Chapter 191

Sarah POV

Travis had called an emergency late-night meeting, so all of us except for Zane, me, Whitfield, and Wilson were on Zoom. Zane had to make the customary opening statements, even though we weren’t any sort of official group, but then he let Travis take over.

“Dr. Louis Calvert is dead,” he announced.

“A hit-and-run?” I asked, not able to help it.

“No, though I was thinking that too when I first heard. No, a transformation infarction.” Travis looked away from the camera, I guessed at a laptop because I heard him typing.

“He was in his sixties,” Rucker—no, Alicia, damn it, said. “That’s hundreds of transformations at the least, and his health was excellent.”

“Signs of poison then?” Zane asked.

“Too early to tell, but I have them testing for everything. The poor man died in agony, and his lab was pretty trashed.”

“Sorry,” Shotz said, and I suspected that shirt he was wearing on the screen was what he’d been sleeping in. “But who is Dr. Calvert?”

“The man who did Olivia Cavendish’s autopsy,” Travis explained.

“Alpha Zane agrees to have her body exhumed and the coroner up and dies of something suspicious?” Shotz clarified.

“In one,” Alicia said.

“But no one, I mean, no one outside of a few people I fully trust knew about the exhumation,” Tavis said.

“Who, exactly?” Zane asked.

“Me, Alicia, a detective from Homicide who used to be my partner, and the bulldozer operator.”

“No one else helped with the body?”

“Just me and Carvel, my old partner.”

“How about people who worked at the cemetery?” I asked. “Perhaps someone was being paid to look after the grave?”

“We cleared the site.”

“That might have been enough,” Zane said. He held up a hand. “Not your fault. Whoever it is we’re after doesn’t like loose ends. If there were something wrong with Olivia’s death, I’m surprised the coroner lived this long.”

“This pretty much confirms there was something wrong,” Ambassador Torrin said. “Where, if I may ask, are her remains now?”

“In a private lab under a strict gag order,” Travis said. “They have no idea who she is and have been told they won’t get paid if there’s so much as a hint of a DNA test.”

“A webcam,” Ted said from her screen. She’d been on mute, so now we all heard her typing. “That’s all it would have taken, tiny and left inside her crypt. Simple solar power, or some other light, could have set it off.”

“Crypt?” Shotz asked. “Not a grave?”

“No, she’s in the—she was in the Cavendish Sepulcher, and she’ll be returned there.”

“Alpha Zane, that isn’t common knowledge, right?”

“No, it’s not, Shotz.”

“What is it?” Ted wanted to know.

“Give me a minute.” He was typing on a computer of his own. “Someone in my platoon forwarded something to me.”

“Platoon?” Delia asked.

Shotz shrugged a little awkwardly at his camera. “Lieutenants lead platoons.”

“They do?” Delia laughed. “I like that better than what I’ve been calling them.”

“What’s that?” Claude asked.

“Feelers.”

I felt my nose wrinkle. “Agreed.”

“Here it is,” Shotz said, nodding to himself. “There are a number of posts I was about to forward to Ted that I think may be from someone working with S and the other conspiracy people. My guy didn’t like some of the details they talked about, including the basic layout of Alpha Zane’s villa and the names of his house staff.”

“What’s the username, Shotz?” Ted asked.

He took a little breath before answering, “OliviasCrypt.”

“Stupid,” Ted muttered.

“What?” Zane asked.

She shook her head. “They’re on one of my lists. Send me what you have now, Shotz.”

“Coming your way.”

We all waited to keep from distracting him.

“Got it,” Ted said.

“Does transformation infarction have anything to do with thin blood?” I asked the others.

“It can,” Alicia said. “Troubles with transformations have many causes, but yes, people with leukemia and other blood illnesses tend to avoid transforming outside emergencies. Why?”

I looked at Zane. “Sorry to be, well, but you said Olivia died because they couldn’t stop the bleeding, right?”

Everyone was quiet for a minute. Even Ted paused in her typing.

“Travis,” Zane said.

“Already on it. We’ve got Dr. Calvert’s body under triple guard, and we’re running every test on the books. I’ll let them know to look for something that might keep blood from clotting.”

“I can help with that, perhaps,” Ambassador Torrin said.

“Yes?” Zane asked.

“We’ve been checking into Zombietween, and it does look like whatever they used on the humans in the trafficking ring came from Orleans Territory. Now, there are many reasons someone looking for exotic drugs would search in Orleans, I’m afraid. The tourists, of course, are constantly seeking new ways to get high, and this along with some religious practices here have led to quite a few designer drug labs.”

She made a disapproving face. “Most drugs involving emotional manipulation are poisonous in the right doses.”

“Pufferfish,” Claude muttered. We all looked at him, or seemed to. It was difficult to tell with so many screens.

“Sorry. People eat puffer fish because the traces of poison even a great chef will leave behind get them high.”

Claude’s mother nodded. “We get a lot of ODs here, especially in the capital city. I can check pretty easily about deaths from clotting issues.”

“So, we’re thinking at least one of the many people behind all this has ties to Orleans Territory,” Zane said.

“Yes,” Ted said. “Also, I think we need to be careful about thinking it’s ‘many’ people we’re talking about here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Analysis of the usernames I’m tracking brought something interesting to light. Different groups of usernames seem to share information, and none of them seem to know what they all know.”

“Meaning?”

“Whoever is behind this may well just be motivating people to post online with specific datasets. These people may know nothing about Dr. Calvert; certainly, no one’s posting about him yet.”

“So we’re talking about a hierarchy, posters given a little information and told to make trouble with it?” Whitfield, who had been oddly quiet, said.

“Yes,” Ted said. “And if that’s true, I doubt these people are going to be posting for some great cause. Even people on the bottom rung of an organization want to know at least a little bit about what’s going on.”

“So, what are you saying?” Zane asked.

“Well, people will post anything if you pay them. I’m thinking whoever is behind this has money to burn.”

“You’re suggesting something,” I said.

She nodded. “We’ve been thinking all along this has been political, an attack on the Pack Alpha and on the pack. But if it’s just one or people with significant resources, maybe this is personal.”

Ted raised her brows. “So, Alpha Zane and Miss Sarah, is there someone out there with a reason to hate you this much?”