“We got the illness under control. Everyone was fine, or so we thought.”
“What about the shifters you brought back from the facility? The ones who had been abducted?”
“We made them stay.”
“As prisoners?” She raises an eyebrow.
“As a safety precaution,” I clarify.
“Do they see it that way?” She’s not judging me. There is no underlying opinion in her tone. No, she’s simply asking me if I have all of my facts straight, but I’m pretty certain that I do.
“They understand they can’t return to their old lives. The Lucky team has a long reach. The shifters wouldn’t make it a day before they were picked up and hurt.”
“And where have they been living since they came back?” She moves on, jotting down notes as we speak.
“We set up a space for them.”
She raises an eyebrow.
“Apart from the community?”
Again, there’s no judgment, but she wants to know what’s been done to help these shifters. Apparently, isolating them on their own was a poor choice.
“A few of them lived in a space together,” I tell her. “It’s a house that’s been converted into apartments. The rest have either mated or live with other community members.”
“And the man you want me to see today?”
“Patient Zero, from what we can tell.”
“He was the first one sick?”
“And the one in captivity the longest.”
She writes this down and looks up again.
“What else can you tell me about him, Donny? Has he had problems before now? Obviously, he’s in a bad place. If he wasn’t, you wouldn’t have called me here. Did he hurt someone? Threaten someone? What kind of situation am I walking into?”
“There’s a human who came here a few months ago. She was part of Lucky.”
Sabrina sucks in her breath. I know this news surprises her. Of course it would. It’s interesting and unusual information. Why would we knowingly bring in a former employee of this hate group? Of this group that carefully, painstakingly hunts shifters?
“She’d only been with them a short time. About a week, officially.”
“And unofficially?”
“She’d done some contract work and some consulting appointments with them.”
“What happened, Donny?”
“There was a situation a few months back. I’ll give you the file. Basically, she was tricked into thinking Lucky was doing something to save the dragons.”
“Not unusual,” Sabrina taps her pencil on her chin as she considers this possibility. “It’s common for groups like this to focus on how they’re “helping” others, when in reality, the truth is very different.”
“She was shocked to find out what her organization was up to, to say the least.”
“Why is she living here?”
“She needed a safe place, and we weren’t about to let her go. We’re still trying to catch these guys, Sabrina. We’re still trying to take them down.”