by Aiden Bates
“Yeah, so…” I glanced behind me, seeing the door of the police station open and close again. A figure stood out on the steps, unmoving. Tall as a fridge and just as wide. “It’s a little late for that.”
27
Nick
My laptop was running, my research tabs open…
But for the life of me, I couldn’t focus on anything beyond all my worries and fears for the big, stupid idiot in a black Mustang and a leather jacket who’d turned my life upside down since Josh King’s death.
Harper was a professional. I’d seen enough of his work to know it was true. No one could have dug as far as he and I had into this case otherwise. Harper’s own brother’s murder was proof enough of that. And when it came to danger, Harper had the scars to prove his mettle. Bullet wounds. Knife slashes. Ragged, twisted bits of flesh, raised and tough and white pale against his sun-kissed Miami skin. If he didn’t have what it took to do the job he’d set out on, he wouldn’t have been able to survive half the things he’d been through.
Instead, he’d survived every one of them. And he’d promised me that he’d survive this as well.
Still, it was no use working when I had so much nervousness buzzing around in my head. It wasn’t that I didn’t think Harper could handle himself. Quite the opposite, really. What made my stomach turn was the people he was up against. The local police, for one. Beyond that, who even knew what these people were capable of? When it came to Josh, they hadn’t even hesitated at the thought of murder. An unarmed journalist—one with Reggie King’s defense training, sure, but with no outlet to practice it—and they’d knifed him in an alleyway. Left him for dead.
What kind of nightmarish bastards would they unmuzzle and send out now that they knew that Harper was their next target? And if they got to him…
I swallowed hard, checking my phone again. No missed calls. No missed texts.
If they got to Harper, what would happen to me?
I closed my eyes, suddenly incredibly grateful for the safety that Ernesto Alvarez and the King Private Security boys were offering me. As much as I’d wanted to go with Harper, the way I froze at the door of my suite when I heard Michael and Gabe let out a roaring shout from downstairs told me that I would’ve been more of a liability for Harper than an asset when it came to field work. Daring to poke my head downstairs, I discovered that my bodyguards were only watching football on the office big screen. The Carolina Panthers had just scored.
I felt my stomach rumble as the smell of popcorn hit me from the floor below. I hadn’t eaten dinner yet—and Ernesto had given me free rein of the kitchen. If I wasn’t going to work, food wasn’t a bad option.
“Something salty?” I asked down toward my belly, rubbing my palm against it in a little circle motion.
Another grumble. It wasn’t really an answer, but it was close enough.
“Something salty it is, then,” I agreed.
Popcorn for dinner didn’t seem like all that healthy of an option for an expectant Omega, but I found some tortilla chips in the pantry and the fresh ingredients for a salsa in the fridge. Michael and Gabe didn’t pay me any mind as I hauled the produce out onto a cutting board, but if I was making nachos, it seemed rude not to offer.
“Are you guys, um hungry?” I raised an avocado in demonstration. “I’m whipping up some guac. Salsa, too.”
“Already ate,” Michael grunted, barely even glancing away from the screen.
Gabe turned toward me with a friendly smile. “We could run out and grab you something if you’d rather. Sunaco’s always open.”
I shook my head, forcing a grin in return. “No thanks. I think Harper’s fed me enough Sunaco snack foods for one lifetime. Besides—I probably need the distraction.”
“All right.” Gabe turned back to his game. “Holler if you need anything.”
Mashed avocado. Garlic crushed beneath the garlic press. Salt, pepper, half a red onion and a squeeze of lime. I added a minced jalapeno for spiciness—my secret ingredient—and taste-tested the mixture on a chip.
Closing my eyes, I let out a little moan. Rich, creamy, salty and perfect. Exactly what I needed.
I was just chopping up the tomatoes for salsa when I heard a phone ring. My eyes immediately leapt to my own on the counter—but it remained silent. With another grunt, Michael rose from the couch and trudged wordlessly out the door.
“Probably his mom,” Gabe called out to me in explanation. “Won’t admit it, but he’s a mama’s boy and always has been. We give him shit about it all the time.”
