The Hunt

by Chloe Neill

He gave me another moment to settle.

  “Broussard found the invoice,” I theorized when I was in control again. “He approached Caval about it. Caval killed Broussard. And someone killed Caval.”

  “That’s what it looks like to me.”

  “Someone is keeping this from Gunnar, maybe from the Commandant.” I wanted to talk to him again. To tell him what we’d seen. But we’d taken a big enough risk going to his house last night. We couldn’t go back today.

  “Let’s get back to Moses’s,” Liam said. “We’ll think it through, regroup, and come up with a plan.”

  We needed one.

  • • •

  Given the battle we’d already fought, we were extra cautious on the way to Moses’s house. We backtracked twice, stopped two additional times to make sure we weren’t leading anyone to him. When the coast seemed clear enough, we walked inside.

  We walked in together, and we weren’t sniping at each other. But there was probably no mistaking the grim expressions on our faces.

  “What now?” Moses asked. He was across the room, standing on a chair stacked on a table and picking through a box of parts I was pretty sure hadn’t been there this morning.

  “Did you bring more stuff in here?”

  His gaze narrowed. “My damn house, my damn rules.” He pulled out a half-naked Barbie doll. “Could be something for you in here?”

  The question was asked with such naked affection I couldn’t help but smile. “I am full up on half-naked dolls, but thank you for the very kind offer.”

  There was a flush across his cheeks when he threw her back in the box. “Suit yourself.”

  “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Mos.”

  “You’d hear a lot less swearing,” Liam said.

  “There is that.”

  “There is what?” Gavin asked, walking into the room with a glass of iced tea in one hand and what I thought was a fried chicken leg in the other.

  “Where you’d get that?” Liam asked with narrowed eyes.

  “Your scientist lady brought it.”

  “Darby,” she corrected, following Gavin into the room, with her own drumstick and what looked like disappearing patience. “Friend at the lab made it, and we had extra. I wasn’t sure if Moses was eating.” Hand on her hip, she glared at him.

  She was curvy, with pale skin and dark hair in a sleek bob around her face. She favored retro clothes that my dad would have loved, and that made her curves look that much more lush. Today, she’d paired pink ankle-length pants with a pale green short-sleeved shirt that had a Peter Pan collar and tiny pearl buttons on the placket. She wore dark glasses with cat-eye frames and a rolled red bandanna held her hair back.

  “I eat!” Moses protested. “Had two cans of potted meat today!”

  “More like rotted meat,” Gavin muttered. “Am I right?”

  Moses pointed at him. “That’s your word. Your human word. It was fine.” He sniffed the air. “That stuff, that chicken, smells too fresh.”

  Darby rolled her eyes, smiled at me. “Hey, Claire. How was the bayou?”

  “Wet.”

  She grinned, looked at Liam. “And welcome back to you. How’s Eleanor?”

  “Good, thanks. Erida’s with her.”

  “She’s still fierce, I assume.”

  “You asking about Erida or Eleanor?”

  Darby smiled. “Either or both.”

  “Malachi not here?” I asked, glancing around. “We have information.”

  “Not back yet,” Gavin said, pulling off breading and meat with his teeth.

  My stomach grumbled, and I obeyed the demand. “Hold that thought,” I said, and headed toward the food. The morning hadn’t been appetizing, but the hunger and travel had left me ravenous.

  Moses’s little kitchen was surprisingly tidy for a man who liked spoiled food. True to Darby’s retro style, the chicken was tucked into a red-and-white-checked towel inside a small basket, and the tea was in a Tupperware pitcher the color of avocados.

  I poured myself a glass and went back into the living room the same way Gavin and Darby had, with chicken and sweet tea.

  Moses had found what he was looking for—a black box with wires that dangled like tentacles—and made his way toward his stool.

  “So what’s the story?” he asked, short fingers linked together like creatively arranged sausages.

  “Well,” I said, jumping in before Liam could talk, “I find this one at Broussard’s house, standing in front of the murder scene. Long story short, he didn’t do it.”

