Buried and Shadowed (Branded Packs #3)

“To forget.” Slowly, he turned, revealing his narrow face that was deeply lined, although he couldn’t be much more than fifty years old. “Do you know, when I close my eyes at night, I can hear them scream.”

Mira shivered. Was there a darkness that filled the room? Or was it just her overactive imagination?

“Hear who scream?” she asked, even though she knew the answer.

Lowman gave a sad shake of his head. “The dead.”

Mira grimaced, struggling not to think about the horrific guilt the doctor would have to live with if he was somehow responsible for the mass destruction of mankind.

Instead, she focused on keeping him talking. They had to get answers. The sooner, the better.

“Are you talking about the virus?”

He gave a slow nod, pain in his pale eyes. “Yes.”

“How did it happen?” she asked, deciding to start at the beginning.

The doctor leaned against the windows, his face shadowed. “I was hired by the Verona Clinic because of my work with the Ebola virus while I was finishing my doctoral program at John Hopkins University.”

“You must have been very young,” she said.

He released a short, humorless laugh. “Young and idealistic. I thought the intention was to broaden my research to find a cure.”

A portion of the anger she hadn’t even realized she was harboring toward this man began to ease. Was it possible that he was more a victim than the evil scientist she’d been imagining?

“I’m assuming that’s not what they wanted?” she asked.

“No.” His thin body was wracked by a visible shudder. “Only months after starting at the clinic, I was told my research was being funded by Bellum International.”

“Damn,” Sinclair abruptly breathed. “That’s the connection to Ranney.”

Mira frowned. Were they talking about Colonel Ranney? The head of the SAU?

“He didn’t want a cure for Ebola,” the doctor said, his pale eyes shadowed with dark memories. “In fact, he wanted to turn it into a weapon.”

Ah. Mira belatedly understood the connection. She’d forgotten that Bellum International was a defense contractor.

“Why didn’t you quit?” Sinclair demanded, clearly not as sympathetic toward the doctor as Mira.

“They threatened to blackball me,” Lowman said. “They said I would never work in research again.”

“And your career was more important than the human race?” Sinclair snarled.

The doctor flinched, whether from guilt or fear was impossible to guess.

“It wasn’t like that,” he denied the accusation. “They assured me that it was going to be like nuclear weapons.”

Mira sucked in a sharp breath. “What’s that mean?”

Dr. Lowman restlessly plucked at the belt that was wrapped around his robe. He reminded Mira of a nervous bird, constantly on edge.

“They promised that it was only going to be a deterrent,” he said, his expression defensive. “That it would never actually be used.”

Heat prickled through the air as Sinclair struggled to contain his wolf.

“But it was,” he snapped.

The doctor took an instinctive step backward, his face paling to a pasty white.

“God forgive me.”

Mira wrapped her fingers around Sinclair’s arm, sensing he was reaching the limit of his control. And unlike other men, if Sinclair snapped, it wasn’t going to be a few angry words and maybe a punch to the face. It was going to be fur and claws and lethal fangs.

“Did they intend to destroy the world?” she asked.

“No.” The doctor hesitated as he considered his words. “Or, at least, the head of the clinic didn’t plan on doing more than trying to see how swiftly the subject was infected and if the local medical facilities could detect that it wasn’t a natural virus.”

Her lips curled in disgust. How could anyone who was in charge of a place that was supposed to promote healing actually be part of an experiment that had no purpose beyond spreading death?

“Why would it matter if the doctors could determine if it was manmade or natural?” she asked.

It was Sinclair who answered. “If you want to discreetly kill a world leader, or even destabilize a nation, you wouldn’t want anyone capable of tracing the death back to whoever ordered the assassinations.”

“Oh,” she breathed, shuddering in revulsion.

Sinclair’s eyes glowed as he glared at the doctor. “So what went wrong?”

Lowman gave a helpless lift of his hands. “The virus spread far quicker than anyone could have predicted. Before they could contain the damage, it’d grown out of control.”

A growl rumbled in the air as Sinclair curled his hands into tight fists.

“Ranney might not have intended mass genocide, but he was swift to take advantage,” he sneered.

“Yes,” the doctor breathed, his head abruptly jerking to the side as a hidden door slid open.

“Who are you and how the hell did you get in here?” a voice sliced through the air as a woman stepped into the room.





Chapter 11


Sinclair was furious with himself.