“That’s…sweet,” I said, forcing another smile. A big, grinning linebacker and a giant mama’s boy. Harper certainly couldn’t have left me with more affable bodyguards. That thought put my mind at ease a little.
I just wished that Harper had two more of the same to watch his six as he took on the Fort Greene police, Carver Media, and worse.
Cheese bubbled away on the tortilla chips in the oven while I mixed up the final ingredients of the salsa. A little fresh cilantro, and I had myself a respectably healthy dinner—flush with salt. Just what the baby ordered—although I wasn’t entirely sure Dr. Lemon would’ve approved. The man would’ve had me eating nothing but apples and kale if he’d had his way, I was sure.
Grabbing up the plate I’d made for myself, I cast a final glance toward the couch before heading up to my room. Michael was still out gabbing with his mom, but Gabe was still around to watch the door while I ate. Miraculously, the Panthers were up by two goals. I considered hanging out to watch the end of the game for a moment, but then thought better of it. Maybe it was a little antisocial, eating in my room—but my bodyguards didn’t seem all that keen on chit-chatting with me, and I didn’t need anyone seeing the way I was going to devour the entire plate of nachos I’d served up for myself.
Some things were best done behind closed doors, and closed doors alone.
As I munched away on my chips and melted cheese, I dragged my laptop back toward me on the bed and went through my tabs again. I’d whipped up quite the collection of items of interest for Josh’s case. Some were from Josh’s own archives. I’d only added to their fold—Carver Media’s website, their list of subsidiaries, and a couple dozen other news articles that had turned up when I’d run the company’s name through Google. I scrolled through them one by one, trying to better understand what kind of people Harper and I were dealing with here—at least, when it came to their public face.
I frowned as I read through one of the final articles I’d clicked on. Weird—I didn’t know how I hadn’t gone over this in more detail before. The piece was from a society page, just detailing donations to various Super PACs. Under Carver Media’s listing, there was something fishy, though.
Americans for Family Futures. It sounded wholesome enough—at least, until I Googled their name.
Will you fight for what’s yours by right? their website banner read. Not too sinister, I supposed—but then I read a little further. There was a blog post a little way down the page titled The state of the American family—what you can do to keep YOURS in line. When I clicked on it, I could taste my mouthful of chips souring in my mouth.
“Breeders” seemed to be these people’s preferred way to describe Alpha-Omega couples who were doing their patriotic duty for this great nation. They had another word for Omegas who were shirking the so-called joys of childbirth: “Outliers.” The first blog post seemed to be a step-by-step Alpha’s instruction guide to being the man his family deserved—which, as far as I could tell, mostly meant keeping his Omega docile, humble, modest…and pregnant.
“Bunch of fucking weirdos,” I muttered to myself, clicking through a few more blog posts.
Each one I opened only turned my stomach a little more.
These people didn’t come right out and say it, but it was pushed so heavily between the lines that they might as well have. They saw Omegas as second-class citizens. Alphas as the natural leaders of the nation and Omegas as subservient baby factories,
only worth the children they could provide their strong, dominant husbands. As for Omega-Omega and Omega-Female couples—forget about it. There was page after page of ranting about the evils of preventing superior alpha offspring to enter the gene pool. Sure, Alpha-less couples couldn’t conceive Alpha children—but up until now, I’d never seen anything wrong with that.
I was just about to make myself sick by reading Taming your Omega: How to mold a partner who is loving, fertile and obedient when I heard a dull thud sound from downstairs.
I froze again, waiting to hear the cheer for another touchdown—or the swearing that I expected would mean we’d lost our lead.
It didn’t come.
Fuck. Maybe Gabe had knocked something over in a victory dance. Or maybe there was something wrong with Michael’s mother—maybe he’d come in angry and slammed the door.
Either way, it made me nervous enough that I figured I might as well go check it out. Closing my laptop, I tiptoed out of my room and down the stairs.
No one in the kitchen.
I swallowed hard.
