“You didn’t sleep last night.”
“You didn’t either.”
“I can go weeks without it.”
Luca flexed his grip on the steering wheel. “Please, I feel like I need to do something.”
Nox sat back in his seat. They crossed the county line, and the secondary highway gained two more lanes. “Are you hungry?”
Luca wished he wasn’t. “Yeah.”
“There’s probably a grocery store on the way. We can pick up some juice and sandwich meat. We should probably get healthier food.”
“Nope. The first fast-food place we come to, I’m buying you super-sized everything.”
Nox raised his eyebrows. “Why?”
“You’re lumpy.”
“I’m what?”
“Lumpy. All those muscles. That’s the reason I didn’t sleep last night. You need some softening up. You’re as uncomfortable as a gravel driveway.”
*****
How long had Reese stared at the screen in front of him? The frozen image of a beta walking away from the Alpha he’d killed. It was unfathomable. Alphas held all power over the betas.
There was only one possible answer.
Koda had ordered Nash to do it.
“Dr. Dante?” Phillips said.
Why? Why would Koda want Nash to kill him?
The world fell back into focus, and once more Reese was in the back of the trailer with Harrington and Phillips. He scrubbed his face smearing tears. Puddles clung to the bottom edge of his glasses. He took them off and wiped them with the edge of his sweater but only succeeded in streaking the surface.
“Here.” Harrington offered Reese a box of tissue.
“Thanks.” He took a few pieces and wiped the lenses clean. “And thank you too, Phillips. For letting me…” Two points of pain threatened to blossom under each ear. Reese swallowed it.
“From what I understand, you checked them for the company logo.” She almost made it a question.
“Yeah.”
“And they didn’t have one.”
“No.”
“What do you make of that? What you saw down there, plus the video?” Her tone suggested she already had the answer.
The doors, the footprints, the death on level three and the trail of blood, then level four where the unknown Anubis had been killed and nothing beyond that.
The intact doors.
The missing guards.
“They were already inside.” Reese played his walk from level one, two, then three, four. The complete slaughter of already dead people. Messy, uncoordinated, making it almost impossible to gauge what had happened in that room.