching his mate.
Maxim tried to remember whether he’d ever done the same and couldn’t think of a single time.
I was so very right about them. I’m glad I brought them together.
“This is very weird,” Gordon said for about the seventh time since they had left the basement.
“You handled it so well, sweetheart. I’m proud of you,” Adler said.
Gordon tsked. “Not that. I mean… How?” He looked at Maxim. “How do you get someone from normal to…whatever that is? Honestly, if it hadn’t been you two who brought him in, I’d order a CT under suspicion of police violence.”
Maxim crossed his arms. “I have never seen anything quite like this myself. But let’s—”
The elevator stopped. This wasn’t the penthouse, but Heath’s office floor. Maxim hadn’t wanted to risk Raven running into either Gordon or Adler without being prepared, without agreeing, and in this very moment, the fledge had more important things to focus on. May my dusty memories help him along.
“Where are we?” Adler asked, slightly suspicious, probably on account of his protective instinct still being in overdrive.
Maxim sighed as he stepped into the hallway. “This is where all the numbers go to make little spreadsheets and inform the tax authorities of what we do here. I suppose this is also where our employees get paid, so that’s a good thing. Come along. Heath’s office is right through there.”
“Wow, he has an office?” Gordon hurried his steps. “Does he have a board with red string and conspiracy theories? Or a really big wall of screens?”
“Not that the tax authorities know of.”
One of Heath’s office workers poked her head out of wherever she slaved over files and things, but disappeared right away when she saw Maxim and the others. Do I not come here often enough? He wouldn’t plot to overtake my collection floor, would he?
Adler, all observant beta, looked around and sniffed the air. “Nice. No stale coffee here. That’s the thing about the station, that smell is in everything.”
Gordon winked at him. “My office is nicer, right? You like how it smells there, don’t you?”
Maxim watched with rising glee as Adler stumbled and almost fell right over before finding his footing. “Sweetheart…it smells of you. Of course I like it.”
Gordon pointed. “Can you believe this? I need to get stronger cookies. I was wondering whether it was just me or whether the interns were having less fun this term than they normally do. I can’t have them work at the morgue and not have fun.”
Maxim clicked his tongue. “I shall put in a word with Morgan from the restaurant. If she can make our donors bleed, she can certainly bake your weed. Do you take chocolate chips with your drugs?”
Gordon nodded while Adler tried and failed to hide his embarrassment. “All the interns like chocolate. At least I think so.”
“Morgan will be delighted to dive into narcotic cuisine.”
Maxim pulled open the door to Heath’s office, mildly surprised not to see his son clicking away at the keyboard or poring over files as arcane as the Rosetta Stone had been to humans before they’d deigned to find the right vampire to translate for them.
My darling son is plotting. Poor Raven. His fortitude is being tested, but I believe in him.
Maxim took a deep breath. I believe in his strength.
I believe that he will be free from the rawness of the pain, if not the scar.
“So what do we do with a shifter who’s clearly had his marbles twisted around like that?” Adler asked as they sat down in Heath’s southeast-facing lounge area.
“I’d like to know how it happened.” Gordon slid in close to his mate, who put an arm around his shoulders.
Maxim narrowed his eyes. “Repeated compulsion will have been a part of it, but I don’t think it was that alone.
” His throat felt tense, as if invisible hands were squeezing it.
“But maybe if he was made to suffer trauma, then compelled, over and over, and traumatized again and again… I’ve never seen anything like it either, so I can only speculate. ”
Gordon rubbed his eyes, then put a hand on Adler’s leg. “You think this was some kind of experiment. You think—oh. You think that’s how it connects to Pearson. Two failed experiments, is that it?”
Maxim sighed. “I have nothing to prove such a theory, but if it was, one might consider it a failure.”
Adler nodded. “Yeah, right. People are dead.”
The door to the office opened, and Heath came in, slightly breathless. “Sorry, I needed…I needed a drink. Of blood. I went to have some blood. What’d I miss?” He looked at each of them, then rolled his eyes. “Ugh, it’s just some more fuckery, isn’t it? I really don’t like this case.”
You and me both, darling.