No one on the couch.
Creeping a little closer, I rounded the couch to find the last thing I wanted to see: Gabe’s big, burly body, unconscious on the floor. I dropped to my knees immediately, checking for a pulse.
No sooner had my fingertips pressed against Gabe’s thick, muscled neck than I felt something cold touch the back of mine.
“Not a word, sweetheart.” I could hear Michael’s voice behind me—calm, but gravelly. Measured and rough. I hated the way that word sounded from his lips: sweetheart. It had sounded so much better when Harper had called me that. From Michael, it sounded like a threat.
And if he was jamming what I thought he was against my spine, it probably was.
“I need you to be very quiet. Very cooperative. Think you can do that?”
I hesitated. Jesus—he’d just said “not a word”…
There was an annoyed grunt from Michael, then he jammed the gun a little harder against my skin. Hard enough, I imagined it would leave a little pistol-tip-shaped mark—at least, unless he decided to pull the trigger.
“Nod if you understand.”
Slowly, I nodded.
There was nothing else I could do.
“Good.” A pause. Like an actor trying to remember his lines. “Come with me, then. You and your boyfriend…”
He nudged the gun upward, motioning for me to rise. I did, as carefully as I could. A glance down at Gabe made it hard to tell if he was merely unconscious, or already dead.
“You’ve finally pissed off the wrong people.”
28
Harper
I didn’t have to see who was following me to know I was being followed. Not anymore. In my years as a PI, I’d distilled the sensation down to something beyond science. A sixth sense for movements in the shadows, almost imperceptible to the human eye. An instinctive knowing when the car behind me was taking too many of the same turns with just a little too much hesitation. A cold, firm feeling on the back of my neck that told me someone’s eyes were on me, whether they wanted me to know yet or not.
As I hung up the phone and headed back toward the Mustang, it all washed over me at once. The heaviness of someone else’s watchful gaze. The echoing tap of footsteps measured out to match my own, step for step. Up in front of the doors of the police station, Ansel Thomas’ figure held its ground. But someone else was tracking me, waiting with bated breath to see what my next move would be. I could taste it on my tongue, cool and metallic and sweet. Feel it pounding away in my ears. Ringing true in my bones.
Just like I’d planned.
I moved past the Mustang without approaching it. Didn’t even give it a glance. To look at it would be to give Ernesto’s position away in an instant—the last thing I wanted. If Ernesto was as keen-eyed as he’d always been, he’d make a note of that and make his own plans around it. There wasn’t a man in Fort Greene with instincts more similar to my own.
Ideally, they’d keep on my trail. Keep hold of my scent on the wind. Hunt me like the wolves they were. I tucked my hands in my pockets, hunching my shoulders and keeping my head down. They didn’t need to know that I knew I was being watched. Situation management at this point was intrinsic. The second that they knew that I knew that they were on my tail, all bets were off.
I knew how this game was being played up to a point. The second I’d left his office, Sorenson had made a call. Local boys. Police, maybe. Maybe someone else. They’d been tracking me from the moment I’d left the police station, waiting to see if I met up with a partner. Keeping tabs on where I headed now that I’d blown my load.
What they didn’t know was that, if Ernesto was worth his salt, he’d wait until he saw who was tailing me—then, he’d be tailing them, too. He was the ace in my sleeve, a piece of the puzzle they hadn’t figured on.
As I headed east through Arlington then down through King’s Place, I counted the streetlights to keep my head clear and waited to hear the roar of an engine on my six. If they wanted a target, they had one. Might as well have traded my leather jacket for a big, orange reflective vest.
I walked past KPS without so much as a pause. As much as I would’ve loved to see Nick in that moment, I couldn’t lead my new buddies right back to the place where I’d left him to keep him safe. The building was quiet. Lights on, but no more Latin music.
Good. My heart might’ve been beating away at the inside of my chest, but at least if it was quiet, it probably meant Nick was getting some sleep. The idea of his lips softly parted, eyelids shut and lashes flickering softly as he was whisked away in some pleasant dream, calmed my pulse a little bit.
