He’d wondered, as a kid, what it would like to no longer be alive. Simpler, he’d always thought. Being dead wasn’t complicated.
Except now he was dead, on paper, and blood was something he had to drink, and everything, everything was complicated and awful.
He put his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. “I don’t want this,” he whispered. “None of it. And I don’t know what to do.”
Alexei laid a consoling hand in the middle of his back, and this time he didn’t try to avoid the touch. It was a measure of small comfort, if nothing else, genuine or not.
“Jamie,” Nikita said. “Look at me.”
He did, through the gaps in his fingers, hating him.
“It doesn’t matter if you want this. It happened.” His voice lowered a fraction; a tiny note of sympathy crept in. “It won’t be easy, learning to live this way. But you can’t collapse. If your life before was worth something, then this one has to be as well.”
Sasha turned to smile at his friend, expression almost proud.
Nikita ignored him, staring steadily at Jamie. “We can help you. And right now, we need your help, too. Someone’s abusing immortality in this city, and I’m not going to let that happen.”
Jamie let his hands fall slowly down to the table. “But – but I’m an artist.” And it sounded like Nikita was asking something of him he’d never contemplated before.
He nodded. “Not just. Not anymore.”
*
“I don’t even know what to think anymore,” Captain Abbot fumed. “Something ate them? Ate them?”
Lanny tossed his stress ball from one hand to the other and said, “Wouldn’t be the first time a dealer had a buncha riled up pits.”
Abbot stopped his pacing, spun, and pinned his glare on Lanny. “And you. The vics were your neighbors.”
“Yes, sir,” Lanny said, blandly. They’d all learned it was best not to respond in kind when the captain got like this.
“We’re working on some possible leads,” Trina said.
He swung his glare to her – long enough to make her want to wriggle down into her shirt collar – then muttered something unintelligible and stormed toward his office.
“That went well,” Lanny said.
She sighed. “Speaking of leads…”
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Jesus, don’t pull a muscle.”
“What if we go back to the scene, and I” – he tapped the end of his nose – “tried to follow them?”
Something about the gesture, and the offer, struck her as unbearably cute, so she hated to burst his bubble. “Sasha already sniffed it out, though. Said the trail ends. They must have gotten in a car.”
“Oh. Right. I knew that.” He covered his disappointment poorly. “Well–”
“Trina,” someone said, and she glanced up to find one of the young patrols walking toward her desk, a man in an expensive suit following along behind. “You’ve got a visitor.”
She hitched up straighter in her chair. “I can see that.”
The man in the suit – iron-haired, but well-preserved, upright and fit for this age – stepped forward and offered a large, tan hand for her to shake. “Detective Baskin? I’m Dr. Fowler with the Ingraham Institute of Medical Technology.”
She broke out in goosebumps. If she closed her eyes, she could see Dr. Charles Ingraham’s smiling face, hear his stumbling Russian.
She swallowed and pulled her hand back, hoping Dr. Fowler didn’t notice that it had gone suddenly clammy. “Hello.”
Lanny gave her a sharp look from behind his desk.
“May I sit?” Dr. Fowler asked, motioning to the chair angled toward their pushed-together desks.
Trina had to clear her throat. “Sure.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, doc,” Lanny drawled, his running-interference voice. “But we weren’t expecting a house call.”
The doctor arranged himself in the chair and favored Lanny with a smile that was polite, but cold. “My apologies. I’m sure you’re both very busy, and I hate to disturb” – his gaze returned to Trina – “but I think we might be able to help each other.”
Trina lifted her brows. “That doesn’t exactly sound cop-kosher, Dr. Fowler.”
He chuckled. “No, I guess it doesn’t. I’m sorry, let me try again.” He settled deeper into his chair, hands clasped together on his knee. “At the Ingraham Institute, we’re working on improving health in a number of areas,–”
Sales pitch, Lanny mouthed.
“–working on breakthrough drug studies that would treat both physical ailments…and mental ones. I’m afraid that’s why I’m here.” He looked troubled, regretful. “Several murder cases have made the news recently, all fielded by this precinct – by you and your partner – and, well – I believe I may know who’s responsible for these horrible crimes.”
Lanny held up a piece of paper where the doctor couldn’t see it, holy fucking shit scrawled across it in the blue ink of his favorite pen.
“Friends of yours?” Trina asked.
“Patients,” he said firmly. “Patients who are, to put it bluntly, not in their right minds. They’ve been undergoing extensive psychological evaluation and treatment at our facility in Queens.”
“Treatment?” Lanny said. “What’s that like? Electroshock?”
Dr. Fowler grimaced. “No, Detective Webb. We’ve come a long way since the days of sanatoriums. The patients I’m referring to are in the midst of a drug trial for a new antipsychotic medication. They’re staying at the facility – a safety measure for them and those around them. And, regretfully, they slipped out.”
“So they escaped,” Trina said, voice flat. It was taking every ounce of composure not to betray her mounting panic.
“Yes.”
“Do you have photos?”
“Well,” he hedged. “I’d hoped you’d allow me and my people to try to apprehend them so that they can return to the Institute and get the treatment they need.”
She took a quick, constricted breath. “Doctor Fowler, if this is the work of your patients, this is murder. Whether they’re sent to jail or remanded to your custody is up to a judge, maybe a jury. But it’s not up to me. It’s my job to arrest them and take them into custody.”
“Of course.” He dipped his head. “I understand. Only…”
“What?”
“I hope you’ll be careful.” Something dark flashed in his eyes, there and gone, that left her stomach clenching. “These men are very dangerous. Especially when cornered.” He pulled a white business card from his breast pocket and set it on the edge of her desk. “Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything. I’d like us to work together to rectify this situation.”
“Right,” she said.
He stood. “Pleasure meeting you. I wish it had been under different circumstances.”
“Yeah.”
When he was gone, Lanny said, “Why do you look like you wanna throw up?”
She swallowed hard. “Because I do. The Ingraham Institute? That was founded in 1942, by a doctor who was studying Sasha.”
He blinked. “Let me say it out loud this time. Holy fucking shit.”
“The people who sent feral werewolves to track you,” she said, gasping a little, “are fucking government funded.”
10
Trina slid the small, white card across the table and a superstitious, silly part of Nikita didn’t want to touch the thing. He pushed through the urge to flick it away and instead picked it up between thumb and forefinger, bringing it to his face so he could read it in the dim light.
Dr. John H. Fowler, M.D; Ph.D.
Ingraham Institute of Medical Technology
“Treatment for a once-distant horizon of health.”
They were seated at two pushed-together tables in the Lion’s Den, the quiet murmuring of the evening crowd of patrons providing a wall of privacy around their odd little group. He would have preferred to be at home, but he didn’t trust privacy now; they had been tracked to Lanny’s home, and not while they were out on the street. That meant the Institute didn’t want to make a scene – not a public one, anyway. He could handle two feral wolves no problem, but if he got the others hurt, the ones who depended on him…well, he’d done that more than enough for all the lifetimes he was going to be forced to live.