Chapter 15
BIANCA
By the time Weller leads me into the hallway, I need every weapon in the house laid out where I can see it, a map of the property, and at least three ways to get all five of us out if somebody comes through the trees. This is easier than thinking about the men.
“Where’s the utility room?” I ask.
Weller looks down at me. The dark heat from the common room is still there, tucked behind the part of him already studying the windows along the hall. “Past the laundry. Why?”
“I want tools, flashlights, the breaker panel, and anything heavy enough to use as a weapon. Then I need the floor plan.”
He wants to tell me they’ll handle it.
“I’ll get the plans from Tristan,” he says.
“I want to walk it first.”
The weapon inventory is insulting. I add the tools I made at the mansion, knives from the kitchen, a fire poker, two heavy flashlights, and a hammer from a utility shelf. The ammunition portion takes no time at all because we have exactly zero guns.
My shoulder keeps reaching for the weight of a bow that isn’t there. My omega keeps reaching backward for Weller. Both are annoying.
“We need actual weapons,” I say.
“Guns,” Owen agrees from across the island.
“A bow. Arrows. Real knives.”
Freddie finds a pad of paper in the office and writes it down from his seat at the end of the counter.
His list already has food, water, coffee, first-aid supplies, batteries, chargers, clothing, toiletries, and three underlined reminders to find suppressants.
As I watch, he adds weapons in a separate column, then draws an annoyed little box around it as if the paper is responsible for how badly armed we are.
“We can’t walk into a gun store and pass over our IDs,” Weller says.
“Today we make what we have useful,” I say before they can turn this into a full argument. “Ezra might be able to help with better weapons.”
I grab the pad from Freddie and draw the rough shape of the first floor.
“Whitney goes on the threat list,” I say.
The surf seems to get louder around the house, each wave breaking somewhere beyond the windows while sunlight lies prettily across the pile of knives between us.
Tristan sits on a barstool, arms folded.
“I’ve been thinking about how she found someone willing to do her dirty work, but Whitney never needed someone to like her.
She needed to know what they wanted, who they hated, or what they couldn’t afford.
Montgomery collected people the same way.
” Tristan glances at Weller. “His security has the guest list, footage, staff records, ballistics, and enough money to make witnesses remember useful things. If the shooter left anything behind, Montgomery has a better chance of finding it than we do.”
“Great. Maybe he can be useful before I kill him.”
Owen sets a hammer down with care that feels more violent than throwing it.
“Did you see the shooter?” I ask.
“Not clearly.” Weller’s attention goes distant. “A tall figure moving behind the crowd after the first shot. Hat on. Jacket. I believe it was a man.”
“Same build I caught,” Owen says.
I make a list.
Whitney. Shooter. Male accomplice? Emmett Montgomery William Dashwood Vincent West Charles Miller Alexander Barrett Havershams (3)
Owen and I take the map outside while Freddie follows with the list, adding items whenever one of us calls a new need back.
The house sits high enough on its pilings for a person to move beneath most of it without bending, and pine needles have blown across the sand beneath the deck.
One set of stairs climbs from the front.
Another comes up beside the outdoor shower, where cedar slats make a perfect place for a person to wait without being seen from the windows.
“Camera here,” I say.
“Two,” Owen answers. “One facing the stairs, one under the deck.”
Freddie writes both down.
The hot tub screening blocks the view from the common room to the south corner.
Beyond it, live oaks and palmettos press close enough to the property that the wind keeps making things move at the edge of my vision.
I walk the tree line slowly, studying snapped branches, old depressions in the sand, the narrow spaces between trunks where a body could disappear.
Under the deck’s south corner there’s a shallow depression the size of a boot, or the size of nothing, weathered too soft to read.
I crouch over it until my eyes water. The ground here holds marks badly; one good rain wipes everything clean, which cuts both ways.
Owen stays at my shoulder. Close enough that the heat of him follows along my arm while we work.
