3. Hunter
Hunter
" Y ou're sure you can't come with?" Kade eyed me over his cup of coffee, tapping long, pale fingers on the ceramic.
"I have a job, too, you know," I told him. "Relax. It's going to be fine. Everyone else will be with you."
Kade frowned. "I know that, asshole. It just doesn't feel right leaving you here alone. You'll miss out on all the fun."
His attempt at a joke fell flat because I knew the man in front of me all too well. Kade was my left-hand man and I'd known him for longer than either of our pack members. He'd never come out and say it, but I knew it made him anxious when the group split up.
"Two days and you'll be back here," I reassured him. "I'm looking forward to the peace and quiet in the meantime."
"Live it up," he said dryly. "Archer will be fucking with you in no time."
He threw back the coffee with a wince and hopped up from his chair, just as Orion rounded the corner from the living room.
"You still in here?" Orion glared. "Get a move on, we're out of here in five minutes. Anything you forgot to pack gets left behind." His gaze swept over me. "Make sure you set the alarms when you leave, River."
"Yes, Dad."
His glare only intensified. "I'm serious, River."
"I know. I'll keep the place locked down like Fort Knox."
A minute later, Archer came thundering down the stairs and I shook my head. The man was the smallest of us all, which wasn't saying much, but he sounded like a herd of elephants as he pounded downstairs. His suitcase thudded behind him as he bounded into the garage.
"See you, River!"
Then they were gone, and the house was silent.
I had only just poured a fresh cup of coffee and sat down when my phone started vibrating in my pocket.
Annoyed, I pulled it out, expecting to see Archer's name, but it was the ORC.
Adrenaline shot through my body. There was only one reason they'd call this early.
"James speaking."
"River, we have a problem. One of the omegas escaped yesterday afternoon." Laura's voice was clipped and impatient. "I need you on this immediately."
"Immediately would have been yesterday afternoon," I pointed out.
"No one thought she could get far, she was in heat. We had the betas searching for her, but she's vanished."
"So you wasted valuable time searching for her before calling me," I sighed. "Alright, I'll be there in twenty. Make sure all the intel is ready to go, and I'll head out as soon as you debrief me."
"Jump to it. This one's important." She hung up.
I finished my coffee before heading upstairs to change into my work clothes, black slacks, and a black shirt.
It was snowing outside, so I pulled on a black sweater to finish the outfit and shrugged into my jacket and boots before heading out the door.
Mindful of Orion's instructions, I made sure the alarm was set before getting into my SUV and heading in to work.
The Omega Reassignment Center wasn't far from home and I arrived exactly 20 minutes after the call. Leaving my car parked in the staff lot, I headed inside, nodding at the receptionist before making my way to Laura's office on the third floor.
"Come in," she said at my knock. The director of the institute was standing at the window, looking down at the throngs of omegas lined up for breakfast.
"You have all the paperwork?"
"Right here." She handed me a file.
Flipping it open, I pulled out the photo of the omega I was looking for.
Quinn Ramsey, 24 years old. The intake photo showed an attractive enough female with long wavy hair and freckles scattered across her nose.
If she'd been a beta, I would have thought her pretty, but she was an omega.
In my experience, they were literally designed to reel alphas in and tear them apart. That made them all ugly to me.
With a curl of my lip, I scanned the rest of the file, noting that the omega had been in a pack a year ago and had previously lived with her father and a beta sister on a farm outside the city. Those were two places I needed to check. Most runaways headed for familiar territory.
"She disappeared from the heat den on Fifth Street," Laura told me.
"How did the guards miss catching her?" I raised an eyebrow. "An omega in heat isn't moving fast."
"She . . . took the van."
I frowned at that. Omegas weren't allowed to drive, so most of them had no idea how to. The fact this omega had a forbidden skill meant there could be a lot more we didn't know about her.
It didn't matter. I was good at my job and I'd track her down quickly enough and get her back where she belonged.
Leaving the office, I looked over the information on Ramsey's previous pack.
They'd signed her over to the ORC after she'd run away twice.
That was more than enough reason for most packs to give up on an omega.
It also meant I had a renegade on my hands and if she was running off and stealing vehicles, no pack would take her.
They might as well deliver her straight to the heat dens at this rate.
"Oh, I'm sorry, sir," a thin, reedy voice startled me as I nearly plowed right through the beta guard I hadn't seen with my nose in the folder.
"My fault." I stepped aside and he lunged forward, brandishing a long electric prod. A frightened omega scurried away as the baton snapped with blue sparks.
Ignoring the spectacle, I strode outside to my car and settled into the comfy seat before pressing a button on the dash. A small screen flashed and a keyboard slid out of the center of the dash. Kade had set this up for me and it saved a lot of time when I had to hunt someone down.
