Page 32 of Unnatural (Men and Monsters #2)

Mark opened the door to a smiling delivery girl. “Agent Mark Gallagher?”

“Yes,” he said, taking the package she was holding out to him and signing for it on her digital pad. “Thank you,” he said, handing her a tip.

“Thanks! Have a great day.” She turned, heading back down the hall of the building where his temporary apartment was. It was small and cramped and smelled like new paint and old carpet, but it did the job.

He couldn’t wait to get home to his wife and his dog and his house that smelled more like the former than the latter, thank heavens.

He couldn’t wait to get back to Jak and Harper and little Eddie, the family that had adopted them—or maybe it’d been Mark and Laurie who had adopted Jak, Harper, and Eddie.

And now they would soon add a fourth to their little family.

Or maybe they’d all collectively gathered each other and become a unit who had all lost and then gained and understood each other in ways others never could.

And he might get his wish in the next day or so, because so far, there had been no break in the case.

The news driveled on and on about what had happened at Deercroft Academy, doing more to divide than anything, each “side” using the loss of life to further their own agenda long before the bodies had even been placed in the ground.

Screeching and blaming and generally getting nowhere helpful. Typical.

He brought the package to the writing desk near the window that overlooked an alley and pushed his laptop aside.

Inside the envelope were a few thumb drives that had the camera footage from all surveillance in the area of Deercroft Academy from the two hours before and after the shooting.

He’d already looked through some of it, and the computer forensics team at the NYPD had looked at more than that, but so far, they hadn’t come up with anything on the white-haired man or the woman in the coral sweater.

They had, however, found the shooter on video and had been able to track him from one of the subway stations to the school.

They’d attempted to map his travel to the subway station as well but had lost him.

Of course, they didn’t really need to map him considering they had already identified the man and knew where he lived, but Mark would have liked to have had that information anyway, more for his own reasons than anything.

He chose one of the thumb drives based on the time frame—directly after the shooting had occurred—and inserted it into the side of his computer. The drive contained a list of videos, and Mark began going through them again, this time more closely.

He’d gone through half of the footage by noon.

Mark rubbed his eyes and got up to make a second pot of coffee in the tiny kitchen.

Again, he sat, poring over the images that moved from this angle to that one, disorienting sometimes.

Often, he had to pause and figure out where he was looking, only to realize he was looking at the same spot he’d stared at a moment before but this time from a different vantage point.

He was almost ready to throw in the towel for the time being and seek out some lunch when he paused, his hand on the mouse, about to click to the next video.

There. He leaned in slightly. A tall head above the crowd, wearing a baseball cap with a few wisps of silvery hair barely showing at the nape of his neck.

There for a second and then gone. The man wasn’t just tall, he was markedly tall.

Just like Ms. Maples’s description. Mark clicked back through the videos right before and after.

He thought he got a glimpse of the man here and there, but it was as if…

as if he was walking down the street in a way that would evade the cameras.

Interesting.

Unfortunately, once the streets that led to the academy became more residential, the cameras all but disappeared. If the man was evading city street cameras, he wouldn’t have had to once he turned off the main drag.

Mark sat back, considering for a moment, and then he put a different thumb drive in, this time from directly after the shooting.

There again.

Only this time, the very tall man in the ball cap appeared to be walking with a woman.

Mark clicked through a few images, his heart giving a small jump. It had to be.

The woman wasn’t wearing a sweater, but…she might have taken it off. The couple were leaning into each other as if they were having an intimate conversation.

Or as if she was supporting him.

He clicked through the rest, this time with more focus and excitement, the feeling that he’d found something that might lead somewhere else boosting his energy.

Unfortunately, that hope crashed when the couple turned a corner onto a street that, as far as he knew, had no available footage.

Damn.

But before they turned, Mark saw the man trip slightly, a small stagger that made the woman stumble too before they both righted themselves and continued on.

“Who are you?” Mark muttered.

He clicked through a few more cameras on different streets, moving through time, but the couple didn’t appear on any other footage.

Double damn.

He sat there for a minute, drumming his fingers on the desk. He felt as if he’d just discovered something that had changed the case. He just needed to figure out how to move it forward even more.

The girl. He had more information about what she looked like now. Or…mostly. She had dark, wavy hair that was half clipped back. About five foot five he’d estimate, average weight. It was more than he’d had to work with until right that minute.

It took him about thirty minutes to find the same girl on the footage in the time frame before the shooting.

And this time, she was wearing a bulky, coral-colored sweater.

He used the videos to follow along behind her, much more easily than he’d followed the tall man in the ball cap.

