“Shut up, Jacks,” Lily said, as she came up behind him, a little out of breath. “Dom, I just got off the phone with my contact.”
“And?”
“It’s a breeding operation. Darkbloods are setting up a goddamn breeding operation.”
He felt his pupils dilate, and the blood pounded between his ears. “With sweetbloods?”
“Yes, they’re capturing them to breed them. They’re keeping them alive, hoping they can successfully mate two sweetbloods to create more.”
“That’s fucked up,” said Jackson. “I knew they were a bunch of freaks, but that’s just twisted.”
“And it’s set to commence soon,” Dom reminded them. “We need to find these facilities—as in yesterday. Cordell, you said you couldn’t hack into their system. How do you know the labs are in those cities?”
“Those losers must’ve copied these reports from the main Darkblood site that we can’t break into.” Cordell paged down to the next screen. “Phoenix, San Diego.” He craned his neck around and looked at Dom. “And Seattle. They’ve got one clear up here.”
Panic knotted his gut as an overwhelming sense of protectiveness came over him. He took a half-step backwardsand grabbed the edge of a table. A piece of it crumbled under his fingers.
Mackenzie wasn’t on their database up here, though, he told himself. They didn’t know about her—the information he’d downloaded to his phone proved that. But then what about last night? Those DBs sure as hell knew about her. Could they have run across her by chance?
Cordell’s hands flew across the keys. “I can’t find exact locations for any of the facilities.”
“Send out an alert to all the regions letting them know about Lily’s new information and what you’ve discovered. Maybe someone’s turned up something that can help us locate the sites.” Dom twisted his thumb rings as he paced.
“Look,” Lily said, pointing to the screen. “There’s a spreadsheet of names of the family lines they’re seeking. Can you pull up that document?”
“Sure.” Cordell clicked open the file. They all leaned over his chair as a detailed chart popped up on the screen.
“Holy shit,” Lily said. “Looks like they’ve captured a few of them already.”
Dom cursed under his breath and began pacing again, unable to get it out of his head that Mackenzie was on the island and not under his immediate protection.
“We’ve got to change our focus from tracking DBs to locating this facility,” Jackson said. “If we find that, we hamstring their whole operation.”
“I agree,” Dom said. They needed manpower for a widespread search, but with Stryker still not a hundred percent, they were seriously short-staffed. “Cordell, contact Portland and Vancouver. See if they can spare any Guardians. Lily, we’ll need a few more Class-A scent- trackers. Can you?—”
“I’m on it,” she said.
Good. They’d mobilize as many?—
“Urn, Dom?”
He stopped pacing and turned around. Lily was pointing to the screen. “What’s Mackenzie’s last name?”
His blood turned icy in his veins. “Foster-Shaw,” he said slowly.
“According to this spreadsheet, those guys who were after her were looking for a Mackenzie Shaw.”
The vise around his internal organs tightened further.So those fuckers didn’t just happen upon her last night? They've beenlookingfor her?“But the database I downloaded onto my phone showed no Fosters or Shaws.”
“Dunno, love.” Lily looked like she was delivering a cancer diagnosis. “That was a couple weeks ago. Her name’s there now.”
“Lemme see.” Cordell adjusted his keyboard. “Maybe it’s not the same person.”
“Yeah, what are the chances of that?” Jackson said.
The tech lab fell eerily quiet except for the clicking of the keyboard. While Dom paced, the seconds slipped by as if they were large grains of sand in a too-small hourglass.
Finally Cordell spoke. “Does she have something to do with the University of Washington? Hold on. Is this her website?”
