He gestured to her with an open palm. “Whenever you’re ready.”
“Aren’t we waiting for Darren?”
He blinked slowly. “Darren isn’t working for me anymore. He couldn’t follow directions.”
The way he talked down about Darren, as if he were a petulant child who couldn’t mind rules, grated against Danielle’s nerves. She hadn’t liked the guy either, but when she’d initially met with him, he’d seemed professional enough and passionate about the environment here.
Reynolds lifted his eyebrows and clasped his hands on the desk between them, the picture of impatience.
Clearing her throat, she pulled a stack of printed notes from the front flap of her biggest journal. “I’ve printed off the most important findings for you as a quick reference for what I’ll be talking about.” She slid the paper-clipped papers across the desk.
Reynolds lifted his hands so she could push the papers under them, but he didn’t look down at her notes. He only stared blankly ahead at her.
Uneasiness spread through her, making it hard to focus on the notebook she held clutched in her shaking hands.
“The infestation is much worse than previously thought,” she began. “The beetles have demolished, or are in the process of demolishing, more than a quarter of the trees here already. Worse than the loss of the trees, though, is the loss of balance in the ecosystem. Native animals and insects that make their homes in and around these infected trees are already being affected. In small quantities, the pine beetles can be beneficial, serving to wipe out old and sick trees to allow for sunlight to reach the pinecones on the forest floor. But it has been so dry and hot in recent years and the forest is mostly made up of mature trees with fewer saplings that the beetle population has exploded. They use the bark to lay their eggs under, and they also introduce a blue fungus to the tree that slowly stops water and nutrient flow, eventually starving the tree. With the ongoing drought, the trees are already stressed and susceptible to the beetles. The land owner who hired crews to clear territory in sections is onto something. At this rate, the living ponderosa and lodgepole pines won’t be salvageable and will sicken like the others at an alarming rate.”
“Fascinating.” The way Mr. Reynolds said it made it seem like he wasn’t interested at all. “Now, share with me some information I could actually use. Tell me everything you know about Denison Beck and his brother, Brighton.”
Shock slashed through her chest and sucked the air out of the room, congealing the oxygen in her lungs. “I was hired to study the beetle problem in this area. That is what I’m trained in, and that’s the only reason I took this job. If you have questions about anything else, I can’t help you.”
Mr. Reynolds opened a drawer beside him and pulled out a stack of glossy eight by ten pictures, then slid them in front of her.
The horror and gore of the picture in front of her made her gasp and cover her mouth with her hands. A woman in a lab coat lay on a sterile-looking tile floor, her stomach ripped to shreds and her throat torn out.
“You don’t have to play coy with me, Ms. Clayton. I’m fully aware of what Denison is. I realize you likely feel an unnecessary loyalty to him, which is why I chose you to spy on the Ashe Crew.”
She couldn’t take her eyes away from the woman in the picture.
“You see, Denison is a murderer. So is Brighton.” He brushed his palm across the stack, fanning out the gruesome images.
All featured a man or woman in a lab coat, their middles covered in crimson and unrecognizable as human anatomy.
“This victim of their savage rage,” he whispered, pulling the last one from the stack, “was my wife.”
The blond woman stared back at the camera with a blood-smattered face and glossy, vacant eyes. Even in death, she looked horrified.
But Danielle had heard the other side of this story, and a slow fury built in her veins. “Were you there?” she asked in a strangled voice.
“Yes. I witnessed their brutality firsthand.”
“No, I mean,” she gritted out, looking up, “were you cutting them and bleeding them and torturing them with these other doctors?” She spat out the last word like a curse.
A slow, cold smile drifted across his face. “I see you’ve grown sympathy for the plight of these animals, but I assure you, they are no more than servants to their instinct to kill. These doctors had families and homes. They had names and were real people.”
“Denison and Brighton are real people, too. They have value, and you tortured them. Your team deserved what they got. They shouldn’t have been experimenting on people. Blame yourself for what happened in that dungeon, you pompous prick. You kidnapped two innocent kids from their family. They were kids! And you cut them and bled them. You took strips of their flesh.” A sob clogged her throat, and she gritted her teeth and swallowed it down. “You took Brighton’s voice, and for what? What purpose did it serve to torture them?”