Chapter 31 Twenty-seven
Twenty-seven
Caine
There’s this hill outside of town. We drove over it when we left for my heat.
I remember because it looked like one of those hills you have in anxiety dreams, that seem to reach straight up into the sky.
I remember holding my breath as we came to the top, looking down.
Would it plunge down as sharply? Or was it missing huge chunks of road so that lines of cars zoomed across the space or down to their demise just like in my dreams?
And the funny thing is, I’m not even exaggerating. Maybe the heat haze was already setting in, but somewhere in my brain I remember actually being scared that we were about to rollercoaster ourselves to death on this dark road.
I think about that hill a lot. I think about trying to ride my skateboard down it.
Which would be stupid. I mean, the hill wasn’t quite as deadly as Past Me had worried about, but it was still pretty damn tall and pretty damn steep.
Not something omegas should try to surf down on a cheap board and wheels.
But I wanna. What’s that say about me?
I’d been thinking about that hill a lot lately too. About why it’d gotten stuck in my omega’s head, why it warranted four entries in her journal.
Yes, I was ashamed at having read through her journal.
But since coming back to Farendale, Taryn was different.
Which of course she’d be. We all were. Bonded to her now, though, I felt how soul-deep that change was, and I felt her ignoring it.
It was like she had a leech on her skin but refused to pluck it off. Refused to even acknowledge it.
She scared me sometimes.
Like the nights she snuck up to the roof. I’d watched her stare up at the sky like she hoped the world would spin around and she’d fall into it. And I’d watched her back away from the ledge, trembling, but with an ache in the bond that felt like yearning.
There was one thousand percent a better way to express my concern. My therapist would be fucking pissed—especially since she was also bonded to Taryn.
Fuck. That would be a fun conversation to go home to. Then right after I admitted to violating my sunshine omega’s privacy, I’d confess to stalking Heston Callaway. Like a goddamn psychopath.
To be fair, though, he hadn’t been difficult to find.
He and his pack lived in a Springvale townhouse north of Farendale.
In the days since Gail showed us the Wainwright memo with his initials on it, I’d volunteered to attend some of Lin’s business meetings in his stead.
For my own growth journey, I’d insisted, and to take some of the burden from Lin.
In reality, it gave me the excuse to make the two-hour drive and sit in the park across from the Callaway address and monitor their routine.
Blond Alpha walked the dog around the neighborhood park at eight. Glasses Alpha returned home for lunch at half past noon. Manbun Beta, at least fifteen years younger than the other men, went for an evening run around six then, by half past eight, pealed out on a midrange motorcycle.
Heston never emerged. Not any of the four separate days I’d lurked in the park across the street.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
Taryn
Oh! What about “Wainwright? That man ain’t right! Wanna topple a dynasty together?”
I chuckled and ran my fingers through my hair. She’d been sending down with the empire! pickup lines in the group chat for days, each sillier than the last.
Some of our coping strategies were healthier than others.
Brea
In the event these messages are ever subpoenaed, these are all Nonserious Jokes.
Taryn
Yes.
Much joke.
Very laugh.
Brea
I’m going to strangle you.
(AGAIN. JOKES.)
Taryn
Don’t threaten me with a good time.
Brooks
Brea wouldn’t strangle you.
She’d put on some sexy heels and step on you. Then we’d thank her for the privilege.
I turned my phone on Do Not Disturb and put it away. The superficial levity of our pack group chat had become a welcome reprieve in the months we’d been home. But if I was going to recruit Heston Callaway to our cause, I had to focus.
A throat cleared behind me. I looked up into the narrowed eyes of a female beta pushing a stroller. She didn’t say anything, just glared down at me.
“…Yes?”
“It’s generally considered polite to offer your seat when a woman needs it.”
I blinked rapidly. “I…what?”
“You’re taking up the bench,” she spat at me. “Which means I can’t take my mid-run break.”
