24. Chapter 24
Chapter 24
Abby
“What the fuck do you want?” Gage snarled.
He was around the corner, standing at the front door and cursing at someone. I didn’t care who it was, only that they came to my rescue. Tension eased from my body, spontaneous breath leaving my lungs as the erratic rhythm of my heart calmed.
I had no business asking about mates. I was only setting myself up for disappointment.
Maybe fated mates were real. David certainly believed in them. So did Gage, apparently, and the dedication in his tone while he spoke about some woman he didn’t even know…
I was jealous. There, I admitted it. I was jealous of this imaginary woman. Not because she got Gage, but because she got that.
Being wanted so much that someone would sacrifice for her.
I didn’t know if I would be destined for that in this lifetime, and the reality of it burned.
“Remember when we were kids, and you whined that everyone liked me better because I was the future alpha?” I couldn’t see Levi, but I knew it was him by the exasperated tone. “It wasn’t because I was future alpha. It was because I’m not an asshole.”
“It was because you’re a pretty asshole.”
“Are you going to invite me in?”
“No.”
“Come in for some coffee, Levi!” I shouted down the hall.
Gage wasn’t going to be happy with me, but I wanted to know if I was fired or not, and also what the hell was going on, and when I could go back to my car and get away from all the Gage-ness that was overwhelming me.
Gage stomped around the corner, glowering at me, and propped himself against the kitchen bar. Levi smiled to me over Gage’s shoulder, his eyes perusing my face and then exposed shoulder longer than was polite. I plucked at the neck of my sweater self-consciously, trying to cover more of my collar.
Gage shifted, blocking me from Levi’s view. “You got a problem?”
Levi raised his eyebrows, looking Gage up and down and asking, “Do you have a problem? Y’know, a problem? ” I couldn’t see him, but he seemed to be gesturing to Gage’s pants.
Levi was in what I assumed was casual wear for him. Jeans that were probably worth more than my car, a crisp, clean button-up, and a watch that gleamed in the kitchen light. In contrast, Gage’s grey sweatpants were extra faded.
“I have a problem.” I hopped down from the bar stool, crowding the two shifters until Levi was forced to step back and give me space. At least he understood what it meant to stay out of someone’s bubble. Gage did the opposite, moving in until he was closer than my shadow. “Am I fired?”
“Of course, you’re not fired,” Levi scoffed.
“Am I about to be gunned down by some special ops sniper?”
“No! You’re perfectly safe here.”
“Here, as in Gage’s kitchen?”
Gage and Levi exchanged one of those shifters-only glances.
“Safety is number one priority for every member of my pack.”
“That includes you,” Gage was quick to add.
“Right, and until we identify all the players in Cargill’s game, we need to be cautious. I don’t believe you’re in immediate danger—”
“I do,” Gage cut in.
“Either way, I won’t risk it. You should stay with Gage, at least until Thanksgiving.”
I grappled for an excuse, clinging to Levi’s previous words about not working with Gage. “But on Saturday you said—"
“It was a rash remark made out of frustration. I need you to keep working with Gage. The two of you have proven me wrong. You make a good team.”
“Thanksgiving is almost three weeks away,” I hissed.
“Exactly. Plenty of time for you to accomplish what you need to so we can move on.” He gave Gage a meaningful look.
“That’s not long enough,” Gage said through gritted teeth. “What we need to accomplish first is finding Dallas.”
“The guys are already on that. We met this morning and agreed to make this our only focus. You have more important things to attend to.”
“And I’ll attend to those when the timing is right.”
Levi pinched the bridge of his nose. “Did you listen during lessons with the elders at all? You don’t have the luxury of time.”
Gage straightened his shoulders. “I have as much time as I need.”
“Gage, this is hurting all of us.”
“Because you gossip like a bunch of pack elders and can’t mind your own damn business,” Gage muttered.
“What are we talking about?” I asked.
Levi revealed Cargill’s flash drive from his pocket and handed it to Gage. “This. I can’t get it open.”
I studied the tight lines around Levi’s mouth. What weren’t they telling me now? I respected their desire to keep the most painful parts of their past in the past, but this had become a present problem, and I was in the middle of it. If Levi wasn’t going to tell me the truth, Gage would.
If I found the right way to force it out of him.
