Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
The laptop sat on the table between them, the tinny speakers filling up the small conference room with the sounds from Sunday night. The ambient noise. Crickets. The distant murmur of music leaking through the patio door.
Then voices.
“I’ve been patient,” a nervous male voice said. “Two years of feeding you everything. Who’s talking. Who’s not. I flagged the dispatcher before she became a problem. I earned my out.”
Siren leaned closer.
The dispatcher. Becca Matthews. She was the emergency communication worker who started investigating the response delays during the Crown Mountain attacks. She was the woman whose murder Dom had been framed for.
“You’ve earned a conversation,” the second voice said. It was calm, neutral, professional. “That’s what this is.”
“I want extraction. A new identity. The fifty thousand you owe me.” It was the nervous voice again. Presumably Carl Unger. He was pushing harder now, his desperation growing. “I know how Meridian works. I know where the money comes from.”
Meridian.
Eighteen months she’d been chasing financial trails that dead-ended at shell companies. She’d only found fragments that couldn’t be connected. Threads that dissolved into offshore accounts and corporate paperwork designed to obscure.
She’d known there was a pipeline somewhere, a channel that moved money from whoever was funding the conspiracy to the mercenaries who carried out the attacks. She’d never been able to find it.
Was Meridian the name she’d been looking for? The bridge between the money and the violence?
“You know what we want you to know,” said the calm voice.
“I know this goes above Prescott. Way above.” Carl’s voice was climbing higher now, fear bleeding through the bravado. “You think I didn’t keep records? Insurance. Anything happens to me and it goes public.”
Prescott. That was confirmation that the conspiracy hadn’t ended with his arrest. There was something bigger. Someone funding everything. And that person was still out there.
“Your files are already gone, Carl. We’ve been in your apartment twice this month.”
They were thorough. Careful. They cleaned up after themselves. That’s why she’d never been able to find anything. Every lead had gone cold. Every threat dissolved into nothing.
“I’ll talk. The FBI. The Shifter Protection Agency. Someone will listen.”
Carl’s last desperate gambit. Siren knew how this ended. She’d read the news reports. He’d been found in a dumpster behind Fate Mountain Brewery yesterday morning.
“The Major doesn’t tolerate loose ends,” the calm voice said. “And no one is listening to a dead bartender who skimmed from the register.”
The Major. A military title. Siren filed that information away. It was another thread to pull.
The recording continued. There was a scuffle, a grunt that was cut short, and then silence.
Something heavy was dragged across the concrete and the metallic creak of the dumpster lid opening.
A thud and the lid falling closed. The footsteps walked away, unhurried and calm.
And then crickets, the distant hum of traffic, and Reed Bright singing folk songs inside.
The recording ended.
Siren stared at Reed. He was watching her, his face uncertain. He had no idea what he’d given her. This recording could be the key to a conspiracy that had been eating at her for eighteen months.
“Where’s the original?” she asked.
“Still on the recorder. I have another copy on my computer at home.”
“And you’re sure no one else heard this, or knew about it?”
“I told the sound guy, Danny, I was recording. But I don’t think anyone else knows.”
If the killer didn’t know the evidence existed, then they had time.
“You did the right thing,” she said. “Coming here was the right move.”
Something in his face shifted. The validation he’d needed after not knowing what to do.
“But you need to understand something.” She held his gaze, making sure he was listening. “The man on this recording is dangerous, and he works for dangerous people. They’ve killed to protect their secrets, and they will kill again.”
She let that land. “If they find out you have this…”
She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to. She watched the fear solidify in his face. He’d known that this was dangerous information. That’s why he’d brought it here instead of the police.
And then it sunk in for her. Her mate was in danger.
The thought cut through her professional detachment like a blade.
Her wolf surged inside her, angry and relentless.
She shoved it down. This wasn’t the time to be concerned about the mate bond.
This witness had critical evidence. She needed to protect him like she would protect anyone in this situation.
“Stay here,” she said, standing. “I need to brief my boss.”
He nodded, and she walked out of the conference room. Dom’s office door was closed, and she knocked once before entering. He looked up from his desk, his eyes focusing on her.
“We have a situation,” she said.
She opened the laptop and played the recording for Dom, watching his reactions as the voices filled his office.
Becca Matthews’ murder had nearly destroyed him.
It had put him in the crosshairs of an investigation that could have ended with him in prison.
They’d put Frank Dalton behind bars, but that hadn’t been the end of it.
Which was exactly why Siren had been on the case ever since.
When the recording ended, Dom sat back in his chair, his jaw tight.
“Meridian?” he asked.
“I’m guessing it’s part of their financial pipeline. I’ve been looking for something to connect the dots for the last eighteen months.”
“And the witness is Reed Bright,” Dom said, scratching his chin. “The son of Cory Bright, the founder of the Bright Institute.”
“He was playing a gig at the brewery the night Carl was killed. He had an ambient recorder running on the patio. It picked up everything.”
“Does anyone know he has it?”
“He says he told Danny, the sound guy. But if one person knows, there could be more.”
Dom nodded slowly. “Steel Protection takes over his security. We retrieve the original recording and assess the threat level.”
“Agreed.”
“You take point on protection. You’ve been on this investigation for eighteen months now. You know what we’re looking for.”
“There’s a complication,” she said hesitantly.
Dom waited, raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”
“Reed Bright is my... my mate. We were matched on on Sunday night. We haven’t spoken until now. But you know what they say about fate…”
Dom studied her for a long moment, his expression unchanging. He had met Valeria during the Becca Matthews investigation, so he understood what it meant when mates and missions collided.
“Can you handle it?” he asked. He needed to know she could do the job. “Can you keep your feelings out of it?”
“Yes,” she said with no hesitation. “I know the case. I know what we’re looking for. I’m the best person for this.”
She paused and met his eyes. “And my wolf won’t let anything happen to him. I can assure you I will protect him with everything I’ve got.”
Dom considered her and nodded.
“All right. You’re on protection. You can deal with the personal stuff later.”
She turned toward the door.
“Siren.”
She paused and looked back at him.
“Don’t let later become never.”
She didn’t respond, just walked out the door. But the words followed her down the hallway. She stood outside the door of the conference room and took a deep breath, centering herself.
She was about to spend a lot of time in proximity to her fated mate. The one she’d rejected. The one whose simple message had been sitting on her phone unanswered for twenty-four hours.
She pushed through the door, and Reed looked up at her when she entered.
“Steel Protection is taking over your security,” she said. “I’m on your detail.”
He nodded.
“We need to retrieve the original recording. And you need to pack a bag.” She kept her voice level. “You’re not going home for a while.”