Page 109 of Wicked Nightmare

Chapter Thirty-Three: Cam

I towered over the zip-tied bastard, his phone a dead weight in my hand. He'd been uncooperative since we started. Every piece of useful information so far had come from Rose, not him. He just sat there bleeding and smirking with what was left of his mouth.

"Password," I said, swiping at the locked screen. Nothing.

Beaver just laughed, a wheezy chuckle that set my teeth on edge. I tried his limp finger on the sensor. Still nothing.

"You think this is funny, asshole?" I grabbed a fistful of his hair, yanking his head back. "Let's see how much you're laughing with a few less teeth."

My fist connected with a satisfying crunch. Blood spattered, painting his chin a new color. He grunted and spat out a couple of teeth. They bounced off the floor and rolled under the table. Satisfaction curled in my gut. Fuck this asshole.

"Ooh, hit him again, baby." Lakey was perched on the arm of the couch, legs swinging. "Right in that smug little mouth."

I paused. Something was bugging me. He'd been eyeing Rose ever since she walked back in the room. Not the way a handler watches an asset. The way a man watches a woman he thinks belongs to him. That desperate, hungry look. Rose's patient number. Worth a shot. My fingers flew over the keypad.

Bingo. The screen lit up.

I scrolled through the contents. "Looks like someone's got a crush on our little Rosie."

Lakey's brow furrowed. "What'd you find?"

I held up the phone, showcasing a map dotted with blinking lights. Each one labeled with a patient number, including our girl.

"Seems like he was telling the truth. Chimera's keeping tabs on all their lab rats," I muttered. A sick feeling settled in my gut. How many more were out there?

For a split second, I pictured her face that first night. Christ, she was just a kid. Twenty years old and already put through more hell than most people experience in a lifetime. I didn't know why that bothered me. Lakes and I had probably been through worse. Lakey for sure. I couldn't really remember much about my own time in the lab. Just a brief flashback. More of a feeling, really. That I'd been there before. That my body knew things my brain had been made to forget.

I shook it off. Whatever that was, I didn't have time for it.

Sociopaths don't do guilt.

"How many?" Lakey's voice had gone quiet.

I counted. "Twenty-seven. All over the fucking map."

Beaver started thrashing against his restraints, desperation all over his battered face. "You don't understand," he wheezed. "Those people need us. We're trying to help—"

I silenced him with another punch, harder this time. His head snapped sideways and he went quiet. "Sure, pal. Real humanitarian work you're doing."

Lakey's arms snaked around my waist from behind, her cheek pressed against my back. "What do we do now, baby?" she whispered.

I stared at the blinking dots. Each one a life Chimera had fucked with. Each one a person strapped with a tracker they probably didn't even know about. Pretty soon we'd be overrun with strays if I didn't rein in this savior complex I was clearly developing. When did that happen? When did I start giving a shit about strangers?

"We figure out how to turn off these goddamn trackers," I said. "Starting with Rose's."

As I dug deeper into Beaver's phone, a thought kept circling. What would we do if we couldn't turn it off? She'd become a liability. A walking homing beacon, leading more of these fucks right to our door. But I couldn't just throw her out. She'd become something to us. To me. Not a daughter, not a sister, but some kind of extended family. I pushed the thought aside because every time I acknowledged it, I ended up thinking about Lillianna and how Lakey's kid was out there somewhere with one of these chips in her head too, probably, and I was here playing brain surgeon on a kitchen table.

Fuck. One thing at a time, Axley.

Lakey's fingers dug into my hips as she leaned around me, propping her head under my arm, her eyes fixed on the screen. "Holy shit, Cam," she breathed. "There's a couple close to us. Maybe we can go get 'em. Add them to our pound."

I chuckled. "Looks that way, sweetheart. But no. No point if we can't turn this fucking tracker off."

Lakey's laugh was sharp. "Oh, goody. I do love a challenge."

This just got interesting. Sometimes the danger found us, and we didn't even have to leave our apartment. Kind of nice for a change, having it brought here. Like a delivery service for murder.

Murder-gram? Nah. Skip the Hunt. Yes. Yes, that's exactly it. Murdery delivery services by Lakey and Cam. You want 'em, we got 'em.