Chapter 31 #2
“Cecil Albertson. Fifty-seven years old, single, no kids, lives alone in Peabody in a house with no mortgage. Doesn’t owe money on his car, and his bills are paid through an offshore account that I haven’t been able to trace yet. I’ll send you the file.”
Grunting, I flip open one of my laptops and nudge Silas out of my way. He huffs indignantly before swinging himself up and over the table and plopping into the seat next to Vae.
“So someone is taking care of the good doctor.” I don’t need her to send me that file; I have a feeling I know exactly who is funding him.
“So it would seem. Albertson used to be one of the top researchers in inter-species genetics. Especially Designation Biology, dynamics, and instability. He was brilliant, but a bit of a recluse.”
“Yeah, I remember him.” I start typing, pulling up some of my own files. “He got blackballed after performing unauthorized treatment on a Human-Wolven hybrid kid, right? The one whose body was rejecting his designation during puberty?”
“That’s him.” She confirms. “Stabilized him, but the ethics board tore him a new asshole. He lost his license and vanished. According to them, what he did was wrong.”
“Morally grey area,” I mutter.
I can hear the approval in her tone. “Exactly. No one else would touch that kid to help him. Albertson did, and lost everything for it.”
”Fates,” I breathe, pulling up what I can. “This is an absolute shit-show.”
“I’m going to keep running tests,” Whitetail insists. “This is the craziest shit I’ve ever seen. I know when you called me originally, you said the blood was exhibiting unusual markers, but you really undersold this shit, Daxen.”
“I told you I didn’t know what the hell it was,” I remind her.
“You did. Now neither of us knows what the hell it is, except that it’s far above both our pay grades. This isn’t just the kind of scientific discovery people die for, Daxen,” she warns. “This is the kind of scientific discovery people would sell their souls for.”
Vae flicks his gaze to me and raises a brow in question. I already know what he’s going to ask. Will she fuck us over?
I give him a tight shake of my head. Whitetail won’t sell us out. She’d lose everything she’s painstakingly worked to curate over the last eight decades. If she wanted to sell us out, that means exposing herself, and attention is the one currency she won’t dabble in.
No, Whitetail will demand something else.
And I can fill in the blanks just fine on my own.
“I don’t have more than the vial Caelan found at the estate,” I admit.
Her reply is immediate. “I want it.”
She wants more information and freedom to run her own studies, which she can’t do with the small amount I provided her. And to be honest, I don’t have the time, the bandwidth, or the equipment to do it myself.
“You share every single experiment, study, theory, or note with me, and it’s yours.”
“Done,” she agrees.
“Don’t make me track you down.” My voice is ice cold, but it’s important she understands exactly what I’m threatening.
“I’ve never pushed to meet face-to-face because we have a good working relationship.
And frankly, I respect your desire to stay the fuck away from people.
But I don’t need to tell you that I already have everything I need to knock your door down in under twenty minutes.
Don’t make me regret giving you my trust. I like you, kid.
I’d hate to rip off your head and watch your corpse burn. ”
“I don’t want to share this with anyone, Daxen,” she shoots back. “I want to figure out what the fuck it is and who it belongs to. On my own.”
My eyes flick to Vae. He lifts a shoulder in a lazy shrug. ‘Don’t you dare put this decision on me, asshole.’
I sigh, prepared to capitulate.
Silas taps me on the shoulder, and when I glance at him, he mouths, ‘You should keep some.’
I wave him off. I already planned to. I trust Whitetail, but not so thoroughly that I wouldn’t keep back a bit for my own experiments. Just in case.
I open my mouth to respond, but Silas whispers, “I want to see what kinds of flowers it grows.” The excited grin on his face is genuinely unsettling.
Fates, Fuck my life.
Of course, that would be his primary concern. I’ll have to hide the vial to keep him from growing his own personal Secret Garden. With our luck, the flowers will grow ten feet tall and eat him.
“I’ll send it via secure drop in the next twenty-four hours, so be ready.”
“Perfect,” she replies, and hangs up. I know I won’t hear from her again until she has more information—that, or more warped results that make my blood pressure spike.
Turning to face my teammates, I can’t bite back the slow curl of an anticipatory smile from tugging at the corners of my mouth.
“You boys want to go on a field trip?”
Three hours later, we’re pulling up to a middle-class home in a cul-de-sac.
The houses are all cookie-cutter versions of each other—single story, white trim, two-car garage, fenced-in-backyard.
