CHAPTER EIGHT
David’s phone buzzed. A text from Rogers. Going to the food court. Want anything? He texted back, No thank you.
Suit yourself.
That conversation over, David turned his attention back to the screen. His stomach growled. He really was hungry, but he didn’t want to stop right now.
The others all shared some pieces of the puzzle.
There were three Marine Corps dogs listed as designated for assignment to the Testing Brigade but only their names were available.
All other information: height, weight, and medical history, were gone.
A few others were subjected to a number of tests checking things like cognitive flexibility, memory retention and recall, plasticity, and something called resistance.
Results were given on a simple scale from poor (two results), fair (five results) and good (one result).
If there were any other results possible, these dogs hadn’t reached them.
He was trying to figure out what those tests were and what the results meant, but he couldn’t find protocols for any of them. The FBI tested cognitive ability related to a dog’s ability to remember scents and follow commands, but their tests weren’t nearly involved as these seemed to be.
Seemed to be. That was the problem. It was impossible to tell what exactly any of this meant.
He knew it was real because these were Marine Corps records, but he didn’t know what precisely was going on.
Like with Sierra, there were signs that something was amiss, but nothing definite.
Nothing that told him exactly what the 93rd Testing Brigade hoped to do with these dogs.
His eyelids drooped. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed them. Maybe he should have asked Rogers for coffee.
A loud knock sounded on his office door. David jumped and quickly closed the browser. “One second.”
“Doc? It’s Gary.”
“Yeah,” David said drily, logging out of the user profile and logging into his normal one. “One second.”
He opened a medical file for one of the K9 dogs in training, then got to his feet. He checked himself in the mirror, decided his look of exhausted irritation wouldn’t do, and switched it to a smile.
He opened the door and smiled at Gary, his intern.
Gary was an impossibly attractive young man of twenty-five who had just graduated veterinary nursing school and was finishing his education by working for the FBI’s veterinary office.
He was a good kid, smart, enthusiastic, great with patients and handlers, a little fuzzy on the finer aspects of social interaction but goodhearted.
He was also a pain in David’s ass lately, though in his defense, everyone was a pain in David’s ass lately. “Yes, Gary? What is it?”
“Oh, um…” Gary reddened, which made his boyish good looks even more boyish and good-looking. “I was just wondering if you’d looked at my vacation request. Our vacation request. Mine and Jackie’s.”
Jackie was one of the veterinary nurses.
She and Gary had been dating for a few months and were firmly in the sickeningly adorable honeymoon phase.
David had prodded Gary to ask Jackie out after Jackie’s weeks of obvious hints didn’t get through.
He liked them together and liked the reminder of his own honeymoon phase with Faith, back when everything was butterflies and giddiness and a firm belief that everything would always work out perfectly for them forever.
David sighed. “Right. You both want next week off to go skydiving.”
“Yeah. Well, not just skydiving. We’re also going to go hiking and river rafting and maybe camping. We’re not sure yet. We’re just gonna see what happens.”
“All of that in a week, huh?”
Gary shrugged. “Yeah, we’ll see. So…”
“You can have the time off, Gary.”
He pumped his fist, then asked, “Um, both of us?”
“Yes, both of you.”
He pumped his fist again. “I’ll tell her. You’re the best, Doctor F.”
David grimaced. “I’m gonna say no to the Doctor F thing.”
“Right. Sounds good. Thank you, though, for real.” His face grew intense and serious. “I think I’m in love with her, Doc. Like really in love.”
David kept the polite smile plastered on his face. He really didn’t want to chat right now, but he had been distracted lately, and he didn’t want people to start whispering about that, especially with two strange federal agents hanging around in the waiting room all day.
Probably time to wrap up here and head home, he realized with some irritation. It was a lot harder to conduct a clandestine investigation than he anticipated it would be.
He realized that Gary was looking at him expectantly and said, “You’re young.
Both of you. Not too young to know if you’re in love, but I suggest that you guys take it slow.
Enjoy each stage of your relationship. Take it one step at a time.
If you guys still feel like this when you’ve been dating for a year, then maybe think about moving in together.
Sign a one-year lease and have an exit plan if it doesn’t work out.
If it does work out, then you can start having serious conversations about the future. But don’t be in a rush.”
