have you regretting you were born male. You got it?”
Jackson gave him the thumbs-up sign and Dom stepped away. Coughing, Jackson rolled onto his hands and knees, hanging his head between his shoulder blades for a moment before he pushed himself up, the snake bulging on his biceps. “Sorry, man. I forgot how sensitive you are about her. I was just messin’ with you.” He repositioned the cocky tilt of his hat and rubbed his throat.
Lily slowed the treadmill to a walk. “Jacks, those loose lips are gonna cost you one of these days. That, and your dick.”
“Yeah, thanks. It is lethal.”
Lily patted her hips, her midsection and her arms, as if looking for something. Then, with her mouth ajar, she gave him a look of mock surprise. “Wow, that’s strange. I’m still alive.”
He flipped her a one-fingered salute as he stumbled to the watercooler.
“Lil, you said something was off the hook at that Darkblood den. What’d you find?” Dom asked.
She punched the up arrow and broke into a run again. “Jackson, you tell him. I’m in the zone here.”
Jackson filled a pointed paper cup from the water dispenser jug and walked it over to Lily. Yeah, he wasn’t as self-absorbed as he appeared. Pouring one for himself, he cleared his throat.
“Well, the place was a pit, a regular science experiment on every hard surface, so we didn’t expect to find much. Figured they were a couple of routine ferals and not part of the organized Alliance. We found some crazy shit in the basement though. Curdled my blood, and that’s hard to do.” Jackson rubbed his neck again.
“Crazy? As in how?” Dom asked.
“Torture and experiment crap. Chains, surgical instruments, leather straps, a couple of metal gurneys, needles, IV bags. Really creepy shit.”
“Yeah, real creepy,” Lily said. “Like horror movie creepy. We located their hard drive and Cordell is hacking into it right now. But I’ve got a bad feeling about this. If fuck-ups like those two guys have an operation like that, what the hell is going on? They couldn’t have their—”
“You’re sure it’s Alliance?” Dom paced back and forth next to the boxing ring.
“It was too ritualistic down there for the likes of those two.” God, that music. Like a hangnail on a fresh manicure. She simply couldn’t stand it any longer and turned to Jackson. “Can you turn that crap off, or at least down? It’s giving me a flipping aneurism.” She slowed the treadmill once more as Jackson twisted the volume knob and the sound of a screeching guitar died into background noise. Much better. She could think again. “As I was saying, everything was too neat and tidy. Things were arranged neatly on a pegboard and labeled, like a retired engineer’s workbench, if that retired engineer planned on doing medical experiments and torture in his basement. It was as if the whole place was set up according to some master plan. We even found a couple of planograms.”
Dom kept pacing but scrunched up his forehead.
“You know, retail stores have POGs from their home office telling them how to display all their shit. Put this here, hang this over there, so that every store is set up the same way. There’s no way the losers who lived upstairs could have organized that basement without any outside help. And that kind of organization screams long-term, not just ‘hey, in case we run into a sweetblood or two.’ You know what I mean?”
Dom stopped and his eyes met Lily’s as the realization of their findings evidently sunk in. Experiments conducted on sweetbloods. Here. In Seattle. “Was it just the two of them living there?” His voice, though quiet, seethed with rage. She could almost smell it in the air.
“Yeah, just two bedrooms with blackened windows and a coffin in each.” After glancing at the treadmill panel, Lily stepped off and snatched a clean towel from the stack near the watercooler. She guessed 2K was better than no K.
“I even peeked inside. They’ve got goddamn dirt lining the bottoms. That is just so wrong.” Jackson stuffed another sandwich half into his mouth. His jaw popped as he struggled to chew the large mouthful, which would’ve taken her six or seven bites to get through. At least. The guy burned food like a coal furnace.
“Cordell. Where is he?” Dom strode across the mats and kicked the doors open.
“Computer lab,” Lily said, trotting after him.
“Wait up, guys. I’m coming with,” Jackson said, his voice muffled through the bread.