Free Exposure by Kathy Reichs Page A

he’d been counseled not to trust.
    Tory and her Morris Island friends, in the darkness of his basement. Moving way too fast, eyes glowing unnaturally bright.
    Those same four, darting like arrows across a pitch-black beach. Same unnatural speed. Same blazing irises.
    He’d thought himself crazy. His doctors had agreed. Together they’d painstakingly constructed a new reality—a rational one—where Chance hadn’t seen those things at all.
    Then it happened again.
    The debutante ball.
    He hadn’t witnessed the last event firsthand—Tory had seen to that—but those outcasts had accomplished the unthinkable. A feat of strength beyond anything remotely reasonable.
    It. Was. Not. Possible.
    Third time’s a charm.
    His tortured laugh echoed in the cavernous chamber.
    Chance’s gaze dropped to the drawer. He tapped the handle with an index finger.
    These folders hold the key.
    He didn’t know how. Didn’t understand why. But Chance was certain.
    Karsten’s records would solve the riddle of Tory Brennan and her sidekicks. The answers he sought lurked somewhere inside those reports.
    Chance yanked the drawer open again. Slapped a new file onto his desk.
    He paused a moment, shaking his head at the part of the story he knew.
    A hidden lab. Secret tests. Corporate espionage. Payoffs and payouts.
    His father had ordered an illegal medical experiment, off the books, bankrolled by an untraceable shell corporation using Candela funds. The harebrained scheme violated dozens of laws and regulations. It was both a criminal and fireable offense.
    The arrogance of it boggled Chance’s mind.
    Thankfully, his father had been careful. Chance had checked for records thoroughly, spending hours sifting through boxes at Candela’s file storage warehouse, and even more time combing the database. He was satisfied no other documents existed.
    No one would learn of Karsten’s work.
    No one but me.
    It’d taken Chance months just to comprehend what he was reading.
    At first, the connections were hidden. Even with a mole at LIRI feeding him intel, Chance had learned little of use. Dr. Mike Iglehart was a major disappointment. The secret link to Loggerhead Island hadn’t borne much fruit.
    But then he’d found it.
    Chance flipped to back of the file. Selected a computer printout.
    The bridge had been there all along. He just hadn’t seen it.
    Page sixty-four. Third paragraph. Second line. Twenty-five words.
Subject A for Parvovirus XPB-19 is a wild canine hybrid captured on Loggerhead Island, the offspring of a female gray wolf and male German shepherd.
    In other words, a wolfdog.
    So simple. Yet he’d missed it repeatedly.
    “Cooper,” Chance whispered. Tory’s too-smart mongrel was the key.
    Though, admittedly, Chance still hadn’t put it together at that point.
    Karsten had used Coop as a parvovirus test subject. So what? The dog had clearly recovered and survived. Perhaps Tory had adopted him afterward. What difference did it make?
    But Chance had held tenaciously to his theory. And his diligence paid off.
    He’d simply needed to find the other pieces.
    Chance removed a third file from the drawer and placed it beside the other.
    Paging to the middle, he found the crucial line. He’d only apprehended its significance that morning.
    Bottom margin. Handwritten. So easily overlooked.
 
The highest caution must be employed. Due to its radical structure, Parvovirus strain XPB-19 may be infectious to humans.
     
    There.
    There there there.
    A connection. One that might explain everything.
    What he’d seen. What he’d experienced with those Morris Island weirdoes.
    What, exactly, had Cooper carried?
    What happened after Tory took him home?
    Chance didn’t know. But he was going to find out.
    At that moment, a startling thought occurred to him. Something that, shockingly, he’d never considered before. The implications shot ice through his veins.
    Chance quickly dug out and opened his MacBook. Fingers flying, he accessed his secure