I looked again to the phone and saw no bars. I wasn’t losing my mind.
“You don’t think he’s jamming it, huh?”
I looked at Stuart. “How could he even do that?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know anything about phones or computers. I-I mean, it’s not like the kids will be using those much, right?”
I wanted to go off on him about his obsession with keeping up with youth trends because it was a joke that had stopped being funny months ago. But I kept my mouth shut. That’s not what I needed to expend energy on at that moment.
There was another possibility I realized: the phone call itself had been bugged. It was a rare kind of hacking that I had only read of in periodicals involving Dolphin shifters: where they would use certain tones and notes that would cause the line to connect to the internet and start downloading a virus that bricked the entire thing, and it would start with an inexplicable loss of phone service. But this was an extremely rare kind of hacking, so I discarded it at first.
Until the entire phone stopped working. No matter what I did or what button I pressed, the screen was frozen.
“He’s got a hacker on his side...”
That name came back to me: Jesse Grover. The Beta brother of Jonathan who was excellent at computers. I didn’t recall his face, but I wondered if it was his face I saw in the SUV all those months ago.
There was a sort of resigned sigh on my lips after that.
What had Jack been doing? Where had he gone, and why had he gone there?
More importantly, why did I never checkup to make sure he wasn’t planning something? I trusted that he’d not make so much trouble.
I went back to Miranda, got down to her level, pressed her chin, and said, “Hey, listen. It’s fine. We’ll solve this. But I just need you to tell me what he was saying when he came in here.”
She sniffled through her sobs, but she had managed to calm herself down enough to say, “He was talking about how he was going to take Josh for himself.”
I stood and pressed my hands into my pockets. “So that’s what this is about?”
It was everything I feared might happen finally coming true, the sum of all fears.
Josh was a beautiful baby in all ways, and I’d raise him no matter what he was. But even though I’d be raising another Alpha’s child, he would still feel offended if he was of such a narcissistic mindset. Some Alphas treated the idea of raising another man’s child as being counter to the idea of being an Alpha of the world, but others thought it to be the opposite. In their minds, it was actually a show of great dominance that you could claim any child as your own.
And if our seed mixed in Stuart’s garden, then who was the planter? It was a tough question that I didn’t have the time to answer. All I knew was that the fireworks of last night were nothing compared to what was about to happen.
I went to Steamy Cups, the whole time feeling unnaturally disconnected without my phone. I didn’t even know where my hat was. But I did have Stuart with me, and for good measure, we brought Miranda along, deciding to never take a chance again.
When we pulled in, I was somehow able to keep the Bugatti within the lines despite still not seeing straight. Then, as calmly as I could, I got out of the car.
Stuart even asked me, “Are you okay?”
Though we exchanged glances, I felt that was enough to tell him that this was the strangest question of the day. Of course, I wasn’t okay. If anything happened to Josh or Michael, I’d never feel okay again. And thanks to my more reserved motions, I could see tinges of fear in the way both Stuart and Miranda acted. I wasn’t entirely myself, and even the slightest thing could set me off.
But in truth, I kept my mind on one thing only: Josh. Michael, too: he was blood, a member of my family though a beloved brother. But I had to focus on Josh to keep focus on anything at all.
We went in, and Tommy took one look at me and said, “Now what happened?”
“Jack.”
Neil came downstairs with Scott, and when they arrived, they looked confused at first. However, even though none of us spoke, their faces went from confused to dark very quickly.
Neil said, “Well, then... What should we do?”
I found a seat. “He says he’s watching me, but I don’t know where he’s watching me from. But, I do know he has a hacker with him, so there’s no point calling back. His demands are simple: he wants me to move out. And then he’ll give back the boys.”
“Do you really think he will?”
Tommy had folded his arms and had a similarly dark look. “Trust me: he’s bluffing. He won’t give you them back.”
I nodded. “I already knew that.” Then I pat Miranda’s head. “By the way, I’m gonna need you to call Zeke, will ya?”
The lobby of Steamy Cups became electrified. As Miranda recited what happened earlier that morning, Neil, Scott, and I kept exchanging glances. Tommy and Stuart were also near each other. However, I sat next to Stuart, and Tommy sat directly next to Neil. It felt like a visualization of how we were all connected.
Scott, however, was standing near the door, looking out the window. I felt so bad for him while also feeling angry at myself for losing his child. Jasper was on his way, and just hearing his voice break on the phone was terrifying to hear.
When she finished, she started crying again, and both of the Omegas went to tend to her. Soon enough, Zeke and Marc arrived and ran to collect Miranda.
Zeke and Marc kept smothering their child with kisses, and I wished I could do the same for Josh.
Stuart and I squeezed each other’s hands.
The one thing we said before anything else was, “I’m sorry.” We kept repeating it over and over.
Scott held up his hand and said, “Don’t worry about it,” more times than I could count as well.
Zeke was less forgiving. “Why would you even leave two young children in a house alone? That should only happen in a movie!”
Stuart’s meek reply was, “We only came here, is all. We never planned on staying out long.”