I looked to the half a bench beside me that was wide open. “By all means, have a seat.”
Her cheeks reddened even more. “I can’t. Not with you there.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“My god, your scent is strong enough it hurts my sinuses!” she cried out. Only then did I clock the distance she kept between us. “It’s inconsiderate, honestly.”
Oh.
Shame burned through me like cinders scattering over a stone floor. It had been so long since I’d been in close proximity with people outside my pack, or away from the scent neutralizers most buildings—including ours—used.
Without the alpha meds, my citrus and cinnamon scent was like a cloud of bad cologne around me. Strong enough that even betas were bothered by it. I’d considered myself lucky no one had approached me during these trips to stake out the Callaway house.
It seemed much more likely I’d been given a wide berth.
My stomach clenched. My alpha inside whined.
“Well?” the woman said, hand on hip.
“Hey, Margot,” a deep voice piped up. “If you’re going to spew pure bullshit, there’s a restroom just that way.”
I looked to the newcomer—and froze. Glasses Alpha. Shit. Was it already lunchtime?
Margot huffed, pushing her stroller down the path with a furious fast-walk.
“Sorry about her,” Glasses said. “Margot has so much gross inside that she sometimes can’t help it leaking out. You’re welcome to sit wherever you like.”
I gave a curt nod. “Thanks.”
Glasses stuck out his hand. “I’m Saul, by the way. I’ve seen you out here a few times. You new to the neighborhood?”
Newer than you’d think.
My heart lurched, and I rose to my feet.
Well, now or never.
“Actually, no.”
“Oh?”
I sighed, meeting Saul’s eye. “I’m here to see Heston.”
Heston Callaway’s bourbon stench was strong enough a spark could blow us to kingdom come. If there were any actual fumes coming off him, that was. The man hadn’t touched a drink in twenty years. Neither did he take scent dampeners, though, so his pheromones exploded from him full force.
Saul’s protective tirade in the park took on new light, hearing this tidbit.
I sat at the cramped kitchen table, three alphas and a beta staring at me from the other side. Blond Alpha, Patrick, came home early from his job at a local science museum. Nielson, the manbun beta, worked night shift as a club manager downtown. Saul called out from his data entry job.
And Heston Callaway himself. The man, the myth, the lynchpin in our plan to nail Wainwright’s ass to the wall.
He was smaller than I imagined, especially for an alpha.
Slight of build, with narrow gray eyes and a sharp beak of a nose.
Some may’ve called his hair salt and pepper, though it was more like fucking zebra to me—jet black with wild streaks of silver and white.
It was cut short, but unruly still. Maybe he used his fingers as a hairbrush.
What struck me hardest, though, was his face. Guy couldn’t be older than mid-fifties, but his face was a worn roadmap of lines. They fascinated me. What stories lay behind those wrinkles? What struggles were they proof of?
Over the course of an hour, I laid out the whole goddamned tale—that Taryn’s mother had been part of the drug trials he’d worked over; Taryn’s late Registration to the Census; the chase and the capture and the escape.
Our goal to tie it all back to Wainwright and hold them to account for all they’d done.
To Taryn. To Nova. To us.
Heston listened intently, tracing the woodgrain of the table.
My throat ached, I’d talked so long. Finally, I slid the copy of the ProGenE memo toward him. “We know Wainwright is still at the helm of this project. But we can't prove it. Every other avenue has come up short,” I said. “We’re hoping we’re finally on the right road.”
He glanced at the memo then away again, his fingers never stopping their oblong path.
“You think if I had any power to cripple Wainwright,” he said finally, voice gruff, “that I wouldn’t have done it already?”
“If you had no power over them,” I snapped, “they’d have crushed you by now.”
He laughed. “Some days I feel mighty crushed.”
Nielson and Patrick exchanged looks over Heston’s head. “You don’t owe these people anything,” Patrick said carefully.
