Amy pulled the SUV onto the road. Phillips turned to Reese.
“Why did it mutilate the animal?”
Mutilate. Again, an all too conservative word. Obliterate seemed more appropriate.
A tuft of tan fur caught a breeze and tumbled through the grass, catching on Reese’s pant leg. He shook it free. “The Anubis thrives on stimulation. When they were due to go out on assignment, Echols would often separate them from their Alpha for a few days. Denying them contact with Koda raised their aggression. He thought it made them more efficient at their job.”
“And what do you think?”
Watching Koda while he sat on his cot, gaze far off watching what his beta’s saw, feeling what they felt, seeing him flinch, the tears on his cheeks and how he would hide his face as if he could turn off the visions they fed to him, had left Reese cold.
If Koda’s reactions were anything to go by, Reese was glad he’d never had to witness what the betas were capable of.
“They like stimulation. I don’t know what else to say. Whether it’s eating, having sex, or—”
“Killing,” Harrington said.
Reese turned. “No. It’s not the killing they enjoy. It’s what comes before that.”
Phillips turned her attention back onto the scene. “In other words, it likes to play with its food.”
“Pretty much.”
“Why the mountain lion? There are more than enough deer in this area.”
“They wouldn’t have been much of a challenge.” The first few missions the betas had been sent on, they’d completed far quicker than anyone had estimated. And when they returned, their aggression remained so high they could barely stand in the same room together.
It wasn’t until Koda had been put with them that they calmed, and even then, it took days.
Days where he remained buried under them, where he would sleep, and when awake Koda’s pleasure-filled cries would echo through the halls.
Heat burned a path up Reese’s neck.
A ding sounded. Phillips took out her phone. It lit up, and the corner of her mouth curled in an almost smile.
“Were they able to gain access?” Harrington said.
“Of course, and they’ll have coordinates for us by the time we get to the airport.” She ran her thumb over the screen.
“Access?” Reese said.
“The satellite.”
Reese squinted, and Phillips arched an eyebrow. “You know, the one you said New World uses to find remains of subjects when lost on a mission.”
“How did you get them to let you have access?” They’d worked hard to destroy everything else.
Harrington answered, “They don’t know.”
Reese looked back and forth between Harrington and Phillips. “You can do that?”
Phillips slipped her phone back into the pocket of her blazer.
“No, of course you can’t. You’d have to have a warrant and court orders, and then there would be lawyers.”
“What do you think they’d do if they thought we might use their technology to find what they might have very well unleashed?” The way Phillips said it made it clear she already knew the answer.
“Wait. Unleashed?”