Buried and Shadowed (Branded Packs #3)(63)

Mira frowned. Were they talking about Colonel Ranney? The head of the SAU?

“He didn’t want a cure for Ebola,” the doctor said, his pale eyes shadowed with dark memories. “In fact, he wanted to turn it into a weapon.”

Ah. Mira belatedly understood the connection. She’d forgotten that Bellum International was a defense contractor.

“Why didn’t you quit?” Sinclair demanded, clearly not as sympathetic toward the doctor as Mira.

“They threatened to blackball me,” Lowman said. “They said I would never work in research again.”

“And your career was more important than the human race?” Sinclair snarled.

The doctor flinched, whether from guilt or fear was impossible to guess.

“It wasn’t like that,” he denied the accusation. “They assured me that it was going to be like nuclear weapons.”

Mira sucked in a sharp breath. “What’s that mean?”

Dr. Lowman restlessly plucked at the belt that was wrapped around his robe. He reminded Mira of a nervous bird, constantly on edge.

“They promised that it was only going to be a deterrent,” he said, his expression defensive. “That it would never actually be used.”

Heat prickled through the air as Sinclair struggled to contain his wolf.

“But it was,” he snapped.

The doctor took an instinctive step backward, his face paling to a pasty white.

“God forgive me.”

Mira wrapped her fingers around Sinclair’s arm, sensing he was reaching the limit of his control. And unlike other men, if Sinclair snapped, it wasn’t going to be a few angry words and maybe a punch to the face. It was going to be fur and claws and lethal fangs.

“Did they intend to destroy the world?” she asked.

“No.” The doctor hesitated as he considered his words. “Or, at least, the head of the clinic didn’t plan on doing more than trying to see how swiftly the subject was infected and if the local medical facilities could detect that it wasn’t a natural virus.”

Her lips curled in disgust. How could anyone who was in charge of a place that was supposed to promote healing actually be part of an experiment that had no purpose beyond spreading death?

“Why would it matter if the doctors could determine if it was manmade or natural?” she asked.

It was Sinclair who answered. “If you want to discreetly kill a world leader, or even destabilize a nation, you wouldn’t want anyone capable of tracing the death back to whoever ordered the assassinations.”

“Oh,” she breathed, shuddering in revulsion.

Sinclair’s eyes glowed as he glared at the doctor. “So what went wrong?”

Lowman gave a helpless lift of his hands. “The virus spread far quicker than anyone could have predicted. Before they could contain the damage, it’d grown out of control.”

A growl rumbled in the air as Sinclair curled his hands into tight fists.

“Ranney might not have intended mass genocide, but he was swift to take advantage,” he sneered.

“Yes,” the doctor breathed, his head abruptly jerking to the side as a hidden door slid open.

“Who are you and how the hell did you get in here?” a voice sliced through the air as a woman stepped into the room.





Chapter 11


Sinclair was furious with himself.

How the hell had he gotten so distracted that he’d failed to notice that someone was approaching? Even if it was through some secret door?

With a speed that no human could match, Sinclair was moving across the long room and circling the woman to approach her from behind. Then, wrapping one arm around her upper body to pin her arms to her side, he slammed his hand across her mouth to ensure she couldn’t make a sound.

“Sinclair,” Mira called out.

He ignored her protest, along with the doctor’s pained whimper. Instead, he concentrated on the woman, who was standing, frozen in fear.

“Don’t move,” he growled in her ear. “And keep your mouth shut. Understand?”

Waiting until she’d given a hesitant nod, Sinclair quickly frisked her, removing her cellphone along with a small, black pager that he shoved into his pocket.

“Please,” the doctor pleaded. “Don’t hurt her.”

Slowly stepping back, Sinclair studied her with a narrowed gaze. Wearing scrubs and a white lab jacket with a nametag that read ‘Jessica,’ he had to assume that this was Dr. Lowman’s wife.

She had dark hair that was peppered with gray and cut in a short, no-nonsense style. She was almost as thin as her husband, as if they’d both been worn to the bone over the past twenty-five years. Not that he had any sympathy for either of them.

Lowman may have been young, but he’d clearly permitted his ambition to allow him to turn a blind eye to the looming apocalypse.

Jessica licked her lips, regarding Sinclair with dark brown eyes.

“You’re a shifter,” she said, trying to disguise her fear behind a fa?ade of stoic calm.

He snapped his teeth in her direction, even as Mira moved to stand at his side, her hand running a soothing path down his back.

“Sinclair, don’t,” she said. “She’s only trying to protect her husband.”

The woman’s dark eyes widened. “How did you know?”