42. Chapter 42
Chapter 42
Gage
Sleep was heavy on my eyelids, weighing them down as voices murmured somewhere nearby. The room was dark when I finally forced them open. I could barely see my own body below me.
But I could see the empty space where Abby should have been. The bond alerted me before panic had a chance to set in.
She stood in the corner of the room, cell phone pressed to her ear, voice soft. Her head was turned away, unable to see my open eyes in the dark. Even if she knew I was awake, it seemed she forgot how good my hearing was. No phone call was private when a shifter was in the room.
Through the bond I felt a ripple of guilt.
“He’s awake.”
A male voice echoed through the phone. “Will he live?”
“Yes. He’s going to be okay.” A long silence followed, and Abby rushed to ask, “Where’s Cargill?”
“Don’t know.”
“I was right, wasn’t I? About the weapon?”
More silence.
“It’s you. All of you.”
What was she talking about?
“We were attempts. Failed attempts,” the voice responded.
“Then what does Cargill want with them?”
“Cargill likes his chess games. Whatever it looks like he’s doing, he’s already planned seven moves ahead.”
Abby rushed another question. “Does he have the missing shifters?”
“Cargill lost most of his research when Manchini blew up that warehouse. He’s starting from scratch, meaning he needs new subjects.”
She covered her mouth, exhaling shakily. “What about Manchini? What does he want?”
“What they all want. The weapon. The real one,” the voice said impatiently. There was a shuffling sound. “I have to go. You won’t see me again.”
“Wait!” she begged. “You can come home. They’ll help you.”
“Goodbye, Miss Abigail.”
The screen lit up her face as she pulled the phone from her ear. At the same time, she glanced over her shoulder, noticing me and grimacing.
Abby crossed the room, sitting gingerly on the edge of the bed without touching me. “How’re you feeling?”
I scowled at her. “That was him, wasn’t it?”
Abby handed my cell phone over. “Dallas called every day, twice a day, until you woke up. He didn’t say anything, but I know he wanted to know you were okay.”
“That I’m okay? He did this to me, didn’t he?” I pointed angrily at my bandaged chest as memories flashed in and out of focus. “He was going to do this to you!”
Shit. Now my mate was crying again. “I know. I know what he did, Gage.”
“If I find him, I’m going to kill him.”
“You can’t.”
“I have to."
“No, Gage, you can’t. Dallas knows the full truth, and I think he’s willing to tell it.”
“And what is the truth?”
Abby quietly left the room, returning with all four of my pack mates. They smiled at me, Kai making sure to comment about how awful I looked. None of them looked much better.
“Take off your shirt, Levi.” Abby was holding a marker, pointing it at my brother to direct him.
“Don’t you fucking dare!” I snarled. Apparently being bed bound with gunshot wounds wasn’t enough to dull the possessive fury of a new bond.
Abby looked pleadingly to me. “Just trust me?”
“Fine,” I snapped, “but you can’t be standing that close to him.”
“But I need to—” She cut the words off with a sigh, silently handing her marker to Ezra. “Will you please trace the scars on the back of everyone’s neck?”
I clasped Abby’s hand with too much strength as I watched my entire pack rip their shirts off in front of her. They turned, giving me their backs, and I was more puzzled than ever. Ezra went from Levi to Kai and then Mason, carefully outlining the scars at the base of their neck. He handed the marker to Mason and Mason did the same for him.
Levi leaned over to stare at the markings, eyes glowing a hostile shade of blue.
“What the fuck am I looking at?” I’d seen their scars before, many times, but I made a point not to stare. I didn’t need the reminder. None of us did.
When we began documenting the scars for our case against The Organization, I left it to Abby. I could barely stomach my own scars.
“You’re nine,” Abby explained. “Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen,” she counted out, ending with her finger pointed at Ezra. “Dallas was eight.”
“What does that mean?”
“There is no organization. Cargill is doing all of this. Cargill is the Scientists, and he hasn’t stopped his work on shifters.” She looked to me, eyes shimmering. “I think you are the weapon.”
I stared at her, not comprehending. There were still a lot of painkillers swimming through my veins, and it was obviously making me hear things.
“I’m the weapon?”
The guys were giving her equally puzzled looks, and I was pretty sure none of them were doped up.
I glared to Levi and asked, “Did you know she was talking to Dallas?"
“What the fuck?” Levi asked in disbelief. “How?”
She smiled softly, her voice taking on that gentle but commanding tone. “Don’t be angry at me or Dallas.”
“He shot your mate,” Kai said flatly.
“He went through what you did for five years. Years , Kai.”
Kai had the decency to drop his head in acknowledgment. I barely made it out without losing my shit and we were only there for months.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to kill him, but I would feel bad about it.
“You said you didn’t want to talk about it until Gage was awake.” Levi pointed at me, obviously irritated with my mate. “Time to start talking.”
