Claimed (The Lair of the Wolven #1) by J.R. Ward

Even as she told herself to get a grip, it was a while before she could resume the footage, and she locked her stare on the time counter, keeping track of the killing in her peripheral vision. Which was still too much information: During the takedown, the wolf struck only once and made it count, the pounds per square inch on that vital airway choking the man out. When the resistance of the prey weakened and those arms stopped flailing, there was a single reposition, a split second of release so that the animal could go for right in front, compressing the jugular vein as well as the windpipe.

As the human went totally limp, the teeth stayed where they were.

For a solid minute and a half longer.

The savagery that followed was something Lydia turned away from. There was no sound associated with the feed. No smells, either. But it was as if the ripping and tearing, the copper bloom of the blood, the consumption of meat and gristle, was happening on the desktop.

The total elapsed time of the attack was only about twelve minutes, and when it was over, the wolf stepped off from the ravaged, glistening corpse. The red stain that marked its muzzle and the fur of its chest was something out of a horror movie.

The predator looked around. And even glanced up at the camera.

Then it trotted off, light and quick on its paws.

The body lay there in the sunlight, like a gruesome beachgoer, and the behaviorist in her analyzed exactly how much meat was still on the corpse. Lots of it.

Taking the man down had been for sport, not on account of hunger. And the wolf had worked alone.

With a shaking hand, Lydia stopped the footage. And then without conscious awareness, she bent to the side, opened the lower drawer, and took out her Lysol wipes. Snapping one free, she ran the damp cloth around the monitor’s base. As the fresh linen scent tingled in her nose, she blinked fast.

Clean. She needed to clean things up. If she could only …

Stopping herself, she looked down at the wipe. It was warm now, and as she turned her palm over, the thing was the color of her skin, like it was transparent.

The debate went on in her head for about five minutes, and when she came to her decision, she threw out the wipe, put the container away, and thought of her grandfather. He would not approve of what she was about to do. But he would have approved of her reason why.

Her minor in college had been IT.

And it took her no time at all to locate the right editing program on the web, load it, and cut what she needed to of the footage. After that, she went back days earlier in the feed, to when the camera had been in position four. Reviewing the requisite twenty minutes, at the proper time, she made sure there were no giveaways, no telltales that would compromise things, like a downed tree or rainy weather when it should have been partially cloudy. After lucking out with the intangibles, she copied a day and a half’s worth of footage, and spliced it into the feed so it replaced the attack. Then she went back into the program that controlled the orientation of the cameras and manually manipulated the direction that lens #046 was pointed in, locking it into position four.

The good news was that though there was a regular schedule, that schedule was regularly random. Depending on the movement of the packs, she was constantly changing the orientation of the cameras all over the preserve so nothing would seem unusual about the override.

The last thing she did was not just remove the editing program from her computer, but go deep into the hard drive and cover her tracks. But that wasn’t going to be enough. CPUs could be forensically examined, and just as corpses on the autopsy table gave up their secrets, even if you deleted something, the scar would remain to be found.

The Dell was almost ten years old. Well past the end of its useful life.

The virus she found on the dark web and infected the unit with instructed the computer to turn off its cooling fan. And then to make sure there wasn’t a fire hazard, she went down to the break room and located some tin pans that Candy had washed and saved after Thanksgiving leftovers had been brought in months ago.

Lydia put the computer in one of them and made sure it was set away from the edges of the desk.

The bad news about working at the WSP was that money was always tight. The good news, at least in her current situation? There was very little new high-tech or state-of-the-art anything in place. So the chances of an old PC burning out overnight?

Sorry, Officer. That’s just what happened. But at least we have the footage from the preserve, right? Oh, wait, it shows nothing. What a shame.

Signing out of her computer, she just stared at the monitor. That kind of bloody, violent attack just validated what the hotel was acting on. And given that Eastwind was clearly reluctant to do anything, she was going to have to take charge … and God knew she would do anything—anything—to protect the animals that could not speak for themselves.

No matter what it cost her personally. Or what it brought up from her past.

Yes, it was obvious that an animal attack had occurred. But no one needed footage like that getting leaked and ending up on the Internet—and God knew, that was where everything went these days. Something like those twelve minutes would be used to further scare people off wolves and threaten their reintroduction into this part of the United States.

Predators were a necessary part of the ecosystem.

As far as she was concerned, humans were the ones the planet could use less of, considering all the damage they did.

On that note, she got up from her desk, and walked down to the clinical area. Turning on the light, she went to where the wolf was crated. He did not lift his head, but his groggy eyes opened the instant he scented her. At least he was no longer ventilated.