37. Garrison

Chapter 37

Garrison

R esa's footsteps move up the stairs as the same question circles around my mind.

Why didn't his beta friend take him to a clinic himself?

I went to Jerome's regular heat clinic. They said they hadn't seen Jerome, and I believed them. But I'd still set Roman to watch it, just in case, and there was no indication the heat clinic was up to no good.

If Jerome's heat had surprised him, he might not have a chance to get to his usual clinic. So we checked all clinics within walking distance of his dorm room. Nothing. No one had seen him.

Because he hadn't gone into heat at all. We'd only been told he had.

It's so obvious I don't know how I missed it. It was right there, and I didn't see it.

This is the part of the case that never felt right.

I get up from the armchair and head for the office as upstairs a door snicks closed. After the devastating news she received today, I hope Resa can find some measure of peace enough to sleep. I hope her nest gave her the comfort she must have needed.

The pool house was a job so big I'd taken one look at the interior and asked myself if we were biting off far more than we could chew.

Black walls. Pool games, floats, towels, plastic containers of stuff none of us could remember what they contained. And the smell…

It had been obvious none of us had been out there in a long time.

It would have been easier to take one of the bedrooms and turn it into her nest, but I kept thinking about Sadie's comment that a house with alphas is not the right place for an abused omega to be. So it had to be the pool house.

Then I'd shaken my head, realized we had little more than six hours of daylight left, and there was every chance Resa, whose room overlooks the back garden, would peer out and wonder what the hell we were doing.

It had been a lot of work. Carrying everything to the house, making a quick trip to the hardware store for paint and supplies, and another to a department store, which meant cleaning out practically their entire home furnishing department.

Shopping has never been an activity I enjoy. I do it when it needs to be done, but I'd rather find something that fits, purchase it in five colors and go home. Shopping done for the year.

Vaughn's eyes had lit up when he spotted a part of the store someone had set up like a Turkish living room: cushions on the floor, silks hanging from the walls, everything bright and cozy. Even I had wanted to sink into one of the cushions.

An omega would want to dive in. I hope.

The sales assistant had looked at us like we were insane when we told them what we wanted and that we wanted it all delivered to the house as soon as possible. Or he had until I'd pulled out my black credit card and slid it across the counter.

Then he'd gotten to work gathering everything we needed while Vaughn and I had returned home to continue emptying the pool house with Blaine and start painting with the non-toxic primer and paint.

It had taken hours. We took turns dealing with work calls between turning a pool house into a cozy nest for a wary omega.

I wish I'd seen her face. Had she smiled? Laughed? Had it made her a little less wary of alphas? Not any alpha and not all. Us . Just us.

"You look like you have it bad," Vaughn says, returning me to the present. "You know that, right?"

He's hanging off the door the way he sometimes likes to. Still dressed in paint splattered clothes, it'll be hours before he goes to bed. "One day you're going to take that door off its hinges," I warn him.

"Not likely. I'm too fit for that." He drops into a seat at the table. "Did she like it? I still think she would have preferred being serenaded."

"You cannot serenade someone with drums."

The idea had interested Resa from her smile. If I ever tell Vaughn about that smile, he will be dragging those drums out before I've finished speaking. Even if it's nearly midnight and Resa would not appreciate drumming in the middle of the night.

But that's Vaughn.

Vaughn doesn't tell you he loves you. He's determined to show it.

That was one of the first things that struck me from his interview. He wanted to work security, not because he thought he was good at it. He applied because it was secure, and he could learn skills to look after his family for years to come.

As far as I know, even though his mother wants nothing to do with him, he still sends her a check every month, so she never has to worry about money.

"I'll admit the drum and bass was a good idea," I tell him. "Resa was stomping down the stairs sooner than I thought."

He grins at me. "Nothing like a bit of bass drum and bass at night to encourage a person to go deal with the music."

The door swings open. Blaine at least has changed out of his paint splattered clothes into a pair of black sweatpants and a black turtleneck. "So, did she like it?"

"I think so."

Blaine sighs before he crosses over to the table and takes a seat, nudging his glasses up the bridge of his nose when it slides down. "I need more than that."

"She seemed pleased," I say mildly.

I come under direct fire from withering stares.

"You know," Vaughn says thoughtfully, "If you ever decide to change careers, I beg you to never take up writing greeting cards. She seemed pleased tells us nothing. Where is the passion? Did she smile? Laugh? Kiss you?"