But it appeared…it appeared almost as if she was following that man.

He rewound and rewatched until he was almost certain that was what she’d been doing.

She knew him. But they hadn’t arrived together.

And whether the man realized he was being followed, Mark couldn’t say.

What is this all about?

He picked up the phone and called the district where the detectives working the case were stationed. Mark made his request, and an hour and a half later, another delivery person arrived with a second package.

Mark thanked the young man, tipped him, and shut the door, and despite his tired eyes, he was eager to get started poring through more video.

“Where did you come from?” he murmured to the unknown girl, rewinding through time, going farther outside the radius, tracking her to the moment it appeared that she spotted the tall man, jerked to a halt as though in shock, and then raced across the street and followed his path.

She didn’t plan to be at that school. She was only there because of him.

Back…back…she’d been walking briskly, looking over her shoulder frequently as though she expected to see someone behind her. Did you think you were being followed?

All his hackles were raised.

“Come on. Bring me somewhere helpful.” Somewhere that will help me learn your name.

He paused the video. There she was, exiting a building. He zoomed in. The Department of Social Services?

“Okay, okay, now we might have something.” He was talking to himself the way he did when there was a possible break in a case. If Laurie had been there, he’d have looked up to see her smiling at him. She knew his tells.

He used a search engine to find the number to the department and then dialed it and waited on hold.

He identified himself to the receptionist, who put him through to someone else and then someone else.

It was a big department, and lots of people had been working that day…

he got the same hopeless answer once, twice, three times.

Finally, the fourth person he was transferred to suggested that he speak to a social worker named Chantelle who was a manager and definitely would have been in the office as she didn’t go out on calls.

When the woman named Chantelle answered in a clipped greeting, he once again gave his spiel, with much less enthusiasm than when he’d first given it twenty-five minutes before.

“Hold on, what time?” the social worker asked.

“A few minutes after one.”

“Oh. Yes.” She sighed. “That would have been Autumn Clancy. I’m not sure what you’re calling about, but if it has anything to do with the fact that she stole my files—”

“Hold on, please.” His heart drummed. “You said her name is Autumn Clancy?”

“Yeah. She’s been a thorn in my side for years. But she’s never outright stolen from me. I was surprised, honestly. She’s a pest, but she’s never been a thief.”

“Is Ms. Clancy a client?”

“She was one of my cases for several years. She was put into the system at birth. I took over her case when she was fourteen and placed in a foster home and later adopted.”

The system. Faint alarm bells started ringing. Mark Gallagher was very familiar with the system and the myriad ways children could be victimized, whether by those inside or out.

“She was an ADHM baby,” Chantelle was going on. “And she was raised at a hospital just outside the city.”

“ADHM baby,” he murmured.

“Mm-hmm. You’re familiar with ADHM kids, right?”

“I am.” Mark knew as much as the average person did, he supposed.

It had been a terrible, tragic time when so many babies were being diagnosed and subsequently passing away from what turned out to be cancer.

It was almost too much to watch unfold on the evening news.

Of course, the kids affected were children born of addicts, most of whom became wards of the state, so few people who didn’t also live that lifestyle knew anyone personally affected.

In short, it was not a suburban problem, so if you lived in the suburbs, you were mostly removed, for good or for bad.

Good for obvious though perhaps selfish reasons.

Bad because those with the most means to help weren’t helping as much as they might if they’d been confronted by the very real human cost day after day.

At first, people were afraid to touch the ADHM kids, even medical workers.

Afraid they were contagious. There was one public service announcement after another, especially when a few of the kids survived.

Apparently, Autumn Clancy was one, because the woman he’d followed down the street using dozens of cameras looked to be in her early twenties.

Which would exactly coincide with when the first reports of ADHM babies being born had occurred.

He hadn’t thought there were very many ADHM survivors left, if any at all.

The system.

Had the tragedy been used to victimize children already suffering?

How is this linked to your case, Autumn Clancy?

To the lost? The children he’d been searching for for years who’d been sold into cruel experiments for profit, the “profit” taking any number of diabolical forms. Mark didn’t know for sure if there was a link to the program here because there was no way ADHM kids could ever be expected to do the work they sponsored.

Even so, he had a deep feeling there was a connection that he currently couldn’t see.

“Ms. Rogers, I very much need to speak with you. Can you meet me now?”

“Now, well—”

“I would greatly appreciate it.”

“Sure. If you get here in the next fifteen minutes, I can give you a half hour of my time.”

“I’m leaving now.”

Mark jumped out of his chair and raced from the building.

Her name. He had her name. Autumn Clancy.