2. Garrison

Chapter 2

Garrison

N ancy, the Pack Ashe housekeeper, smiles warmly at me, front door wide open as I walk from my car toward her. "Good to see you again, Garrison. He's in the garden." She steps aside, pushing the door closed as I enter the mansion.

"Can I get you a drink?" She peers over her shoulder, her blue gaze capturing mine as I trail her through the white marble foyer and out to the garden.

"I won't be staying long."

Rune is standing next to the pool on the stone patio. Everleigh is at his side, resting her white-blonde head on his arm.

I frown at the bottom of the garden where contractors' tools sit piled up around a two-story, light wood structure. The building is up, though no doors or windows are in yet.

"You're late." Rune's Cajun accent drifts toward me as I join him under the patio spotlights, stuffing my hands in my pockets as a cool wind whips my way.

"No. I'm not," I tell him mildly as I note the company name on one of the downed tools. I passed a white truck with the same name and logo stamped on the sides as I drove up to the security gate at 8:55. Late for contractors to be leaving a job.

Whatever Rune is building, he must want it up fast .

"And if traffic had held you up?" he asks as Everleigh leans around Rune to smile at me.

I nod a greeting at her, still distracted by those tools. "I'd have remembered to leave twenty minutes early to avoid it."

Rune bounces his amber gaze from me to the building and he snorts a laugh. "Go on, you can ask. You look like you're itching to."

It wasn't long ago that someone kidnapped Everleigh from this very garden.

"I passed a truck on my way up. Meritt's Contractors. Did you?—"

"Told you there would be at least one work question, cher." Rune gently bumps shoulders with Everleigh as he grins at me. "Garrison Brewster does not have a work off switch. And yes, I had Blaine do a background check before we hired them. Surprised he didn't mention it."

I'm not. We're nearing the annual checkup, which is right about the time getting anything out of Blaine requires surgical precision.

"It must have slipped his mind."

"Hmm…" Rune gives me a long look and drops a kiss on top of Everleigh's blonde head. "We weren't about to let just anyone wander around here."

My visits to the house have been brief and late. Much later than the 9 it is now, so the contractors must have left before I arrived.

We're in the middle of finishing up our third round of hiring security for the newest Ever Safe location to open in over a month. Despite Ever Safe being a Pack Ashe business, it has morphed into a joint venture between Pack Ashe and Lucas Security, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

We're both in our thirties. Rune is thirty while I'm thirty-six, but we both know what it is to build a business from the ground up.

Rune and his pack have the funds to make it the most luxurious free heat clinic in the city, with a bar, sex toys, and top of the range everything in air-controlled suites for an omega to see through their heat without their perfume triggering every alpha within sniffing distance. Lucas Security has the skills to make it the most secure.

During my last visit to the house, Rune briefly mentioned he was building something, a project Kylian was taking the lead on.

"What exactly are you building?" I ask.

I withstand another probing stare. Rune knows Blaine didn't tell me shit. We've been friends for years, so the why question is coming.

Everleigh blows out a heavy sigh. " That is the small cabin Kylian said he would build for my mom to stay when she visits."

Olive Deane, Everleigh's birth mother, has good reason to be wary of alphas, so it doesn't surprise me one bit why she wouldn't be comfortable stepping into a house filled with them.

My eyes narrow on the two-story building. "That doesn't look like a small cabin."

It looks like a family home.

She sighs again. "It doesn't, does it?" Turning to the house, she shouts, "Kylian, you said it would be small."

"And it is, beautiful." Kylian pops his dark head out of an upstairs window, giving me a salute before adding quietly, "From up here."

The first time I came to see Rune, she asked if I'd learned anything about Resa, a fellow captive who she was—and is—still desperate to find. I didn't have any news for her then and I don't now.

So when she gives me a hopeful look, I shake my head and her face falls.

"We'll find her," I assure her.

"The city is a big place," she murmurs.

"But there are only so many places a person can hide. We will find her."

Rune wraps his arm around her waist and tucks her close. "Garrison says it'll happen, so it'll happen, cher."

She slips out of his hold. "You look like you need to talk. I'll leave you to it."

I wait until she's disappeared inside so I can get to the reason I made this brief visit. "She's more at ease around me."

After Lawrence Wentworth spent the better part of a year abusing her, I'd thought it would take longer than a few weeks for her to be comfortable around alphas.

He's dead now, courtesy of her scent match Kylian, but that doesn't mean her scars have healed over.

"You're an alpha she can trust, and she knows what you're doing for Resa. How's the search going?" His gaze sharpens. " Really ?"

"Resa. A young woman in her mid-twenties, approximately 5'4, with long dark hair, olive skin, large brown eyes, between two to four months pregnant. No last name, and a first name that could as easily be fake or a nickname. Slow is how things are going. Too slow."

"You sound frustrated."

Pissed is what I am. And worried.

I lower my voice, not wanting Everleigh to hear any of this. "She isn't just a missing person. Someone is holding her. The longer this investigation into Asylum goes on, the more likely someone will see her as a loose end to tie off." They might have already.

Rune scrubs a hand over his dark-blond beard. "Fuck."

" That is what I hadn't wanted to tell Everleigh." It's what had me making a forty-minute drive to Rune's home to get this frustration out before I implode.

"And that —" Rune's eyes sweep over my face, "—is why you look like shit."

I stare at him. We've been friends for a long time. He knows what that look means.

