Noah folded his hands and sat at the table quietly. For once, the NightShade agents outnumbered the de Gottardi/Little members. Only Will and a woman he introduced as Jen represented the family.
Noah figured he’d listen rather than speak. He was definitely the low man on this totem pole. Even Jen, whom he hadn’t met before, was clearly in Will’s favor. Noah wasn’t certain he was in anyone’s favor.
Once they were all seated and introduced, GJ launched into presenting her evidence. “Whoever it was that did this, they got into the tunnels.”
“How?” Will immediately volleyed back.
“You tell me.”
Noah was thinking his own way through the incident, pondering how little he knew about the underground network, except that it was extensive. When the talking trailed off, he decided to screw silence. “I'm just playing devil's advocate here.”
Brainstorming worked best if people kept talking. Since no one else was doing it, he did. “What if someone found a door? Some of the tunnels go to the edge of the property, right? And they open out into the fields?”
That's what he'd been told. Then again, maybe he'd been lied to.
But Will nodded first, before amending, “I don’t know how they would find one… though I suppose it could happen. Also, the tunnels don’t go to the edge of the property. There would be no doubt you were trespassing if you even got close to one of the doors.”
So it wasn’t as easy as Noah might have thought. “What if they did find a door? And made their way in to where the soldiers were kept?”
Will’s brows pulled together and his features darkened. “Then they’d have to be able to find their people.”
Jen hopped in, though her voice stayed relatively quiet. “The tunnels are too extensive. They don’t all lead to the heart of the land… well, not directly.”
Will, though not fighting too hard, was clearly holding stubbornly to the idea that his own people could not have done this. He added, “They would have to be wolves.”
“Why?” Christina pressed. Now the NightShade agents were the ones frowning.
“I don't know how else they would find their own people down there. It’s all mazes, like Jen said. They either already knew exactly where the soldiers were being kept, or they would have to scent them and follow that trail.” He sighed, clearly not liking the answer he’d arrived at. “Honestly, that far away, through multiple tunnels that we didn’t drag their friends through…? It would be too hard to tell. I don’t think even the best wolf could do it.”
Eyebrows darkened around the table as the idea seemed to spread like wildfire through the group. The killer couldn’t have come through the tunnels blindly and found their prey.
“So,” Christina asked on a deeply concerned sigh, “is it possible they already know the tunnels?”
Will’s head swiveled toward her, just as Noah’s did. That had not occurred to him. He was told the tunnels were private and secret, and he had simply believed it to be true.
Will looked to Jen with a question in his eyes. When she shook her head in reply to the silent communication, he added, “I suppose in the grand scheme of things, it’s a possibility. But I don’t think so.”
There was something of a tremor in his voice and Noah could tell the old man was giving the idea his best consideration, even though he didn’t like the implication.
“Could they have gotten their hands on maps or anything?” GJ tossed that idea out to the table.
“There are no maps. None that I know of.” Will shook his head at her, and once again, Noah was reminded of how fiercely this family guarded their land and their secrets. How fiercely they had to.
“If there are no maps, then someone gave them the information. Someone who lives here and knows the layout. It may mean you don't have a killer among your people, but you definitely have a mole.”
“Fuck.” The word emerged low and breathy as Will again lifted his hand to rub his nearly naked skull. “If we believe that no one could have knowledge of the tunnels without living here, and no one could simply wander in and find their people—”
“—and get back out undetected—” Walter tossed in.
Will conceded that point with a nod as well. “—Then they must have had guidance.”
When the table remained silent for a while, Will shared another piece of information that lent credence to the idea of a mole. “The soldiers had been down here for a while, in the same place—but even I can’t sniff someone out from that far away.”
Well, that answered one question for Noah: He'd wondered about Will’s genetics. By his guess, Will was likely one of the superior wolves. After all, he’d wound up as the head of the family.
If Will couldn't come onto this land and just find people, Noah was willing to bet no one else could, either. They'd wander around underground until they got lost.