"She did not kiss me or laugh. She smiled a bit though, but we were talking about the puzzle at the time."

Vaughn snorts, then reaches forward, snagging my open file. "So, what are you working on?"

Blaine leans a little to the right to avoid his shoulder bumping into him.

I pretend not to notice.

I'm not the most tactile person in the world, but everyone needs touch. A hug, a pat on the back… something to connect a person to another in the world. But Blaine? Blaine has gone years without it. And annual doctor check ups do not count.

He spent nearly two years in the hospital and then his room recovering from the car accident. Those two years opened up an enormous gulf between us and him, and him and the rest of the world that I worry if he will ever recover. The offer of self- defense lessons seemed like he was a step closer to recovery. Now I wonder.

I tug the file back and close it. "That's the Jerome Walker case, but it's solved now."

"Since when?" Blaine frowns.

"Since five minutes ago." Before he can ask for details, I get up from the table and cross over to the whiteboard that takes up almost the entire wall.

When we gutted this mansion and turned it into half home-half headquarters, Blaine pushed to have a massive white board we could use to brainstorm and plan for big events.

Blaine used it more than the rest of us. He likes to explain things using pictures. I just talked, enough to put someone to sleep, Vaughn would joke. What Resa wants is going to require precision like planning. Big picture and small.

I pick up a black marker, hope it's not dried out, and remove the lid. "Resa saw that plea on TV for witnesses to speak at Sloane Eddiswood's trial," I say. "She wants to do it."

Silence.

"You didn't agree to what will undoubtedly be the most dangerous place for her to show her face, did you?" Vaughn asks.

In the center of the whiteboard, I scrawl two words:

Exterior

Interior

Then I draw a vertical line separating the words.

"We need solutions to solve both of these problems. Inside the courthouse and outside it."

Blaine sits back in his seat, frowning. "That place is going to be a circus, Garrison. Reporters, strangers just there to ogle, and undoubtedly people who would want to silence Resa before she gets one step inside."

"It will be a challenge," I say.

Vaughn and Blaine stare up at me, faces expressionless.

"Seriously, no greeting card writing for you. Ever," Vaughn mutters.

"She knows things about the Asylum members. If they learn she's going to talk in court… in front of a judge and reporters? They will do everything they can to silence her," Blaine says quietly. "We can't control what goes in and out of there, Garrison. We can't keep her safe."

It's an alpha's nature to control, to have people bend, so we never have to.

Life has humbled me often enough to have learned, first from Lucas, then by what happened with Blaine and Violet, that control is an illusion.

There is no controlling some things. And the more you try, the more it hurts when all that control you think you had drifts between your fingers like grain of sand.

"This is her fight. No one has been hurt more by what's going on in the city than her and other omegas in it. I intend to help her."

I wait for their cooperation or their refusal. But I won't push. This is a fight that puts all our lives at risk. Perhaps our most challenging ever, and we have the most to lose: our scent match and the woman who means more to us than any other. If I'm not willing to risk for my scent match, then who else is there?

"The courthouse is going to be a bitch to secure," Vaughn says slowly.

"We would have to watch all entrances and exits," Blaine says.

"Or time our arrival for when the trial is already underway." Vaughn narrows his eyes as he thinks. "Fewer people going in and out."

"And we need to have someone on Resa. We don't do close bodyguard work," Blaine says.

Not anymore.

It was something Blaine did occasionally. After Violet, he no longer trusted himself to do anything but the most straightforward background research. Even then, getting his opinion about some things is like pulling blood from a stone. For fear he might be wrong. Fear someone might die because he missed something.

But he's the most experienced with bodyguard work, so if we go ahead with this, he would be the one guarding Resa. I'm asking a lot from him. Maybe more than he can give.

"How about we start with the big picture and drill down?" I suggest.

His eyes slide from me to the whiteboard and his brows knit together before he heaves himself out of his seat and crosses over, holding his hand out for the marker. "Then we need to start with the exterior. Buildings across the road and where someone could set up a perch."

I hand the marker over and move to sit down.

Vaughn lifts his brow, not hiding his surprise.

Tonight, it looks like we're going to be working on this for a while. Tomorrow, I have phone calls I need to make and a case to close that's been open far too long.

A case that Resa just solved.