Gage rubbed his face. “Please tell me you didn’t plug this into anything at the office.”
“Hey, I run a security company. Give me some credit.” Levi punched Gage’s shoulder. “I plugged it into that offline laptop you gave me. There’s a file labeled ‘O’ but its encrypted.”
“What did Cargill say about it?”
“Nothing. He refused to say anything else, ‘for his own safety.’”
“Yeah? Well, he’s not scared for his safety.” Gage flipped the drive around in his hand. “He asked me to find the rest of the research we lost in Sicily.”
Levi rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “And when were you planning to tell me this?”
“Whenever you planned to tell me what the hell you want to do about it.”
“The plan is for you to get into that drive. I want names and faces for this organization.”
“Is Cargill still in Seattle? Assuming you let him go.”
I made a noise. Gage shrugged.
“Yes. We should assume he’s not alone, and that he knows we’re tailing him,” Levi said.
“Give me the address.”
“Kai is on him. You’re banned from speaking to Cargill again.”
“Don’t care. I want that address.”
Levi turned to me. “New plan. You’re going to stay with Gage until Thanksgiving, and I’ll pay you overtime to be his babysitter.”
“Babysitter wasn’t in my job description.”
“I don’t need a babysitter,” Gage said at the same time. “I’m not going near Cargill. I just want to document all his connections in Seattle.”
“Fine.” Levi tapped into his phone. A moment later Gage’s phone buzzed on the counter.
I read the message over Gage’s shoulder, mind whirring. “Hold on, let me see that address again.”
Gage handed me the phone. I handed it back, shuffling around the small dining room and looking for Gage’s laptop bag.
“Gage! Tablet!”
He heaved the bag out from under the table, sliding my tablet out and handing it to me. “What? What is it?”
“I’m almost positive that…” I trailed off, tapping into my notes from Mackenna’s disappearance.
“You’re killing me, Abigail.”
“No coincidences, right?” I flipped the screen around for him to see. “Michael Lake owns that building.”
“Holy shit.” Gage was looking at me like he wanted to kiss me. “You’re amazing.”
I blushed, tucking a lock of hair behind my ear. “Just a random memory.”
I thought I heard Levi mutter something about weird foreplay but when I looked at him he cleared his throat. “Someone want to enlighten me?”
I explained the connection between Michael Lake and Connor Ware, Mackenna’s coworker.
“You’re volunteering for an anti-shifter political campaign?” Levi looked like he was warding off a headache. “And internet stalking nepo babies?”
“To gain intel, obviously.”
“Last night Cargill asked me if we had any missing shifters,” Gage told him. “He also said the weapon was biological. It’s not crazy to assume these scientists that broke away from The Organization were the same people that decided to get up close and personal with our kidneys. And if those scientists were studying shifter anatomy for their weapon…”
“Don’t fucking say it,” Levi pleaded. “Please don’t fucking tell me that those sick fucks have our missing females.”
I pressed my hand over my mouth. Of all the horrible possibilities for Mackenna…
“Only Cargill knows the truth. It’s not too late to take him to the unit and—”
“No,” Levi said firmly. “We’re not touching him. Not yet. Open that drive for me and then we’ll make a plan.”
Gage fisted the drive. “Dallas warned us about him.”
“That’s what he wants us to think. Right now, I don’t trust anyone that isn’t pack.”
“Dallas is pack.”
Levi dipped his head. “Dallas was pack. We have no idea who or what he is now.”
Gage bristled but for once he managed to hold his tongue. “Babysitting jokes aside, you have to pay Abby for overtime.”
Levi cocked his head, smiling. “Do I?”
“For this weekend, and for the next three weeks. Every hour she’s staying with me is an hour on the clock.”
“Is he that insufferable?” Levi asked me. “I’ll pay you to put up with him. But if you get sick of him and you want to go home—wait, where is your new place? You never gave me an updated address.”
I wrung my hands together. “Oh, I—um—”
“Doesn’t matter,” Gage cut in. “She’s staying here. We’ll be at the unit until I get this cracked. Dead zone.”
I frowned. I still had no clue what was going on. “Dead zone?”
“We block cell signals. No calls in or out.”
