“Where is she?” Logan inquired in an authoritative tone.
“In here,” Fiona cried. “She’s in the bedroom. I just don’t know who would have done this. We were supposed to go clubbing tonight. But then we found her…like this. How could they do something so awful?”
Wynter quietly gasped as they arrived in the small bedroom afraid of what they were about to see. She grabbed onto Logan’s arm as she took in the scene, and he briefly touched her hand with his. The white shabby chic décor was splattered with blood. Dana’s body had been awkwardly positioned on the bed, so she appeared as a puppet. Wearing nothing more than a purple bra and matching panties, her grayish skin was mottled with bite marks. Vampire.
Wynter found herself walking toward the body, both drawn to and horrified by the bites. A wide open slit across Dana’s thorax exposed her spine. As a researcher, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen a dead body, but never in her life had she seen one decimated to this extent. Her eyes roamed over the marred pale skin and letters that had been scrawled into the flesh. The monsters had left a message: SCIENTIFIQUE. Scientist. No one else called her that; it had to be him. He’d addressed her in that manner in every single message he’d sent during her captivity. She’d never seen his face but had known him only as Director Tartarus. A chill swept over her.
Why would they go after the doctor? Logan had told her that she’d taken blood samples. Was that why they’d gone after Dana? To get the blood? Or hide the results? But why not just take her? Then it occurred to Wynter that she’d been with Logan the entire time. Maybe they were afraid of the Alpha. Her mind whirled and she considered a possibility far worse than the ominous directive. If they’d somehow changed her DNA so that she was wolf, they could have caused Dana’s death by giving her a virus. They had access to any number of highly contagious diseases. And while they hadn’t yet perfected a virus for wolves, Emma, a hybrid, was ill. And like Emma, Dana was also a hybrid. Panicked, she attempted to get Logan’s attention while he knelt next to the bed with Fiona, who was crying uncontrollably.
“Did anyone touch the body?” she asked, putting a hand on Logan’s shoulder.
“She’s not a body!” Luci screamed at Wynter. “She’s our friend. And she’s Fi’s sister.”
Logan turned his head, and growled a warning at Luci.
Despite Luci’s attack, Wynter pressed the issue. “Did anyone touch the body?”
“No, no one touched the body. Okay?” Luci responded curtly. “Can someone tell me what in the hell she is doing here?”
“Logan, we need to get everyone out of the room,” she told him quietly.
Logan glanced over his shoulder at Wynter, unsure as to why she was behaving so strangely. “Please, can you just give us a minute? Fi’s just lost her sister,” he pleaded.
“I know, and I’m so sorry, but Logan, this message. It’s for me,” she explained with a pleading look.
“Out, everyone out,” he commanded. What the fuck?
“But Alpha, please,” Fiona cried. “I need to stay with her.”
Logan hugged Fiona to his chest. Wynter turned her head at the sight, admonishing the small misplaced pang of jealousy that fluttered in her chest.
“It’s okay, Fi. I’ll be right out. Luci, stay with her. Dimitri, stay. I want you here for this.”
Luci shot Wynter a menacing grimace on the way out of the room. As soon as the door closed, Logan turned on her. “What in the hell are you doing, Wynter?”
“They know I’m with you. The people who took me,” she said, carefully approaching the body.
“I’m sure whoever took you knows you’re with me. It’s not exactly like we’ve been trying to hide that. We’ve been all over the city today.”
“It’s the message.” She gestured toward Dana’s stomach. “Scientifique. It’s me. No, I mean, that’s what he called me.”
“Who called you that?”
“Him. The person who kept me. I never saw him,” Wynter recounted with fear in her eyes. Logan never took his eyes off of her as she continued. “Director Tartarus. I only communicated through email with him. And sometimes text messages before they locked me up. But once I was captured, the guard would bring me a flash drive with a single text file on it in the morning. There’d always be one with a letter of sorts…directions from him. At the end of the day, I was instructed to save my results back onto the drive and then I’d give it back to the guard. It was my only communication with him.”
“Tartarus. Very funny,” Dimitri huffed.
“What?” Wynter asked as she knelt next to the bed, looking carefully at Dana’s skin.
“Tartarus. Greek mythology. A place where gods would be sent for punishment,” Logan explained.
“A punishment to fit their crime,” Dimitri added.
Logan watched Wynter remove the lamp shade from the bedside light, pick it up and shine the light into the soulless stare of Dana’s eyes. “What are you doing?”
“Honestly,” she sighed. “I just had to be sure that she wasn’t sick. I mean, Tartarus. He knows disease. The company I worked for…he’d have access to all kinds of viruses. And even though you told me she was wolf, she was hybrid…” Like Emma. “I needed to see for myself. From what I can tell, though, there’s no indication of illness. No jaundice, lesions, weight loss. And if you saw her last night and she was healthy…then it’s unlikely. But the bite marks. Whoever did this tortured her. She died from exsanguination when they slit her throat.”
Just like he’d seen happen to Wynter in his dream, Logan thought. But he knew it wasn’t Dana’s face in his vision.
“She knew him. Maybe well or not. But she liked him,” Logan said with his arms crossed.
“What makes you say that?”
“Make up. Hair’s done. The bra and panties.”
“I agree about the underwear, but she was going out with Fiona and Luci. Maybe she was hopeful,” Wynter said, playing devil’s advocate.
“Or maybe she planned on meeting him there? Look around the room. There’s no sign of struggle. He targeted her to get to you. But the fact is that he may have known her.” The thought that Dana could have known her attacker bothered him. He’d question the girls and see if they knew anything about who Dana had been dating. “Even if he didn’t know her, vampires can be very persuasive.”
“Logan. I’m not sure if you’re planning on calling the police or taking care of this on your own, but in either case, this body…”
“What aren’t you telling me, Wyn?”
Wynter shook her head. It was now or never. She’d tell him the truth.
“Emma.”
“Huh?” Logan raised an eyebrow at her in confusion.
“Emma. The girl Léopold mentioned. Jane Doe. The one I spoke about at the charity event. She’s not just a case study. She’s part of Jax’s pack. A hybrid. And she’s really, really sick.” The thought of Emma made Wynter want to crawl into a ball. The girl was going to die, and she still hadn’t found a cure.
“Yeah, you said that at dinner, but what’s that got to do with Dana?”
“Logan, Emma is going to die soon if I can’t find a cure. And it’s not just that she’s sick, it’s what made her sick. A virus. You can’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you,” she pleaded. Brushing the hair from her eyes, she sucked a breath and blew it out, shaking her head. “You know my friend, Mika, I told you about; Emma’s her sister. Her doctors all agreed that her condition was caused by a viral infection but they couldn’t explain it. I mean, hybrids don’t get sick let alone get terminal diseases. It made no sense. Jax was worried that if word got around about her condition, his wolves would panic. So, her parents brought her to his country home, where she now gets round the clock nursing. I had to do something; something to help her. So I changed my major and started studying virology instead. During my doctoral program, I finally narrowed down the virus, it looked familiar. I should have known.” She began to pace.