Gary nodded. “Yeah. You’re right.” He smiled. “I guess you’d know, huh? You landed a baddie too.”
David stared blankly at him. “Landed a what?’
“Oh.” Gary reddened. “Landed a baddie. It’s slang. Like, you got a hot girlfriend too. Not that I’m saying your girlfriend’s hot! Or your wife. Not that I’m saying she’s not hot.”
David clapped Gary on the shoulder. “Enjoy your vacation, Gary. I’m going to wrap up a couple things in the office then head home.”
“Yeah,” Gary said, roughly the shade of a ripe cherry. “Sounds good. Thanks again, doc.”
“You bet.”
He closed the door, sighed heavily, then returned to his desk. “Landed a baddie. They come up with something new every year.”
He chuckled and thought about telling Faith about that phrase. She’d get a kick out of that.
His smile faded as he sat behind his desk. She was mad at him, and rightfully so. He could justify his actions, he still believed that, but hiding them from her was something he couldn’t justify. She wasn’t really mad; she was scared.
He sighed and rubbed his eyes. Time to go home and sleep, then maybe consider just letting the experts handle this.
Sure. You keep telling yourself that.
And sure enough, he still sat in front of his computer staring at the desktop screen. He couldn’t stop himself. Sierra’s forlorn face, the fear she showed in front of Whitaker, the despair. He couldn’t just let that go.
He would try one more time to find information on the 93rd Testing Brigade’s testing protocols. If he didn’t come up with anything, he’d shut it down and go home.
He logged into his alternate profile and opened the Marine Corps K9 records page again. As a vet certified to work with military working dogs, he had access to most of these records, although things like unit assignments and missions were usually redacted.
He entered his login information, and the page returned an error message: ACCESS DENIED.
He frowned. This had worked for him a few minutes ago. He tried again. ACCESS DENIED,
A chill ran down his spine. Were they tracking his username now? How could they do that? It was an FBI username. They shouldn’t have access to it.
He logged out and logged back into his FBI page. His credentials worked, and when he opened records of several working dogs, each opened with complete information, just like before. He tried the Army website and had no trouble getting in. Same with the Air Force.
So, it was just the Marine Corps. Sometime in the past ten minutes, they had shut down his access to their working dog records.
His heart thumped. His throat went dry, clicking when he swallowed. Stop inserting yourself into Marine Corps business, or we’ll take steps to ensure that you no longer can.
Maybe this was what they meant. Maybe that email wasn’t a death threat at all. Maybe they were just threatening to shut him out, and now they had.
He checked his email. Nothing from Colonel Chastain, the man who had emailed him before about this.
No pictures of his home or images of Faith at work.
They might not even know that he had been snooping today.
Chastain might have already put in the request to have David’s access cut off, and they’d only just now gotten around to it.
That’s probably what it was. Nothing to worry about.
As his fear receded, anger took its place. They couldn’t stop him. He wasn’t going to give up. He was going to find out what was happening to those dogs, and he was going to put a stop to it, no matter what it took.
Even if they threaten Faith? Even if they explicitly tell you they will kill her if you don’t stop?
“Well, if they do that, I’ll just send that to the authorities, and then I’ll have proof that they’re up to no good.”
He said that softly, but his voice still seemed to echo throughout his office.
And it was a weak excuse, anyway. They weren’t stupid enough to incriminate themselves like that.
If they were going to put a hit on him or Faith, they wouldn’t warn him first. No more than they already had.
They’d just kill him. Or her. Or both of them.
And you really want that on your conscience?
David’s lips thinned. It wasn’t fair. Damn it, it wasn’t fair. He was just trying to make sure those dogs were okay.
And he was making progress. He had to be. They wouldn’t be deleting these records if they weren’t afraid of what would happen if someone found them.
He couldn’t stop. Stopping meant giving them time to cover their tracks. If they did that, then stopping them would be far more difficult.
Well, you’ve done enough for today. Can we agree on that, at least?
He got reluctantly to his feet and headed for the door. By the time he reached the lobby where Rogers and Hammerton were polishing off the last of their sub sandwiches, he was smiling again, but underneath that smile was a cold rage amplified by fear rather than quelled by it.
You won’t stop me, he promised. I’m going to get to the bottom of this. I’m going to stop you.
A cold, insidious voice deep inside his mind offered the obvious rebuttal. Or you’ll die trying.