Marc said, “That’s usually when the worst things happen. When you run out and think you’ll be back in a few minutes. And you know why?”
Stuart shook his head, but I heard the line of reasoning before: “Because you’re telling your kids exactly how long you’ll be gone, basically. Kids want to be left alone. They don’t want to be supervised until they have a problem they can only use an adult for. The best parts of their daily lives are when their parents are out, and they’re home alone because that means they can go wild, running around the house, sneaking junk food, and playing a video game. And it’s better when you tell them it won’t be for long because that gives them a reference for how long you’ll be gone, so they’ll be rushing to play around.”
Zeke then added, “And if anyone’s watching the house, they’ll be waiting until at least one of the cars is gone before they do anything. No matter how long a trip is, even if you’re going to a store that’s a minute away to pick up a single loaf of bread, it’s still faster to break into a house. They can be in and out within a minute if they want to kidnap someone.”
I felt stupid when they said that, though I also realized that this wasn’t exactly an everyday occurrence. So I asked, “Has this happened to you before?”
“Several times, Mr. Millionaire. We don’t live in a big, fancy house like you do,” Marc snapped. “We’re not in a safe neighborhood like you!”
Stuart immediately got up and said, “You better stop talking your shit right now!” I pulled him back.
Zeke also pulled back his mate, and they quickly cooled off.
“I should’ve at least had Eric here,” I said as I sat down and set hands under my chin. “I let him go for the holidays.”
Neil asked, “How do you keep up with the whole place then?”
“I’d like to do it myself, personally. With Stuart as a helper. It’s tiring at times, but at least I know what I’m doing.”
; Stuart rubbed my back. “He’s probably the most eccentric millionaire out there.”
Tommy then said, “And that’s why you can’t move out. You’re making a life there.”
I looked at him, and he was looking at me too. “What do you mean?”
“You can’t move out.”
I stood. “You’ve read my mind, then.”
Scott unfolded his arms. “What? But how are you going the kids back then?”
Tommy and I spoke off of each other as we said, “If I move out...”
“Then that’s giving up to the Grovers.”
“And I’m not going to roll over.”
“And he’s not going to give back the kids anyway, no matter what he says.”
Stuart wrapped his hands around my arm. “But babe, what are we going to do? That’s what he asked!”
“Oh no, we’re going to look like we’re moving out. It’s nothing to put everything back. Just an afternoon or two is all.”
Neil blew out his cheeks. “That’s one intense afternoon, then.”
“Maybe. But it’s the only way. And it’s the game that Jack wants to play, right?”
“What are you going to do besides that?”
I rubbed my chin. “I know his number, but it’s going to be foolish to call now. So we’ll ‘move’ immediately, and then call them later on one of your phones so he can make a move: and that’s when we’ll attack.” I felt no shame when I said, “I assume that you don’t have internet-connected super phones?”
All eyes in the shop looked at me like I had just spoken fluent Chinese.
“Internet? On a phone?” Scott said. “What would you even need that for?”
I shrugged. “Today’s definitely making me reevaluate my priorities, but it’s actually convenient.”
There was another silence. I used it to think further about what I was planning. It was a foolish idea all around to do what we were going to do, but it was just as foolish to kidnap two children from a close-knit family of Unicorns. And really, aren’t most of the best ideas foolish?
Scott looked outside again as Jasper held him tightly. “If it gets Mikey back, I’ll do it.”
OXO
As soon as we broke, Stuart and I went back to the mansion with the other families following suit. I used Neil's phone to call Eric down to prepare a moving truck with Jay. I knew better than to say anything about our plan in the case that the hacker may have been wiretapping us.
Upon reaching the house, all of us Alphas went to work moving furniture out, and it was after carrying only two lounge sofas and the fridge that I realized what I had just put myself through. It was going to be painful and tedious, but it was what we needed to do. I also regretted that we'd probably be throwing away most of our cold food. Things were getting a tad tight around the wallet book ever since the internet stocks started tanking, and I was still thinking about my internet job even while stressing over Josh and Michael: would I still have that job, which paid so well on its own?
There was no rest for the next eight hours as we painstakingly moved everything out, leaving only what was bolted down or originally there to begin with.
While it was on my mind, I also called my client back in Seattle and asked him, "Might you list me as still living there for right now? Online, I mean."
He responded, "Why, what's wrong? You're thinking about moving back?"
"Yeah."
"I mean, it's kinda cozy here. Unless you want to be roomies."
"That's a good idea. I'll be there in a couple days. I'll be staying at a hotel for right now."
I heard the beep of an intersecting call, but when I hung up and tried taking that call, I saw that the other line had also hung up. This seemed odd to me, especially considering it was probably someone close to Neil or his business if they were calling at this hour until I looked at the phone's built-in caller ID on the screen.
That was the same number as Jack.
I immediately went to call it back, but I stopped. "Hey, Neil. Need your phone?" I handed it back to him.
"Why, what's wrong?"
"Check the caller ID."
He spent a second looking, and his face scrunched as he saw the odd number. "Who's this?"
"That's Jack."
"Jack?! Why is he calling me?"