"Told you you should have come with," Kade's voice sounded over the speaker when I called.
"Yeah, well, an urgent job came up. I need help . . . can you hack the cameras around the heat den on Fifth Street, yesterday, around 3 pm? I have an omega who took off in the ORC van."
"What the fuck? How did she know how to drive?"
I didn't respond, hearing the clicking of his fingers flying over his own laptop. The man was a genius and in another couple of minutes, the footage popped up on my screen.
"Looks like she knew what she was doing," he muttered.
On screen, the betas helped carry heat-stricken omegas into the heat den and the van suddenly lurched away from them, speeding down the alleyway and out into the street.
"Can you follow it?"
"Already done. She dumped it in the Heights." He sent another piece of footage to me. "Headed into the woods there and my software isn't picking her up anywhere else."
Frowning, I watched the tiny omega slip out of the van, glancing around before she took off running at a surprising speed toward the woods. Her dark hair bounced, and I realized, as I jumped the video back again, that she was barefoot, like all the other omegas in the center.
"She couldn't have gone far," I muttered. "You're sure there's nothing else around the woods, Kade?"
"Nothing I've picked up on the software. I'm sending you the footage now to review manually." He shot it over and then hung up.
I'd figured this would be a simpler job. An omega in heat couldn't get very far, but the omega I'd seen running for the trees was definitely not in heat. There was no stumble, no hunching over . . . which meant she'd faked it. She was smarter than most of my targets already.
Flipping through the paperwork, I searched for the date of her last heat. Nothing showed up, despite her being at the center for 11 months. Something was off here, but it didn't matter. I wasn't paid to investigate heats, I was paid to return the omegas to their rightful owner.
"This is going to take a lot longer than I thought," I growled at the screen.
Pulling away from the curb, I drove to the park that sh van was gone, picked up by the beta crew.
Their footprints covered the park and the entrance into the woods, obscuring any clues I might have picked up if I'd been called in first thing.
Swearing, I headed further into the trees, keeping my eyes peeled for anything that might give me a hint of what the sneaky little omega had done.
The scuff of beta footprints hid any signs of bare feet until I crossed the little bridge over the creek.
That's when I saw it. The omega had moved to one side and there were a bunch of marks like she'd hopped around and swished things over the ground.
A tiny piece of blue fabric was caught on the bush beside the creek and when I examined it, I realized it was a bit of uniform.
Considering that she'd gotten this far, it made sense that she'd stopped to wrap her feet, probably with part of her uniform.
When I emerged from the other side of the small forested area, it was onto a suburban street. Comfortable homes lined the area. There were no traffic cams, but a quick sweep showed me that several of the houses had doorbell cameras, including on directly across from the park.
I strode over to the house and rang the doorbell, holding up my security badge.
"Yeah?" a tired woman's voice sounded, with a baby wailing in the background.
"I'm a security officer from the ORC, and I need to view your doorbell footage from yesterday afternoon," I told her smoothly.
"Really?" The woman sighed, and a moment later, the door opened. "Do you need to come in, or can I just give you my phone?"
"The phone's fine," I assured her, and she shoved it at me, bouncing the fussing child on her hip.
While she ducked back inside, I scanned the footage.
It didn't take long to find exactly what I was looking for, a dark figure moving out of the woods.
It was already twilight in the video, and it was hard to see the figure, but no one else had come out of that area.
"Little sneak," I muttered, realizing she'd somehow changed and had something wrapped around her head and shoulders. A blanket? A shawl? I wasn't sure how she'd managed that, but it was obviously pre-planned. And as I'd suspected, her feet were now covered.
Once I'd determined which way the omega had gone, I returned the phone and headed back to my vehicle. This female was definitely going to be one of my more difficult catches.
It took the next two hours to track the little omega.
I headed in the direction she'd gone, stopping from time to time to request doorbell camera footage.
Most people were at work, but here and there, I found someone who could quickly show me their footage so I could make sure I was still on the right path.
The omega had wound through the suburban streets before cutting through another park and over a highway. There, I lost track of her, so drove around the area, watching for any signs of where she might have gone.
"Any luck?" Orion asked when he called me mid-afternoon to let me know they'd arrived at their destination.
"I've tracked her to the highway out of town, but she crossed it," I said wearily.
"You think she went to ground? Look for anywhere she might hole up, an abandoned building, a church . . ."
A truck stop loomed ahead. "Fuck."
"What?" Orion rasped. "She dead?"
"No. The truck stop is just down the road from where she crossed over."
"Oh, shit."
I pulled into the parking lot and eyed the trucks parked there, the drivers inside the diner eating or asleep in the cabs. If she'd hitched a ride with someone, it was going to be next to impossible to find the little minx. Fury coiled in my chest. I would not let an omega beat me.
I would bring her in if it was the last thing I did.