It’s exactly where I’d hide if I were a world-renowned geneticist being bankrolled by a megalomaniac to inject trafficked Omegas with someone or something else’s blood.
How the fuck did he go from telling the Ethics Board to eat shit in order to save a dying kid to working for Jonathan fucking Varenthrall?
“You want to just ring the doorbell, or should we go in like SWAT?” Vae asks, and his tone makes it clear he’s being serious.
I turn off the ignition to the Suburban, lean over, and smack him across the back of the head. “How is it I’m the one who always gets stuck behind a monitor as your eyes in the sky, and you’re the one sent on the important field missions, when you ask such stupid questions?”
“I mean… that’s exactly why you stay behind. So I can get answers to my stupid questions when I’m on a mission.” He smiles and pops his gum.
I clench my hand into a fist instead of doing what I want—shove my fingers in his mouth, rip out the gum, and pitch it into the street.
He’s been like this for days. Ramping up the funny guy act, going out of his way to distract me or make me laugh.
I know what he’s doing—trying to get us both through this shit with Caelan without unraveling—and I appreciate it, I really do.
It’s also annoying the shit out of me.
Vae believes he needs to be the one who holds us together. He thinks it’s his job to keep us both from falling apart, but he’s wrong. He doesn’t need to carry this on his own. We’re a pack, and that means we carry this shit together.
Always have.
Caelan isn’t getting worse, and Calder said his body is slowly repairing itself. Vae and I spend most of our free time in the medical wing, just sitting with him. Soon, hopefully, he’ll wake up, and we’ll be back in the field together—all three of us. And things can finally go back to normal.
“Both of you, just be quiet and follow my lead.” I check my weapons as I climb out of the SUV.
“Ford usually lets me—” Silas starts, but I cut him off with a low growl.
“Ford’s not here, and Ford isn’t your superior. I am.”
“Copy that, Colonel Crankyballs… damn,” he mutters under his breath. Vae snorts a laugh, and I have to turn my head so Silas won’t see my smile.
It’s a quiet, cool night, still relatively early in the late Spring for the East Coast. Most people have their porch lights on, but by this time of night, everyone’s asleep. Or should be.
“Do you smell that?” Vae asks once we get to the front door.
“Smells like nothing,” Silas notes.
“Right, like this place has been abandoned for a while.” Vae jiggles the front door handle, but it doesn’t budge.
“Gonna go old school here,” I crack open my lock-picking kit and within seconds, the door’s swinging open.
Both Alphas follow me in, and I wait for the lock to catch before making my way down the narrow hall.
“I checked for security before we came,” I remind them.
“I don’t know what it is about Varenthrall that makes him think he’s above basic security measures.
Who the fuck hires a private security company but doesn’t bother with sensor alarms?
Or hides a doctor in suburbia but doesn’t spring for a fucking Ring doorbell. ”
“You’re sure we’re dealing with Varenthrall?” Vae asks, dragging a finger along the dusty fireplace mantle.
“Almost surely. We found the blood in his study. It’s a Fates-damned scientific miracle, and a doctor who was one of the most well-known geneticists in the country just happened to run tests on the exact same blood and upload it to a privately encrypted server.
This is the same guy who was ostracized by the scientific community and hasn’t worked in the past decade. ”
I spin in a slow circle, gesturing to encompass the entire house. “But somehow, all his bills are covered through some secret offshore account?”
“Well, when you put it like that…” Vae hums, picking up a photo of a beaming Albertson proudly displaying a huge bass in both hands. Vae snorts and sets it back down. “Old white men, am I right?”
I can hear Silas in the kitchen, opening and closing drawers.
I let him be and continue down the hallway, checking the doors along the way.
All the rooms are empty until I get to the master bedroom at the end, which looks normal enough.
There’s a queen-size bed, dresser, nightstand, TV—all the usual single-man shit.
I start searching through the drawers, but don’t find anything unusual. Vae follows me in and begins rummaging through the dresser.
A moment later, Silas joins us and heads straight for the ensuite bathroom on the left.
“Jack shit,” I groan after ten minutes of searching.
“Doesn’t surprise me,” Vae replies, bouncing onto the bed like he doesn’t care who’s been sleeping in it for the last decade. “Albertson clearly left a while ago. There’s dust on everything, no clothes in the drawers, no food in the fridge. What did you expect?”
“A murder board?” Silas calls out from the walk-in closet.