His scent is stronger outside, blackcurrant and spice riding the salt air, and every time he leans over the map my omega becomes deeply interested in how much easier this job would be if I climbed him instead.
Five years at the refuge taught me to appreciate a competent partner. The drug in my blood has decided competence should be rewarded with my thighs around his head. Teamwork comes in many forms, apparently.
“We should rotate the perimeter,” he says when we reach the boardwalk. “One of us out here at all times.”
The boards stretch through the dunes in a straight, exposed line before dipping out of sight, pretty and private and a perfect route to the water, which makes it an equally perfect route back to us.
“Not yet.”
He frowns. “Why?”
“We put up cameras and sensors, then act like the tourists we are pretending to be unless we have a reason not to.”
“I’m not pretending to be a tourist in that shirt again.”
Behind us, Freddie says, “Adding more colorful shirts for Owen,” and ducks when Owen turns.
We map a route anyway, from the front steps beneath the house, around the hot tub screen, through the narrow strip between the shower and the trees, then back along the deck with a clear view of the boardwalk. If anything changes, we can start rotations in minutes.
By the time we go back inside, Freddie’s list has spread onto a second page.
He’s added electrolyte packets, bottled water, cooling packs, basic medication, gauze, detergent, towels, flashlights for every room, door alarms, window contacts, cameras, motion sensors, screws, cable ties, extra locks, and enough food to survive what he keeps calling our heat appetite.
“Protein,” Weller calls from the office. “Fresh vegetables. Potatoes. Bread.”
“Cookie cereal,” Tristan says at the same time.
Freddie writes both without looking up. “I’m adding frozen pizza so nobody murders anybody over dinner.”
His pen stops at the bottom of the page. “Has Mason’s guy called back? About my mom?”
“The second he knows anything, we all know it,” Tristan says from the office doorway. “New rule, remember?”
“Right.” Freddie nods at the list like it needs his attention.
“Add chips,” I say.
“Already did, B. Salt and vinegar.”
The entertainment room is behind two wide double doors at the back of the first floor. I’m shocked when I open them and realize the room is two stories tall, with an observation deck on the second story where I can see the ocean and hear it if I open the French doors to the balcony.
I expected another pretty sitting room. Instead, the floor drops down two shallow steps into a broad square lined with an oversized mattress, deep enough to stretch out without touching an edge.
Built-in seating runs along the sides, and a few movie-theater chairs face the largest television I have ever seen.
A wall-to-wall library-style bookshelf fills one wall, the ladder reaching all the way to the top.
A mini fridge waits beneath a countertop with several cabinets for storage, empty but functional, and a control panel beside the door offers separate settings for temperature, lighting, speakers, blackout shades, and the two large skylights overhead.
“Wow,” I whisper. “This is nice.”
Nice barely covers it.
I turn off the bright overhead lights and bring the wall lights up slowly until the room settles into a warm gold.
The blackout shades stay open for now, but I program them to close together at night, then press the button for the skylights.
The covers slide back above me, the motor barely audible.
The extra light gives the room a dreamy quality.
The mattress only has neatly arranged pillows, but not enough fluff. I steal a few more from a room across the hall, then another from upstairs. My arms are piled high with several blankets, along with a heavier quilt because the ocean breeze will probably turn cold after dark.
I just want to be prepared, and I’m struggling with my haul down the stairs when Freddie catches me.
“Are you stealing all the bedding?”
“It isn’t stealing if it belongs to me.” The words are out before I can think about them.
“There’s a mini fridge that needs stocked,” I tell him.
“Water, juice, maybe those little single-serve cheeses, fruit, chocolate, and enough snacks that nobody has to leave the room if we don’t want to. We need ice cream if it has a freezer.”
He looks down at his list. “I’ll check.”
The flowers are still beside the champagne in the kitchen.
I find a glass pitcher in one of the cabinets, fill it with water, and bring it into the space.
They’re messy and bright against all the careful neutral colors.
