Crystal hesitated for a moment, but then nodded. Thankfully, one key unlocked all the labs in this part of the building.
When they walked into Nadia’s lab, Trey didn’t get even a hint of the sweet and dusty scent he’d come to associate with the vita. Then again, there wasn’t much of any scent, unless he counted blood and corpses. It was like Nadia didn’t have much of a smell in her human form, which was strange as hell. For a moment, he wondered why he hadn’t noticed that distinct lack of scent when he’d first met her.
Trey was still trying to figure that out when he smelled something all too familiar. The odor was like a chemical disinfectant, but with a flowery noted blended in. He froze for a moment before following his nose straight toward the sink on the far side of the room.
“You got something?” Connor asked.
Trey was too focused on the plastic pump bottle filled with pink foamy soap on the counter to answer. Picking it up, he gave it a big sniff and almost gagged. It was like someone had dumped a bottle of perfume into a container of bleach. This was definitely it.
He turned and held up the bottle, giving Crystal a questioning look. “What is this stuff?”
“It’s a disinfecting body wash. It’s normally used for cleaning patients prior to surgery, but Nadia uses it to wash her hands. She buys it directly from a vendor in France or someplace fancy like that. It’s ungodly expensive, but she claims it’s the only thing that gets the stench of dead bodies off her skin. She makes a big deal out of having a sensitive nose.”
Trey stood there wondering how it was possible he hadn’t smelled this scent on the woman in their previous encounters. It was damn strong. Again, all he could think was that it had something to do with her vita half. Maybe shifting back and forth from human to vita diminished her scent? That would certainly explain why Nadia barely had a scent as a human.
“What’s the big deal about the body wash?” Crystal asked, looking back and forth from him to Connor.
Trey exchanged another glance with Connor before answering. “The scent has shown up on a couple of the body parts related to the Butcher case and at least one of the crime scenes.”
Crystal gaped in disbelief.
Trey tensed, waiting for the avalanche of questions to start.
“I really want to ask how the hell you know something like that, but instead, I think I’m just going to file it under thatit’s complicatedcategory you mentioned earlier and leave it at that,” she said. “I’m going to wait for Louis in Samantha’s lab. I’ll call you if we find anything.”
Connor waited for Crystal to leave before looking at him. “Do you really think Nadia is working with the Butcher?”
Trey ran that possibility through his mind. He’d been sure that the second person he’d seen in the woods the other night was a man. Maybe he’d been wrong. “I don’t know. But what really has me scared right now is that if we figured out Nadia is involved with the Butcher, maybe Samantha did, too. What if that’s what she wanted to tell me, and when I didn’t answer, she went to confront Nadia herself?”
“Samantha wouldn’t do anything that crazy,” Connor said.
Trey could tell from the doubt in his pack mate’s eyes that Connor wasn’t as sure about that as he sounded. The truth was, they had no idea what was going on. Or even what to do next. All Trey knew for sure was that Samantha was out there somewhere completely on her own.
Chapter 19
It was the sound of humming and soft footsteps on rough concrete that pulled Samantha out of her restless sleep. She forced herself to stay calm and not jump up like she had the first time. Instead, she opened her eyes slowly and tried to sneak a look around the basement without giving away the fact that she was awake.
The basement was lit up much brighter than it previously had been. Looking up, she saw lines of overhead fluorescents attached to the ceiling, painting the entire place in a harsh industrial glow. It made her feel like she was back in her autopsy lab at the institute.
Catching sight of a pair of leather dress shoes through the openings in the grating of her cage, she knew without lifting her gaze any higher that it was Louis. She’d recognize those waterproof wingtip oxfords of his anywhere. The man had been wearing them every day since she’d met him.
When Samantha realized Louis was standing in front of the rack Kyson was strapped to, she gave up all pretense of being asleep, pushing herself up on one hip so she could see better. A quick glance to the right showed Shaylee lying on her mattress in the corner of her cell, apparently still sleeping.
Louis pushed a large syringe of neon green goo—the same kind in the glass cylinder on the wall—into a heart catheter. The stuff must have been unusually thick because Louis’s knuckles were turning white from the force he was applying to the plunger. As unsettling as it was to see him put green goo into the big man, it was even more disconcerting to see Kyson’s open eyes stay flat and inexpressive, even though Shaylee had said he was aware of everything happening to him when he was like this.
“What are you doing to him?” Samantha demanded.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Shaylee jump a little, pushing herself up from her mattress. The woman looked around, terrified, and Samantha wondered if she’d just made their situation worse than it already was. As hard as it was to believe that could even be possible.
“I’m making him better,” Louis replied, the words spoken so casually that she’d think he’d simply said it might rain today.
“What is that stuff doing to him?” Samantha pressed.
Getting up, she walked across the cage and leaned against the door. She pushed on the lock, even though she knew it wouldn’t budge. She glanced Shaylee’s way and saw the woman moving closer as well, her agonized expression making Samantha think she’d seen this kind of thing before.
Louis didn’t answer at first, waiting until he had finished injecting the rest of the goo into the catheter and then moving over to scan a bank of monitors Samantha couldn’t quite see. Only then did he turn and approach her cage, his face taking on that patient mentoring expression she’d become so used to over the past few years.
“Around three o’clock Wednesday morning, my test subject had a run-in with your boyfriend in the Cedar Ridge Preserve,” Louis said, regarding her calmly. “You may not be aware of this, Samantha, but your boyfriend can be quite vicious when he wants to be. Even though my subject is an incredibly powerful man, I watched Officer Duncan literally tear him to shreds. From a scientific point of view, I must admit it was quite impressive.”