I attempted to sit up, ultimately having to use the button to raise the bed. Not exactly a threatening response to the tone he took with her.
“Cargill is The Organization,” she reiterated. “I don’t know how he started doing this or why, but I think he’s behind all of it. I think he has the missing shifters. I think he was using Dallas to watch you."
Levi crossed his arms. “And what brought you to this conclusion?”
Abby tugged her hand out of my grip, holding it out for the marker. Ezra handed it to her. She shuffled around the table beside my bed, finally locating a piece of paper and a flimsy cardboard takeout box to write on.
“Number one,” she said aloud as she wrote it on her paper, “shifters started going missing in your area around the same time you started the firm.”
“They were probably going missing before we started the firm,” Ezra said. “There wasn’t anyone to report a missing shifter to before Levi claimed territory.”
“Fair point,” she conceded. “But listen to the rest.
“Number two, Manchini and his pack arrived in Seattle at the same time as you. Number three, Dallas said Cargill was the one doing the experiments. Number four, Cargill obviously knew Dallas was alive which gives weight to what Dallas said.”
“This still doesn’t make sense to me,” Levi said. “ Why would Cargill do any of this?”
“It makes perfect sense!” Abby said a little too eagerly. She started scribbling wildly on her piece of paper, drawing lines and circles all over her words. When she was done, she held it up to show my brother.
Mason and Ezra leaned around his shoulder, squinting at the scribbled words. Kai looked to Abby and asked, “You feeling okay, kid?”
“Explain, Abigail,” I demanded, feeling more lost than any of them.
“So, you were kept in this facility and then randomly released. Why would they do that? To test their work. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were being surveyed by someone this whole time.
“Then there’s Manchini. Cargill claimed that they worked together at one point. Maybe that’s true, or maybe Manchini, a pro-shifter activist turned extremist, learned of a human kidnapping and experimenting on shifters, and was doing what he could to put a stop to it. Manchini blew up the warehouse with Cargill’s research in it. They were here in Seattle because you were the only opportunity they had to find him when he went underground. We should consider him a potential ally.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to work for me,” I grunted, trying to sit up further in the bed. “He thinks our mating is an abomination.”
“Well, we don’t have to like each other.” She shrugged. “Anyway, Cargill hired you to watch you. I think whatever his plan was for you, it wasn’t working. I overheard him asking someone if they found ‘the source of the interference.’ My assumption is that he thought someone—maybe Manchini—was interfering with you.”
Levi scowled deeper. “When did you overhear him saying this?”
“I might have followed him when he was leaving the office.” She smiled sheepishly. “His vibe was off.”
“You know, I hired you because I thought you were going to take away some of our crazy, not add to it,” Levi grumbled.
“You hired me because your brother wanted to bone me,” she snipped.
I laughed, cutting it short when my chest burned from the movement.
“Still mad about that, I see.”
“I would be scared if I were you,” I told my brother. “My money is on her if she challenges you for alpha.”
Abby rolled her eyes, continuing with, “So, Cargill gave you the drive. It was a misdirection. He was using you.”
“For what?” Impatience strained Levi’s voice. He was tired too.
“To take out Manchini, and to frame you—all shifters—to bring his work out in the open.”
The silence in the room was heavy. Abby didn’t notice.
“This is all assumption, obviously, but it’s kind of genius in an evil sort of way if it’s true. First, he does whatever he does to you to make you into a weapon. Then, he manipulates you into believing a group of high profile, anti-shifter figures are responsible for what happened to you. It was inevitable that you confront them, or worse.” She looked accusingly at me.
“When you did, Cargill would make sure everyone knew it was you, and what you are. Now suddenly shifters are openly attacking anti-shifter politicians and influencers. Shifters are a threat to humanity.” She emphasized her point with her marker, smacking her palm.
“But don’t worry,” she said in a singsong voice, “Joseph Cargill has the solution. Fight fire with fire. And look, he’s got all this handy research to prove he can utilize shifters, against their will, to combat other shifters.”
Abby finished her rant with a loud exhale, sitting on the edge of the bed and resting her hand on my thigh.
“That’s some real fucking crazy shit,” Mason said, scratching the side of his neck.
“I know,” she said breathlessly. “But it’s the only way I’ve been able to interpret it, so far.”
Levi pushed a breath through pursed lips. His hand ran up the side of his neck, scratching irritably. The side of my own neck tingled.
“What kind of weapon are we supposed to be?” he asked. “Our training was military training, but we wouldn’t blindly follow orders to kill other shifters because of that training.”
“I’m not sure,” Abby answered. “Dallas said they put something in his head.”
“Like what? A mind control chip?” I flexed my hands, feeling too powerless in my injured state. “Dallas is fucking crazy.”
“Well, maybe that’s because they did something to him. He told me that you were a failed attempt at Cargill’s weapon, but there was one success out there.”
“So, we don’t need to find out what the weapon is,” I said slowly, “we need to find out who.”