“There are miles and miles of tunnel,” Walter commented. The words sounded almost off-hand, but Noah was confident she was leading to something.
“That's just it,” Will said, his shoulders slumping. “Even if they got incredibly lucky and headed the right way by sheer, random choice, and then scented their friends…. they probably still couldn’t get back out.”
“How did they not run into someone else?” GJ asked next.
Will looked around the room. The day was growing darker and he seemed to check that, yes, they had drawn all the shades. Now he reached out and twisted on a flat disc at the center of the table that offered up a dim glow.
In a bit, this room is going to be flat-out creepy. But the conversation pulled Noah away from that thought.
“How far were you able to follow them?” Will shifted gears. Noah didn’t even understand what he was asking. Who had followed who? The deflection was confusing, and he wondered if the change of topic was serendipitous or strategic.
“Honestly, sir, after five steps, the blood was gone.” GJ seemed to know what Will was asking, and her clear answer let Noah know they were talking about the killer’s boot tracks.
“So, we know which way they initially fled.”
But GJ’s response was to hold her hands up as if she didn’t really know. “I truly only have evidence of one person. I can’t even say it’s the killer. Just someone who stepped in a spot of the blood and then headed down that tunnel.”
“But you think it's the killer?”
“Most likely.” She sounded like crime scene techs he’d met on scenes in Miami. They were willing to say exactly what they’d found, but the best anyone could get from them about what had actually happened was speculation, and they always emphasized it was no more than a guess.
The problem was, that she also sounded like she was still holding back…
GJ had been sitting with her hands folded until this point. Pushing them flat onto the table now, almost as though she were going to stand up, she instead leaned forward. She went preternaturally still as she began explaining.
“We can speculate all day, but you all need the rest of the evidence. The blood spatter from the one on the left—the man—was from a brachial artery.”
Noah knew this, they all did. But he waited her out.
“That kind of cut should send a spurting spray forward—”
Noah tried to remain scientific rather than thinking about blood.
“But there’s no outline of the killer or anyone standing in front of them. We usually see when someone gets in the way of the spatter.”
GJ paused, and when no one jumped in with comments or questions, she kept plowing ahead. “Both victims were leaning against the wall. So the killer wasn't behind them.” She turned to Noah, next to her. “May I?”
The moment he started to nod, she grabbed his arm and held it out to his side, across the front of her chest. Reaching her hand over his arm, she made a clawing motion. “If the person had done it like this, the spray would move forward. Their hand would be very bloody, maybe to the point of dripping, depending on how fast and how clean the cut was.”
The cut had been very clean, Noah thought, so they might have gotten away without too much evidence dripping off of them.
“That kind of position would send the arterial spray forward, like we saw.” GJ motioned with her hand. “But these two had their backs against the wall, and the evidence is that they died where they sat. So someone got in front of that person and managed to cut the brachial artery, before the soldier realized he needed to defend himself.”
Again, silence ringed the table.
“I mean, look where the cut is.” She motioned once again to Noah’s arm.
And while he understood the need for something to demonstrate on, having her repeatedly demonstrate how his brachial artery could be cut open and he could bleed out in less than two minutes was unnerving—especially now that he knew just how sharp those claws could be. He hadn't really thought about it until he'd seen the bodies and gotten a firsthand view of how straight and deep the lines went.
“But,” GJ continued, “the second person was also killed. This time, they hit the carotids in a clean slice across the neck. And again, no evidence of the killer in the blood spray.”
“Could they have stepped to the side?” Christina asked, finally getting into the issue of the scene itself. “I think it would be easy enough to step to the side and stay out of the way.”
“Yes!” GJ said. “But only once. I don't know how one person kills one of the soldiers without getting anything on them, then steps toward the second one, who doesn’t even tug too hard against his zip ties at his wrists…”
She trailed off letting the evidence speak for itself. Noah could practically hear the thoughts around the table getting deeper.
Will put voice to what GJ’s evidence was suggesting.
“So I don’t just have a mole,” he said with a shudder. “I have a mole who’s moving at least two enemy killers through my camp, undetected.”