7. Avery #3
“Young alphas,” I corrected him. “But still, you’re reaching.”
“Maybe,” he agreed. “But maybe since she’s brand new to bein’ an omega, she doesn’t get how she’s drawin’ in these guys fast and hard, and you know what they say about omegas: that other wolves lose their shit around them.”
I grunted my agreement.
“Turns out Remy Talmadge was putting omegas into a kind of fake heat,” Wade told our fellow detectives. “And then blackmailing them over it down the road.”
“No shit. You see?” Peck almost shouted. “That’s the answer right fuckin’ there.”
“It follows,” Ness affirmed with a shrug. “Think about it. Talmadge gets her all going, kissing on her, fingering her––”
“Could you not,” Wade groused at him.
He scoffed. “Whatever, Massey, sack up.”
“Anyway,” I pressed him.
“Yeah, okay,” Ness groused, turning from Wade in disgust to meet my gaze.
“So Talmadge has got the girl all wet and ready, her pheromones are off the fuckin’ charts, and Highmore’s there for who knows what, and he loses it, he attacks her, knocks her out, and now he’s shittin’ bricks, ’cause just like that, suddenly there’s someone who will for sure say what he did, ’cause she’s rich, and he can’t do nothin’ to her. ”
“That plays,” Wade agreed.
“Oh good, thank you” came the sarcastic reply.
“Don’t be a dick,” Wade ordered, slipping his arm around the back of the couch, pressing into my side. “Fuck, she’s lying in a pool of blood. That can’t all be hers.”
“It is.” Seeing Imogen bathed in blood shook me more than it probably should have by now.
The aftermath of violence, both human and lupine, was an unavoidable part of the job, but she was so young and vulnerable, and I was sad thinking about how fragile life was and how relentlessly cruel fate had been to her.
“Lupines have double a human’s supply to allow for the shift. It’s all hers.”
“Poor kid,” Ness commented.
“Your story makes pretty good sense,” I assented, glancing at Ness, “but what’ve you got as her time of death?”
He gave me the estimation that the ME gave him, between nine and nine thirty.
“Yeah, see, that’s the same window we’re getting on Highmore’s death. So maybe he knocked her out, I can buy that, but he couldn’t be dead and in a car driving from Highland Park to Englewood.”
“Okay then, next suspect,” Peck offered. “Where was Talmadge?”
“Locked in a panic room.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah, it’s a coded lock system. We have the log from the monitoring company showing when he went in, and the door didn’t open again until he came out to get to me.”
“And Talmadge’s car was there, at his house,” Wade told them.
“CSI took it to the garage, so we’ll know if her DNA can be linked to it pretty quickly, but do we think Talmadge drove from his house to Englewood, ripped out her throat in an alley there, and then drove home and locked himself in the panic room? Does that work?”
“Not with the time lock on the panic room,” Ness replied. “Unless Talmadge found a way to hack the system and close the door to make it look like he was locked in when he wasn’t.”
“But if he’s out driving his car, that means he has to park it in his garage without any of the first responders spotting him, and then slip back into the panic room to then come out later and attack me.”
“That window of time is really tight in Chicago traffic,” Wade threw out.
“Yeah, not likely,” Ness agreed with a sigh.
“You guys should have the hospital take a swab of his mouth anyway,” Peck told us. “Get an imprint of his teeth in human form, then have him shift and take one in wolf form as well. You should do the same with his fingernails and claws.”
“Already ordered those kits done.” Wade sighed heavily and lifted his head, done looking at an eviscerated young woman. “Because traffic or not, panic room door or not, I like Talmadge for this. He wasn’t hurt, and the blood on him wasn’t his.”
“So it could be Imogen’s, then.”
Wade squinted. “My money is on it being Highmore’s. I think he was there when Highmore was torn up, and that’s what sent him into the panic room.”
“Makes sense,” Ness concurred, “if the scene was as bad as everyone says.”
Wade took the tablet, pulled up pictures of Highmore in Remy Talmage’s bedroom, and passed it back to Ness.
“Jesus Christ,” Ness groaned as he flipped through the shots. When he handed the tablet back, Wade and I were looking at Imogen Lowell again.
She was young, just turned eighteen. Despite all the blood, she looked like a doll.
“It certainly wasn’t a robbery,” I commented, zooming in on her wrist so everyone could see. “That’s easily five grand worth of diamonds.”
“No shit.” Peck whistled, and I wasn’t sure if he was stunned, impressed, or maybe a little of both. “I thought it was costume.”
