“Over the years, I’ve cultivated quite a few deep, close, and influential contacts in the field of animal welfare. One of them let me know about the job opening at the Philadelphia Enquirer. My old editor wrote me a stellar recommendation and the job was mine. However, it’s ironic that I moved east and ended up living just over an hour away from where Vision Zone’s leftover assets ended up at Tango Bio’s only remaining facility. The universe has a twisted sense of humor.”
“Or maybe it was destiny,” Basia mused.
“You still write about animals?” Gray asked her.
“Sometimes. I’ve never stopped looking into animal research facilities gone bad. It’s a passion project, you could say.”
“So, you were still following Vision Zone—er…Tango Bio after all this time?” I asked.
“Yes. This past year, I started poking more and more into the lab, asking questions and requesting government and state files. I even convinced my boss to let me work on it in my free time. He agreed. But that’s when the stalking, the dropped calls, and the anonymous threats started happening.”
“Someone discovered you were back and snooping around,” Gray said. “And they didn’t like it at all.”
“Not at all,” Barbie agreed. “That’s when I realized they had something new to hide, so I’ve redoubled my efforts to find out what they are doing. Now you call me out of the blue and tell me something big is about to go down at the lab. You’ve piqued my curiosity, to say the least.”
I hesitated. “Are you sure you want to help us and risk sabotaging your career again?”
She didn’t even think about it. “Absolutely. Because now…it’s personal.”
Barbie sat very still, hands folded in her lap, like if she moved too much something inside her might crack. It was absolutely silent in the penthouse. When she spoke, her voice was calm, but it had that careful precision of someone holding herself together by will alone.
“Nearly a year ago, I was researching a story. There’d been a spate of badly traumatized or physically maimed dogs being dropped off anonymously at shelters around various locations in New Jersey. I personally visited these shelters to get more information for my story. I quickly realized there was a pattern with these dogs and cats. No paperwork. No owners. And they weren’t normal rescues. They were severely traumatized. Some were badly injured. Others looked like they’d been experimented on.” She glanced at each of us, making sure we understood. “I suspected Tango Bio early on. I just didn’t have proof yet.”
She swallowed. “I found Tootsie, my dog, about a year and a half ago at one of these shelters. She was tiny, probably five pounds soaking wet. She was barely functioning. Wouldn’t make eye contact. Wouldn’t let anyone touch her. She shook constantly. The shelter vet said her microchip looked like it had been surgically removed, and not carefully. Like someone ripped it out fast and didn’t care what it did to her.”
My stomach twisted.
Barbie pushed a strand of hair off her forehead, and I noticed her hand was shaking. “As I was about to leave, that tiny little dog whimpered at me and looked up with soulful brown eyes, as if she was begging me not to leave her.
“I took her home that day,” Barbie continued. “Didn’t think twice about it. It took months before she’d sleep through the night. A year before she’d play. But she came back. Slowly. She trusted me.” Her fingers clenched together.
“In the meantime, I went back to researching my story. It was a mission by that point. A few weeks ago, I requested an interview with the CEO of Tango Bio. He refused the interview and his staff was openly hostile to me in his response, which was to leave them alone or they’d pursue legal action. They didn’t say it outright, but they implied that things could go badly for me if I continued researching for my story. I got the message, but I didn’t back off.”
“So, what happened?” Basia asked.
Barbie’s voice wavered, just for a second. “A few days later, Tootsie was playing in our front yard—fenced, I might add. She liked to lie out there and watch the birds. I heard her bark once and then this awful squeal. I ran to the window and saw a white van parked in front of my house. A man was standing there, in my yard, holding Tootsie.”
No one breathed.
“He tossed her into the van like she was nothing,” Barbie said quietly. “I ran outside screaming. He looked right at me, flipped me off, and drove away.”
The silence afterward was heavy.
“I know it was Tango Bio,” she said. “I just can’t prove it yet. But I know. They wanted to scare me. And it worked…until now.” She lifted her chin, eyes burning now. “I’m not stopping. Because if I stop, it means they win. And I’ll not let what they did to Tootsie happen to your dog, or any dog, ever again.”
Even though Ginger wasn’t technically our dog, I exchanged glances with the girls. They looked as fiercely determined as Barbie.
“Good,” I said quietly. “Because we’re going to help you bring them down.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Lexi
“Can you fill us in regarding what you know of their current operation?” I asked.
Barbie took a moment to compose herself and then looked down at her notebook, now filled with notes. “You already know the essentials and more.” She tapped her pen against the paper. “I’d heard whispers about something called ‘For the Birds’ in regard to the original federal contracts and the CIA ties, but it was classified, so I never got traction there. Whatever sources you’re using…” She let out a low whistle. “You’ve done in days what took me months, even years, to discover and piece together.”
Gray glanced at me. “We’re motivated.”
