Chapter Two #3
Walking to his own vehicle, his First stood there in shadow. He opened the ping on his neuro net. She rejects you.
No. She is fighting it like Commander Elon said she would. But she has a connection to him he never mentioned. She cares for him deeply.
She is not a Mate to him.
No. She acknowledges that.
He wants her in the Empire. But if she says no…
Then it will be no and we move on.
I am sorry Commander. We all wait so long. A Mate is precious.
Showing an emotion First? That is very human of you. We both know your emotions are off, as are mine.
True but if we are to mix with humans now, be with humans, find our Mates, it is logical that we use their words.
Agreed.
You believe her to be your Mate?
I do. When she doesn’t think, she is compliant and calls to me.
Then she needs to stop thinking.
I’m working on that.
They got in the vehicle. Now where are we on the mission.
Zee and his team are good. They have chased down many good leads. We are covering their work and find no mistakes. Now we are following all those identified as possibly being involved. We’ll have arrests and interrogations soon.
Moving off. Good. We need to move on this.
Another thing. Their Councillor Frost. He was waiting at the female's house last night, it was too late for a social visit. He’d intended to ambush her at her door and his body language and voice acted of possession and yet he has no relationship with her.
She rejects him firmly, in any personal capacity and does not like him professionally. I want him looked into.
Affirmative.
Her day had started off pretty good, if she ignored the fact that Kito had stayed the night in her house. Cooked her breakfast half naked. But it had come with breakfast. So she’d give him points for that. But that left her needing to deal with Frost.
Frost. That was becoming a problem….. Checking the time, she made the request to present at the Council meeting that afternoon.
Approval coming back via the Secretary.
She would confront Frost directly at that meeting.
Question on what authority he presented at her house uninvited. Breaching her privacy. Knowing he wasn’t going to take it well. She was now considering if he was the right person to lead the Council at all.
Not that it was her decision to make. It was theirs. The Council.
Tapping her finger on her desk. Had Frost always been like this?..... She didn’t know. But, she would find out. If this was how he dealt with things, it was unlikely to be the first time he’d stepped out of line, stepped over boundaries.
But she’d have to be careful. Keep it on the downlow until she had more proof. If there was any to be found.
She started digging. Raiding the Hub for information going back 20 years.
It took time. She was meticulous. And wasn’t long before a list of concerns were evident.
Nearly all were removed either by the woman or by a professional stating no evidence.
That bothered her. And made a note of three women, finding where they were and taking her truck keys, went out telling Caron she was looking into something and back in a couple of hours.
Twenty-odd minutes later she was outside the first home. Knocking. This woman had reported inappropriate persistent contact that after the reporting had been withdrawn. The woman had moved jobs and home. It was 18 years ago. A smiling woman in her 40s came to the door.
“Senna Milson?”
“Yes.”
She got out her credentials and showed her. “I’m Jane, I wonder if I could have a word. Nothing to worry about, I’m just looking into something you might be able to help us with?”
“Of course, come in.”
Two coda’s and a long conversation off the record told its own story.
Frost had been nice to start with, then persistent and attentive on the pretext of liking her.
She’d been flattered but he gave her a weird feeling she didn’t like and shut it down.
Then he started getting aggressive. Cornering her, ending with some threats to her job and why she wasn’t being nice to him when he was ‘just being friendly’.
It ended with him having held her back at the end of the day and tried to pressure her into a sexual encounter.
Only the building security arriving doing their rounds stopped him from raping her. She’d fled. Made the report. Left the job and never heard from anyone again. No follow-up. No answers.
She’d sat there stunned. Frost had made this female feel that he was capable of raping her in that moment. Her body chilled. The reports going missing.
There should have been both. Thanking her, she told her she would get back to her and moved on. That had been before Robbins' time. One of his predecessors.
The next two were similar. The last one had made a scene at the time. Got vocal. Demanded action. But she told her it was made clear to her that if she persisted, her life was going to get very difficult. The woman had stopped.
Driving back to the office, she was now pissed.
Anger riding her.
This was a pattern of behaviour that had been hidden one way or another. But it was out now and she would make sure Justice was served.