First it was a remote cabin in the woods. Now it was an unknown location called "the unit" with no cell reception? If I didn’t know any better, I would think Gage was trying to get me alone without witnesses.
“I don’t hear from you in two days, I’m sending Ezra after you,” Levi warned.
“Two days?” That was a long time to be trapped with Gage. “What's ‘the unit?’”
Gage met my eyes for the first time since Levi interrupted our awkward breakfast. He looked…nervous. “I’ll explain on the way. Grab what you need. We might not be home until tonight.”
For some reason I did as he said, robotically walking to his bedroom and standing at the foot of the bed to stare at my stuff. There was a duffle bag of clothes and cosmetics, a plastic bag of dirty laundry, two blankets, a towel, and a few paperback books I gathered at Goodwill. Gage left my case of beef stew and my propane stove in the car.
At this point, the embarrassment from him seeing my pathetic life was fading. Now it was just odd. Odd that my meager collection of belongings was piled on his fancy duvet. Odd that I was wriggling into a pair of jeans in one of my boss’s bedrooms and I was more concerned about wearing the wrong panties for this pair of jeans than I was about being in my boss’s bedroom.
Last night I entered some kind of twilight zone. I was probably still in shock.
Otherwise, I would have argued about being hauled around like an accessory to Gage’s laptop. Levi was my boss at work . He couldn’t make me stay with Gage.
So, why wasn’t I putting up a fight?
My tachycardia answered with a series of quick pings.
Levi was gone when I reentered the kitchen. Gage was leaning over the counter, tossing takeout containers, and dropping plates in the sink. He turned when he noticed me, his gaze immediately falling to the high neckline of my new sweater. With a subtle nod he went back to his work, silently tidying up breakfast.
I broke the silence. “Levi doesn’t seem very worried.”
In fact, they were all handling this situation too casually. They were literally imprisoned and tortured, and Cargill knew about it, and they were acting like it was any other day in the office.
“It’s his job not to seem worried.”
“So, he is worried?”
Gage considered his words. “More than he’s letting on, but not as much as he should be.”
Cryptic as always. “He doesn’t have to pay me overtime.”
Shut up, Abby. In three weeks, you could have an apartment and a full set of furniture.
But letting him pay me to stay with Gage felt wrong on a dozen levels.
“You’re here because of work.”
“I don’t have to be here.”
He crossed his arms. “You’re not as worried as you should be either.”
Maybe because everyone was being so blasé about having guns pointed at us and super-secret weapons passing between criminal organizations. It made the threat feel insignificant.
“If Dallas wanted to hurt me, he would’ve. As for Cargill…I’m not useful to him.”
Gage held up the drive. “You’re privy to everything I uncover on this drive, and Cargill knows that.” He came around the counter, looming over me. “You have everything to do with this.”
He stretched his other hand out, offering me a thin slip of paper. “This is yours, in addition to your overtime.”
I took the check from his hands, not even glancing at it before tearing it in two and handing it back. “I don’t want that.”
“Like hell you don’t!”
“You curse a lot.”
“Get the fuck over it.” He stomped into the kitchen, fishing around in a drawer to find a pen. Then he dropped his laptop bag on the counter, yanking out his checkbook and scribbling on another check. Gage shoved it at me so forcefully my hair fluttered.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m not taking your money, Gage.”
That was a hot button for him. “What’s wrong with my money, Abigail?”
“It’s not about your money.” I took the check from him, carefully folding it and setting it on the counter. “I’ve seen your scars.”
He recoiled from me, turning to face the stove. All he did was reveal the scars he was trying to hide. A thin white line cut straight down the left side of his neck. Another mark, this one like a burn, peeked over the back of his T-shirt.
“What happened to you was wrong. You deserve answers, and I want to help you find them.”
The breath was squeezed out of me as a sudden crushing force hit me. His movement was so fast I was reeling, too surprised to return the brief, tight embrace.
He jerked away before I could respond, folding the strap of his laptop bag over his shoulder and beckoning for me to follow.
We didn’t speak as we marched down nine flights of stairs. Gage was quiet when he opened the passenger door of a tall black truck in the parking garage, offering his hand to help me up. He didn’t say anything until he was seated behind the steering wheel, keys twisted, seatbelt buckled.
“Thank you,” he said softly as he shifted into reverse and pulled out of the garage.