Chapter Forty-Six
Kev
Pinnacle Therapeutics puts its public face on the upper floors.
Glass and steel and a lobby that smells of recycled air and money, a receptionist who handed me a visitor badge without asking for ID because Adrian had already called ahead.
The elevator took me down, not up. Sub-level two, keycard required, the kind of floor a building this size maintains for reasons it doesn't put on the directory.
The corridor down here is concrete and strip lighting and nothing else.
No signage. No windows. Doors with numbers that mean nothing without context.
Adrian is outside the last one when I get there. Levi is beside him, arms crossed, shoulders set.
“How long has he been in there?” I say.
“Four hours,” Adrian says. He straightens his jacket. “I had coffee sent in at the two-hour mark. He drank all of it.”
A corner of his mouth turns up. It's not quite a smile. It's the look of a man who set a trap and just heard it spring.
“You're an evil genius,” I say.
He does smile then. A real one, wide enough that he has to press his lips together and look at the floor to get rid of it. He clears his throat. Straightens his jacket again.
Adrian opens the door and we go in together.
Wallace is sitting at the table.
The smell hits before I've cleared the doorway. A week without a proper shower is bad enough. A week without being able to wipe himself is something else, and the room has been closed for four hours. I breathe through it and keep moving.
I haven't seen him in person since Ashcroft. That was dark and chaotic and while I enjoyed my omega's heat, I didn't give him another thought.
His hair is unwashed and sits flat against his skull. There's a dark line at his collar where sweat has dried. Both hands are bandaged stumps. Palms minus the fingers.
He sits at the table, spine straight, chin up, like the bruise and the bandages and the smell belong to somebody else.
I pull out the chair directly opposite him and sit, pretending I don't want to wrap my hands around his throat and strangle him.
His pale eyes move across my face. “Mr. Dawson,” he says. Funny how polite he is now that he has no fingers.
Adrian takes the chair to my left without looking up from his phone. He sets it face-down on the table and crosses his leg. “Dr. Wallace,” he says. Warm enough to be pleasant. Nothing underneath it at all.
He's acting like this is some sort of business meeting. He's completely delusional.
Wallace shifts, crossing one leg over the other, then puts his leg down again. This is the effect of four hours on a hard chair and a coffee he shouldn't have accepted. My mouth quirks knowing how bad this is about to get for him. I have zero qualms.
“I understand there are things you want to know,” Wallace says. He rests both bandaged wrists on the table in front of him. “I'm prepared to discuss that. On certain terms.”
“Tell me about the terms,” Adrian says, sounding as though he's actually listening.
“I want to be clear first.” Wallace glances at me again. “I'm aware of who you are, Mr. Dawson. You led the civil filing against the Haven network. Primary counsel on three of the six counts.” He licks his lips. “Good work, actually. Poorly funded, but the framing was sound.”
I have spent twelve years filing omega rights cases on budgets that wouldn't cover Wallace's dry-cleaning bill.
I have paid filing fees out of my own pocket.
I have worked weekends for clients who couldn't afford a retainer and called it a privilege.
And this man, sitting in a room that smells of his own body because he cannot wipe himself without fingers, is grading my framing.
My hands go flat on the table and stay there. I keep my jaw loose. The longer game. Always the longer game.
“I'm a scientist,” Wallace says. “What I do here, what I've been doing, is foundational work.
I'm not an interrogation subject, Mr. Dawson.
I'm a resource, and I'd like to be treated accordingly.” He lets us sit with that for a moment, as though he's making us an offer we can't refuse.
“I want continued access to a laboratory.
Basic materials. Oversight I can negotiate the terms of.
In exchange, I'll consult with law enforcement on outstanding cases, assist with identification of network members, and provide evidence in prosecution.”
He gazes at Levi. “I understand you're Omega Affairs. I could be genuinely useful to your division.”
Levi's jaw moves once. That's all.
This waste of space has decided we need him more than we hate him.
The terrifying part is that he might be right.
The development is his. The network is his.
Every name we still don't have is sitting somewhere inside his skull.
He's betting it all on the fact that his usefulness will matter more to us than watching him rot in a cell.
