“Don’t care,” Lyle mutters. “I stopped caring about legalities when the police dispatcher refused to help and someone cloned my phone to lure Rosa out. Do it. Nico, take this. Drink some water.”
My alpha’s trembling fingers wrap around the bottle handed to him, and I twist off the cap so he can take a tentative sip before I return to my computer.
“Do you feel everything Rosa does?” Nina asks, eyes wide. They tried to keep her home, but she threw a fit. Rosa made an impression on her, and she refuses to stay out of things.
That’s the thing. My soul match has a way of impressing people without realizing it.
“Yes. I can feel the emotions, but Rosa processes pain at a different level than most people. I could be feeling a fourth of the pain she is in,” Nico growls, wincing. “Sorry. I bet I looked insane while I couldn’t breathe earlier, but that’s because neither could Rosalia.”
“Don’t be,” Riley murmurs for her. “She knows you’re not growling at her. I have to say, I’m concerned about you.”
“I’m not going to be locked up like a goddamned dog,” he snarls. “I just need her. We need to find Rosa.”
“Andy!” Easton says loudly, pulling our attention as he begins to pace the backyard. “Hey, I need a favor.”
Nico spits one last time into the bucket after rinsing his mouth out, while Silas silently takes it from him to clean it out.
Thankfully, the October breeze pulls the sour scent away from us as it cleanses the area. I can’t enjoy anything about the impending fall weather without Rosa.
I doubt I’ll be able to appreciate anything beautiful again without her.
“I can do that,” Dario says helplessly, but Silas is already walking toward the hose around the side of the house without a word. It’s just as well, Dario doesn’t like to be around puke as it is. The last thing I need is to hear him gag. Nico pops a piece of gum into his mouth, leaning forward to close his eyes and rub his temples as he tries to lessen its pounding.
I can feel residual pain through our bond, and know it’s definitely thumping. Dario hands over pain medication to help him, and Nico swallows it down in an effort not to sink into the pain.
“This person is getting help,” I rasp softly as I continue to come up empty handed. My quiet words still command attention, and Verona’s gaze raises to meet mine. Her blue eyes are rimmed with red along with a light brown, signaling both that she's bonded to two omegas, as well as that she just stopped crying.
I have her scrolling through on-line classified ads because Lyle said human traffickers have begun selling people through there. It’s all written in code, but it’s worth a search and gives her a distraction.
Everyone needs to feel needed, especially when we’re stuck in a holding pattern.
My fingers move over the keyboard as Easton puts his phone on speaker as he prowls, and Abbott raises his hand in the air so we’ll all be quiet.
“Andy, you’re not making sense,” Easton coos, making my eyes widen. The words are sweet and sultry, but I’ve never heard that tone before from him. Silas glares at Easton as he returns to his seat, and I realize Easton is setting up a trap.
Shiloh gets up and comes over to sit beside me as I open the dark web server, convinced that if Avery is behind this then she is going to want to sell Rosa to someone. It sounds like one last ‘fuck you’ from her father, especially since the man we found dead on the ground was a guard that escaped the night of the charity event.
Abbott had to call someone for a body retrieval since the police are completely ignoring our existence. Hopefully, Easton’s honeyed tones can change that narrative.
“I said no,” the man on the phone growls.
“Fine, fine, Andy. I have your sex tape still from your bachelor party. I know you’re trying to run for office soon, and it sure would be a shame for that to come out,” Easton drawls. “What was her name again? Katrina? Suzy? Have you been to the Pussy Cat Parlor recently to see her?”
Lyle shakes his head and covers his face, because this is not only petty, but also blackmail. Silas shoves Lyle with a grin, clearly enjoying the moment. If you play with fire with the people Pack Mayor cares about, you’re going to get burned.
“You son of a bitch! Is this kidnapped girl really that important? She’s some mafia brat who’s probably better off sold and killed. All I keep hearing about is how her squabble with her father is causing the city a headache,”Andy grumbles. “Bodies keep popping up everywhere, and we can’t make any arrests because the police commissioner doesn’t want to deal with it.”
“The police commissioner was letting her clean the mess up herself,” Easton says, revealing a new piece of information to me. “She wants to live in peace with her pack, Andy. That’s what she was doing when she was kidnapped. How fucked is that?
“I’m not backing down, and I have the video queued up to all of my favorite news channels. Tell me, do you want the news of your sex tape broken to the public in a classy or raunchy way? Dealer’s choice, Andy.”
“Are you fucking her?”Andy asks. Growls fill the area, and he gulps loudly. It’s not even just our pack that’s offended by this, but the entirety of the backyard.
Carter rolls his eyes in disgust, while one of his pack members shakes his head in annoyance. It’s pretty bad when a fellow police officer also thinks you’re a piece of shit.
“I forget that there’s a line for what I can get away with,” Andy grumbles. “You really want me to canvas that warehouse district? That’s a five block radius.”
Yeah,pendejo, we know. Since the signal disappeared, there’s no way to know how far she traveled after that. Worst case scenario, she could be anywhere, but signal blockers don’t work like that. Someone would have to disable the device completely or jam it, and the odds that they would know there’s a tracker in Rosa’s ring is negligible.