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Lila typed a code into the security box by the back door.
Tristan gagged slightly as it opened. The smell of rotting meat was light on the air but strong enough to claw at their throats.
Lila had smelled it before on patrol. “Pull the others back to the trucks,” Lila said, dragging him away from the door before he vomited. “Call Frank. Have him retrieve my satchel.”
Tristan nodded quickly, gulping quickly several times. After a long moment, he pulled out his palm and relayed her instructions.
Frank didn’t do much better. He turned a rather odd shade of green as he stood near the door, and seemed more than happy to return to the truck.
Lila removed her hood, then pulled covers over her boots and donned latex gloves. “Are you better now, Tristan? Can you go inside?”
“I’m fine.”
“If you throw up, you’ll leave your DNA behind. Take a moment if you need it.”
“I’m fine.”
She helped Tristan fit covers over his boots and gave him a pair of latex gloves. “Don’t touch anything if you don’t have to,” she whispered, handing him a camera.
Tristan took it uncertainly and followed her inside, the smell growing worse in the closed warmth of the heat wave.
The scene chilled her, not due to the violence but for the lack of it. It was as though Natalie and her people had fallen where they stood, not even wasting the time to face their attackers. A half-eaten donut lay near one of the guards, his mouth still full. Near another, a tranq gun had fallen from its owner’s holster, unused. Laptop cords wound around a few tables in the room, the computers missing. A tray of croissants and pastries had been placed upon the tables, half the food uneaten.
More disturbingly, a blue teddy bear lay discarded at the side of the room near a large dog crate. If Oskar had been inside, he’d barely had room to stretch.
Knowing Natalie, she’d bought him a dog collar and a leash to complete the look.
“Oskar was here.” Lila picked up the bear with gloved hands. She breathed out in relief when she turned the toy over and found no blood. “They took him.”
“Are you sure?” Tristan said, his voice muffled as he pulled his scarf over his mouth.
“I know this teddy bear.”
Tristan crouched in front of the crate. “No blood. If they wanted the boy dead, it would have been much easier to shoot him here. They didn’t do that. He’s still alive.”
“Maybe.” Lila tossed the toy into the crate and slammed the lid. Oskar had slipped further away. “I was supposed to find him today. I was supposed to bring him back safe, so I could start looking for the others.”
“We’ll find him. We’ll find all of them,” Tristan assured her, tugging her back from the crate. His gaze swept the room. “I count ten bodies.”
Lila turned, counting as well, trying to keep her mind on the case. Natalie and her people had perished in the dim factory, bullet holes adorning their chests and foreheads, all lying in blood, little of it disturbed in last-minute death throes. One in the head, two in the heart.
“You think they were drugged first?”
Lila shook her head. Too many had died with their eyes open, their pupils seeming to follow her around the room.
It was Reaper all over again.
It was Hans Schulte.
“Take pictures of the scene. Make damn sure we aren’t in them. Not even a finger or a hem.”
While Tristan sent his people a short message to return to the shop, Lila took a blood sample from each body. If the food had been drugged, it might explain how ten experienced thugs had been slaughtered before they even managed to draw their weapons.
She put the samples into her satchel and searched each body. Unfortunately, it appeared that the killers had already done the job, though poorly. Lila managed to find a palm hidden in a bag of clothes in the back of the room, stitched into a hidden pocket.
That wasn’t the only thing she found. In the corner of an office, she discovered a ladder propped against the wall, one so tall that it nearly scraped against the ceiling. After dragging it out, she scrambled to the highest rung, peeking over the steel beams that ran the length of the factory’s ceiling.
“I’ll be damned,” she whispered, sliding out to snatch a palm. She found another on a second beam near the entrance. Taking out her laptop from her satchel, she backed up each palm’s contents, then replaced them where she’d found them.
