Lily patted her hips, her midsection and her arms, as if looking for something. Then, with her mouth ajar, she gave him a look of mock surprise. “Wow, that’s strange I’m still alive.”
He flipped her off as he stumbled to the watercooler.
“Lil, you said something was off the hook at that Dark blood den. What’d you find?” Dom asked.
She punched the up arrow and broke into a run again. “Jackson, you tell him. I’m in the zone here.”
Jackson filled a pointed paper cup from the water dispenser jug and walked it over to Lily. Yeah, he wasn’t a self-absorbed as he appeared. Pouring one for himself, he cleared his throat.
“Well, the place was a pit, a regular science experiment on every hard surface, so we didn’t expect to find much. Figured they were a couple of routine ferals and not part of the organized Alliance. We found some crazy shit in the basement though. Curdled my blood, and that’s hard to do.” Jackson rubbed his neck again.
“Crazy? As in how?” Dom asked.
“Torture and experiment crap. Chains, surgical instruments, leather straps, a couple of metal gurneys, needle IV bags. Really creepy shit.”
“Yeah, real creepy,” Lily said. “Like horror movie creepy. We grabbed their computer. Cordell is working on it right now. But I’ve got a bad feeling about this. If fuck-ups like those two guys have an operation like that, what the hell is going on? They couldn’t have their?—”
“You’re sure it’s Alliance?” Dom paced back and forth next to the boxing ring.
“It was too ritualistic down there for the likes of those two.” God, that music. Like a hangnail on a fresh manicure. She simply couldn’t stand it any longer and turned to Jackson. “Can you turn that shit off, or at least down? It’s giving me a flipping aneurism.”
She slowed the treadmill once more as Jackson twisted the volume knob, and the sound of a screeching guitar died into background noise. Much better. She could think again.
“As I was saying, everything was too neat and tidy. Things were arranged neatly on a pegboard and labeled, like a retired engineer’s workbench, if that retired engineer planned on doing medical experiments and torture in his basement. It was as if the whole place was set up according to some master plan. We even found a couple of planograms.”
Dom furrowed his brow in confusion. “Planograms?”
“Retail stores have POGs from their home office telling them how to display all their shit. Put this here, hang this over there, so that every store is set up the same way. There’s no way the losers who lived upstairs could have organized that basement without any outside help. And that kind of organization screams long-term, not just ‘hey, in case we run into a sweetblood or two.’ You know what I mean?”
Dom stopped pacing, and his eyes met Lily’s as the realization of their findings evidently sunk in. Experiments conducted on sweetbloods. Here. In Seattle. “Was it just the twoof them living there?” His voice, though quiet, seethed with rage. She could almost smell it in the air.
“Yeah, just two bedrooms with blackened windows and a coffin in each.” After glancing at the treadmill panel, Lily stepped off and snatched a clean towel from the stack near the watercooler. She guessed 2K was better than no K.
“I even peeked inside. They’ve got goddamn dirt lining the bottoms. That is just so wrong.” Jackson stuffed another sandwich half into his mouth. His jaw popped as he struggled to chew the large mouthful, which would’ve taken her six or seven bites to get through. At least. The guy burned food like a coal furnace.
“Cordell. Where is he?” Dom strode across the mats and kicked the doors open.
“Computer lab,” Lily said, trotting after him.
“Wait up, guys. I’m coming with,” Jackson said, his voice muffled through the sandwich.
Mackenzie paced around the living room a few times before she found the nerve to call Martin. Stuck somewhere in the San Juan Islands—she wasn’t sure which one—she didn’t think she’d be back in time to teach her class tonight. She never backed away from her commitments and didn’t feel comfortable putting her class in the hands of one of his grad students. But she saw no other option at this point since she was stranded so far away from home. Thank God she’d emailed Steve her latest photos yesterday and didn’t expect to be sent out anywhere for a location shoot for the next few days.
“The islands, huh? Staying in a romantic bed-and-breakfast with him?” Martin asked.
“Him who?”
“Hello? Don’t play dumb with me. I know I didn’t fail at my little matchmaking attempt the other day, regardless of what you say. Having a nice time with Dom?”
“He’s actually not here. He was, but not now.” She wanted to add that she didn’t know if he was coming back and that she probably should figure out another way to get home, but she didn’t.
“Honey, what happened? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She tried to give her voice a casual lilt. “He had to leave suddenly. I just wasn’t sure I’d make it home in time to teach my class tonight.”
“Don’t pull that nonsense on me, babe,” Martin said. “I can tell you’re upset. What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Nothing happened. I’m fine.”
