Chapter 5 #3
I look closer at the board. The photo in the middle is of a woman in her thirties, maybe, with dark hair, and she’s pretty and professional-looking. She has the kind of smile people use at work events when they’re trying to look relaxed for a camera they didn’t ask for.
Red string stretches from her photo to a timeline, a list of dates, and the name of her employer off to one side. Then it stretches to what looks like a gang.
Something in me goes still, feeling like this is too close to home.
I lower my fork, glancing at Clio while she says, “So what are we missing?” Then she heads back and sits down next to me on the couch with her plate of food in hand.
I lean toward her. “Clio.”
“Mm?” Still not looking my way.
“Sounds very similar to me, or could have been me, you know,” I whisper. “And then disappears.”
“But you didn’t,” she murmurs back quietly. “This is a local case,” she explains, the same volume. “Nothing to do with you or your boss. We’d been on it for a couple of weeks before you got here.”
I hold on to her stare for a second.
“Different case,” she says simply.
I pick my fork back up, knowing I’m being paranoid because Clio would never tell a soul what I shared with her. Still, the case feels familiar because what if I hadn’t left LA? Would I be the woman who’d gone missing?
“The financial angle is where it gets interesting,” Priya says, drawing my attention as she flips back two pages in her notepad. “Three large deposits into the employer’s personal accounts in the eight months before Rebecca’s complaint about the unknown sources.”
I think about invoices from my days at the job I ran away from. Retainer payments and what they look like when there’s nothing behind them. The particular way certain accounts moved through Lumen, Daniel’s company, that I never questioned because I was doing my job, not his.
“Did you check against any consultancy payments?” I ask. “Retainer invoices, anything framed as professional services?”
Priya’s pen stops tapping. “What kinds of services?”
“The kinds that look legitimate on paper and don’t have a deliverable attached.” I spear a piece of pulled pork and try to sound like I’m talking theoretically. “It’s a clean way to move money. Dress it up as a brand retainer or a consultancy fee, and it’s just a line item.”
The room falls quiet. Aura writes something in her notebook. Priya underlines something on hers and then writes three things underneath it fast.
Malia is just nodding, studying me.
“You said you work in brand strategy,” Priya says.
“Worked,” I say. “Past tense.”
“Right.” She looks at me with those quick, assessing eyes, and I get the very specific feeling she’s already clocked that there’s more to that sentence and has filed it away for later. “Well. The retainer angle is useful.”
“I’m just observing,” I say, and everyone is eating now, staring at the corkboard.
Outside the open window, Oahu hums around us, warm and alive. I glance at the board again. Rebecca Hana. Missing for a year and no one knows where she went, which is awful.
But right now, Priya is balancing her pad on one knee while eating with the focus of a woman who could absolutely win a court case and a knife fight on the same afternoon, and Malia is somehow halfway through her meal, while Clio is hovering near the board like she wants to say something dramatic but is trying, for my benefit, to behave like a normal person.
Her sister heads back for a second helping of food.
“So,” Priya says, staring at me now. “How long have you known Clio?”
I smile sweetly. “Since we were in high school.”
Priya nods like she’s confirming a theory. “Ah. So you knew her before she became like this.”
“I was always like this,” Clio adds.
“Sort of,” I tell her. “You used to be less organized about it, but yes, she’s always been like this. She used to make me watch murder mysteries with her, and within ten minutes, she’d pick the killer. It was impressive.”
Malia points at me. “She still does that. It’s incredibly insightful.”
Clio puts a hand to her chest and grins. “Aww. Thanks, babe.”
“But it can be deeply annoying,” I say. “You’d ruin the whole thing by being right.”
“I prefer to think of it as being an intellectual detective.”
I take another bite, trying not to smile too much, because the dangerous thing about this apartment is how easy it is to settle into it. How fast these people are starting to feel familiar. Maybe that part isn’t so surprising.
Clio and I go all the way back to high school in Whispering Grove, which feels like three lifetimes ago now.
Chris was always hovering somewhere nearby back then, keeping half an eye on me, and Clio was this bright, lonely girl with no real friends and a talent for getting under the skin of every bully in school just by continuing to exist. We found each other somewhere in the middle of all that.
