27. Wes Osprey
Wes Osprey
Scarlet sleeps with my shirt bunched beneath her cheek and Roman curled around her front.
Morning light filters through the curtains, turning the nest into a tangle of faded quilts, dark fabric, and auburn hair.
My scent covers her skin more heavily than it ever has, and a low, proprietary satisfaction moves through my chest at the sight of it.
She asked for what she needed last night.
The knot left its mark in the way her body rests, loose with exhaustion and trust, and my alpha wants to read her ease as an answer.
It isn’t one. She isn’t mine in any way that would hold outside this room, and she won’t be until she chooses it on a morning when fear is not doing half the deciding for her.
I keep my hands gentle. The rest of me doesn’t feel gentle at all. How can she choose me when I can’t keep her safe? I was the alpha watching the property when someone walked through the rain and left poison in her grandmother’s flowerbed.
Roman opens one eye when I ease out of bed. His palm remains spread over Scarlet’s stomach.
“How is she?” I ask.
“Warm.” His voice is rough from sleep. “No fever.”
Scarlet makes a soft sound and presses her face deeper into my shirt. Roman brushes two fingers along her temple, then checks the side of her neck where my teeth touched without closing.
I wanted to leave my mark. The clean skin eases one concern and stirs another.
I set water, crackers, and pain reliever on the nightstand. “Keep her upstairs until Pepper clears the greenhouse.”
Roman’s mouth curves. “You could stay and try telling her that yourself.”
“I prefer assignments with a chance of success.”
Scarlet’s eyes remain closed, but her hand reaches behind her until she catches my wrist.
“Coward,” she whispers. Affection softens the word. After what we learned last night, it stings anyway.
I bend and kiss her hair. “Rest.”
“I’m resting.”
“You’re eavesdropping.”
“That requires little effort.”
Roman’s sleepy laugh follows me downstairs.
The word mine keeps pressing through my alpha instincts. I want to return to the nest she built from our clothes, pull both of them against me, and guard the door until every threat in Sweetheart Haven grows old waiting. That isn’t what Scarlet needs.
Last night she needed proof that fear had not rewritten her choices. Today she needs answers and the freedom to decide what the knot means after the comfort fades.
I start coffee, open every window except the ones facing the greenhouse, and pull up the footage from the night the bundle appeared.
The figure enters at 11:47 p.m. Rain turns the image grainy. A hood hides his face, and he stays beyond the porch light. He steps over the low section of fence without testing it, crosses behind the rain barrel, and follows the narrow strip where the greenhouse blocks the view from upstairs.
The arrangement remains covered beneath a black plastic sleeve, until he reaches the marigold bed.
He unfolds a page under his flashlight, looks from it to the fence, and counts three posts before placing the bundle at the base of a trellis.
Two motorcycles start beyond the trees less than a minute later.
I replay the sound. The engines are low and rough, older than most of the polished touring bikes crowding downtown for festival week.
Roman comes downstairs, carrying Scarlet. Her bare legs show beneath one of his shirts, and her hair spills over his arm in a wave.
“I told you I could walk,” she says.
“I have heard the rumor.”
He settles her into a chair and kneels to pull thick socks over her feet. I set coffee in front of her, then make toast and eggs while she watches the paused figure on my screen.
“Did you find him?” she asks.
“Yes. He may be a courier.”
She picks up a piece of toast but doesn’t eat. “What makes you think that?”
I turn the laptop toward them and play the clip.
Scarlet watches him consult the page and count along the fence. “He had notes.” She leans closer. “That trellis is visible from the kitchen sink.”
I look from the footage to the window behind her. “Then whoever wrote the directions had been here, had photographs, or knew the property well enough to mark the placement.”
Her leg bounces under the table. I cover her knee with my palm.
“The man carrying it may not understand the flowers or the note,” I say. “We treat him as part of the delivery chain until the evidence gives us more.”
Scarlet looks toward the evidence wall. “The copied words were bait.”
Roman rests one hip against the table. “For what?”
She sets down the toast. “Whoever selected those lines already connected my grandmother’s writing to release rites. They may be missing the rest of the entry, a definition she used elsewhere, or an attachment that was stored with the page.”
