“His name’s Pettine,” Brooks said. “He’s a surgery specialist, but he also volunteers at a clinic near the RTC campus. The clinic has an ongoing relationship with several of the local colleges, and they refer students there for immunizations, health and wellness exams, and general appointments. It’s entirely possible that the other two missing girls had gone to the clinic as well, but there wasn’t any indication they ever had a prescription for birth control pills.”
“Tell me you have a location on this guy,” Alex said.
“Max is on him now,” Brooks said. “Pettine left Charles Hospital about an hour ago and went straight to some kind of research facility near there. Max says the place has been quiet since Pettine went inside. I’m heading over there now.”
“Text me the address, and I’ll meet you there,” Alex said.
“Shouldn’t we get this information to the councilman and the rest of the task force he’s put together?” Lacey asked as he hung up.
Alex shook his head. “They’ll only want to drag Pettine in for questioning. It’s more important to them that they appear to be on top of the case by talking to people of interest than in accomplishing anything. They bring this doctor in, and he’ll lawyer up in seconds. They’ll never get anything out of him, and our lead will be meaningless. You have to trust me on this.”
Lacey didn’t look convinced, but she nodded. “Okay. Just bring Kelsey home. Please.”
He leaned in and kissed her. “I will.”
* * *
The research facility wasn’t what Alex expected. With the familiar snake and staff symbol of the medical industry attached to the front of it, the three-floor glass building looked like a cross between a high-tech computer firm and a hospital. It definitely didn’t seem like the kind of place a psycho killer would take his victims.
Alex drove past it, pulling up behind Max’s black Camaro a few blocks down the street. Max and Brooks were standing beside the car, waiting for him.
“What the hell kind of place is this?” Alex asked as he got out of his truck and closed the door.
“I don’t know,” Brooks said. “Becker is trying to find out who holds the lease right now. He said he’d call as soon as he has anything.”
“About five minutes before you guys got here, Pettine and everyone else in the place bailed like it was an evacuation drill,” Max told them. “We have the doctor’s license plate info, but the others took off before I could get anything on them. I tried to follow, but they scattered. Something’s not right here, I can feel it.”
Alex’s gut clenched. Max was the youngest werewolf on the team, but he was a good cop. If he thought something was wrong, then it was.
Alex reached down and pulled his off-duty SIG P224 out of its holster. “I have zero probable cause to go into that building, but I’m going anyway. If you two want to hang out here, I’m completely okay with that.”
“Hell no,” they both said in unison.
Brooks and Max followed his lead, pulling out their weapons as they ran for the back side of the building and what Alex hoped would be an easy way in.
They found a metal door along the side of the building that wasn’t facing any of the streets that ran past the facility and wasn’t well lit. Max probably could have picked the lock, but Alex didn’t have the patience for that. Instead, he ripped off the knob, then yanked open the door. Pieces of metal fell to the concrete with a clatter, but he ignored it as he led the way into the dark building.
They’d barely gone twenty feet before Alex picked up Kelsey’s scent coming from somewhere down the hall. He glanced over his shoulder, motioning in that direction. Brooks and Max nodded, spreading out along the corridor and checking each room as they went past.
The air was heavy with antiseptic odors and industrial cleansers, but underneath them, Alex picked up a myriad of human scents in addition to Kelsey’s. He ignored the rest and focused on hers, following it to a stairwell and down into a dark basement.
He was halfway down the stairs when he realized that the basement was empty. Kelsey had been there but was gone now. They were too late.
Alex continued down the stairs anyway, Brooks and Max at his heels. The girls might be gone, but they needed to check to see if whoever had kidnapped them left any evidence behind. His stomach churned at the thought of what they might find. He didn’t smell any dead bodies, but still… He’d seen what the killer had done to Nicole Arend. The basement was made up of a big main room with five smaller rooms off it. Each held a small cot and not much else. Alex could pick up Kelsey’s scent in one of the rooms, along with that belonging to a man that was oddly familiar, even though he couldn’t place it. Strangely enough, he also smelled fireball. What the hell would that crap be doing here?
Alex walked back into the main room and joined his teammates as they searched the utility cabinets. He’d just opened one and started looking through it when Brooks’s phone vibrated. Brooks pulled it out of his pocket and glanced at the screen, then thumbed the green button.
“I have you on speaker,” he said. “Go ahead, Becker.”
“Things just got real weird,” Becker said. “Councilman McDonald owns the building you followed Pettine to. It’s one of his medical research facilities.”
“Shit,” Alex muttered.
No sooner was the word out of his mouth than footsteps echoed upstairs, first in the hallways, then in the stairwell. A moment later, the basement was lit up bright as day as fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling blinked to life.
Double shit.
“Do we fight them?” Max growled, his eyes glowing in a partial shift.