  “Well, no shit on that one,” Moses said.

  “No shit on that one,” I agreed. “Among other reasons, we may have found the guy who did do it, after we fought with some Containment agents. He’s dead.”

  “The agents?” Darby asked, eyes wide.

  “The man we think was Broussard’s killer,” Liam said. “Small-caliber GSW to the head, and what we’re guessing is Broussard’s blood still on his hands.”

  “Busy morning,” Gavin said, glancing between us, probably trying to guess if we were still fighting.

  When I gave him a look, he just smiled sheepishly. He was a Quinn, just as nosy and stubborn as his brother, and he wasn’t about to apologize for it.

  “How does it go together?” Moses asked. “Lay out the story for me.”

  Liam walked to one of the tall windows, leaned against the wall so he could look outside and stay alert, and crossed his arms. “Broussard finds something he isn’t supposed to. Something related to this Icarus project.”

  “The file,” Darby said, and Liam nodded.

  “He’s killed in his home, and not much time elapses between his looking at the file and his TOD,” he said. “His computer’s missing, and we find an envelope taped behind a picture.” Liam nodded at me, and I pulled out the invoice I’d folded and put in my pocket, offered it to Gavin.

  Gavin put down his tea, looked over the document. “Invoice for scientific equipment.” He passed it to Darby. “Thoughts?”

  “Basic lab equipment,” she said. “ADZ Logistics. I don’t know that company, but I know that name. Laura Blackwell. I’m pretty sure she worked at PCC Research when I did.”

  “We haven’t looked for ADZ yet,” Liam said. “The name at the bottom, Caval, is the man we found dead. Broussard had hidden the envelope. Hard to say how long he’d known about Icarus, but he’d apparently managed to put some of its pieces together.”

  “He thought he’d found a smoking gun,” Gavin said. “Something he wanted to keep safe.”

  “And nearby,” I said. “But either word got out that he’d put two and two together, or he confronted the wrong people. Caval decides, or he’s instructed, to take Broussard out. He does, leaves a note blaming Broussard’s death on Liam. Caval goes to the safe house, is killed before he can even wash his hands.”

  “He was in a hurry,” Gavin said.

  Liam nodded. “And he was killed in a different style. Knife for Broussard, gunshot for Caval.”

  “It’s cleaner,” I said. “Faster, more expedient.”

  “Professional,” Liam agreed with a nod.

  “This is top-of-the-line stuff,” Gavin said. “Big enough to merit a Containment safe house and two hits.”

  “More evidence this is connected to Containment,” Liam said. “It’s getting uglier.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Darby said. “It is. But very interesting scientifically.”

  “Discuss,” Liam said, when we all looked at her.

  “You’ve got the floor,” Gavin said.

  “So I’ve been looking at your file. It’s not a molecule. It’s actually much more complicated than that.” She paused for dramatic effect. “It’s a complete biological synthesis.”

  We were apparently too ignorant to understand the import of that
assessment, because you could have heard crickets in the following silence.

  “Okay,” Liam said. “I’ll be the first one to admit I have no idea what she’s talking about. What does that mean?”

  “It means the file wasn’t just illustrating the structure of a molecule,” Darby said. “They were building something.”

  “Elaborate,” Gavin said.

  “Well, without getting into the hairy details, some labs focus on creating new structures—new proteins, new bacteria, new viruses. I can’t give you much detail from the stub. There’s just not much there, but it looks like a protocol for synthesizing something.”

  “You can’t tell what?” Gavin asked.

  She shook her head. “There’s not enough left of the file, and what’s there is pretty garbled.”

  “What would you use it for?” I asked with a frown. “The thing you’ve biologically synthesized.”

  “Anything. Replacement tissue, research, curiosity, to test drugs. Whatever.”

  “So the last thing Broussard looks at before he dies is some kind of biological research file.”

  “Does the invoice look like the kind of stuff they’d need for that?”

