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I turned back to the living room when he was out of sight, only to find Cary and River standing awkwardly at opposite ends of the room. Both watching me. Cary had a small smile on his face, but River was scowling.
I’d told Lexie and Maia I knew my path was rocky. But I was fooling myself. There were avalanche warnings surrounding me. Like the ones on the windy, narrow roads through the mountains, that scream danger.
Except for the twins, the only common link between these men was me. Yet all five were mine. I wasn’t some femme fatale or seductress, though. I also didn’t have the innate confidence of Lexie, or even Maia. I didn’t know how to bring these men together into a pack.And if I managed it? How did I think I was going to handle five men when I’d never even handled one?
I needed to ask Maia and Lexie way more questions. Or maybe find a book. With pictures.
seven
Somethingwasn’trighthere.
I was standing, staring in frustration at a jagged hole in the wall, when a voice startled me.
“Let me guess, it was like this when you found it?”
I spun around to see River leaning casually in the open door. I figured he was trying to appear non-threatening, but it didn’t work. He always looked a heartbeat away from catching a bullet with his bare hands. There was a coiled power within his body that he could never completely conceal. I’d spent a lot of time around Damon and his mates, but River and Ryder even had them spooked.
“No. I definitely did it.” River’s mouth curved slightly at my words, as if he was fighting a smile. I wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t intimidate me the way alphas typically did. I was usually a nervous wreck around Damon, my instincts telling me to run the other way.
“Why? Not that I’m complaining. If you want to tear this whole place down, I’ll help you.” There was an underlying darkness to his words, a promise, that had me stilling.
I watched River for a minute, not sure how much to say. I sensed I could trust him, but some of the secrets I carried weren’t my own. He narrowed his eyes at me, then looked around the room.
“Okay, I’m assuming it wasn’t for decorative reasons. Which means you’re looking for something. Correct?” He wandered over next to me and crouched down to get a better look at the wall.
The guy could bark me into submission without even raising his voice, force me to tell him anything he wanted. Yet he was patiently waiting for me to answer. Even if he wasn’t backing down. He seemed like he wouldn’t let things go easily, if the answer wasn’t what he wanted.
“What’s the problem with the power?” He asked, point blank. He wasn’t just a killing machine, he was perceptive and smart, too. Which made him even more deadly.
“There isn’t any power,” I answered, deciding to be honest. He’d done nothing so far to show he was untrustworthy. Even if there was something intense going on between him, his twin, and Ava.
“I know, it’s called the Crash,” he replied, with a raised eyebrow.
“No. I mean, I know that. But this building is running on something. The lights are on, and some of these computers are on. I assumed it was the generator, because there weren’t any solar panels on the roof. I checked.”
“Why are you worried about the power? Sam’s team checked the generator. It’s a big industrial one, and the gas canister attached is at least half full. If we’re careful, we should be alright for at least a week.”
“Yeah, I heard that. But I need to boot up some of these systems. The security here is shit. Everyone seems to have hacked it at some point, and I want to make sure people can’t spy on us while we’re here.”
River chuckled. “I may have hacked it a time or two myself.”
I rolled my eyes. It didn’t surprise me. Ava had been here, and I didn’t think a few flimsy firewalls on their security system would stop him from watching her, even from a distance. “Plus, I need to get into their deeper files so I can figure out what research they were doing on Wolf, and how it involved Ava. Each of these labs had its own secret server. Turning on these systems may suck a lot of juice though, so I wanted to confirm how much we have left. In a more scientific way than tapping on the canister. I don’t want to leave these omegas in the dark.”
River’s head tilted at my mention of secret servers. So he hadn’t found those. Neither had Max initially. The Palace had hidden them well. Pala had discovered them while undercover. It honestly surprised me the lab techs hadn’t taken them or smashed them when they left. They must have been in a serious hurry to get out. Someone was going to be pissed if there was no back-up of this data. Which meant if whatever was in here was important enough, they could be back.
“Both tasks sound like a priority to me. If we have to find more gas, just let me know and I’ll make it happen.” The confidence of alphas always astounded me. It was usually justified, though. “What does that have to do with the power points or the cables in the walls?”
“I checked the generator. The gas cylinder is attached to it. But the actual generator isn’t attached to anything at all. The power cord coming out of it goes behind a cabinet and is just laying on the ground. It’s not on and it’s not powering anything.”
River stood up abruptly and spun to look around the room. Paying attention to the lights and the lone computer still turned on.
“The lab techs turned off almost everything before they left last night. Only this computer was left on, as well as one in the other lab. I want to know why, and what’s powering them. If we don’t figure it out, the power could go off at any second.”
“The lights are working around the whole place. We checked when we did the sweep. We’ve just been keeping them off. Everything in the kitchen is working, too. Including the hot water. That means whatever is powering this place has to be big.”
“Yeah.” There wasn’t much more I could say.
River motioned me out the door. “I’ll help you, but we need to be discreet. I don’t want to alarm the omegas.”
