Phillip’s expression remained blank, but her eyes glittered.
“You knew they were doing this, and you didn’t say anything?” Reese stood.
She lifted her chin. “I suspected after I spoke to you in isolation.”
And what would cause anyone to make that leap in logic? “Why?”
“When New World came to us, they specifically said they felt this was a possible terrorist attack. Terrorists don’t make a habit of wasting resources on operations unless they know for certain there’s something they wanted.” She pressed her lips together. “The only way terrorists could know what was being done in that lab was if they’d seen it. And as secretive as New World has been, the only way they could have seen it is if—”
“Someone showed them.” Reese sat back. “Who?”
“About six months ago, we received some reports from contacts in rural areas of Yemen. Villagers reported seeing what they described as pariah dogs moving through known insurgent-controlled regions. Many times, entire armies would be decimated.”
“Anubis.”
“From what I’ve seen so far, I’m confident they were. At the time, the stories were too bizarre to believe, but the reports coincided with the dates military contractors had gone in and managed to take over an area with unprecedented speed and no losses.”
“And that didn’t strike anyone as odd?”
“They got the job done.” She lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. “You said yourself, don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Reese went back to looking at the papers. “Something happened.”
“And based on those papers what would you say happened?”
“They made Anubis who don’t need an Alpha. Anubis from people who were alive.” The concept refused to take root. Not just the idea of getting the ichor stable enough to bind with living tissue, but who would even volunteer to take the risk?
And who would have the knowledge to create a method to begin with?
“You think Echols did this?” Reese sat back.
“He’s the only one who could reprogram the locks.”
But Echols had lived for that lab. The work there was his life. “Why?”
“Money is usually a very strong motivator.” She folded her arms. “But I checked his financials, and there’s no sign he received anything beyond his monthly salary.”
“Echols didn’t care about money. Not when it came to the ichor.” Reese scrubbed his face with both hands, knocking his glasses off his nose. “His motivation would have been the science.”
“Well, there’s plenty of that.”
There was. “Dr. Echols wasn’t a geneticist. I’m pretty confident in saying, I think some type of hybridization would be beyond his abilities.”
“What about the other scientists who worked for him?”
Reese chuckled. “Not if Echols had a say in who was hired.”
“Meaning?”
“Echols loved his job. But he also loved being the smartest person in the room. He would have hired people good enough to help him run the lab but not someone who posed a threat to his limelight.”
Phillips slid her gaze to the image on the computer screen. The grays and whites left highlights in her dark hair and edged her eyes in pewter.
“What about Dr. Markus?” Harrington said.
He’d been so quiet, Reese had forgotten the man was there. And how a man as big as him could disappear less than a yard away, Reese had no idea. “What about him?”
“Do you think he could be involved?”