  Darby nodded. “Creating new tissue is an incredibly complicated process. It needs lots of time, lots of money, lots of very smart people. And plenty of equipment.”

  “So . . . what?” Gavin asked, swallowing chicken. “Maybe they’re trying to figure out how to give humans Paranormal skills? Grow wings or something?”

  “Eh, we’re several years past the war. I can’t imagine they’re like, ‘Oh, let’s suddenly start testing Paranormal tissue to see what makes it tick.’ That’s not a new research question.”

  “If someone didn’t want Broussard knowing about this, maybe it’s too expensive?” I suggested. “Or it’s not going well?”

  “Or it’s generally top secret,” Liam said. “But this is merely speculation until we get more information.”

  Information came in the form of an opening door. Malachi walked in, wearing jeans and a T-shirt that belied his true nature.

  That something had happened was clear on his face. He looked absolutely grim, like a man worn thin by exhaustion and grief.

  “What’s wrong?” Darby asked, moving toward him.

  He looked at me. “Cinda’s dead.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Cinda’s dead,” Malachi said again. “Along with another. Two more are sick.”

  “‘I’m sorry’ seems like a totally insufficient thing to say,” Darby said. “But that’s all I’ve got.”

  “The words are insufficient,” Malachi agreed. “I gave mine to Anh and the others, and they felt insufficient, too.”

  “The same illness?” I asked.

  He nodded. “The illness seems the same—starts as fatigue. Then chills, fever. Rapid heartbeat, rapid breathing. Confusion. Red dots across the skin.”

  “Hmm,” Darby said. “I’m not a diagnostician, but that doesn’t sound like your run-of-the-mill infection.”

  Malachi nodded. “We presume it’s contagious, since they live, work, and eat together. And we aren’t aware of any other vector.”

  Darby frowned. “Strangers on the property? New food or water source? Environmental changes?”

  “Other than leaving Devil’s Isle, no. Anh has lived on the property for five years. She hasn’t been ill with anything like this, and she wasn’t aware of anything on the property that would cause an exposure problem.”

  “Did Gunnar get a Containment unit out there?”

  Malachi nodded. “Volunteer. The Zone equivalent of Doctors Without Borders. But without hospitalization, there are limits to what they can do in the field.” He pulled from his pocket two small vials of crimson liquid, offered them to Darby.

  “Blood test?” she asked. She swirled one of the vials, held it up to the light.

  “Please.”

  “Your wish is my command,” she said, giving a jaunty head bob. At our blank stares, she asked, “I Dream of Jeannie?” Then she waved her hand. “Never mind.”

  It seemed science wasn’t the only thing we didn’t know much about.

  “How else can I help you?” Darby asked, frowning as she looked up at Malachi. “I’m a lab person, not the doctor you need, but maybe I can find someone to help with diagnosis?”

  Malachi shook his head. “I need to talk to Lizzie, but I can’t get close to Devil’s Isle.” He looked at me.

  “Yes,” I said. “Of course. I’ll go tonight, after dark.”

  “Today of all days,” Liam said in a tight voice. “After what happened earlier today, you’re going to try to sneak into Devil’s Isle? You were in a shoot-out with Containment.”

  Put like that, it didn’t sound very smart. But what choice did we have?

  “Delta is as Delta does,” I said. “And we’ve got our delivery procedure, remember? I can handle myself.”

  That was a lesson I’d been learning. That I could handle myself. I liked learning that.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  The concern that furrowed his brow was clear.

  “No, you won’t. I’ll be quieter, faster, less noticeable on my own. This isn’t my first rodeo.”

  “Liam,” Gavin said quietly, “this is the package Gunnar talked about. She’s been doing this for five weeks.”

  She’s been doing this since you’ve been gone, he meant. Which was the absolute truth. But it wasn’t a truth that Liam wanted to face, given the pained look on his face.

  “I hate to bring this up during this non-tender moment,” Gavin said, “but there’s an illness spreading among Paranormals at the same time Containment’s running some kind of secret project involving a biological thingamajig.”

