Page 159 of Golden Eagle

“Who knows,” Lanny said, catching her gaze and holding it. “Maybe you should go look that up.”

“Yeah.” Garcia stood, still staring at his phone. “I’m not getting good reception in here. Lemme just…” He pointed vaguely over his shoulder and headed for the doors.

“Take your time,” Lanny called after him. When he was gone: “Jesus Christ, we’ve got to knock this fucker out of the game.” He tapped the notepad on his blotter, where he’d doodled a rough but unmistakable wolf. “I don’t care what the point of it is: he’s got to stop chewing up New Yorkers.”

Trina nodded.

“Shame you didn’t get both of them at once the other day.”

“Believe me, I’ve thought that.” She felt a headache brewing in her temples. Night had fallen beyond the windows, the early dark of late October, the detective bullpen aglow with soft, warm lamplight all around them. She’d lost count of the nights she’d spent here, poring over evidence, pinning up crime scene photos, running theories with Lanny. It had always been a safe place, a comforting one – a place where everything terrifying in the world could be looked at logically and picked apart piece by piece. Where she could fight evil with her brain, from a careful distance.

But it turned out evil was farther-reaching, and more dangerous than she’d ever anticipated. Not a puzzle to be solved, a compatible disease to be diagnosed, properly treated, and excised.

It was something wild and barbed –fanged– running loose in a forest too thick and dark to navigate with her human sensibilities.

“What I don’t get,” she said, keeping her voice low, and her expression neutral, “is why, if these ferals are too difficult to control – and obviously they are – they don’t lock them back up. These are the same ones who killed your neighbors a few months ago, right?”

“Yeah.” His jaw clenched. “They are.”

“Okay, so we assumed they were hunting for you – or Nik. Following your scents. But, obviously, that went majorly sideways. With the exception of luring Sasha – and that was just scent, who knows if they were even present – nothing they’ve done has served any purpose other than murdering random civilians. They’re a liability. Why keep using them?”

He nodded slowly, mulling it over. “Maybe they didn’t have a vamp working with them before. They thought Gustav would make a difference where human handlers couldn’t.”

“Makes sense. But it’s a failed experiment.”

“Right. And, at this point, they know where we are. They’re not still hunting us.”

“So what are they using them for?” she asked. “They…” It clicked into place, then. “They’re not random.” When she said it, sheknewit had to be true. There was no other explanation that made any sense.

“What’s not random?”

“The vics.” Her pulse accelerated, the familiar rush of locking onto a viable theory. “None of them knew each other, all of them had different careers, so we’ve been operating under the impression that these attacks were random.”

“They all happened in the early morning. We assumed it was a breakfast time motivation,” he countered.

“Yeah, but what if it’s deeper than that? What if there’s a bigger connection?”

His brows went up, face smoothing as he considered. “I dunno. What if there is?”

“Do you have the vics’ files?”

He passed the printouts over, and she woke up her sleeping computer to search for them.

“Got it,” she said, ten minutes later. “They were all in the military.”

“They what?” Lanny got up out of his chair and came to peer over her shoulder at the screen. “Shit, how did we miss that?”

“Kinda had a lot going on.”

“Shit,” he repeated. “Did they serve together?”

“No. Not the same years, and not even in the same branches. But all of them served overseas at some point.”

Lanny snapped his fingers. “That guy who’s with Will and them. Rooker?”

“Rooster. Yeah. Something about an experiment from a few years ago, the Institute experimenting on injured vets.”

They shared a look, and she felt electricity beneath her skin, the adrenaline surge of a hot lead.

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