Cassa had confirmed Brandenmore and Engalls’s ties to the victims over the past weeks, after the anonymous emails had begun coming through with their bloody pictures attached.
Dr. Ryan Damron. Phillip Brandenmore’s father had paid Damron’s way through college and medical school. The forensic pathologist had at one time been under scrutiny for having worked with the Genetics Council that created the Breeds. He had been charged with performing autopsies on live Breeds. He had escaped Breed justice though, just as so many had during those first trials.
Officer Aaron Washington had been a New York City police officer of little rank or notoriety. His connection to Brandenmore and Engalls stemmed from off-duty work he had once done as a security guard for the pharmaceutical labs just outside New York City.
Attorney Elam March. He had been one of Brandenmore’s best friends in college.
The former Glen Ferris mayor David Banks had grown up in the area with Brandenmore and was known to have frequented Brandenmore’s mountain cabin often.
And finally, H. R. Alonzo, the great-grandson of one of the founders of the Genetics Council. He spoke out often against the Breeds and contributed heavily to organizations rumored to often strike out violently against them. There was little connection between him and the pharmaceutical and research giants though.
Staring at the screen of her laptop, Cassa frowned and hit another button, pulling up an outdated, grainy photograph that had been included in one of the files her anonymous source had sent her.
There was no identifying all the men in the picture, though Cassa had been able to recognize Brandenmore and Engalls, and pinpoint the six men that had been killed in the past months.
Six down and six to go, she thought as she squinted at the picture and tried to make out facial features of the men she couldn’t identify. She’d run the picture through several identity programs, and had a list of names as long as her arm from them. The picture quality was just too damned poor to do anything with. But there was one face that kept niggling at her with its near familiarity. She could never pin down what bothered her though.
Sighing, she closed the files, backed them up and stored the small chip of information in a protective case before hiding it in her purse as she heard the shower shut off.
She wasn’t a fresh reporter with no experience backing her, she thought mockingly. She knew better than to allow Cabal to catch her with that chip. Every piece of information she had stayed backed up and as secure as she could make it. She had learned that lesson early in her career, and she made certain it was a habit she adhered to.
The ties the six men had to Phillip Brandenmore and his brother-in-law Horace Engalls placed the two men right in the forefront of early Breed killings, during the years before the Breeds were public knowledge, when they were shadows sliding on the outskirts of human knowledge.
There were accusations against the two pharmaceutical and research giants, that they had experimented on captured Breeds in the past years and used their physiology to come up with several revolutionary drugs. The primary drug in question was one now being used with a high success rate in the fight against cancer.
If it was proven that the two men had been involved in those early activities, it could mean a trial involving Breed Law—namely, the law that called for the punishment of death against those who experimented on, or contributed to the deaths of, Breeds after the establishment of the laws.
Breed Law was a complex set of rules and regulations adopted by the U.S. and several other countries to allow the Breeds a measure of autonomy, to police themselves and their communities, as well as protection against the factions and societies intent on destroying them.
So far, Breed Law hadn’t been used to kill, at least not that anyone knew. There were rumors that the Bureau of Breed Affairs, or namely its director, Jonas Wyatt, exercised Breed Law outside the dictates of a public trial.
Cassa didn’t doubt it, but neither could she blame him, in most cases. When compared to the world population of humans, Breeds were few. Little more than a thousand at the last count, with less than a half dozen children. Without Breed Law they would have been decimated by now.
Brandenmore and Engalls were already close to facing Breed Law. If evidence showed they had indeed conspired to steal information, were behind the drugging of Dr. Elyiana Morrey, and conspired to kill several Breeds within Sanctuary, then the panel convening to weigh the evidence could rule that they go to trial under that complex set of laws. And that they could be put to death without appeal or a waiting period.
So far, that extreme measure hadn’t been practiced on any of the Breeds’ enemies that had been put on trial, but Cassa knew for a fact that it was being considered now.
Cassa could imagine the protests against the Breeds, should that happen. Already Brandenmore and Engalls were being defended by many of the press, as well as many political figures. Enacting an execution based on Breed Law could do more harm than good. But not doing so could send just as destructive a message to others.
Either way this went, the damage that the Breed society faced would be harsh. Cassa ached with that knowledge. The Breeds had endured hell in ways most men and women couldn’t comprehend. She would hate to see their independence and freedom being limited any more than they already were, because of the evil of two men.
Pacing her room, she moved to the wide windows that looked out over the Gauley River. Frowning down at the winter gray choppy water stretching out below her, Cassa let herself remember, just for a second, the night she had realized the horrors the Breeds had actually faced.
In a little-known valley in Germany, in the middle of a storm, watching blood mix with mud and pour over the landscape, she remembered the battle to free the Breeds in that hidden lab.
The plans put in place to rescue that lab had been precise. There should have been no lives lost. But the Council soldiers and Coyotes had been waiting for the rescue forces. They had been warned that they were coming, from which direction, how many and the strength of their weapons.
She closed her eyes, trying to block out the memories, but they refused to dim. They refused to give her any peace. She had been the reason her husband had been allowed on that team. The trust the Breeds had placed in her had been extended to Douglas.
And her husband had betrayed her.
She remembered the blood and the death. The image flashed through her mind of the flight through the facility to the underground pit where the Bengals were being killed.
Douglas hadn’t let go of that camera even once. He had tracked every move, recorded it. Through the mic he’d worn at his cheek, he’d recorded his observations, and in his voice she’d heard his excitement and his pleasure.
“There’s no saving this batch of the bloody bastards,” he’d commented as they raced through steel-lined halls. “We can hear their screams even from here. The blood has to be ankle-deep in that pit if the reports are anything to go by. Hopefully there’ll be a way to get a shot.”
He’d wanted to see the blood, the death. The camera had been his proof that he’d ensured their deaths, as well as his own private adventure in the making.
She’d been desperate to save lives. He’d been desperate to watch and record the deaths.
She rubbed at her arms to chase away the chill that invaded her. Her husband had died that night, by Cabal’s hand. But so many Breeds, as well as the humans fighting to rescue them, had died as well. Within the heavily fortressed compound, the Breeds the scientists suspected would turn against them once the rescue began had been placed within a pit of churning blades.