“The fuck you don’t,” I growled, leaning forward. “If you had any part of this bullshit, then you owe us.”
Patrick and Saul puffed up, low warning rumbles in their throats.
“Stop all that posturing, you three,” Heston said with an annoyed swat of his hand. “My word, next thing we know you’ll be pulling out tape measures.”
His packmates rolled their eyes, while Nielson bit down on a grin.
They were cute enough I almost let my anger slip. I held onto it. I needed it. Heston was going to help us, if I had to tie him up and throw him in the back of my car to make it happen.
Fuck, how was he so calm? Not only had I just told him that his former pet project was still actively harming omegas, but he was off the alpha meds. Just like I was off the alpha meds.
Why wasn’t he going apeshit at a stranger inside his territory?
“You were in the Rem City facility, you say?” Heston sighed as he sat back, resting his folded hands on his crossed knee. “Means you’ve met the incomparable Dr. Hilt, then?”
The growl that rolled up my throat was wholly involuntary. “Friend of yours?”
“Oh, hardly,” Heston said with a dismissive wave. “Pompous prick. The best part about getting fired and blackballed was knowing I’d never have to share oxygen with him again.”
The other Callaways tensed, but my mouth tipped up in a grin. “The one time I met the man, he threatened to have my dick cut off if my omega resisted his commands. So. You’re not missing anything.”
Heston's index finger tapped against his folded hands. "What would be justice, to you?"
Zero hesitation. Zero doubt. "My omega lived through six days of unassisted heat. I'd make sure he and every other soulless bastard who brought her there felt every second of it."
"Including me?"
Pack Callaway stilled, barely even breathing.
"Depends on the amends you're willing to make," I answered.
Heston met my gaze and held it. Steady, unyielding. Surprising, considering his position on my shit list was TBD. He looked as if he were trying to read my mind, and the uncomfortable hum beneath my skin made me question if he actually was.
Minutes passed. Finally, he stood, crossing the small kitchen to an old beat-up hutch in the corner.
“Wainwright was very thorough,” he said as he bent and opened one of the lower cabinet doors.
Haphazard stacks of papers and books and files and who the fuck knew what else were crammed into the space.
Heston, though, sorted through it like it was a perfectly orderly file cabinet.
“Between my unexpected escort off the premises and the court orders to surrender files, I didn’t leave that place with so much as a sticky note. ”
I clenched my jaw, waiting as he pulled out an accordion file and opened it, sorting through. He continued on.
“And the NDAs? There’s not any wiggle room or loophole the size of a needle head. The noncompetes were brutal.”
With a small aha! of success, Heston pulled out an old, worn notebook and set the box aside. He returned to the table and slid the notebook toward me. Old as shit, a dingy brown color with a stretched out elastic band holding it closed—or, well, trying to.
I was afraid to touch it. The same way my bones hummed when Heston examined me, this book emanated…vitality.
Am I talking to a damn warlock?
“The one thing they never explicitly ordered me to hand over.”
When he didn’t elaborate, I frowned and sat up straighter. Forced myself to pick it up and pull the band back. The worn binding practically threw itself open.
Sudoku. An entire book of twenty-year-old Sudoku. I thumbed through the pages. Every single puzzle was completely filled out. Except—
Holy shit.
“Bertram and I were a good pair early on,” Heston continued as he resumed his former pose. “He had the money. I wanted to play mad scientist. When his true ambitions were unmasked, I realized I may need to preserve and protect the work. From him.”
I listened as I scanned over the pages of gibberish.
Every page was completed, all right. Every square filled in.
But the numbers weren’t part of the puzzle.
Some pages were equations, written out box by box.
Others were filled with ones and zeroes—notes written in fucking binary.
Legends and keys scrawled in margins that, on a perusal, could just be the notes of a particularly bad Sudoku player.
Heart pounding, I looked up at him. “So what’s in here?”
Heston cocked his head. “Everything.”