I nodded. He followed.
Scott was in the other room, carrying a cardboard box. All of us were so sweaty that we had taken off our shirts to reveal our bare pecs and abs, and I knew that this was probably exciting the Omegas, but they were still off on their own, helping to bring stuff out of the mansion. Even Miranda pitched in. She couldn't pick up anything really big even though she wanted to, and one of the things she thought she could get was a big box that I marked as 'Fragile' in big black marks.
I saw her trying to pull it towards the elevator and said, "Hold on, there, Miranda. Leave this to Eric and me. This right here is real important."
"What's inside?"
"You remember that computer I showed to you?" She nodded. "This is it."
"Oh wow. It looked so much bigger on the desk."
"Computers aren't really that big. But you've got to be careful because otherwise, you might damage the hard drive on the inside. And I know you know what a hard drive is."
She hesitated when she said, "Yyyes." She may have had many masculine pursuits, but it was perfectly fine that she was unfamiliar with computers. I hadn't known many kids to be into computers in the fourteen years I'd been using them unless they were particularly nerdish geeks who were also into computer science.
Getting the computer out was something I wanted to do later, only because of how expensive it had been and particularly how valuable the data on it was (and increasingly unvaluable it was as the stock market kept tanking, goddammit!).
Finally, as we finished up, I took Neil's phone again and called the number.
It rang once and half-rang again before it picked up with an innocuous, "Hello?"
"I'm moving now."
"I knew I'd domesticate you."
I seethed and then said, "We'll be on our way in just a few minutes. But you'd better tell me where the kid is, or else I won't budge."
I had expected him to retort with some edgy badass statement about how he'd only 'pay up' once we finished, so I was completely ready to begin moving all of these things to the garage.
"You're moving now?!" I heard him swear as if he was talking to someone else beforehand. "You better tell me where you're going."
This startled me. I had expected him to know what I was doing, considering how omniscient he tried presenting himself earlier. But now that I knew that there there was a small kink in his armor, I had to ask if he wasn't instead holding up a single piece of metal and asking me to hit only it and nothing else.
This was a reasonable hypothesis, it turned out, because I told him, "I'll give you the address, and you can look it up online. You can even see my name listed there."
Almost immediately, he said, "You're trying to make fun of me? You're making fun of me, you clown?"
Stuart watched me, and I exchanged a passing glance at him, winking. This was easier than I thought.
"I've said nothing of the sort. All I need for you to do is look up this address..."
When I prepared to tell him my old place's street, I did so with the expectation that he'd pass it around the other Grover boys, and thus set a mental note that I'd need to get the new tenant out of there as soon as possible, as inconvenient as it might've been for him.
But then something happened that took me off guard.
A baby cried.
Jack immediately shouted, "Shut! Shut up! Shut that damn baby, now!"
And heard someone in the background shout back at him, but that was clearly a woman's voice. Was Jesse not with him anymore, or did he bring company? There were so many possibilities running through my mind until I felt Stuart lean in to bring his ear close to the speaker.
"What do you hear?" I whispered. He sh
ushed me.
The woman kept speaking in the background, and this time I heard a third distinct voice. That had to be Jesse— it sounded too much like what I remember his voice being.
Then Jack returned to the phone and said, "I'll get back to you. But you better listen here: I'm only making the trade when I know you've moved, and don't pull any of this fancy techno shit on me either. I don't need to hear any of that."
"I'll meet with you wherever you want. I'm just moving to Seattle is all, and you can move into the mansion whenever you want."
"Exactly. I knew I'd domesticate you!" That line didn't hit me with anywhere near as much impact as the first time because he sounded desperate repeating it.
I finished with, "You'd better not renege on the deal."
"STOP talking to yourself, Beta Bitch."
He hung up.
"He's at the Cherry Madison!"
Everyone looked at me, and I thought they were trying to bore holes in my face with some sort of laser vision I didn't know they had.
I repeated, "They're at the hotel I was staying at."
"How can you tell?" Frederick asked.
I bit my lip and sat down on one of the stone steps because the thought of being wrong weighed heavily on my heart. I still said, "Because did you hear that woman in the background? That was totally Lauren, the receptionist. I know her voice."
Frederick looked like I was talking Spanish, and I could see how he might think that. I was referring to a voice I grew to know over the course of maybe a week almost a year prior, and there was no guarantee that this was even the same person. There were a lot of variables. But I had to take that risk. My baby's life was at stake. And my intuition was telling me that this was the truth, so I had to listen. If there was any lead we could take, then why not the one every fiber of my being was telling me?
Zeke stepped up and said, "Are you sure?"
"1,000%," I lied. In most novels, characters like me are always so sure of themselves. They were the ones who were guided so strongly by their emotional intuitions that they never doubted themselves. I wish I could be that strong. I wish I could grab the tie of fate itself. But I couldn't, and it hurt me to imagine being wrong. No, I didn't want to be wrong. And my Cat intuition was definitely pointing me towards the hotel, so I genuinely should've been 1,000% sure.
A New Millennium's Omega Page 12
