5. Chapter Five
Chapter Five
Dana
The bakery feels different when you're not in it to buy bread. Oh, I'm still going to buy some bread, and bagels, but that's not my purpose for being here and I feel like there's a flashing neon sign above my head announcing it to everyone on both sides of the counter. I don't have a working relationship with The Baker, his brother, or any of the people who work in the shop. I come in, get my bagels, and get out. Sure, I watch the bakery as much as anyone who makes it their business to see things and notice them; but that's a completely different thing than walking through the door when baked goods aren't your mission.
There are a few tables by the windows for people to have a cup of coffee and have a bun or a pastry with their complimentary coffee. That coffee is strong enough to walk behind the counter and knead the dough itself, but that's one of the things the bakery prides itself on. I've been sitting at one of the smaller tables for almost an hour. I've gotten more than two glances from the Beta at the butter brushing station and I've had one refill on my coffee. All I've got to show for my time is an aching hip and jittery nerves.
I take the last bite of the croissant I've been nibbling at since I sat down and brush my fingers together over the napkin. I'm not buying another one and I'm not trying to give myself a heart attack with another cup of that coffee. If I haven't overheard anything by now, I'm not going to. I'll have to come at this a different way.
An Alpha I've never seen before comes out from the back. She locks eyes with me and stalks toward my table, brushing her hands off on her flour covered apron. She sits down across from me and leans back in her chair. “What do you want?”
I tip my chin in the direction of my sack of bagels and fresh loaf of bread. “Bread.” I tap the rim of the coffee cup in front of me. “And the best coffee in town.”
“It's Wednesday.”
I nod. “I guess it is.”
“You come on Fridays. And you don't buy bread. What do you want?”
I could draw it out, try to make her nervous. I can play word games with the best of them, but there's really no point. “The Scarlet Selection is in about a week.”
“And?”
“I just thought it might not be a terrible idea to see what my odds are, that's all.”
Her eyes narrow. “Odds are of what?”
“I need a certain type of Omega. I thought this might be the sort of place I could ask about something like that.”
Her mouth flattens into a little line and she crosses her well-muscled arms across her chest. “This is a bakery, Detective. What would we know about certain types of Omegas?”
“Word on the street is that you'd know plenty.” I offer a conspiratory smile. “I might be a Detective on Fridays, but on Wednesdays I'm just your average Alpha looking for love. I've put off coming here for a long time. I didn't want to be a bother and, more importantly, I didn't want to embarrass myself. I was just hoping to get a hint or a leg up. That's all.”
She holds my gaze for a long minute before pushing out a sigh. “Tell me the truth about what happened to your leg.”
My mouth drops open. I can't help it. There was no way in the world for me to anticipate or expect that question. “A trade?”
It isn't so much that it's a big secret, but it isn't smart to go around announcing your weaknesses. Especially to other Alphas. Especially in the bakery.
She nods. I can't believe she's curious enough about my injury that she'd trade secrets to find out about it.
“I tell you about how I got hurt and you'll tell me if the type of Omega I need will be at the Selection?”
She looks back over her shoulder at the Beta who is busily applying butter to whatever is in the pan in front of him then back at me. “Do you want to know or not?”
“I do.”
“Then tell me how your leg got hurt and I'll tell you whether or not your Omega will be at the Selection.”
I don't know if it's a fair trade, but I'll make it. “When I came of age, the first thing I did was sign up for the military. I was in for four years. My team was sent somewhere we had no business being and I caught the mean end of a bullet in my thigh. It hit my femur and did some nerve damage. And then there's the other thing.”
“Other thing?”
“Eleven years ago, I was in love. I was young and stupid and I thought he loved me back. He was a client. I should have known better, but like I said, young and stupid.”
“Omega?” she interrupts.
I shake my head. “Beta. I changed my whole world for him. I lost my partner because of it. Anyway, one night he didn't show back up at my office. My partner had left by then and I was letting my client stay there to keep him safe. He didn't show the next night, either. Or the next. It took me two weeks to find out he wasn't coming back. Turns out, he already had an Alpha. Two, actually. They shared him and an Omega. They would have been a picture perfect pack if it wasn't for the bets and the drugs.”
“You didn't know he was bonded? You didn't see a mark?” Her expression and her tone both say loud and clear how deep her doubts about it run.
I shake my head again. “I never saw a mark. It was somewhere it could be hidden by clothes. I never slept with him. I just wanted to save him. I wanted to love him. I was under the impression I was hired to keep him safe from an Alpha who was obsessed with him and get him and his assets out of town.”
“Why were you really hired?”
I sigh. “I'm good at finding things out. He wanted me to help him find a shipment of illegal opiates but I didn't know it. I thought the obsessed Alpha was behind the opiates, and if we kept track of where the drugs were, we'd keep track of where the Alpha was so we could avoid him and get the Beta out. I was very naive.” I smile and take the last cold sip of coffee in the cup. “Young and very, very stupid.”
“I can't disagree with you, but love is love. What can you do?”
“You can get picked up by a very jealous and deranged Omega and her equally jealous and deranged Alphas and taken to their basement to be interrogated about their missing Beta. You can take a baseball bat to the hip about five times because you really, really don't know what happened to him. Then you can get dumped off the wharf in the middle of the night in the dead of winter and left to drown.”
“Damn.”
