I’ve caught up.
I close my eyes.
I’m home.
Chapter 25
Lola
I sleep until eight. Sort of. I keep one eye on the door even in unconsciousness. I wake up on the couch with my blanket and the morning light coming through the high windows. The smell of Tristan’s coffee moves through the house like a slow tide. For approximately four seconds I am just here. Warm and still and here.
Then I remember last night and I breathe through it.
Not the bad version of breathing through it. The version where something enormous happened and you’re coming to terms with it. I came inside. Ryan held my hand on the river path and I let him. Then I let Tristan hug me and Jack made exactly one joke that was so precisely calibrated to the moment that it made me exhale into something like relief. Archer sat at the worktable andsaid nothing.
And then we finished the bond. We made it official. I’m now part of this pack. Their Omega. They are officially my Alphas. My protectors. My loves. Nothing has ever felt so right before.
We fell asleep on the couch together. All five of us, scattered in exhaustion and satisfaction. Spent and knowing every second was worth it.
I get up and find the coffee. My body is slightly sore from the claiming, both above and below the waist. My Alphas were incredible and I have a lifetime with them now. Unless the police find me.
Ryan is already at the kitchen table with his own coffee and a legal pad, which is Ryan in operational mode, I’m learning. The coffee and the paper and the pen, working through something in the focused quiet of a man who processes by writing.
He looks up when I come in. “Good morning, sweetheart.”
“Good morning,” I reply. I pour coffee and lean against the counter. I sneak a look at the legal pad, which has things on it I can read from here:timeline, evidence access, chain of custody, Amber O’Connor —known associates.
“You started without me,” I say.
“You were asleep.” He says it plainly. “You needed it.”
“That’s my case to solve.”
“Yes. Which is why you should be awake when wework it out.” He pulls out the chair across from him. “Sit down.”
We work for two hours.
All of us, eventually. Jack arrives at nine with nervous energy. He has already been doing things and brings information from those things. They turn out to be that he has a contact in the county records office who owes him a favor from a carnival situation three years ago that he refuses to elaborate on, and this contact can pull the public filings around the bank in question.
Archer contributes the car information. He moved it to a property on the valley’s north edge. He took the plates off and replaced them with others. They belong to a different pack’s member who has been abroad for six months. They are clean and trouble free. The original plates are now on the bottom of the river.
Tristan makes breakfast. This is his contribution and it is welcomed by all. It’s a full breakfast that means everyone eats properly before they do difficult things. I’m ravenous after last night.
What we have, by ten o’clock: The frame was built on three pieces: camera footage, physical evidence, and flight. Amber and Daniel constructed all three. The camera footage I can’t contest remotely. I need access to the original files or an independent analysis, which requires resources I don’t currently have. The physical evidence—my prints on the equipment—is explainable with the right testimony about the context, but testimony requires me to not be a fugitive, which is a circularproblem. The flight is the weakest piece because flight is circumstantial, and circumstantial is arguable.
Amber’s partner is the key.
Danial has to have been her partner. Amber didn’t act alone, which means the conspiracy is bigger than me, which means the case against me specifically gets complicated. Two perpetrators, one frame. Archer says a competent lawyer makes that an evidentiary problem.
“How good is your lawyer?” Ryan asks.
“She’s a friend who owes me a favor,” I reply. “She’s good but I haven’t used her for anything more than getting out of a parking ticket before.”
“Contact her,” Ryan says.
“I have a burner phone in my bag.”
“We have a clean line,” Archer says. “Pack business line, not traceable to you.” I look at him. “We have a clean line,” he repeats with patience.
