Chapter 9
NINE
Jez
I BARED MY TEETH AT the alpha in the doorway and crab-crawled inelegantly backwards into the nearest corner. With jerky movements, I yanked the belt free of my wrists and balled it up in my hand.
It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was the only one I had. Though it would have been a better one if not for the distracting hint of yeast and orange peel that had worked its way into the stronger scent of leather.
“I have nothing to say to you,” I snarled at Gage. “Stay the fuck away from me!”
Tony had backed up until he was leaning against the wall opposite the bed. One hand was clasped over his mouth, like he was trying to hold back words or tears or both.
Gage looked between us like we were straining his brain cells to the breaking point.
“Okay,” he said. “So, you tried to kill Knox because you thought he was leading a pack of traffickers. As... what? Revenge because your dad sold you?”
I clamped my lips shut and glared at him.
When it became obvious that I wasn’t going to answer such a stupid fucking question, he continued, “But we figured someone had sent you to get back at Knox for intercepting their latest shipment of omegas and getting them to safety. Because we’re not trafficking the kids. We’re rescuing them.”
“Yeah,” I sneered, remembering the gaunt, bruised faces. “Sure you are.”
“Wait, what?” Tony said, his hand falling to hang at his side. “You’re doing what?”
Gage looked at him, a serious expression digging furrows his big, dumb face. “It’s what Knox does with his money. He’s got a... personal interest, I guess you’d say.”
“Heath just said that you help people in trouble sometimes,” Tony said weakly. “He made it sound like no big deal.”
I didn’t want to listen to this, even if it maybe meant that Tony was gullible rather than evil.
“Well,” Gage was saying. “I don’t think he really wanted you to get dragged into it, is the thing.” His eyes pinned me again. “Gets a bit dangerous sometimes.”
I lost the fight to hold that alpha gaze, but I was damned if I’d show throat no matter how my neck muscles twitched and spasmed.
“Funny how the bad guys always try to make out like they’re the good guys,” I growled. “Face it, Tony—you’ve been played. What did they have you doing, besides buying toothpaste and underwear for their prisoners?”
But Tony was still gaping at us.
Gage answered instead. “Heath started payin’ him for any info he heard on the street about the mob families.”
“But... he only ever asked about stuff related to the trade unions and the import-export business,” Tony said blankly. “He never asked me to look into sex trafficking.”
“Course he didn’t,” Gage told him severely. “Because that’s the kind of shit that’ll get you killed.” His lips twisted unhappily. “Just ask Knox.”
“Or,” I grated out, “he didn’t ask you because he didn’t want you to find out what kind of assholes you were working for.”
A horrible, niggling voice in my head whispered, ‘Unless Adrian was the one who lied, so you wouldn’t find out what kind of assholes you were working for.’
I quashed it. Adrian was an omega. No way in hell was I taking the word of an alpha over his. Alphas couldn’t be trusted. My entire life was a case study of that fact.
But Gage wasn’t finished.
“The kids you saw downstairs were intercepted on their way to the Vozzina gang,” he said, addressing me directly again. “We’ve been working on the assumption that they’re the ones who sent you. But if we’re wrong and there’s someone else after us, we need to know that.”
Tony looked at me with a tinge of desperation in his face. “Jez, what if they lied to you about who you were going after? What if you’re a dupe?”
The way the words echoed that unwanted little voice in the back of my head made my teeth ache.
“I’m not,” I said past a clenched jaw.
Because if I was a dupe, that would mean I’d just...
No.
The fact that I was scent-matched to this pack was nothing more than another example of nature’s mindless cruelty. No matter how my instincts screamed, it had no bearing on whether they were good people or not. It had no bearing on whether or not they deserved to be punished.
Maybe it was the reason I was locked up in the pack’s crazy-woman attic instead of in a jail cell. That was all. And the jury was still out on whether my snap decision not to throw myself on the tender mercies of the cops would be a good one or a terrible one.
In fact, right now it was leaning heavily toward terrible.
“Where do you send the kids?” Tony asked, out of the blue. “Once you get them away from the gangs, where do they go?”
Where do you think they go, I wanted to ask. Instead, I waited, curious to see if Gage had another lie at the ready.
The big alpha hesitated, drawing in breath to speak, only to hold it for a couple of seconds.
“I don’t think I should tell you that,” he said after a pause. “It’s not safe information for you to have.”
I scoffed, shoving all of my gathering doubts into a shoebox, and stuffing that box away in a deep hole.
“Convenient,” I said, laying on the sarcasm with a trowel.
Gage didn’t react. “Not safe for Tony. Definitely not safe for them, if the Vozzina pack sent you.”
