“No! I already told you?—”
“But would you recognize them? If you saw them?”
Becca took a deep breath and leveled the woman with her steadiest expression. “You need to take me to those things right now.”
Carl answered instead. “It’s not a place you should see. It’s not a nice basement.”
She swallowed. “Was Theo in there?”
“We don’t know,” Carl answered.
“But you suspect.”
Officer Tonya exhaled slowly. “It’s an active crime scene. I can get pictures?—”
“A picture isn’t going to do it. And what you’re doing right now? It’s making me insane. Look, I may not look as strong as Officer Tough as Nails here, but Theo’s my son. For his sake, I’d walk into hell itself.” When that didn’t seem the sway them, she tried a different tack. “Theo and I have a shorthand between us. Symbols and stuff that wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else, but I’d recognize it if I saw it. If you think Theo might have been in there, you have to let me look.”
Becca froze her body into the most coldly determined stance she could manage. Her chin was lifted, her brows lowered, and her hands were clenched at her sides. And while she kept her expression fierce, she looked at Carl. He was the Max, so he was the one she had to convince. “I’ve dragged my sister’s drunken ass out of bars at two a.m. I took care of Theo every time he had the flu. And I’ve nursed my mother through lung cancer. I’m not going to freak at a scary basement.”
Carl sighed. “It’s not the same thing.”
“I don’t care. If Theo was there, I need to see it.”
He had to agree. He just had to. And in the end, he huffed out a breath. “I’m going to be with you every step of the way.”
“And you’re both going to do exactly what I say,” Tonya snapped. Then she touched Becca’s hand. “And call me Tonya. This kind of thing is easier with a friend.”
Becca nodded and tried to smile. No point in letting her nerves show as Carl helped her into the truck. They drove to the front gate of the Moss compound. It looked all rather normal to Becca for a large Michigan ranch. Except for the barbed-wire fencing. And the squad cars and ATF vehicles everywhere. It took forever to get past all the people checking IDs and the like. Tonya got them through while Becca gripped Carl’s hand and tried not to panic. She didn’t even know when she’d grabbed hold, but their fingers were intertwined, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to let go until this was over. Plus, no matter how hard she squeezed, she was pretty sure his hand could take it. So she held on and kept moving steadily forward.
Until she came to the basement.
A set of stairs descended into a huge concrete nightmare, complete with bloodstains on the floor and four large animal cages.
“Don’t you dare puke on my crime scene,” Tonya snapped.
“I won’t,” she said, willing it to be true.
“I was talking to Mr. Max.”
It was a lie. That had definitely been directed at her, but she liked Tonya all the better for pretending otherwise. Meanwhile, Carl pulled her tighter against his side.
“If this gets too hard, you just say the word. I’ll have you outside in a second, okay?”
“Okay.”
She couldn’t see much. Tonya was blocking her view, which was just as well. The glimpses she’d gotten were bad enough. And the smell was worse. A foul, nauseating scent of bodily fluids and antiseptic. She glanced at Carl’s hard expression and wondered what his grizzly senses were telling him. Nothing good, by the look on his face.
Then Tonya moved, gesturing to a pile of clothing in the corner near the stairs. Not just a University of Michigan sweatshirt, but jeans and shoes. A bloody tee and…
A body. Not in the pile of clothes, but just to the side.
Oh God.
A boy misshapen beyond belief. His face was distorted into a kind of muzzle and there was fur on his arms. But the body was a boy’s, and one leg was human, the other a distorted thing that was part animal. She choked back a cry as she slammed a hand on her mouth.
She would not be sick. She would not be sick.
It helped that she knew immediately that it wasn’t Theo. Awful to be grateful when she was looking at some boy’s death, but she was so relieved that somehow she was able to cope.