“I have a question,” Ness began, whatever was on his mind clearly eating at him. “I’m just thinkin’ out loud here. Why the fuck does Talmadge bring the omegas to his house?”
“Yeah, I don’t get that either,” Wade agreed. “That’s the part I can’t work out. It seems stupid, and this guy ain’t stupid.”
“Maybe because he’s a world-class fuckin’ douchebag?” Peck offered.
“Absolutely no question the guy’s an asshole,” Wade easily conceded, “but he came up with this whole scheme where he gets paid twice. Once for the heat, once for the blackmail. That’s fuckin’ brilliant.”
“It is,” Peck commented, suddenly sounding weary. “Repugnant as it is.”
“And he’s been doin’ it awhile, right?” Ness asked us.
“By all accounts, yeah,” I replied sourly. “He’s been a pariah for years.”
“Okay,” Ness clipped the word, “then what the fuck, why his house? That part makes no sense at all. Why let his neighbors see? Why open himself up to that kind of scrutiny? Why not get a fuck pad downtown or find a––”
“His scent,” I answered flatly.
The other three men went silent.
“Would you care to elaborate on that?” Wade snapped at me.
I hated explaining anything lupine. I felt like it reminded my partner and my peers that we weren’t the same. Ponting out differences was something I worked hard to avoid.
“Now,” Ness ordered me. “It’s time to share.”
“Okay, so an alpha’s home smells like them. Anywhere else, an unmated omega wouldn’t feel safe, wouldn’t be able to stay there, wouldn’t be able to get aroused, because they’d be so fearful for their safety.”
“But an alpha can carry their scent with them wherever they go, so why can’t they do the pheromone dump thing at an apartment just as easily as their own home? It has to be something more than smell to justify this.”
Leave it to Wade to delve.
“It’s like grounding,” I told him. “Think of it like a wolf’s den, that everything in there is steeped in not only smell but use.”
“Keep going,” he prodded me, “I’m not there yet.”
“A lupine can own multiple houses, but only one of those can be its true den, a true home. Lupines form a bond with their ‘hearth home’ that can’t be replicated anywhere else, whether they own the place or it’s a hotel room, whatever.”
“Like, no matter how much I loved the suite at the Wynn when I was in Vegas, I still had that relieved feeling when I walked into the front door of my place in Brookfield,” Ness suggested. “That’s what you’re saying.”
“Yes,” I told him. “Exactly.”
“And other wolves, like the omegas that were in Talmadge’s place, they can sense that?”
“Yeah. Remy Talmadge could only perform the service in his own home. The omegas would have walked into some apartment, and even if, say, he was there often, they would have known instinctively that it wasn’t his home.
And once they sensed it, they would have run.
For them, for omegas, the flight reflex is all there is. ”
It made the omegas sound weak, and they were, and I hated that they were.
But the truth was, most unbonded omegas would have needed that small piece of grounding to trust Remy with their bodies.
The women and men who had allowed Highmore to touch them had done so only because they were in Remy’s home.
His smell in the air, in his bed, on every surface, had reassured them, helped them relax enough to become aroused.
It was a horrible abuse of his power, and did I think it should have been outlawed?
Without question. The problem was, until omegas were raised differently and their rights were changed—until there was an entire cultural shift where we were concerned—mock heat to trap a mate would still occur.
If the practice was criminalized, maybe some alphas would rethink their decision to help .
“That’s fucked up,” Wade concluded, shaking his head. “And I tell you what, if I were an alpha, I would hope my mate would have enough faith in our bond to tell me what they did so I could go kick the shit outta Remy Talmadge.”
I shook my head. “No omega would tell their alpha, someone who has the right, by lupine law, to banish them or worse, what they did to secure their mating.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah, he’s serious.” Peck took over the conversation.
“My brother-in-law told me that back before the laws changed, before there were contracts drawn up that are legal in our courts and can go before the Maion council, an alpha could have their omega killed or tossed out on their asses with nothing. It was brutal, but completely legal.”
Wade nodded. “This all makes more sense now. I knew that omegas were totally controlled, but I had no idea how many rights they don’t have.”
“Shit,” Peck muttered, looking at me. “Thank God you were born a beta, huh, Avery?”
I was saved from having to agree, thus lie again, by my phone buzzing. I answered and listened while Remy’s doctor gave me an update on his condition.
“Thanks, Doc.” I hung up and then stood. “Remy’s awake; let’s all go. Breakfast is on me after.”
“Good plan,” Peck agreed, and even though we usually didn’t drive together, it seemed like the thing to do.