Chapter 33: Chapter 33

SLOAN

Sloan rocked back in his office chair, rubbing his tired eyes. Their weekend activities, coupled with training extra hard and fucking Myra before work, had finally gotten the better of him.

He felt like even his soul was exhausted. He reached up and scratched his beard as a text notification pinged on his phone.

Angel

How’s my Wolfman?

Sloan laughed for the first time since the rogues had resurfaced. ~She struggled to give me a nickname, and after one wild knotting, I’ve been labeled “wolfman.” God, how did I get so lucky?~

Sloan

Your Wolfman is bone-tired…I think I gave you everything over the weekend.

He smiled, put the phone down, and double-clicked on his emails. The coroner had yet to get back with preliminary reports.

They’d put in a rush for the blood analysis, since they had fresh bodies. He picked up his sixth black coffee of the day and took a sip as his phone pinged.

Angel

My honeypot is quite sore…you need to kiss it better.

He spat out his coffee when it went down the wrong way. ~Teasing minx.~

Sloan

Jesus! Woman, warn a man next time. I almost choked on my coffee. Where are you?

He tapped his finger on the desk, waiting for her reply, and he glanced at the time on his monitor. ~Ten past five. She should be on her way home. Unfortunately, I have some work to finish up here before heading home too.~

Angel

We are heading to the airport…Leanne’s brother is coming home for the Christmas holidays.

~Brainy Brian Marshall?~ Sloan laughed thinking about the scrawny stick of a boy who used to follow Leanne around like a puppy.

The last time he’d heard about the boy, he’d gotten into MIT. What he lacked in body mass he made up for in brains.

Sloan

I will be staying late in the office; I need to play catch-up with some contracts. Let me know when you get home. Love you.

Just as Sloan was about to start going through some financial reports, Declan and Tristan barged into his office. Tristan locked the door behind them as Declan continued toward him.

“When last I checked, that’s my name on the door,” Sloan grumbled, still focusing on the words on his computer screen.

“Your name isn’t on that door. It’s plain oak,” Tristan smart-mouthed.

“Maybe I should put it there, so that you guys would know whose office this is.”

“Stop PMSing and forget whatever you’re reading. We have a development,” Tristan snapped as Declan dialed a number on his office phone and put it on speaker.

“Alpha?”

“Dave, do you have the preliminary autopsy?” Sloan asked, abandoning his work to listen attentively to the coroner.

“Yes, Alpha, I do. A preliminary examination of the bodies from over the weekend provided us with a wealth of information, particularly body number five. That one piqued my interest, since it was the freshest kill,” Dave explained.

“Initial toxicology results didn’t show anything special, but I was determined, so I sent the samples back to the labs and had them conduct a more in-depth and complex analysis of the blood samples.”

“And did they find anything?”

Sloan shook his head at Declan’s impatience.

“Yes, Beta Declan. Patience, I’m getting to the good part.” Dave laughed, sounding very excited about the lab’s discovery. “They found a complex chemical compound in all of the victims’ blood samples.

“The composition varied across victims because of their species, but one signature element caused the lab tech to take notice.”

Sloan frowned and asked, “What kind of chemical compound?”

“That’s the interesting part. It’s a chemical blocker that prevents the animal genes from being activated,” Dave continued, and they all just stared at the phone in shock.

~A blocker to our animal spirit? That’s not possible~, Sloan thought. “Anything else?”

“Lots of broken bones and bruises, and I found similar injection sites on each victim’s jugular.

“This location enabled the serum to quickly move through the bloodstream, quickly incapacitating the victim’s animal spirit,” Dave explained.

“I’m speculating that once the spirit was immobilized with the chemical blocker, they were used as punching bags.”

“It’s almost like a one-sided underground fight club situation,” Tristan mumbled.

“They would need a space to run a lab to create the blocker, to house or cage their victims, and possibly an arena to fight and kill them,” Sloan added to Tristan’s offhanded comment.

Dave cleared his throat to get their attention.

“I still have samples from previous victims, so I’m going to have them run new tests, looking specifically for these chemical markers. I believe all these victims were experiments to test the effects of the blockers.”

“Top priority, Dave.”

“Yes, Alpha.”

“Dave, before you go, send me a list of possible equipment needed to synthesize such a serum,” Declan ordered.

“Will do.”

When the call disconnected, they were all lost in their own worlds, soaking in what the coroner had just told them.

“This is the break we all needed. We can find the bastards this way.”

“Is that hope I’m sensing?” Tristan laughed, causing them all to laugh too.

Sloan’s laughter, however, was cut short by a sudden pain in his chest.

He picked up his phone, realizing that Myra hadn’t responded to him. He tapped on her name and listened, but the call went straight to voice mail.

“What is it?” Declan asked.

A sense of dread filled Sloan’s being, and he knew something was seriously wrong. He searched for Leanne’s number and tapped on her name. Like Myra’s phone, the call went straight to voice mail.

“Something’s wrong,” he muttered, typing his username and password into the online GPS website. All of their vehicles had GPS, so he selected the SUV Leanne was using.

The vehicle’s highlighted route for the day showed up. It had left the school grounds at about twenty-eight minutes past four and driven directly in the direction of the airport.

“Why are the girls heading north?” Tristan’s brow furrowed.

“Brainy Brian’s coming home for the holidays,” Sloan answered offhandedly. There seemed to be traffic on the road, and the SUV crawled along the highway.

The vehicle was then redirected to a different route. He guessed Leanne must have searched for a detour, because they were moving again. Then the signal just dropped.

“That’s not possible.” He double-clicked to refresh the page, but the signal was gone.

“Oh no,” Tristan whispered, stepping away from Sloan while Declan pulled out his phone.

“Okay, let’s not worry just yet,” Declan said calmly as he tapped on his phone. “Steven, have you been in contact with the team following the omega?”

He listened, then his eyes shifted to Sloan’s, confirming that something was indeed wrong. “When was the last time you had contact with them?” He nodded at whatever was being relayed to him on the other line.

Sloan pulled up the GPS coordinates for the second vehicle, and their signal had dropped at the same time as Myra’s. Meanwhile, Tristan pulled out his phone.

“Kenny, stop whatever you’re doing. New task: the GPS in the omega’s SUV has stopped recording. Hack the system and find her, but do it quietly,” Tristan ordered.

Sloan counted in his head, trying to control his wolf and his anger. He hated to believe that she’d been taken. He hoped there was just a glitch in the system and they were on their way to the pack house.

But the uneasy feeling and throbbing pain in his chest told him otherwise.

When he opened his eyes, both Tristan and Declan took a step back, and he knew his eyes were pitch black.

“I want Myra found, and I want her found NOW!” His growl vibrated throughout the room and possibly shook the top floor of the office building.

Both Declan and Tristan nodded and started mobilizing their teams.