Page 47 of Captive Omega

It’s approaching dinner time as I finish up my work in the kitchen.

We all have spaces we like to work. Garrison will almost always set himself up in our office/meeting room. Vaughn is anywhere and everywhere.

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve tripped over him sprawled in the hallway, flipping through a file or sharpening one of his knives. I ask him why he can’t sit at a desk like a normal person. He says, “Blaine, what’s the fun in that?”

So I step around him and remember to pay attention to my packmate who likes to make himself into a tripping hazard.

When my cell phone vibrates across the dining table, I stop typing and glance at caller ID. I immediately end the call.

Two seconds later, it vibrates again.

I turn it off, check the calendar on my laptop and muffle a curse.

Why is it the thing you spend the most time wishing away is the thing you’re forced to confront over and over?

Things like hospital checkups and memories you can never forget.

Things like loss.

“We stay in the car,” I tell Violet when she reaches for the handle of my tinted Jeep Cherokee. “This is a stake-out. That means no getting out to stretch your legs.”

Her blue-green eyes wrinkle with annoyance. “It’s been three hours.”

“Just relax. We watch and snap the occasional picture. Then I take you back to headquarters and end a nice, easy first assignment.”

We sit still, watching the house.

“I don’t know why Vaughn was so against me coming.” Violet huffs, blowing blonde bangs out of her eyes. “Hours watching mansion curtains. There has to have been a more interesting assignment than this.”

There was.

Stakeouts are boring. It’s why we all agreed this would be Violet’s perfect first on the field assignment after she’d been pushing and pushing for months.

Two minutes later, she’s shifting around, playing with the radio button, itching to get out.

That’s Violet. I thought Vaughn was restless. Violet is something else.

As I slap a fly off my bare arm, my glasses slide down the bridge of my nose. I push them back up and make sure there are no mosquitos in the car. The only thing worse than surveillance is doing it while being attacked with no option to leave.

It’s a muggy, humid summer afternoon, and even though we’re out here in T-shirts and shorts, it still feels like too many layers.

Violet continues to squirm around in her seat. She unbuckles her seat belt, buckles it, then unbuckles it again, muttering she’s bored as she knocks it aside.

I snort a laugh at her failure to keep still for five minutes. “I told you this was a boring assignment, Vee. That you would get bored. This requires patience.”

“I have patience in spades,” Violet snaps.

I raise my brow.

She’s mid-denial when she twists around in her seat. “Someone is coming.”

This is a quiet road. Just wealthy alphas with corporate secrets live here.

She’s tried this trick before as an excuse to get out, saying a car was coming and the driver was acting suspicious. I peered around her, clocked an old lady taking out her trash, and looked at Violet. Violet suddenly had a pressing need to play with her phone.

“No one is—” I swallow the rest of my words because that does sound like a car engine, and the driver is speeding.

Crunch.

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