I nod. “Damn.”
“So, where was he?”
My answer is dry. “If I had let myself drown, I would have landed next to him at the bottom of the ocean.”
“I know you found out what happened to him.”
I shake my head. “I lost interest during all the surgeries. My best guess is he found that opiate shipment and lost himself in it until the wrong person found him and took him for a swim.”
“That's awful.”
I nod. “It is. But it's over now. All that's left of it is the ache that reminds me not to be foolish ever again.”
“And you still want an Omega?”
“What can I say?” I give her a crooked smile. “I'm a hopeless romantic. I'm not getting any younger and this hip is only going to cause me more trouble. I want a family before I can't keep up with them anymore. I think an Omega would be more willing to deal with my baggage than a Beta, don't you?”
She glances back at the Beta behind the counter again. “Oh, I don't know. Betas are all the fun without any of the drama.”
“Maybe I like a little drama every now and then.”
“Well,” she starts. “You kept your end. What kind of Omega are you looking for?”
I draw my mouth to the side and look up at the ceiling as I recall the major details of the Westover girl. “Younger, I think. Of age, obviously, but younger. I'd like her to have blonde hair and brown eyes, I like that, and a slight build.”
“Her?”
I nod. “Yes. Her.”
“Oh,” she pauses. “I thought you'd be more interested in a man.”
“No, I think I've had my fill of men of all designations.” I feign a quick laugh to make it more personable.
“Completely understandable,” she says, not bothering to hide her smile. “There are always plenty of young female Omegas with slight builds at the Selection. You shouldn't have any trouble picking one, but I can tell you that there are only a couple brown-eyed blondes in the right age group. I can try to arrange a private meeting during the Selection, if you're interested?”
That would be perfect, and maybe a little too easy, but it would be stupid not to take the risk. “Really?”
She nods. “I'm a sucker for this kind of thing.”
That is actually surprising. “That would be wonderful. Here's my number.” I slide one of my business cards across the table before getting to my feet. “Thank you.”
~
There's a note on my door when I get to my office that afternoon. An unsigned note with a room number and a time written on it. I thought I'd get a note slipped to me when I arrived at the Selection, but this is better. If I can find a way to watch that room before the Selection opens, maybe I'll get a chance to sneak in and grab the Westover girl without going through a lot of hoops. I get the feeling that getting her out of the Selection and back home isn't going to be as simple as meeting her during my private viewing and leaving with her under my arm. There are always hoops, and I'd like to avoid them if I can.
What would be interesting is if I got the private viewing and it turned out to be somewhat ethical. Maybe The Baker acquired her through a nefarious avenue, but everything else is legitimate. It's far from the same thing, but people adopt children who have been kidnapped all the time without ever knowing. This could be a similar situation, but with an of age Omega going to an Alpha who has the money or the means to claim her before she steps a toe into the Selection. Apparently, trading the Alpha who works at the bakery gave me the means, because I certainly don't have the money.
I make my usual trip to the bakery on Friday. It's not going to do me any good to deviate from my usual activities after making an extra visit during the week. I'll just have to put the extra bagels into the freezer. Maybe I'll get wild one evening and bring someone home for the night. One night stands enjoy bagels as much as anyone else, right?
The wharf boys are harassing seagulls and anybody with a wallet when I pass by one of their usual haunts on the way home. As soon as they see me, they swarm me with demands for pizza. This has happened a few times before. Sometimes they're just hungry, but other times they want me to get them pizza because they've got something to say.
This is the latter.
“That girl,” the ring leader says. “The one you were looking for. You didn't tell us what she looks like, but we saw a car with a bunch of girls in the alley behind the bakery yesterday. And we saw you there on Wednesday. I don't know if one thing has anything to do with the other, but if we noticed, other people did, too.”
“You think so?” I ask and take a bite of my slice. I'm eating with them tonight. Dinner on a park bench with no dishes to wash is better than destroying my kitchen to make soup.
He nods, rolling his eyes. “Come on, Detective Dana. You know the whole neighborhood noticed. Nobody's talking about it, though. Everyone is kinda glad to see you actually going to the Selection. Why don't you go, anyway? I'd go if I was old enough.”
I swallow and take a drink to give myself time to come up with an answer I want him to have. He's a kid. He doesn't need the kind of detail I gave to the woman in the bakery. “I wanted to work on my career. You can't take care of an Omega or a pack if you can't pay the bills. And since we're talking about it, aren't you about old enough to start working somewhere? Maybe part time?”
“You offering to put me on payroll, Detective?” he asks, raising a brow.
“I don't know, kid. Do you have a driver's license?”
The rest of the boys have gone silent. He takes a big bite and crams it into his cheek to answer. “I can get one.”
I consider him for a moment. He's not quite old enough to get a license, but he's not far from it. He could run errands for me. Maybe pick up my bagels. If he can stay out of trouble long enough. “Talk to me again when you get it. We'll see.”
That wasn't the answer he expected. He expected banter. He expected me to not take him seriously; to not treat him like a person. But he is a person, and he's plenty old enough to understand what that means. For him and for his friends. They're at the age where they have to decide which side of the street they're going to stand on, and he's the leader. He sits up straighter and looks me right in the eye. “I'll do that.”
Never, in a million years, did I think I'd be seriously considering tentatively offering a job to one of the wharf boys. I must be getting soft.