Blue surged forward. “He’s one of the victims? Which one?”
Wyatt took on a mocking tone. “He says his name is King Freeman, son of Sambah Freeman.” Then Wyatt smirked. “That’s what you sound like.”
“King?” I uttered, completely dumbstruck. “Your father said you were found on the stairs. Did you fall?”
“No,” Wyatt replied.
Christian waltzed in. “And what do we have here?”
“Shhh,” we all said at once.
Christian threw his hands up and stayed on the other side of the room, leaning against the desk with his arms folded.
“He was sick,” Wyatt continued. “Says he was going downstairs for… a glass ofwhat?” Wyatt shuddered. “A glass of boiled roots. He was having some chest pain, and it wasn’t going away like before.”
“So he was chronically sick?” I asked.
Wyatt paused a minute as he listened to King. “Occasionally he got heartburn. Says he was under a lot of stress about whether to start his own pride or take over for his father.”
“Start his own pride,” Blue repeated. “Sambah didn’t mention King was an alpha, but maybe I should have asked by the way he spoke about him. Usually the firstborn is the alpha of the family.”
“That’s why he has so many siblings.Insert laughter here,” Wyatt said, making air quotes. “I’m not apologizing. You kept me up all night when I was at death’s door.”
Christian snorted and lowered his head.
“Twelve sons and seven daughters,” Blue added, telling me something I hadn’t known. “Shifters live a long time, but usually at some point, they stop making babies. They like to sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labors. Sounds like Sambah was trying for a successor. No wonder he chose the name King. That’s too bad.”
“He says he was going down the stairs,” Wyatt continued. “He suddenly got a terrible pain in his head that blinded him. He fell. When he hit the landing, he was still alive, but he couldn’t call for help. The pain got worse, and then he couldn’t breathe. After that, everything went black.”
Blue cupped her hands over her mouth, appearing deep in thought as she stared at her feet. “Alphas are stronger. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Has anyone else in his family died under similar circumstances?” I asked. “Or of unknown causes?”
Wyatt shook his head. “Some people just have a bum ticker.”
“I’m not sure that was a heart attack,” I said. “It sounds more like a stroke. Did he have any other pain before it happened?”
Wyatt cocked his head to the side as he listened, and then he replied, “Just the chest pain, only it was different than before. Sharper and more intense.”
“Sounds like a pulmonary embolism,” Christian remarked. “But I can’t say those happen at the same time as a clot in the brain. What are the odds?”
I shoved a short stack of papers aside that we had ruled out. I thought back to every interview. Some who were among the last to see the deceased alive made remarks about them not feeling well. “Chest pain, heartburn…,” I muttered.
“Even Andy mentioned it,” Blue said. “Remember that guy?”
“You mean the beta who threw a knife at me? Yeah, I remember.”
I noticed Christian ease away from the desk.
Blue glanced down at the floor. “He said she was having chest discomfort and went to bed. That fits the pattern.”
I fished his paper out of the stack. “Damn. I thought maybe his snitch of a packmate was right about him killing her. He seemed like the aggressive type.”
“Could be some gene mutation.” Blue sat cross-legged and lined up a few papers. “But they don’t belong to the same animal species.”
“Then we have to consider it might be contagious.” I turned a paper clip between my fingers. “If that’s the case, not everyone’s getting infected—or at least, not everyone’s dying from it. Maybe they’re just carriers. But what do these people have in common? It can’t be the same blood type, or we’d have a bigger list.”
“How wouldyouknow?” Wyatt asked, staring at the empty space beside him. “I thought you only hung around your own kind.”