“Oh,” I said, playing up innocence. “So, you’re going to let me go, then?”
“Fuck, no,” Gage said. “Do I look stupid?”
Frustration and rage welled up in me.
“You look like a cartoon version of Lennie Small, with your stupid five-o’clock shadow, and your stupid muscles, and your stupid pheromones!” I shouted at him, levering myself to my feet on shaking legs to point an accusing finger at his chest.
Unfortunately, that was the moment my body decided to remind me that I hadn’t eaten or slept in far too long, by the simple expedient of fainting. The last thing I was aware of was two figures rushing toward me as gray fog swirled in to block out my vision.
I awoke on a comfortable mattress in a warm room, with the lingering scent of baking bread teasing the back of my throat.
My head was pounding a staccato rhythm in time with my heartbeat, and my mouth was dry. I groaned, some instinct warning me that I’d be a lot happier if I wasn’t awake.
“Jez?”
The familiar voice prodded at my consciousness.
Had I fallen asleep at Tony’s place? A little jolt of adrenaline nudged me further toward awareness.
I’d promised myself I’d never do that...
never become a pity case because I was incapable of performing the basic functions of adulthood, like holding down a job and renting an apartment.
I blinked gritty eyes open, staring at the slanted ceiling above me until it came properly into focus.
The slanted ceiling. The slanted attic ceiling.
I bolted into a sitting position, wallowing in a messy nest of pillows and blankets.
“Whoa!” Tony said. “It’s okay—”
He seemed to catch himself. “Well, it’s not okay. But you’re safe.”
Christ. I’d passed out from exhaustion and low blood sugar. But it was all right. I was awake now, and it had probably only been a few minutes, if that.
“You’ve been asleep for thirteen hours,” Tony said.
What?
“You’ve gotta eat something, Jez,” he went on. “Gage says you haven’t since he brought you here.”
With those words, my stomach reminded me of every single one of those hours.
“Yeah?” I shot back. “Well, excuse me if I’m not in a hurry to be drugged so they can do god-knows-what to me!”
“They’re not—” He paused, shaking his head as though bewildered. “They’re not drugging your food, Jez!” He looked around, and picked up an unopened can of soda from the dresser. “Here, look.”
He popped the top and chugged several deep swallows, then thrust it at me.
“Drink it, for god’s sake.”
I took it hesitantly, my throat convulsing with need for the carbonated, sugary goodness. Was I missing something here? Was it a trick, and I just couldn’t see the catch?
But why would Tony let himself be drugged for me? There was no reason he’d do that. And the can had been sealed, right? Even if they’d injected something into it with a needle, the gas would have escaped, leaving it flat, not bubbling.
I cautiously lifted it to my lips. After a couple of sips, my thirst took over and I was swilling it, tipping the can up and up until it was empty. My stomach felt bloated once I was finished, and I let out an inelegant belch.
“That’s my girl,” Tony said... but the words were a monotone, lacking the teasing lilt they once would have held. “Okay. Chips next. Then the sandwich.”
There was a plate of food sitting on the dresser as well, similar to all the other plates of food Gage had delivered and removed later, untouched.
Giving in to my growing desperation for nourishment, I accepted the bag of chips after Tony tore it open and ate a few.
Same with the sandwich. He tore it in half and took a seemingly random bite out of each part.
I took the halves and devoured them, not even tasting whatever was on them.
“Better?” Tony asked when I was finished.
I curled into a ball, hugging my knees to my chest on the bed. Someone had arranged all the nesting materials I’d been ignoring, making a cozy little haven in the mostly bare room.
“My stomach hurts now,” I said mulishly—because it did.
“Yeah, no kidding,” Tony muttered.
“But I guess if they were going to do something while I was unconscious, they would have done it,” I admitted. Then, “Was I really asleep for thirteen hours?”
“Yeah,” Tony said. “And before you get some grand idea that I was glued to your bedside the whole time, I wasn’t. I went home to sleep and came back.”
“I didn’t think you’d stayed,” I said.
He shrugged one shoulder, listless. “I still want to know why you left me to deal with my stepdad’s body alone.”
God, that had been such a shitty thing to do to him. There was no answer I could give that would make it less shitty. The uncomfortable idea that I was a terrible person had begun circling through my head again, prickling like thorns.
I was silent for too long.
“Never mind,” Tony said. Then, after a slight pause. “Are you seriously scent-matched to these guys? Because... well... Heath and I... we... um—”
A sharp knock sounded at the door. It swung open less than a second later, revealing my Grimm’s fairytale version of the fucking Scotts Lawn commercial spokesman.
“Right, you,” Heath said. “Time for some proper answers.”