Page 158 of Conner's Luna

"No!" I blurt out.

Conner and the wolf-man on the phone fall silent. "I think, if I look at Dr. Honekier's notes, I may be able to see what his research is about."

"You need to secure his research," the very smart wolf-man on the other line agrees with me.

"Fuck. I'll call you back, In."

Conner hangs up and calls his dad to relay the message. The convoy of wolves changes lanes, heading north to Honekier labs. Conner looks at me and very slowly says. "You will stay in the motherfucking truck, yeah honeygirl?"

"I have to..." My words die in my mouth. His eyes are glowing and I do believe his teeth just grew. "Stay in the truck?" I finish.

We drive in silence for another half-hour.

"Until you've secured the building," I add.

---

There's blood. Television does not do murder scenes justice. The sheer amount of blood is astonishing. Dr. Honekier's body is gone, but the blood is everywhere. And, to make it even more upsetting, there is a large, body-sized area of clean tile, that is surrounded by... more blood.

Trey just had to murder Dr. Honekier in his office where all the notes are.

"Here," I say, faintly, passing Sarj a pile of papers. "I noticed that Dr. Honekier liked to do things old-school. Once he printed out the results, he would erase the mainframe. All of my flags would disappear every weekend."

Sarj and a few other wolves gathered up all of the files I pointed out and carried them over to where I'm sitting, surrounded by Dr. Honekier's notes, next door to the crime scene where the stench of death is lower.

"So, all of these black flags are Dr. Honekier's. The pink ones are mine. At first I couldn't understand why I had so many more, but see this pattern?" I show them the gene sequence and receive blank stares.

"Um... right. Well, I was noting every anomaly, but Dr. Honekier was only concerned with these groups. A few months ago it was three specific genomes. After I started working it grew to five." I pause, looking at the documents in my hands. There's a splotch of blood on the upper right-hand corner.

"Bailey?" Sarj gently prods me.

"Oh. Right. So, the two new genomes are the ones I found. He was flagging both males and females before I came. When I started, he was flagging just males."

"Not females?" Sarj asks, exchanging a look with Conner.

"No," I say slowly. "Why males?" I ask out loud. I start looking through the paperwork. Unlike the computer program I always worked in, Dr. Honekier's print-outs contain identifying information of the subjects.

"Here." I finally find what I'm looking for. "This was Nikki's. These are her initials and this particular result says she's pregnant."

"So, what are the two new genomes for?"

"Well, it's a blood type genome," I tell them. "It's strange, actually, because they are almost certainly wolf-men, but why this sequence?" I point to a specific location on the latest male's paper. "He flagged these two genomes that are found in all people, including humans."

"What is it for, babygirl?" Conner pulls me into his chest.

"Fertility. I guess that's to be expected, but this is strange. Fertility is dependent on environmental and genetic factors and this..."

Conner rubs my back soothingly while I process the information on Nikki's page.

"Female infertility is estimated to be due to genetic defects 50% of the time. The chromosomal abnormality in Nikki's genes that indicate that she's a wolf-person isn't present in at least two of these males. This shows that she was a match to a TW. That must be Trey."

I look up and meet Sarj's steady, dark gaze. "Can you check the fertility clinic for these two male profiles?" Feverishly, I write down the identifying markers.

"I'll call it in right away," he says.

I nod. Funny how I worked here for two months, nearly, and never knew that the fertility clinic was on-site. The entire place is crawling with wolves investigating everything. I even saw the Grim with an FBI vest on. I'm 99.9% positive he is not in the FBI.

"You need a break, babe?" Conner asks me.

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