  “Synthesis,” Darby offered.

  “That,” Gavin said. “Coincidence?”

  “There’s a biological synthesis?” Malachi asked, and we gave him the brief rundown about our visit to Broussard and Caval, and Darby’s preliminary findings.

  “I don’t think ‘science’ is a strong enough link between the illness and Icarus,” Liam concluded. “There’s no evidence the Paras are sick because of anything Containment’s done, and we don’t know Containment is working on anything that could make anyone ill. They could be trying to create a new product for skin grafts or something.” He glanced at Darby. “Right?”

  “You got it.”

  Liam looked at Moses. “You get anything from that file?”

  “Oh, are we remembering I’m in the room now?” His voice was the perfect mix of egotistical and long-suffering. That was pretty much Moses to a T.

  “Please proceed,” Liam said.

  He turned to his computer, began typing. “Did more digging on the Icarus file. As we know, Broussard accessed it not long before he died. But that wasn’t the first time he’d looked at it. He’d opened it fourteen times over the last two weeks.”

  “Fourteen times for the same file?” Liam asked with a frown. “That’s a lot of views for a file he didn’t create.”

  “Obsessed,” Gavin said. “Which squares with what we know about him. He was obsessed with Liam, too.”

  “He fixated,” Liam agreed.

  “And there’s this.” Moses punched a key, had paper spitting out from an old-fashioned dot matrix printer on a shelf beneath his keyboard. He reached down, ripped off the paper, handed it to Liam. “Once again, the idiots who tried to delete the file didn’t think about the metadata. Can’t get everything out of the file, but I can tell you the address where it was created.”

  “I want to tear off the perforations,” Gavin said, but Liam swatted his hand away.

  “Well, what do you know?” He passed the paper to Gavin, glanced at me. “Same address as ADZ Logistics on the Henderson invoice.”

  “And there�
�s a link in the chain,” Gavin said, ripping off the paper’s edges with a satisfying zip. “Somewhere in Gentilly, looks like.”

  Gentilly was a neighborhood on the lake side of Devil’s Isle.

  “We need to surveil the building,” Liam said.

  Gavin nodded. “Tomorrow morning. It will be getting dark soon, and the building’s going to empty out. They won’t work at night; the power goes out too often.”

  “And after what happened today,” I said, “if this building matters to Containment, they’re going to put extra staff outside it.”

  Gavin nodded at me. “She’s right. We can get out at dawn, get spots, and be in position when the doors open. We’ll see who comes and goes, and that will tell us what’s happening in there.”

  “All right,” Liam said. “We’ll meet in the morning, go take a look.”

  “Someone needs to get a message to Gunnar tonight,” I said. “Tell him about Caval. Killer or not, he needs to be found. His body dealt with.”

  “And the DNA tested,” Darby said. “If that’s Broussard’s blood on his hands, it will pretty much exonerate Liam from the murder. And then we can just deal with Icarus, and whatever Containment’s trying to hide.”

  “I’ll do that,” Gavin said, and gave his brother a look. “If only we knew how the goddamn knife got there.”

  “I’m working on it,” Liam said.

  “Work harder, please, so we can exonerate your ass.”

  “You know what we need?” Darby asked. “We need a break.” She walked to Moses, looked over the piles. “You got a DVD player in this mess? Or a VCR?”

  “Yeah. Why? You gonna put one back together?”

  “No, I want to watch it. I’ve got a stack of movies in the UV.”

  “You’ve got a utility vehicle?” Gavin hoofed it to the window, glanced outside. “Darby, that’s a golf cart. With an old Coke cooler welded onto the back.” He mostly sounded confused.

  “Friend of mine at the lab did that,” she said with a grin. “We’re calling it Rogue Lab.”

  “Good name,” Liam said with a smile. “And very creative welding job.”

  The cooler was red, probably from the fifties, and had rounded corners and pretty white script. It also had a lot of rust, which made me feel better about the fact that someone had bolted it to a golf cart.