Page 2 of So Sinister
A more chilling thought came to him.How did the package get inside?He hadn’t lived with anyone else since his three-month exercise in idiocy with Chenise, and that was three years ago.
He walked toward the box and picked it up.It was surprisingly heavy and felt colder than the air around it.A touch of disquiet came to him, but it wasn’t until he heard the soft ticking sound inside the box that he realized what he was actually holding.
His jaw went slack, and his eyes opened wide.“Oh, shi—”
He stopped when a shadow fell over him and the box.He started to turn.Then he opened his mouth to swear again.
He didn’t get the chance.
CHAPTER ONE
“It just doesn’t make sense,” Michael said.“The guy’s got no business being involved in this.”
Faith resisted the urge to get up and start pacing around her dining room.When she was younger, that habit helped her stay on the right side of calm, but the older she got, the more she realized it only held her just before explosion.Instead, she focused on her breathing and let the movement of her hand through the fur of Turk’s shoulders relax her.
Her husband, David, wasn’t nearly as successful at relaxing himself.He wasn’t pacing, but hewastapping his heel on the ground and twice now, Faith had caught him biting his nails.His movie-star looks, complete with wavy brown hair and soft hazel eyes, clashed a little bit with his hunched posture and anxious behavior."Well, heisinvolved.He tried to break into my work computer, and he gave me yet another not-so-veiled warning to stay out of this.”
“This” was an investigation David was making into a CIA unit disguised as a Marine Corps unit that was experimenting with dogs, apparently the potential for forming a psychic connection between dog and handler.If it wasn’t the CIA, creators of MKUltra, Faith would have dismissed it as a joke.
Then again, the attempted murder of her husband was definitely not a joke.He still had marks from when his car was run off the road a few weeks ago.
“Yeah, but he shouldn’t be.Josiah Pharaoh is a foreign intelligence officer.His job is to manage assets overseas.He’s got a reputation for being excellent at recruiting and maintaining relationships with people in the Chinese government.That has nothing to do with the 93rdTesting Brigade.”
Michael Prince’s dark eyes were narrowed in an intense brooding expression that fit his close-cropped dark hair and penchant for long-sleeved coats.Like most FBI investigators, the burly former field agent tended to fixate on things that didn’t make sense.Focusing on those things usually led to finding out things thatdidmake sense, and that usually led to solving cases and putting bad guys away.These days, Michael was a Special Agent-in-Charge and delegated the solving of cases to his subordinates, but he was personally involved in this investigation as a favor to Faith.
Endangering his life to support David’s personal crusade in other words.
Faith saw David’s eyes fall.Michael had killed a man.Not intentionally, and in fact, the man stabbed himself by accident, but Michael’s actions had destroyed any chance he had of finding help.
All to save David.All because his life, apparently, was more valuable than that man’s.
And it was.Faith wasn’t ashamed to say that.Her brave, kind, if foolish husband mattered more to her than the henchman of a CIA program that abused dogs and murdered people.
Still, this had gone so far.It had become so much more than an investigation into animal abuse.
Faith sighed and ran a hand through her long, straight, sandy-brown hair.Turk snorted and pressed against her, and she returned her hand to his fur.What if it was Turk?she reminded herself.What if it was my dog?
The answer was easy.If Turk was being experimented on by a CIA unit the way that Sierra, the German Shepherd whose visit to David’s veterinary office at the FBI’s K9 School had alerted him to the abuse the 93rdTesting Brigade was committing, then Faith would stop at nothing to find justice for him.
“Well, that’s him,” David said, thrusting his chin at the picture on the table.“And he called himself Josiah Pharaoh.So maybe the CIA gave him a new job.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Michael admitted.
“The question is what can we do with this information?”Faith asked.
“Not much,” Michael replied.“Not now, at least.The guy visited David’s office with permission from the staff, and while we can prove that he logged into David’s computer, proving that he was looking for evidence of David’s investigation would mean admitting that thereisan investigation.We really don’t want them to know that there is.”
“We can’t just do nothing,” the fourth human in the room replied.“We’ve been doing nothing for weeks now, and it’s not helping us.”
Special Agent Jessica Torres, the young, fiery blond woman with intense blue eyes and the stereotypical “looks that could kill” was Faith’s partner.Officially, she was only assigned to work with Faith on an as-needed basis since Faith’s primary job was Chief Instructor of the K9 School, but lately, Faith’s time had been evenly split between the school and the field, so Torres was essentially her full-time partner.
She was also volunteering her time and endangering her safety to help David.Faith was grateful for hers and Michael’s assistance, but she was also terrified of what would happen to them, to all of them, if this didn’t go the way they wanted.
Jessica was right, though.They couldn't do anything anymore."We should look more into that list," Faith told them."David's only looked at a few so far, but it's already told us so much."
The list in question was a list of researchers influential to or involved with the 93rd’s program.Dr.Carolyn Maldonado, the first researcher he’d looked into, had theorized that latent telepathic abilities in dogs could be awoken by careful treatment with certain medications.David had connected several large purchases of those medications with the Testing Brigade.
“I think we should find out who emailed him the list in the first place,” Jessica said.“Just in case it’s the CIA trying to trick him into giving himself away.”