“And they think you can lead them to it,” I say.
Her gaze returns to the footage. “They leave the fragments here, then watch what records I request or where I go afterward.”
The theory fits what we know. If she’s right, it would also explain why the courier risked crossing a property under surveillance. The package only had to reach her. After that, whoever sent it could watch what she did next.
My laptop chimes with the scheduled secure call.
Dr. Imani Cole appears on the screen, with safety glasses pushed into her hair and a BESTF lab coat over a yellow blouse.
Pepper’s voice comes through a speaker before the doctor finishes greeting us. “Your chromatography equipment remains temperamental.”
“It remains calibrated,” Dr. Cole says. “Good morning, Osprey, Roman, Ms. Sage.” She shares a comparison chart. “The bundle recovered from Cypress Kiss Rentals and the arrangement from Ms. Sage’s greenhouse contain the same synthetic carrier found in three GatorX seizures from your regional cases.”
Scarlet reaches for Roman. I keep my hand on her knee.
Dr. Cole continues. “Ms. Vines determined that the local samples also contain a plant-based binding agent. It adheres to porous material, tolerates heavy moisture, and slows the breakdown of the synthetic carrier. We found the same binder in the dock vegetation and Magnolia crate debris.”
“Could the concentration occur naturally?” I ask.
“No. The source material is natural, but the binder was extracted, reduced, and recombined.”
The tested relief bundle contains the same synthetic carrier found in GatorX seizures.
The material placed at Scarlet’s home carries that same signature and the same locally processed binder.
Someone in or around Sweetheart Haven is combining those materials in a form that stays active through rain and wetland exposure.
Roman asks, “Could delayed absorption explain why Maribel felt better first?”
“It is a reasonable working theory,” Dr. Cole says. “The early calm may be the intended effect. Recognition failure could follow as the carrier metabolizes. I need Maribel’s bloodwork before I can narrow that further.”
Scarlet studies the chart. “Was the greenhouse dose enough to affect me?”
“Your contact appears limited, and weather reduced the concentration. Pepper will draw blood today. Until then, monitor temperature, scent changes, cycle irregularity, nausea, and sensory distortion.”
Scarlet’s fingers curl around Roman’s.
Dr. Cole’s expression gentles. “Exposure gives us a reason to watch your body. But at these levels, you shouldn’t expect to suffer from psychosis.”
Color warms Scarlet’s face, but she meets the doctor’s gaze. “Thank you.”
Dr. Cole sends the signed report, then turns the call over to Pepper.
“I’m at Earl’s stand,” Pepper says. Wind brushes her microphone, followed by the scrape of a wooden crate. “I came out for comparison samples. His ash and chalk have been sold in protection bundles around the county, and I wanted to rule out an innocent source.”
“Did you?”
“The ash here is clean. Earl also mentioned that the guy who bought a large quantity before the museum theft came back yesterday for more.”
Scarlet straightens. “The motorcyclist?”
“Yes. Same person, according to Earl. Black vest in ninety-degree heat. He kept one glove on while he paid.”
I bring up the original roadside interview. “Did Earl get a look at the vest?”
“Only part of the patch, pale wings around a dark circle,” Earl replied, his drawl slow.
Roman looks at the paused greenhouse footage. The figure’s left hand stays close to his body while the right unfolds the directions.
“Any reason to believe he belongs to a club?” Roman asks.
“That’s the feds’ job, ain’t it?” Earl asks.
There is a shuffle before Pepper regains the line. “I’ll check back in later.” Pepper promises photographs of the comparison samples and ends the call.
BESTF has seen motorcycle clubs used as carriers before.
Their long routes, private clubhouses, repair shops, charity rides, and members who cross county lines without attracting notice make them useful to traffickers.
That doesn’t mean every club member knows what passes through the saddlebags.
It also doesn’t prove a club supplied this batch or that the rider at Earl’s stand carried GatorX, but it’s enough to get us started.
I enter the partial emblem into the regional club index.
Three results appear. One is the Hollow Saints, who use bone-colored wings around a black sun.
Their name appears in two old transport reports, both unproven and both involving riders who moved through the same counties as later GatorX drug seizures.