“You've got the only existing research into induced bonding responses,” Wallace continues.
“The scent accelerant alone is worth more than anything your division has produced in ten years.” He leans forward slightly.
“I'm not asking for freedom. I'm asking to keep working.
The work doesn't stop because you put me in a room.”
Adrian uncrosses his leg and leans forward on his elbows. “And the people from Ashcroft,” he says. “The ones in transit when we raided.”
Wallace's expression shifts. Not much. A degree of patience, the way a man looks when he's being asked something he finds mildly beneath him. “I can speak to the organizational structure. The key personnel. The inventory, however, was managed separately.”
“The… inventory,” I say.
“The subjects in transit at the time of the raid.” He says it the same way he'd say the quarterly report. “That wasn't my end of the operation. I didn't manage distribution.”
The table creaks under my palms.
“You said subjects in transit,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Shipment,” I say. “Cargo. Is that what we're calling them.”
“Mr. Dawson.” He sounds almost tired. “The terminology is irrelevant.”
His gaze roams over me. I'll have to scrub my skin later.
“Actually, I've been wanting to speak with you specifically. Your pack is quite remarkable, Mr. Dawson.” He glances at my collar. He's looking for the bond marks, and he'll find them, because I didn't cover them.
His eyes go to the marks when he sees them. He isn't seeing Espie's name on my skin. He's seeing data. Not the six weeks it took to get here. The nest, the heat, Aubrey's hand in mine at three in the morning. He is seeing a configuration he has never documented before and he wants it.
“A six-member scent-match. Two omegas, both matched to all four alphas, and to each other.” He sits back.
He sounds genuinely enthused. “And your fourth alpha. A biological female alpha. The lock presentation in a female-designation alpha is already rare enough to be clinically significant. But scent-matched to a pack of that size.” He shakes his head. “The data there is extraordinary.”
“Dr. Wallace,” Adrian says. “We're getting ahead of ourselves.”
“You could be changing the lives of beta couples everywhere,” Wallace says.
His attention shifts to me. “Think about that.
Ordinary betas. No designation advantages, no biological match capacity.
What I could develop from your pack's tissue profiles—a synthetic scent-matching compound that's replicable, distributable—would be the most significant pharmaceutical development of the last century.” He pauses.
“I'd offer you a percentage of the proceeds, of course.”
I'm on my feet, the chair flipping on its back behind me.
The back of my fist connects with his jaw and his head snaps sideways and he slams his bandaged wrist against the table edge trying to catch himself.
The impact shoots all the way up my arm into my shoulder and Adrian is between me and the monster before I can take another step toward him.
“Kev,” Adrian says. Low.
Wallace straightens. His jaw has gone red. He tries to touch it and recoils when his stump hits his face.
“You'll regret that, Mr. Dawson,” he says.
“Probably,” I say.
“We're very sorry about that,” Adrian says. He does not sound sorry. He sits back down and smooths his jacket. “Dr. Wallace. We want to make this work for everyone. Genuinely. I know this week hasn't been comfortable. Let's see if we can change that.”
Oh, he's good.
Adrian leans back as though he's genuinely negotiating with Wallace. “But I need one thing first. The people transported out of Ashcroft the night of the raid. You initiated that transfer. Give me a contact name.”
“I told you,” Wallace says. “That's a different operation.”
“A name, you piece of shit,” Levi growls. It's the first thing he's said in twenty minutes.
Wallace looks at him and swallows hard. He's not stupid. Just a slimy manipulator.
“The transfer went to a distributor,” Wallace says, shifting in the chair again. “Callum Merritt. He operates out of Veraun County. That's all I know. He took the shipment and—”
“Say the word,” I say. “Say people.”
He regards me for a long moment. “He took them, and they were no longer my concern.”
The way you'd say I dropped it off at the post office.
I look at the wall above his head and breathe. Levi is doing the same across the room. Adrian is very still.
“Veraun County, you say,” Adrian says, pleasant as a man confirming a dinner reservation. “And Mr. Merritt. You've had no contact with him since?”
“None,” Wallace says. “That's not how the network functions. Compartmentalization keeps it safe for everyone involved.”