Buried and Shadowed (Branded Packs #3)

How the hell had he gotten so distracted that he’d failed to notice that someone was approaching? Even if it was through some secret door?

With a speed that no human could match, Sinclair was moving across the long room and circling the woman to approach her from behind. Then, wrapping one arm around her upper body to pin her arms to her side, he slammed his hand across her mouth to ensure she couldn’t make a sound.

“Sinclair,” Mira called out.

He ignored her protest, along with the doctor’s pained whimper. Instead, he concentrated on the woman, who was standing, frozen in fear.

“Don’t move,” he growled in her ear. “And keep your mouth shut. Understand?”

Waiting until she’d given a hesitant nod, Sinclair quickly frisked her, removing her cellphone along with a small, black pager that he shoved into his pocket.

“Please,” the doctor pleaded. “Don’t hurt her.”

Slowly stepping back, Sinclair studied her with a narrowed gaze. Wearing scrubs and a white lab jacket with a nametag that read ‘Jessica,’ he had to assume that this was Dr. Lowman’s wife.

She had dark hair that was peppered with gray and cut in a short, no-nonsense style. She was almost as thin as her husband, as if they’d both been worn to the bone over the past twenty-five years. Not that he had any sympathy for either of them.

Lowman may have been young, but he’d clearly permitted his ambition to allow him to turn a blind eye to the looming apocalypse.

Jessica licked her lips, regarding Sinclair with dark brown eyes.

“You’re a shifter,” she said, trying to disguise her fear behind a fa?ade of stoic calm.

He snapped his teeth in her direction, even as Mira moved to stand at his side, her hand running a soothing path down his back.

“Sinclair, don’t,” she said. “She’s only trying to protect her husband.”

The woman’s dark eyes widened. “How did you know?”

Continuing to stroke her hand over his tense muscles, Mira’s touch anchored him. A necessary thing. His wolf didn’t care that they needed information. It just wanted to punish the people responsible for causing his people such acute pain.

“We’ve been trying to prove that the shifters are innocent of causing the Verona Virus,” Mira explained. “The trail led us to Dr. Lowman.”

Cautiously, the woman crossed the room to wrap an arm around her husband’s shoulders.

“Hasn’t he suffered enough?”

“He’s suffered?” Sinclair snarled in disbelief, glancing around the comfortable room with the sunny view of the gardens. “What about my people? They’ve been caged and branded and collared. Every day, they’re brutalized by their captors while the world condemns them as monsters who should be destroyed.”

The older woman caught her lower lip between her teeth, tightening her hold on her husband.

“It’s not our fault.”

“You knew the truth,” Sinclair said, refusing to let them off the hook. They might have convinced themselves they’d been helpless victims, but he wasn’t nearly so generous. “You knew that it was Colonel Ranney and the Verona Clinic that caused the pandemic, and yet you remained silent, allowing my people to suffer.”

Lowman groaned, leaning against his wife as if she were his only strength.

“They would have killed him if he’d tried to expose the truth,” Jessica told them in harsh tones. “How could that have helped anyone?”

“Instead, he hid here like a coward,” Sinclair accused.

The female tilted her chin, her eyes flashing with anger. “Don’t you dare judge us.”

“Jessica, he’s right,” Lowman abruptly stiffened his spine as if realizing he was cowering behind his wife. “I already told you I was a coward. My presence here just confirms it.”

“That’s not true,” Jessica protested, her gaze swerving from Sinclair to her husband, her expression softening with concern. “He tried to help. He’s the one who worked night and day to create a vaccine to halt the spread of the virus. And he tried to tell the truth about Colonel Ranney and Bellum International.”

Sinclair made a sound of disbelief. He couldn’t imagine the spineless doctor ever risking his own precious neck.

“Tried to tell whom?”

“The CDC,” Lowman said.

“Oh,” Mira breathed. “The email to your father.”

It took a moment for Sinclair to recall that their search for Dr. Lowman had started when Mira had discovered the email written to someone in the CDC warning of a potential disaster.

“Yes.” Lowman gave a nod of his head. “I was writing to him, trying to warn him that there was something wrong going on at the clinic.” His fingers toyed with his robe belt, an air of nervous energy humming around him. “Then, when I realized they’d infected a patient, I told him to organize a meeting with me and the Director of Homeland Security.”

Sinclair arched a brow. Maybe the doctor had more of a backbone than he’d first suspected.

“What happened?” he demanded.