Buried and Shadowed (Branded Packs #3)(64)

Continuing to stroke her hand over his tense muscles, Mira’s touch anchored him. A necessary thing. His wolf didn’t care that they needed information. It just wanted to punish the people responsible for causing his people such acute pain.

“We’ve been trying to prove that the shifters are innocent of causing the Verona Virus,” Mira explained. “The trail led us to Dr. Lowman.”

Cautiously, the woman crossed the room to wrap an arm around her husband’s shoulders.

“Hasn’t he suffered enough?”

“He’s suffered?” Sinclair snarled in disbelief, glancing around the comfortable room with the sunny view of the gardens. “What about my people? They’ve been caged and branded and collared. Every day, they’re brutalized by their captors while the world condemns them as monsters who should be destroyed.”

The older woman caught her lower lip between her teeth, tightening her hold on her husband.

“It’s not our fault.”

“You knew the truth,” Sinclair said, refusing to let them off the hook. They might have convinced themselves they’d been helpless victims, but he wasn’t nearly so generous. “You knew that it was Colonel Ranney and the Verona Clinic that caused the pandemic, and yet you remained silent, allowing my people to suffer.”

Lowman groaned, leaning against his wife as if she were his only strength.

“They would have killed him if he’d tried to expose the truth,” Jessica told them in harsh tones. “How could that have helped anyone?”

“Instead, he hid here like a coward,” Sinclair accused.

The female tilted her chin, her eyes flashing with anger. “Don’t you dare judge us.”

“Jessica, he’s right,” Lowman abruptly stiffened his spine as if realizing he was cowering behind his wife. “I already told you I was a coward. My presence here just confirms it.”

“That’s not true,” Jessica protested, her gaze swerving from Sinclair to her husband, her expression softening with concern. “He tried to help. He’s the one who worked night and day to create a vaccine to halt the spread of the virus. And he tried to tell the truth about Colonel Ranney and Bellum International.”

Sinclair made a sound of disbelief. He couldn’t imagine the spineless doctor ever risking his own precious neck.

“Tried to tell whom?”

“The CDC,” Lowman said.

“Oh,” Mira breathed. “The email to your father.”

It took a moment for Sinclair to recall that their search for Dr. Lowman had started when Mira had discovered the email written to someone in the CDC warning of a potential disaster.

“Yes.” Lowman gave a nod of his head. “I was writing to him, trying to warn him that there was something wrong going on at the clinic.” His fingers toyed with his robe belt, an air of nervous energy humming around him. “Then, when I realized they’d infected a patient, I told him to organize a meeting with me and the Director of Homeland Security.”

Sinclair arched a brow. Maybe the doctor had more of a backbone than he’d first suspected.

“What happened?” he demanded.

Without warning, the man’s eyes filled with tears. “I arrived just in time to witness Ranney’s personal henchmen putting a bullet in my father’s head.”

Mira sucked in a stunned breath. Sinclair wasn’t nearly so shocked. He was acutely aware of the depths that the SAU would sink to hide their dirty secrets.

“And the Director of Homeland Security?” he demanded.

“He was already dead.” The doctor’s face twisted into an expression of profound sadness. “I turned around and ran.”

Jessica glared at Sinclair, presumably angered that they were forced to recall things in the past they’d hoped to keep buried.

“When I found him, he was suffering from a nervous breakdown,” she said in accusing tones. “He barely ate, he couldn’t sleep. He wouldn’t even speak. All he could tell me was that there were men that were coming to kill us. I packed a few belongings, and we disappeared.”

Sinclair couldn’t deny a small flare of admiration for Jessica. There were many women who would have abandoned her husbands rather than go on the run, always knowing that they would be killed if they were found by the SAU.

Mira had the same loyalty.

It was something he never intended to take for granted again.

“Was Ranney afraid you were going to reveal the truth?” he asked.

“It was more than that,” the doctor told him, turning away from his wife to walk toward the hospital bed.

“Gerald, no,” the woman breathed.

“The time has come, Jessica,” he said, moving like a man twice his age as he bent over and reached beneath the mattress to pull out a small object. “The truth needs to be told,” he said, as much to himself as to his wife.

Sinclair remained perfectly still as the man shuffled toward him. He understood that this was an important moment in his people’s lives.

Perhaps the most important moment since the virus had exploded through the humans.

“What is this?” he asked as the doctor handed him a small flash drive.

“I recorded the conversations between Ranney and Dr. Pallen,” Lowman said.

Sinclair frowned. “Dr. Pallen?”