Scene 10

The wolf was curled up in an impossibly small ball, nose tucked under tail, sound asleep.

"You're sure, Jack?" Alison sounded doubtful. She, Jo, Fargo, and Carter were standing in one of GD's large animal labs while Henry and Dr. Glenn worked quietly behind them. Two walls of the lab were glass, giving them views into the adjacent rooms, which were animal enclosures, one of which was currently serving as the wolf's temporary home.

"Sure? No," Carter shook his head. "But I'm sure that Kevin couldn't have been kidnapped. And I'm sure that the search team covered every possible inch of a reasonable search radius. And I'm sure that this wolf had a weird reaction to a drug that shouldn't have bothered it. And right now, that's all I've got to go on."

Alison lifted her face to him. "I want my son back," her voice was barely a whisper. "I want Kevin back." Her face was strained and set, her eyes heavy with the tears that she would not let fall.

Carter put his arm around her shoulders, and pulled her closer. He dropped a kiss on her hair. "I know. We'll get him back. We will. I promise."

"Shouldn't he have changed back when the sun came up?" Fargo asked. "What?" he added when they both looked at him. "Werewolves, full moons, right? The moon goes down, the wolf goes back to being human."

"Fargo, there's no such thing as werewolves," Jo said firmly.

"If this is Kevin, then it's some GD experiment gone wrong. And unless you can explain why the moon would have an effect on DNA, then I think we can call that part of the story superstition," Carter agreed.

"Well, there is a theory about a biological tidal effect. That idea is that the gravitational pull of the moon can actually affect the water in our cells, which might cause a range of illnesses."

"Fargo, that theory is purely speculative. There's no solid research that proves anything of the kind." The intellectual challenge had pulled Alison away from her worry for a moment.

"There is research indicating that some animal behavior changes during the full moon," Dr. Glenn's voice was preoccupied, as if the conversation had only a small part of her attention. Her head was down over her tablet, staring intently at the information on her screen, as she tapped through information screens with a stylus.

"Henry, this is so strange." She lifted her head and crossed to where Henry was sitting in front of a screen. "This DNA is unlike anything I've seen before."

"Yes, the computer's not been able to match it either. But it's definitely not the DNA of a grey wolf."

Carter stepped forward. "More importantly right now, does the DNA you got from the wolf match the DNA of the blood and the fur that we found in Kevin's room?"

"Oh, yes," nodded Dr. Glenn. "They're a definite match. That's a nice easy job. Trying to figure out the rest of it is going to be the hard part." She rubbed her forehead. "I'm not even sure where to begin," her voice trailed off as she returned to staring intently at her screen and the information that was scrolling up it.

"That's good, that's really good. That means we know that this wolf was in Kevin's room. That's the first step. Second step…" Carter was thinking hard. He turned to Fargo. "I know. We have to start with finding the scientist who did this. So Fargo, what did you find?"

"I…nothing," said Fargo, glancing uncertainly at Dr. Glenn.

"That didn't sound like nothing, Fargo," Jo said suspiciously. She knew Fargo well enough to know when he was trying to slide out of something uncomfortable.

"There's only one project that I could find that might…well, could conceivably, maybe, possibly be used for something like this," the pitch of Fargo's voice was getting progressively higher with each successive word.

"So what is it?" demanded Alison.

"Dr. Glenn's project?" Fargo said tentatively, and promptly cringed.

Dr. Glenn looked up in surprise. "My project?"

Fargo held his hands up defensively, "Your project is just a little out there. I didn't know whether it might have other applications."

"Out there? Do you even understand what it does?" Dr. Glenn's soft voice was beginning to rise.

"Well…no. Not really," Fargo admitted, his voice not quite squeaking with guilt.

"Gizmo is an immune system booster. It's a medicine, not a, not a biological weapon!"

"Gizmo?" asked Fargo.

"My gamma interferon zoological molecular optimization project—it's designed to heal animals, not turn people into monsters!" Dr. Glenn's face was flushing with her anger. "I'm a vet, not a lunatic!"

Carter's head swiveled to look at Fargo. "A lunatic vet," he repeated. "Is that what we're looking for? A lunatic vet?"

"Taggart," Jo, Henry, and Fargo all said the name simultaneously with differing tones of realization, exasperation, and resignation.

"Taggart?" asked Dr. Glenn. "Dr. Jim Taggart? He has done some incredible work with wolves. His study in the most recent issue of the American Journal of Veterinary Medicine was very impressive. But he's in Alaska at the moment, isn't he?"

Carter was shaking his head. "He's in town. But how do we find him?"

Jo had already pulled out her phone, and was calling. "He always camps," she said, as the phone was ringing. "We can check some of his usual places, but that might take a while." She paused and listened, obviously to a voice mail message.

"Tag, call when you get this message, please." She hung up.

"Okay," Carter ran his hand though his hair. "We can start checking any places that we know he's stayed. I can get Andy to drive out to every place you know."

Jo was gazing at her phone thoughtfully. "Maybe we can use the GPS in his phone," she said. "That would at least find us his campsite, and he's bound to come back there eventually."

"We'd have to get an order from a judge to get the wireless company to triangulate the signal," Carter replied. "We can start working on it, but it takes hours and there's no guarantee—judges can be sticky when there's no legal cause and no emergency."

"Um, well, there is a faster way. Zane has an app on his phone that we could use."

"An app?" asked Fargo.

Jo looked uncomfortable. "It's a GPS tracker. If we give him the phone number, he can find the phone."

"Isn't that illegal?"

"Technically, yes," Jo looked even more uncomfortable. "But it would be really useful right now." She glanced at Carter.

He looked exasperated. "Really, Jo? Really? I think Zane's corrupting you."

"It won't be the first time we've gotten his help," said Fargo. "Let's do it."

"Jack, we have no idea what this is doing to Kevin," Alison said. "The sooner we find Taggart and find out how to fix it, the better."

Carter shook his head and sighed. "All right, I'll go get a location from Zane."

"I'll come with you," Dr. Glenn said absently. "He's still working on that Skycruiser thing, right? That's right across from my lab. I want to take a look at some of my notes."

"I'll wait here," said Alison, turning back to the glass and gazing at the wolf.

Henry brought up a new screen on his display and frowned at it. "I'll keep working on this." Fargo looked over his shoulder.

Jo said nothing. She watched Carter and Dr. Glenn go and still said nothing, tapping her foot nervously. She glanced at Fargo and Henry and sighed.

Fargo looked back at her. "Go," he said.

She looked at him questioningly.

"You should at least apologize to him for ratting him out to Carter. You know Carter's going to keep his phone or delete the app or something. At the very least, you can cut the lecture short."

Jo bit back a smile. "Okay," she said. "Thanks, Fargo." Turning away, she hurried out the door.

Fargo shook his head. "Goopy," he sighed. "Hey, is that a protein inhibitor on that strand?"