Two girls getting picked on, learning fast how to laugh anyway.
We’ve had each other’s backs ever since.
Funnily enough, her sister never had issues at school. That might say a lot about Clio and me.
Their parents moved to Hawaii after Aura graduated high school, and then she and Aura followed. We kept in touch through all of it. Calls. Messages. And now her parents are retired, Clio’s built this beautiful, full life for herself here, and I can’t help admiring it a little.
Okay, more than a little.
Compared to her, my life feels more like patchwork. Bits and pieces I stitched together as I went, hoping they’d eventually turn into something that made me appear grown-up.
Priya glances my way. “So you’re from Whispering Grove. Why would anyone live somewhere it snows on purpose?”
I laugh. “That’s such a Hawaii question.”
“It’s a valid question,” she says. “The air hurting your face shouldn’t be seasonal.”
Malia leans in the armchair, going back to knitting. “She’s right. Weather shouldn’t be aggressive.”
“See, now I’m being outnumbered by people who think climate is a personal choice.”
Priya finally sets her legal pad aside. “To be fair, you chose to leave the snow and come here, so your argument is weak.”
“True,” I admit, then I glance between them. “So what do you two do when you’re not solving mysteries and emotionally ambushing guests?”
Clio brightens immediately. “Yes. Good. Interview round.”
Malia gives me a look over the top of her knitting. “I spend an unreasonable amount of time yelling at tourists in my head.”
I grin. “Only in your head?”
“Mostly. I used to work full-time at the marine institute, which meant a lot of long days, grant applications, boat time, and convincing people that coral reefs are more important than whatever nonsense they were emailing me about. Now I do the occasional consult when they need me, go out on the water when I feel like it, as it’s really peaceful out there.
I’m also an Omega who has never found her mate.
I had a few Alphas along the way, but nothing ever stuck, you know? ”
I nod. “Yep, I get that so much.”
She shrugs. “I enjoy the freedom, to be honest.”
“And, Priya?” I ask.
She wipes her hands neatly. “I work too much,” she admits. “That’s the short answer.”
“The long answer,” Clio cuts in, “is that she likes being terrifying.”
“I like being prepared,” Priya says. “There’s a difference.”
“There are many stories,” Malia butts in.
Priya shakes her head. “I’m a Beta who grew up with three brothers, two very dramatic parents, and a family business that somehow made every conversation feel like a hostage negotiation. Being organized became a coping mechanism.”
“That explains a lot,” I state.
“It tells you everything,” Clio replies.
Priya ignores her. “Now I spend my weekdays fixing other people’s disasters in billable increments, and my spare time pretending I’m going to relax before accidentally reorganizing a drawer or reading case law for enjoyment.”
I blink. “For enjoyment?”
She lifts one shoulder.
“You also bake when you’re anxious,” Aura adds.
“Bread,” she says. “Mostly. And cardamom things. My grandmother taught me.” That softens her whole face for a second, just enough to catch.
“Oh, I love that,” I say.
Priya smiles then, smaller and more real. “It’s the only thing I do slowly.”
“You say that like you’re hosting a panel,” Aura says.
She’s quieter than Clio, but that doesn’t make her softer.
She has a calm, razor-neat way of moving through a room as though she already knows where everything belongs, including people.
She told me she got a new job at a little gaming store in town called Purr-a-Dice, all local card and board games place, collector items, and open play nights.
She’s an Omega too, like Clio, and for now, they’ve built this life together, having each other’s backs until something more comes along.
Though, she did casually mention that she’s thinking about trying one of those Alpha and Omega matching services.
For a second, I think of Chris. Of the way he sounds when he talks about his pack now. His Omega and life in general. That quiet certainty in him, like he found the place he was always meant to land. Family not by blood alone, but by choice and love.
I always thought maybe I, too, would have that one day.
A pack of my own, people who felt like home, but life has a way of taking my neat little plans, laughing in my face, and setting them on fire.
Still, sitting here with this group talking over each other and smiling, I feel a strange ache low in my chest. Not the bad kind, but something quieter.
Something that feels a little too much like wanting.