Page 16

Levi

“She was trying to blow up the school,” Xavier says.

All eyes turn to him as he sinks into a seat at the table piled high with papers.

It’s not a large room. With five big alphas, one beta, a glaring pregnant omega, and the large round table dominating the space, it feels cramped.

I take the chair beside him. “She was on a mission to convince omegas they were in a cage they needed to break out of.”

Our round of introductions was brief.

Delilah Farrow, AKA Della Jackson, is in trouble. Potentially the life-ending kind.

I had heard of Lucas Security, the private security company that rarely took cases from the wealthy alpha families. I hadn’t known why until all the shit about those same families being involved in Asylum, a secret club buying and selling omegas, hit the news.

Garrison, the CEO, and the face of the security firm, closes the office door and walks to the front of the room, leaning against the whiteboard and crossing his arms. His expression is a mix of amused and bewildered. “The perfume.”

Vince’s phone vibrates, and he pulls it from his pocket as he speaks. “She stopped an omega from being grabbed outside the gate. That was late yesterday afternoon, but you can find her faster than the cops.”

Garrison tilts his head. “How would you know what was going on at Haven Academy?”

Vince glances at his phone. His expression never changes as he switches it off and returns it to the same pocket. “That’s irrelevant. What’s important is that Delilah—Della Jackson—has come to harm, and she needs to be found.”

Garrison holds Vince’s gaze as if he’s debating whether to push for more of a response.

“What exactly happened?” Garrison eventually asks. “We need to know everything that happened before the abduction and after it. Even if you don’t think it’s material, it could be the difference between us finding her or not.”

As Vince gives Lucas Security a detailed rundown of the abduction and what Mercy, the omega, told him, my gaze wanders to the whiteboard covered with messy scrawls and small, colorful magnets that pin a large photograph of Della at its center.

“That’s everything,” Vince eventually concludes.

“Except the reason she was outside the gate at all,” Blaine says.

No one says a word.

“We figured out she was a beta,” I say, ignoring Vince’s pointed stare. “That’s what she was doing outside the school gates. She left.”

“How would they have known she would leave that evening?” Garrison asks.

I shrug. “I don’t know if those guys had been there before and left when no one came out, or if it was just bad luck that the first time they parked out there was the night Deli—Della—climbed over the gates.”

Garrison turns to Blaine. “We need the security footage from those gates.”

“The cops will have it,” Xavier tells them. “They’ve been parked outside the school gates since yesterday.”

“That footage will be stored on a server somewhere,” Vaugh says. “We’ll get it from the server if it’s still there or from the cops if they wiped it.”

Garrison turns to Resa. “We’re not telling her sister anything until we’ve found Della. It will only panic her.”

Resa nods. “I agree.”

“Her sister?” Levi asks.

“Everleigh Ashe,” Garrison explains.

I wince.

Pack Ashe would do anything for their omega, including shutting down a billion-dollar business to start up safer, free heat clinics for omegas in the city. If something happened to Everleigh’s sister, they won’t stop until they find her.

Vaughn seems blind to Garrison’s glower and Resa’s smile when he sweeps all the papers to the floor. “Get the map, Garrison,” he says.

Blaine leaves the room, and Garrison spreads a map flat on the cleared table.

“How’s a map going to help us?” Xavier asks, leaning toward it and tilting his head to study it.

“The camera footage will tell us what car they’re driving and the direction they left in. We can figure out what route they might have taken.” Garrison frowns as he studies the map. “We need to know what the cops do. See if there’s a way to get our finger into their investigation.”

“On it.” Vaughn is up out of his seat and out in a flash.

“And any traffic cams,” Garrison calls out. “If they were in a hurry, they would have run a light somewhere.”

I glance at Vince, who is studying the picture of Della pinned to the whiteboard.

She looks younger in that picture. More carefree.

He did the right thing coming here. We should have come here before, but we’re here now. What happened to Della is on all our heads. It’s our responsibility to find her and save her.

We stay at the table for the next three hours.

Vince has his phone out, probably trying to put out a hundred fires without revealing his location. He’s the secretive and mysterious Dexter Pieter, and no one hates the role more than he does.

Xavier is watching this whole operation, eyes bright with curiosity.

Blaine, Vaughn, Garrison, and Resa pass laptops back and forth, rise to scrawl fresh information on the whiteboard, or pore over a map they spread across the table. Resa occasionally casts a hostile glance at Vince.

She couldn’t have made it any clearer that she doesn’t like him.

He’s aware of Resa’s narrow-eyed stare. He doesn’t care. Liked or not liked. Popular or hated. Those things never mattered to my pack brother. But getting results? Getting revenge? Those things do matter.

