I watch both of them and feel, with the particular sensation of a man watching an avalanche he cannot outrun, that this is going to be a significant conversation.
"Hi," Jennifer says. Her voice is careful. The careful she does when she has not yet decided how to play something. "I don't think we've met."
"We haven't," Chiara says. Her voice is the opposite of careful. "I'm Chiara."
Jennifer waits.
"Their omega," Chiara says.
"Right," Jennifer says. "Well." Her eyes move across all of us. "You can have them."
Chiara stares at her.
"I have had them," Chiara says, her voice going thin and sharp. "For five years. Before you arrived here with your scent and your—"
"My what," Jennifer says, and the pleasantness has left her voice entirely.
"Chiara," Tomas says.
But the tears are already coming. Jennifer can hardly hold herself upright in the doorway, one hand white-knuckled on the frame, and I know better than to cross the room right now. She wouldn't want that. She would hate that more than anything.
"You have an omega," she says, looking directly at me. "You had one all along and you said nothing."
"No," I say.
"Yes," Chiara says, with a smile I want to remove from her face permanently.
Jennifer pushes off the doorframe. "You're liars. All three of you. I want off this island." She looks at Tomas. "Tonight. I want a boat tonight."
"Jennifer." Tomas steps forward. "I found your taco truck."
She stops.
"So you want a medal?" Her voice breaks on the edge of it. "You're rich. You can find anything you want. You could have found me three months ago."
The hallway goes very quiet.
"Marcos called an hour ago," Tomas says, steady. "I know where your truck is." He holds her gaze. "Some bastard knocked you up and walked away and left you to manage all of it alone, and what we did in Vegas was wrong. I want you to trust us."
"The baby is not your problem," she says through her teeth. "I'm going to my sister. In the morning. I want a boat first thing."
"There's a storm coming in," I say. "It's been building since this afternoon. The crossing won't be safe until it passes. Two days, maybe three." I hold her gaze. "When it clears, I'll arrange the boat personally and get you wherever you need to go."
"Fine," she says. Flat. Final. Completely exhausted. "Two days." She looks at all of us in sequence, me, then Santos, thenTomas, and last of all Chiara, with an expression that delivers her full verdict without requiring another word.
"And stay away from me," she says. "All of you."
She goes back into the guest room and closes the door. Not slammed. That would take energy she doesn't have. Just shut, firmly, with the specific click of a lock being turned that lands in the hallway louder than anything she said in the last ten minutes.
We could go after her.
But we have a problem standing in our hallway that Tomas should have dealt with the moment he found her at the bay, and that gets handled first.
21
JENNIFER
My head feels a lot better than it did when I was in pre-heat, even if my mind is racing all over the place. I lie on the bed with no intention of getting up, and then I start going through the craziness of the last couple of days with Anna. I know talking to her will make me feel better, and in some ways I wish I never came here, but just headed straight to Cedar Ridge. Fate really has a crazy way of messing with my mind.