Generation 18 (Spook Squad 2)

“Warren Michaels.”

“Get him on vid for me.”

Izzy tapped her foot for several seconds, then disappeared, replaced by a dark-haired man in his mid-forties.

“Agent Ryan,” Warren Michaels said. “What can I do for you?”

“You handled the serial killer autopsies, didn’t you?”

“Yep. Why?”

“I just found out that all of them were being prescribed Jadrone. Would you have any idea why?”

Michaels frowned and scratched his shadowed chin. “If they were taking it, I found no evidence of it.”

“So I read. And yet all of them had been prescribed the drug since puberty, from what I can gather.”

“I can’t see why. They weren’t shifters.” He hesitated and frowned. “There was an unknown substance in their toxicology results, one we haven’t been able to pin down. And I did notice severe bone degradation in both Maxwell and Jakes.”

“Is it usual to be unable to identify substances?”

“No, not unless it’s something new to the market. We’re still searching, and may yet match it.”

Then she’d keep her fingers crossed for a result. “What sort of degradation was there? And how might it be connected to Jadrone?”

“Shifting puts severe stress on the body’s organs, particularly bone and muscle. As the shifter gets older, the bone and muscles become less pliant, more brittle. Arthritis and other associated diseases become a real problem. In a shifter, this doesn’t normally happen until they are well into the mid–one-fifties, one-sixties. Even in humans, it doesn’t normally happen until your late sixties.” He paused. “Jadrone was administered to shifters to keep the pain at bay and slow degradation.”

“Is there a history of this sort of degeneration in either Jakes’s or Maxwell’s family?”

“That we don’t know.”

She frowned. “Why?”

Michaels snorted. “They were adopted, the same as Burns and Brandon. Don’t you read follow-up reports?”

The edge of derision in his voice stung. “Obviously not.” Nor had Gabriel mentioned that fact. “Let’s presume there’s no history of this in their background. What else might be the cause?”

Michaels shrugged. “Random chance? It happens. Kids as young as five get arthritis, you know.”

Yeah, but their killer wasn’t attacking kids as young as five. There was some sort of pattern here, but one they couldn’t quite see yet. “What about the other two?”

“Minor degradation. A little more than what you’d expect for their age, but nothing extreme.”

“Did you do a cellular analysis on the four?”

“No need to. They were human.”

“Then do it. And tell me what you find.”

Michaels raised his eyebrows. “By whose authority are you ordering this?”

“Assistant Director Stern’s.” She looked up as the man in question stepped into her office. He raised an eyebrow and walked the two steps over to the desk.

“Sorry, Agent Ryan,” Michaels was saying, “I can’t order that sort of investigation without permission from the man himself.”

Gabriel placed a hand on the back of her chair, his face close to hers as he stared at the com-screen. “Then you have it, Michaels. Please proceed.”

Michaels nodded and signed off, and Gabriel sat back on the edge of her desk. “What did I just authorize?”