“We got a hit on the car,” Blaine says, eyes on his laptop.

“And?” Garrison prompts as he lifts a white mug of what smells like industrial-grade coffee to his lips.

“It ran a light while headed west. We lost it near the industrial part of the city,” Blaine says.

“Why aren’t the cops announcing this to the press?” I ask. “Everyone would be trying to find her.”

“Omegas from some very powerful families attend that academy.” Garrison sets his mug of coffee down, and Resa wrinkles her nose, nudging the cup away from her.

He smiles and pushes it even farther away, continuing, “They’ll lose whatever support they have with the city if this turns out to be another case of wealthy alphas victimizing omegas. ”

Vince speaks without looking up from his phone. “People don’t believe cops did enough to save the omegas in the free heat clinics. If she turns up dead, it will be decades, if ever, they regain that broken trust.”

“Don’t you think you played a hand in that?” Resa asks tightly.

Vince returns his phone to his pocket. “I did what I could with the information I had. I am not omniscient.”

Her lip curls. “But you are still?—”

“Got something,” Blaine says. “The car ran another light, then disappeared.”

“ Disappeared ?” I sit up.

Blaine reaches over to point at the map. “Here.”

We all study it.

“That’s the middle of nowhere.” I frown.

“Not nowhere. That’s where I would go to dump something I didn’t want found.”

We all turn to Vaughn.

I don’t ask how he knows, but I think the beta’s friendly demeanor conceals more darkness than I had suspected.

“Like what?” Resa asks.

Nothing good.

I share a glance with Garrison, who stands up. “Let’s check it out.”

“A body,” Resa says, not moving. “That’s what you meant, isn’t it?”

No one responds.

“They grabbed Della. Took her to some factory, and they did something to her.” Resa’s eyes bounce from Garrison to Vaughn. “They killed her.”

“We don’t know that,” Garrison says calmly. “Which is why we need to check this out now. The cops will figure it out soon if they haven’t already.”

No one, not even Garrison, can convince Resa to stay at the house.

We pile into our cars to make the drive to the edge of the city, where people dump things they don’t want found.

“Any of you getting a bad feeling about this?” Xavier asks from the backseat of Vince’s Audi.

He’s thinking of Aly. So will Vince, and so am I.

“Mercy said the guys were young. This isn’t the same thing,” Vince says, driving.

“The Asylum membership passed from older to younger. Byron Wentworth involved his son in it,” I say. “This could be what’s happening here.”

“This might be something else,” Xavier says after a thoughtful silence.

I mutter, “No one camps out outside a school for omegas without thinking about it in advance. Especially now that most free heat clinics have security to stop what was happening before.”

As we drive along the empty streets littered with abandoned shopping carts and burned-out cars, it's almost noon, and I still can't see any sign of Della.

The vehicle in front, a matte black Jeep with tinted windows, abruptly swerves to the right, and the driver hits the brakes. Garrison, Vaughn, Blaine, and Resa scramble out.

Resa leans against the front of the Jeep, one hand covering her mouth, and tears in her eyes.

I see it as Vince swings the car behind the Jeep and flings open his door.

A body.

Face down—vivid red lines crisscrossing a pale, freckled back.

The Haven Academy girls' uniform consists of a dark red plaid skirt, a short-sleeve white blouse, and black knee-high socks. That’s what I’m looking at here, minus the white blouse and the socks. Her skin is ashen white.

I have no memory of getting out of the car.

I’m outside, breathing through my mouth, but the stench of the place—rotting food, urine, and other foul waste permeates the area.

Vince stands beside me, face blank. I don’t see Xavier, probably behind me.

This can’t be happening again.

Garrison drops to his knees beside the body. This isn’t his first time being close to one. His expression has barely changed. He reaches out a hand, presses his fingers to her pale throat.

“She’s still alive.” Garrison’s three words propel us all into action.

We take off our hoodies and coats to warm her up. Blaine calls for a paramedic. She might not survive the ride to a hospital. Garrison carefully, oh so carefully, turns her onto her side. Her lips are blue.

Past and present merge into one, and for a split-second, I have no fucking clue where I am.

We keep her warm. Garrison checks her pulse every two minutes. None of us takes our eyes off her, and we wait, holding our breath until the paramedics arrive.

They sweep us aside with ruthless efficiency, slipping a mask over her face after checking her pulse. They pull back the coats we used to cover her, place her on a stretcher, and drape her with a dark blue blanket.

She’s in the back of the ambulance within five minutes of the paramedics' arrival.

She’s alive.

Somehow, she’s alive.