Nick was safe. That was all that mattered.
I was nearly all the way out to the Sunaco before my watchers finally made their move. An SUV roared past, tires squealing to a halt as the front end of the vehicle popped up on the sidewalk, blocking my path.
Perfect. All according to plan.
My gun was at my hip. Safety off. Bullet chambered. As two men came out of the vehicle, dark suits, dark shirts, dark ties, I let my fingers dig a little deeper in my right pocket, wiggling their way through the hole in the bottom. They brushed against the grip of my pistol, the movement shielded from view by my jacket’s leather.
One wrong move, and I’d have my gun in hand before they even knew what hit them. Just like I’d promised Nick—I was being careful. Especially now that I could see these fuckers for myself.
It was one of Dad’s oldest adages. One that had always proved to ring true:
Never trust a bastard in a suit.
Leftie and Rightie, I named the two. They might as well have been identical otherwise. Nondescript faces. Hands all the size of Iowa State Fair pork tenderloins. Leftie was the cool, calm, collected one. A professional. Took pride in his work. I knew with a glance at his gait that he wouldn’t even go for his gun until I stopped moving for long enough that he could get a clean, clear shot.
Rightie was the one I had to worry about. His hand twitched for his gun almost immediately, a telltale motion that left me with my weapon in hand half a second before he’d wrapped his big, thick fingers around his.
I shot first. Always did. I’d been in enough tussles like this to know that two men in suits from a black SUV was pretty fucking cut and dry. Rightie’s pistol dropped from his hand in an instant. Bang. A grunt and a hiss told me I’d only grazed him with my bullet. Nothing more.
Problem: now I had two things to worry about. Keeping Leftie from putting a bullet of his own between my eyes had forced me forward just enough, he didn’t need to aim so good. Meanwhile, Rightie, shoulders shrugging with a furious growl, had decided to go brawler on me—and I was close enough, I was just in range.
I set off another round to make Leftie dance as Rightie barreled toward me. The second before his shoulder hit my chest, I let my knees give out.
A dark, pleased chuckle escaped Rightie’s lips as we connected. He thought he had me
. He’d thought wrong. He’d geared up his momentum for a head-on collision. Muscled up the kind of force that would take a man like me to the ground. But with my change in stance, he was met with less resistance than he’d planned for. I used it to my advantage, using the slip of his shoulder up toward my collarbone as leverage. We collapsed toward the sidewalk together, but instead of me taking the brunt of his tumble, I was able to roll our bodies so he took the full weight of mine.
Problem: now I had Leftie on my back, pistol aimed, ready to fire. Solution: Rightie’s big, meaty fists were on my lapels. He wanted to be on top. Always a generous lover, I gave it to him. If Leftie wanted to shoot me, he’d have to get his bullet through his partner’s massive frame first.
Problem: Rightie immediately repositioned his ham hocks to my throat. Choking fetish—kinky. Another obvious solution, thankfully. I raised my gun toward his cheek, firing it off just to the side of his head. Gunshots were a hell of a thing. Loud. Disruptive. Especially right next to a healthy serving of cauliflower ear.
If I’d wanted to, I could’ve ended it there. Rightie roared in pain, clawing at his busted eardrum and reeling back in pain just enough, I could’ve put another bullet through his face. But…
Problem.
Leftie was positioned over me now, shoving something in my face. There was a flash of light so bright, I had no choice but to clench my eyes shut.
I kept them that way, waiting for Leftie’s bullet to follow.
But after a beat, then another, then another…
It didn’t come.
I opened my eyes, expecting to see a gun jammed up half an inch away from my teeth. Instead, I saw a cell phone. Its screen light illuminated the space around us, blinding enough that it took me a second to realize what was staring back at me.
A picture. Nick Paulson’s face looked down at me, proud and defiant and beneath that, a tempering of fear in his eyes. His handsome nose was swollen and bloody. His lower lip, so perfect for sucking on and biting into, had been cleaved into two with someone’s fist.