He huffs a laugh. "I mean no offense. Just looks like you've had the better part of two hours' sleep over the last two weeks."

I feel it. And he's right. My hazel eyes are gritty, and I've been delaying sleep to work later and later. It's a miracle I remember to shave in the morning, much less brush my dark hair. It's why I've let the situation at home get as bad as it has. Now it's the worst it's ever been. But this case has gotten under my skin unlike any other.

In the ten plus years since I started Lucas Security, I've had my fair share of missing person cases. So why this one? Why do I get this stomach clenching panic that time is running out on Resa? That I have to be the one who saves her?

"The longer we don't find her, the less chance we will find her in time." I say nothing of the fact it might already be too late.

We've combed the building Asylum held their meetings. Any stone we found, we turned it over so many times we don't know which side is up anymore. Whoever this Resa is, someone has gone to great lengths to hide her.

Rune's brow furrows into a deeper, more concerned frown. "So, no leads?"

He's offered his help, but this isn't his job. It's mine. And I am striking out.

"Whoever has her must have the means to keep her well-hidden."

"So, one of the wealthy families?" Rune folds his arms, muscles straining his check shirt.

Alphas are big, biology made us that way, but Rune Fontenot, the Cajun alpha who was once a former client but now someone I call a friend, can intimidate a person if they didn't know about his affable nature.

"Looks like." I nod toward the tall hedges at the bottom of the garden. "How are the security cameras working out?"

After Byron's son Lawrence abducted Everleigh from this garden, Rune had us look over their security, find any gaps and plug them.

We settled on discreet cameras we buried along the back garden hedges, pairing them with motion sensors that would send a ping to their cell phones and mine if anyone triggered them.

Someone might breach the garden, but they couldn't do it without one of us knowing all about it. And more importantly, seeing exactly who it is. A good first step in tracking them.

"No one would know where they were, even if they were looking right at them," Rune says.

"That's the point." I point my chin at the building. "It's too close to the back hedge. Someone could throw something over it and set it on fire."

Rune stares at me. "I'm aware I know next to nothing about security, but don't you think you're being a touch paranoid?"

"It's my business to be paranoid," I deadpan.

His face breaks out in a grin, and he tilts his head to scrutinize the hedge. "You think we should move it?"

I don't want to imagine the cost of moving a building contractors just put up, but Rune looks like he's waiting for me to give the sign to tear it down and start over.

"Will anyone live in it?" I ask.

He shakes his head. "Everleigh's mom hasn't visited since she moved back in, and anytime Everleigh broaches the subject, Olive changes it. Everleigh needs a place to visit her mom, and her mom needs somewhere that doesn't smell like alphas where she feels safe."

The location makes perfect sense now. It's as far away from the house as you can build something while still being on their property.

"The cameras and motion sensors should be enough. I can have Frost stop by and fit a sprinkler system to the roof."

He likes side projects, and he'll appreciate a taste of Nancy's cooking.

Rune claps my arm, and we turn to the house. "Sounds like a plan. Y'all still need to come for dinner. Bring everyone."

Here it comes…

"I'll ask the others," I say diplomatically.

Rune levels me a loaded look as he stops at the door. "Tell Blaine none of us give a shit about his scars. No one will stare at him here."

"I'll do that," I lie, quietly relieved Rune isn't pushing the issue as much as I thought he would.

Rune pulls the door open and the scent of savory cooking wafts toward us. "We're having a movie night if you want to stick around?"

"Just because you no longer have a company to run doesn't mean I don't," I quip, fishing my car keys out of my pocket.

Rune grimaces. "We're busier now than we ever were running our investment business. Since Dexter Pieter ordered inspections for all free heat clinics in the city, we're not going to be able to build new Ever Safe locations fast enough. The inspections will scare off omegas or he'll start closing them down and they won't have anywhere to go. Anywhere safe ."

And that's the whole point of Ever Safe. A safe place for omegas where no alphas—not even its alpha owners—will step one foot inside. It's why Vaughn, my beta packmate, is the one running day-to-day operations in the downtown location.

I glance at my watch. "I better go. We're having a meeting tonight and Vaughn has been dodging them."

He walks me through the entryway and to the front door, where we say our goodbyes. As I pass the kitchen, Everleigh is sitting on the edge of a counter laughing with Cian and Kylian.

Scent matched mates. A rare, precious thing for an alpha and omega to celebrate.

A long time ago, I thought it was something I wanted. Then all the certain things in my life crumbled to dust and I no longer had time to waste dreaming of something that might never happen.

So I let my hopes and dreams die.

I pull my cell phone from my pocket and dial.

Vaughn answers on the second ring. "Problem?"

"Just checking if you've left."

"I'll be at the meeting." Vaughn pauses for a beat. "As long as nothing holds me up here."

I stop beside my car. "The way things held you up at the last meeting and one before that."

"I'm not dodging them, Garrison."

I know Vaughn, and I know when he's lying. "It's important. Not just for you or for me, but for Blaine."

"I'll be there," he insists.

I hang up and shoot off a quick text message before I climb into my Audi and start the engine.

Home is a forty-minute drive away, maybe a little less with the quiet roads. I should get home around 10, just before Vaughn. If he's later than that, I'll know why.

Vaughn spends all his time out of the house, and Blaine is more closed off than he's ever been. He isn't just retreating from the world. He's retreating from us. Pack. If we don't find a way to reach him, we'll lose him, and I've lost too much to want to lose more.

We all have.