Chapter Twenty-six
I was halfway home when I
stopped dead in the middle of the road. I poured over the files that the doctor
had secured on his computer, and Uncle Radford was researching the scientific
information. What I hadn’t done was gone back to that house. After I pulled
Kraig out of that horrific room in the basement, I’d ordered the house closed and
locked. I didn’t want anything to remind him of what suffered there.
But who knew what might be
there? I’ve been in shock when I realized Kraig was the werekin being
experimented on. And why had he been taking samples from my streak? He’d
already changed Kraig. Was there something about him specifically that was
different?
The last thing I wanted to do
was go into that basement again, but it look like that was where I was about to
go. Answers were more important than my rage and pain, knowing just how long
Kraig had been there suffering when I should have known. He told me to forgive
myself, because there was no way I would have connected to him as a human
werekin. They were outside the power of the alpha.
I marched to that house in the
darkness. My eyes were just enough to see by the moonlight as I went inside.
The stench of old death was awful, and I tried to take shallow breaths. No one
in their right mind would keep sensitive information on the open, and the
doctor had gone to all the trouble of constructing a hidden lab in the basement
concealed behind a false wall.
It would make sense to start
there.
Once I hit the basement stairs
I turned on the light. I didn’t want to alert anyone to my presence in the
house, if one or more of the guards passed by on patrol, but there were no
windows in the basement so the stairs to send it in to pitch blackness. The
wooden stairs creaked under my feet, and I had to resist the urge to creep down
them silently.
There was no one to surprise
here. The house was empty. Not even flies buzzed around the dark bloodstain staining
the concrete floor where the doctor had fallen after I eviscerated him. I
climbed through the hole in the false wall and reached up for the bare bulb dangling
from the ceiling.
Harsh light cast shadows all
around the room as the bulbs swung and then gradually steadied. I flipped my
claws in and out as I prowled the perimeter of the room first. I couldn’t
escape the sight of those chains, the vicious sharp cuffs that it held Kraig to
the wall.
When we need uncovered this
plot, and stopped everyone involved from hurting anyone else again, I would
have this house razed to the ground and the empty hole filled in. I rapped on
the wall as I walked just in case the doctor had seen fit to hide another area
behind a false front, but they were solid.
My stomach churned as I
approached the long metal counter that ran along one wall. Needles, vials,
little metal tools, and even an electrical stun gun cluttered the surface.
There were several specimen jars, Petri dishes and slides along with two
different microscopes and a few other pieces of equipment I didn’t recognize.
Maybe Uncle Radford would.
I pulled out my phone, and
brought up the camera. I took pictures of everything. Slipping my phone in my
pocket, I growled. This was the part I really didn’t want to do. I picked up
the first petri dish and looked inside. There was a red gel surrounding a
piece of flesh, clearly something cut from Kraig’s body because one edge of it
held a rosette.
The only thing that would keep
me going was my rage. If I stopped for even a moment and considered how they’d
taken these bits and pieces from him, I’d go insane and destroy the entire
room. I took a deep breath— instantly regretting it— and then blew it out. What
I needed was papers that had to be some here somewhere.
Nothing was visible on top of
the table, so I began to run my fingers along the edges of the wall along the
top. No cubbies or anything else that I can detect. I crouched just a few feet
away from where Kraig had lain for months on that cold gray concrete floor, and
looked under the table.
“Jackpot!” Built into the
bottom of the table were two recesses. They each were fastened by a lock
creating a built in secure box. Lack of the key wasn’t going to stop me. I
jammed my fingers into the crack between the table and the front of the boxes
and I yanked downward. Pain shot through my claws, and one cracked, but the
metal gave with a screech.
And notebook, a phone, and
several file folders tumbled to the floor. I gathered them up and set them carefully
on top of the table. I reached inside both boxes to make sure they were empty. Something
slick was under the fingers of my left hand. I slid it out.
It was an ID. Studying the
face, I could see the resemblance to Ritch. This had to be what I was looking
for. I clutched the ID and stood. I grabbed the rest of my find and headed home
like I originally planned.
The doctor had definitely
thought he was secure in his hiding places. The actual experiment results made
little sense to me, but the personal notes he made in the notebook were
invaluable. I finally knew why he’d chosen Kraig, why he’d been taking so many
samples from me.
I shoved the notebook across
the table and rubbed my forehead. There was no magical rewind button, no way to
put the genie back in the bottle.
But revealing the information
could rock the entire werekin world.
TBC
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