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Jonas shook his head. There was no mockery, no sarcasm this time. This was the second email they’d tried to trace through Cassa’s connection, to no avail.
The director’s expression was somber, brooding and filled with icy fury. Jonas was at his most dangerous in this mood.
“No trace,” he bit out in clipped tones. “The program we installed isn’t going through. The email itself is embedded with a program that doesn’t allow for it. Dane hasn’t been able to crack it yet.”
Dane Vanderale, Jonas’s nemesis and half brother, as well as the heir to the powerful African Vanderale empire, was a natural born Breed and a thorn in all their sides. But he was the best they had at cracking codes and tracing information.
“He’ll crack it.” Cabal shrugged.
Cabal turned his gaze back to the bank then and the body Rule and Lawe had pulled from the water. The fishing line around the victim’s neck had cut into the skin, leaving a slender wound. Tape covered his mouth. Pale eyes bulged in horror; pale features were creased into lines of pain, suffering.
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.
