Page 10 of Hunted Pack (Her Vicious Pack #7)

Mathew

“How many times has it happened since Vera and Caleb got here?” I stare at the laptop screen, my mouth open, ice running through my veins as Timothy shows me clips of what he calls ‘blips’, strange static in the security feed.

“It happened a few times between when Hubert first came here to hire you and when they arrived. And has happened a couple of times since then.” Timothy’s voice is tense, trying to avoid clearly answering.

“How many?” I look straight at him, I need exact numbers.

“Twenty-one times in total. Multiple people went over the footage, it’s twenty-one times, no more”

That’s not ‘a few times’, that averages out to more than once a week. “And you didn’t tell me about this, why?”

“You had enough—” When he sees the look in my eyes, he reaches out to another laptop and clicks around.

“I set up a second set of cameras and other security measures around the perimeter, on a separate system. That system has been working fine the whole time, no interference, no blips, all clean. I’ve been using the second system for our security, and I’ve been running a program on the first that acts like we’re still using it, in case it’s being monitored.

I didn’t tell you about it because I first wanted to be sure what was going on. ”

He turns to me. “When we realised that something was up the night Vera and Caleb arrived, I immediately beefed up our security. At no point before or since then was our security ever down. And nothing unusual has happened on any of our other systems.”

“Apart from the ‘blips’ on our perimeter security…” Which are a pretty big deal.

Timothy nods. “On the system we’ve been keeping running but haven’t relied on.” He puts extra emphasis on the last words. “Our security is still good.”

“And how are you so sure that they’re not aware that you’re running a secondary security system on the perimeter?” The Hearts, or whoever are doing this, aren’t dumb, they understand how security works.

I really wish Timothy had told me about this sooner because I suddenly feel a lot less sure about our safety, especially now there are a lot of people here, not just us, but also Luca’s family and the kids we rescued.

“They only tapped into the system on our perimeter, not any of the ones that are closer to the house or other buildings. We run the systems separately for this exact reason. This also meant that we were able to set up new cameras and sensors that could keep an eye on both what the perimeter system is supposed to look at and keep an eye on the cameras themselves.”

He pulls up a different program. “The new system fully runs from a generator, so there’s no difference in our electricity use, in case they’re also monitoring that.

And we’re buying fuel for the generators with cash when we’re in the city for something else.

I know that you told us to replace any cameras and systems that could have been affected the night Vera and Caleb arrived, but that seemed like a waste of time and energy.

This way, I could keep an eye on what’s going on while still keeping the security up. ”

“Much good that has done you. You still don’t know what’s going on.” I generally don’t immediately involve myself with the runnings of this place, unless I really have to, trusting that Derrick and Timothy will handle it, so I can focus on the running of the organisation instead.

“I know that I’ve been distracted since Vera and Caleb arrived, but I would have liked to have known about this before finding out that there’s a bounty on my whole pack, the family of one of my pack members and a whole bunch of kids, who are all living in my house at the moment.”

I sit down, my head spinning and my stomach is starting to become unhappy. “Tell me you’ve got good news?”

What’s done is done. It’s better to focus on something productive instead. I understand why Timothy did what he did, even if I don’t like it. It was his call and I’m sure he made the right call, even if it doesn’t make me happy right now.

“I might not know what causes the ‘blips’, but I do know that they’re monitoring that system. The blip might simply be a problem in their monitoring software that I’ve not found yet. There are...” He eyes me, stopping.

“I’m sure that they’re monitoring us. At this point, I’m also pretty sure it’s the Hearts. All they’ve seen for the past months is that we upped our patrols after Vera and Caleb came here —which they’ll have expected—, but that’s all, at least from the system they’re monitoring.”

“And that’s good news, why?” Because I’m not seeing it.

“It means we can show them fake footage. Even if they catch on that it’s fake footage, they’ll still not have access to the original footage, so won’t know what we did during that time. We can use that against them. And we can also see if they try to fake footage our way.”

I sit up, very alert. That sounds bad. “They can fake footage onto our feeds?!”

“They shouldn’t be able to. But I put in some redundancies so that even if they attempt to, we’ll catch it immediately.”

“I would hope so.” I give him a level look, my heart rate only slightly going down. “Because it’s not just my pack you’re putting on the line if things go wrong.”

“Hey! Don’t fucking threaten—” Derrick, who’s been keeping quiet the whole time, steps forward, towering over me, anger rolling off him.

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.” I tap my knife to the inside of his thigh and he quickly takes a step back, out of danger.

“I didn’t mean it as a threat, I’m sorry it sounded like that.

I meant that we’ve got a lot of people under our protection, that’s a lot of responsibility, a lot of people who trust us. I don’t want to break that trust.”