Scarlet leans toward the screen. “Is that his patch?”
“It could be. We need Earl to identify more than half an emblem before I treat it as more.”
Rainwater slides down the windows while Scarlet finally bites into her toast. “The poison in Maribel’s bundle was at my house,” she says.
“It was.”
“And the person who placed it may be part of a network BESTF already suspects drug carriers use.”
“The chemical match is proof. The motorcycle connection is a lead.”
Roman pours more coffee into her cup. “One answer and one new question.”
Scarlet glances at the evidence wall. “That seems to be the town motto.”
My inbox refreshes, and Tom’s reply to the archive request I sent before dawn appears at the top.
The circulation record for the file containing Scarlet’s grandmother’s notes is longer than I want.
Scarlet signed it out twice. Tom accessed it after the theft.
Three preservation volunteers handled the storage box in April, and Myrtle Vane approved a broad copying request for heritage display packets eleven days before the tooth disappeared.
Roman reads over my shoulder. “Anyone working under that request could have copied individual pages without creating another record.”
“Myrtle usually prepares the packets,” Scarlet says, scrolling through the list. “Volunteers collate them. Donors review them. Festival committees borrow whatever makes forever sound marketable.”
“Cameras?”
“Front desk only. The records room has a lock and an air conditioner that threatens mutiny every summer.”
The access record is a pool large enough to hide in. Whoever selected the lines could have done it during legitimate festival work, then passed the copies to someone outside town.
Scarlet taps the copying date. “If they were already searching these records eleven days before the theft, the bundles were planned before anyone knew the tooth was missing.”
“Or the theft and the bundle came from the same plan,” Roman says.
I flag every name for links to Magnolia, temporary vendors, regional riders, and known transport routes.
The search will take time, which means our next useful move is physical.
We need the archive box, the heritage display packets copied under Myrtle’s request, and any record of missing attachments.
The landline rings. Scarlet startles, and Roman rubs his thumb along her knuckles while I answer.
Honey speaks before I finish identifying myself. “Wes, there is a florist box on our porch, and Callum says nobody touches it until you get here.”
“Who is Callum?”
“My alpha. My beta, Micah, has the dogs in the back room. We are all away from the windows.”
A male purr rolls beneath her voice, close and protective.
“What does the box look like?”
“Brown cardboard. Magnolia sticker. White ribbon.” Her breath catches. “Scarlet’s name is written beneath ours.”
Scarlet pushes to her feet.
I lift one hand. “Honey’s pack has her protected. Give me thirty seconds to secure the scene.”
Her eyes flash, but she stays beside Roman.
I put Honey on speaker. “Did anyone see the driver?”
Callum answers, his voice rigid with control. “White delivery van with a magnetic Magnolia sign. Male driver. Leather glove on his left hand, despite the heat.”
Roman rewinds the greenhouse footage and freezes at the courier stepping over the fence. His left hand remains curled near his body. “Could be the same man,” he says. “We need a clearer comparison.”
I tell Callum to move everyone to the far side of the house and wait for Tom’s deputies. Honey refuses to end the call until Scarlet speaks.
“I’m here,” Scarlet says.
“Good.” Honey’s voice softens. “Whoever sent this is trying to upset you, and I refuse to reward poor manners.”
Scarlet lets out a shaky breath. “Don’t open it.”
“Callum offered to sit on me.”
“I offered to hold you,” Callum replies.
“Alpha revisionism,” Micah calls from farther away.
Their pack frequency carries through the phone, warm and coordinated. Scarlet must hear it. The strain in her expression eases by a fraction.
I grab my shoulder holster and keys while Roman packs gloves, masks, and evidence sleeves.
“We go together,” I tell Scarlet. “You stay between us, and you don’t approach the box until Tom clears the porch.”
She reaches for my hand. “Agreed.”
Roman takes her other side as we head outside.
Rainwater drips from the greenhouse trellis where the first poisoned bundle waited. The lab has given us proof that the local relief bundles and GatorX are one case. We have lots of questions and no confirmed suspects. Now a second package is waiting at Honey’s home.
Whoever is directing the courier has moved beyond Scarlet’s property and into the lives of the people she loves. That isn’t a theory I’m willing to test twice.