Someone, something, had made this man suffer.
“Cash Winslow,” Rule stated as he crouched next to the body before staring up at Jonas. “We’ve been watching him. Ex-CIA. He worked for Brandenmore as a security specialist.”
Jonas moved closer to the river-soaked body and hitched up the legs of his slacks so he could get down on his haunches and look at the features revealed by the slender illumination of Lawe’s flashlight.
“He was working on a special assignment from what we were able to find out,” Jonas mused quietly. “We were trying to track him, trying to figure out what the hell Brandenmore was up to, when he flipped off our radar last week.”
Cabal’s brows lifted. It was rare that anyone flipped off Jonas’s radar.
“No rumors as to the assignment?” Cabal asked.
Jonas stared back at him. “He was searching for someone, that’s all we knew. Someone Brandenmore was certain could help him with this case we have against him and Engalls.”
The attempted murder and illegal research against Breeds. Phillip Brandenmore and his brother-in-law Horace Engalls were coming closer to the day of reckoning and possible Breed Law sanctions for their actions over the past year. How the hell they thought anyone could help them was beyond Cabal.
“Any idea who?” he asked.
Jonas shook his head. “All we knew was that he supposedly had information against the Breeds that Brandenmore wanted to use as a bargaining tool. We were trying to find him when our killer sent the message that he’d beaten us to him.”
Cabal breathed out deeply before wiping his hand wearily over his lower jaw. Hell, this was becoming more of a mystery by the day.
“He was meeting Brandenmore or Engalls here?” Lawe questioned the director quietly as he motioned to several enforcers to collect the body.
“Not here he wasn’t.” Jonas straightened before staring around the wooded area with a frown. “There wasn’t a chance of them escaping the men the Bureau has watching them and they know it. They wouldn’t have risked it.”
“Then who was he meeting?” Cabal asked.
“Our killer.” Jonas’s voice was cold, hard steel, a clear indication that the rogue they were searching for was beginning to try the director’s patience. “Unfortunately for him, or for us, our rogue chose the wrong mark this time. I had plans for Winslow. I’d have preferred to mete out my own justice rather than clean up after another’s.”
Cash Winslow had information. Information Jonas was hoping to use against Brandenmore. Information Jonas would have paid for by granting Winslow his own freedom from prosecution once they had him brought in for questioning.
According to their investigation, over the past several years Cash had been involved in the kidnapping of several Breeds that the pharmaceutical owners had used for their research. According to their sources, it was also possible that Winslow knew the location of an infant that had been taken from a mate’s body just before her death.
That child was one of the few naturally conceived children that were the hope for the Breeds’ future. A child that would be used for research, nothing more, if it wasn’t found. Finding that child drove Jonas, Cabal knew that, just as it had driven the rest of them for the past year. The thought of a babe, created naturally by the hand of God rather than the hand of man, suffering the horrors they had suffered, gave them all nightmares.
“They’ll take care of the babe for the first few years,” Lawe mused soberly. “They’re too delicate after birth. They won’t risk its death.”
“Yet,” Rule growled. “Winslow knew where the fuckers stashed that child. As far as we know, he’s the only one besides Brandenmore and Engalls who knew.”
And they sure as hell weren’t talking.
Cabal turned away from the director as well as the two enforcers that were now a part of his own team to listen to the reports coming over the link.
“There’s nothing on-site.” He turned back to Jonas. “No sign of anyone. No tracks, no scents, no vehicle tracks.”
“Fucking ghost,” Jonas cursed.
“Or so he’d have us think.” Cabal shrugged as his gaze moved back to Winslow’s lifeless body. “Seven down. Four to go and one to die again,” he stated, repeating the message that had come through Jonas’s personal sat phone several hours earlier.
Jonas stared back at him silently, and understanding the look wasn’t a problem for Cabal.
“We know the last one,” Jonas stated. “Help me with the other four, Cabal. Tell me you have names by now. Something.”
“Ivan Vilanov, former Russian intelligence officer, a double agent for the CIA. He was one of Winslow’s assets at one time. I identified him from the picture last night with some help from a few new buddies I found at a bar near Gauley Bridge. He was a regular here more than twenty years ago, during his assignment to the Russian Embassy in D.C. Hunting weekends with Brandenmore and Engalls both here in the States as well as in Europe.”
Jonas rubbed at the bridge of his nose in disgust. “He’s missing. Son of a bitch. A report came through Homeland Security less than twenty-four hours ago. He slipped away within hours of being picked up for questioning in the case we have against Brandenmore and Engalls.”
Cabal grimaced at the information. “I have some other names, but I’m running them. Banks’s body hasn’t turned up yet. Walt Jameson thinks he’s still alive. I think its possible. Whoever this Breed is, he would have left the body to be found within twenty-four hours of his death, just as he has the others.”
“Does Walt have any idea who this could be?” Jonas bit out furiously.
Cabal shook his head. “It’s obviously connected to the massacre that took place in the valley we found Alonzo’s body in. The Breeds that were part of that group that night were all killed though, according to all the information we’ve been able to come up with. Walt gave me the names, I ran them. There’s no one unaccounted for.”
Each Breed on that list had either arrived back at the labs dead, head intact, or just the head had been returned and payment collected.
“Any way someone fucked up?” Jonas asked.
Cabal rejected the suggestion. “If they fucked up, then I haven’t found proof of it. There was DNA proof of each kill. That’s damned hard to fake.”
“Someone fucked up somewhere,” Jonas assured him. “Forward that list of names to my sat. I’ll go through them myself. I want to know every man and woman in that group, Breed or human, and their connection to everyone in this fucking town. And I want it yesterday.”
“It was forwarded just before I left the inn to meet with you here,” Cabal informed him. “Good luck with it.”
Jonas was silent once again, his expression brooding, uncomfortably cold as Cabal watched him.
“We know who the last one is,” he finally said. “The one that gets to die again.” He narrowed his eyes on Cabal. “Tell her.”
“No.” Cabal realized the instant refusal was more instinct than intellect.
“If you don’t, the killer’s going to,” Jonas told him. “What then?”
“He can’t prove a damned thing,” Cabal growled. “There’s no way to get proof and no way to get to him. Forget it, Jonas. It’s not happening.”
Jonas shook his head. “The best laid plans,” he sighed. “This isn’t going to end up well, Cabal. You’re fucking up.”
“Then it’s my fuckup.”
Douglas Watts was dead to the world, and as far as Cabal was concerned, he was going to stay dead.
“How did our rogue Breed know Watts was still alive?” Lawe asked, the question barely a breath of sound. “That information was contained to just a few Breeds.”