“The system is safe. You know that I wouldn’t put our people needlessly in danger.” Timothy meets my gaze head-on, not flinching one moment.

“Good.” I try to go over everything that Timothy and Erika told me before she got off the call. She’s coming here to help us get the kids into safe situations, to help Luca’s family make a new start and she offered part of her security team to help us out for a while...

Which is how Timothy and I got into the whole conversation about our current security system ‘situation’.

I let out a deep sigh, exhausted.

“What are you thinking?” Derrick moves, leaning against the table, making sure to stay out of my reach, his eyes guarded.

“That you two have the right idea.” I motion in Timothy and Derrick’s direction.

“I need to learn to delegate more, even when it comes to stuff about the organisation. You two run my technical and my physical sides of the security at home and are in charge of the missions. But when it comes to running the organisation itself, it still falls all on me. We’re dealing with multiple situations here, most of them are connected but not always overlapping, I really shouldn’t be doing all of that on my own. ”

Timothy lets out a quiet laugh as he shakes his head.

“What?!”

He pulls a face. “I agree with you that you shouldn’t be doing everything on your own.

And you’ve now got a pack to help you out, even though you’ve barely made use of them until now.

But as your pregnancy progresses, things will become a lot more tricky.

Right now, we’re mainly dealing with the Hearts throwing a tantrum and putting bounties on everyone. We’ve dealt with that before.”

“Plenty of times.” The bounties actually worry me the least, of everything that’s happened in the last day. Bounties I know how to deal with. It requires tighter security, but we also know what to expect.

“Right. But what happens if your clients, or the wider world, find out that you’re pregnant? What will happen if you’re at the end of your pregnancy and can’t go waltzing all over the place, meet with people, because that has physically become much too hard on you?”

I snort. “That presumes that I’ll still have clients once people find out I’m an Omega.

That presumes that people will still want to work with me.

Who says that they’ll still want to do business with our organisation, even if someone else takes on the leading role?

Even if I, a ‘weak’ Omega, would step back and someone else would be the face of the organisation.

There’s no guarantee anyone will still want to work with us. ”

Timothy gives me a look that tells me I’m being way too defeatist. “At some point in the not-too-far future, you won’t be able to go on missions, that will become physically not a good idea.

Going out for client dinners will also become a bad idea.

Not just for security reasons, but plain-old ‘physically being up to it’ reasons.

Derrick and I can try to help you however much we can, but you’re not the same guy you were before, your life has changed and that means making changes to how you run things too. ”

“I know. It’s not like I haven’t thought about that before. It’s just hard to...” I move my hands jerkily. “Hard to figure out.”

Timothy shrugs, looking back at the guys from the tech team. “You’ve got some time to figure it out, but not a lot. You don’t want to be forced to make choices with options you don’t like. Just make sure you stay ahead of things.”

He sighs deep. “Talking about staying ahead of things, I’ll tell Eli that we’ll have a lot more mouths to feed soon and that we need to get the spare houses ready for Erika’s people.

Unless you need me here for something else?

” He gives me a look, clearly wanting to get out of here, away from my grumpy mood.

I shake my head, letting out a long breath. “Thanks. I should have been the one to tell Eli earlier… So, thanks.”

“No problem.” Timothy jerks his head so his guys follow him out of the library.

When the door closes behind them, I look to Derrick. “We good?”

“We good.” He rubs between his legs, like the memory of the knife being there makes him feel it physically. Then he eyes the door Timothy just left through.

“Let Caleb take care of things on the pack side, together with Jorge, they balance well and Jorge’s not good with the darker sides of the organisation.

Spread organisation things between yourself, Vera and Riley.

Vera has picked up a lot of admin and communication tasks already, and she’s good at them.

Riley knows the more practical side of your job.

She might have to get used to working in a team, but I don’t see a reason why that won’t work. ”

I raise an eyebrow at him. “Are you now telling me what to do?”

“No. I’m confirming what you already know. I believe we’ve known each other long enough for that.” He grins. “And, if not, you can always just get rid of me.”

When I don’t say anything, Derrick lets out an impatient sound.

“You’re not protecting them, or yourself, by not relying on them more.

Hell, it took me way too long to appoint Miles to a higher position.

But now that he’s taken over a lot of your and your pack’s personal security, I suddenly have time for other things again.

Things like my family , my pack , my mates . Things that are important in life.”

My mates…

I suddenly have a family to worry about.

And I can’t do that alone.

And I definitely can’t protect them on my own.

Why are these things so complicated?

And why do I dread even thinking about sharing some of my responsibilities with the rest of the pack?

Well, I know why.

I like control too much.

And that’s a flaw, not a virtue, in this line of work.