I shift the pitcher from the counter to the table beside the mattress, decide it might get knocked over there, and put it on the cabinet where I can see it from anywhere in the room.
Then I collect a few of the weapons and a flashlight to hide around the room. A knife goes beneath the mattress near the door. The fire poker stays beside the built-in seat closest to the balcony.
Perfect.
I wander upstairs where Weller and Tristan are making an office. They’re discussing their fathers, and I pause outside.
“Can someone let Winston and Ezra know we made it,” I say from the doorway. “Winston can tell my mom a general rundown of what’s happening, but not specifics. So she’s less likely to do something stupid.”
“On it.”
When Tristan starts making a list of pharmacies, I go back downstairs.
The sunlight has shifted across the den by the time I return. I decide the gray blanket is too scratchy. The pillows look wrong lined up in neat little rows. I pull them into a loose crescent along the back of the mattress.
The den is as ready as it’s going to get without a supply run, so I follow the crinkle of plastic to the kitchen.
The four of them stand around the island, dividing what’s left of the gas station haul. A bag of cashews, two granola bars, the jerky nobody wanted last night. Freddie has fanned it all out like presentation might multiply it.
Tristan’s phone sits face down on the counter.
“Tell me something good,” I say.
Tristan turns the phone over, then face down again. “There’s nothing on the island or at the three places from the pharmacy card.”
“Let’s have Mason check,” Weller says. “If the hold routes through Barrett Pharmaceuticals, it will be sitting in their system with a signature attached.”
“Sent five minutes ago.”
“We need real food,” Freddie says. “There’s a seafood place by the marina. I could have them?—”
“No delivery.” Weller’s tone closes the question. “Nothing comes to this house and no one meets a driver at the end of that lane. I’ll pick something up myself.”
My omega has no notes on any of this. She’s busy taking inventory: we need more blankets, more plants, a few house trees, definitely more food... but the way four alphas are filling our new house with their scent is distracting enough to make me forget all of it.
I definitely do not trust myself right now.
“You better not get me pregnant,” I say, and all eyes are on me. “Because the last thing I want or need right now is a litter of children.”
Freddie looks up from the supply list. “That would be kind of cute.”
“I will stab you. Not joking.”
“Understood.” He writes at the bottom of the page. “No adorable babies.”
“If you can’t find suppressants, buy condoms.”
Owen’s expression turns openly hostile, and the dark possessive edge in his scent reaches me in my next breath.
“Yes,” Weller says. “We need to do the math on how many a full heat requires.”
Owen mutters something about not being able to get close enough.
“If you can’t handle it,” I tell him, “I guess you won’t be invited to participate.”
Tristan’s gaze lifts to mine, cool blue gone hot enough to make the ache between my legs clench. “Might be easier to agree to before you’re begging.”
“I don’t care if I’m chasing you around the house, pleading and crying and pulling on your legs. If you get me pregnant, I’ll personally remove your dick. Creatively.”
His mouth curves. “That would be cruel, sweetheart.”
I bare my teeth and snap them once.
Tristan’s smile only deepens.
“Condoms,” Weller says, and Freddie underlines the word with the miserable focus of a man signing a death certificate. “Heat strength with knot support.”
A latex-covered knot sounds highly unappetizing.
The sundresses Freddie bought are still inside one of the bags.
I peel off the cover-up and swimsuit, wash the salt and sweat from my skin, then choose the light yellow dress with thin straps that falls right above my knees.
The seam of my underwear presses against me for less than five seconds before I take them off.
Everything down there is too sensitive, swollen enough that soft cotton feels rough, and air seems like the kinder option. Shoes seem equally unnecessary.
I take the champagne from the kitchen, hug the cold bottle to my chest, and back toward the deck door.
“You all look like you need a break,” I tell them.
Weller stands. “Bianca, wait?—”
I open the door and the wind catches my dress. “Come get me.”
Then I take off down the boardwalk.
Freddie’s laugh breaks loose behind me, and four sets of heavy footsteps hit the boards before I reach the first dune.