Page 39 of Fallen Omega

My breath catches.

A small leaflet, and I’m betting there’s a worn one somewhere on her person or in her bag, from a city funeral.

She did it. On her own.

I can see her, standing there at the no-nonsense marker after the burial, trying not to cry.

I shove most of them back in the drawer, there’s only four, so I’m thinking if it is Elias going by Connor Roth, then others from the Hollows would have come.

He was the type of man, even way back when, who’d befriend half the Hollows.

Folding the one I took on the photo printed on the front, I call Dante, setting it on speaker.

“What?”

Okay, he’s extra snarly. Something’s happened. I don’t ask. I’m sure he’ll tell me or I’ll find out when the time comes. It doesn’t bother me.

What does bother me is what I tell Dante. “Someone’s been through her place already. Amateur.”

There’s a backpack, and I pull it to me, going down on my haunches to go through it. Clothes, not much. But I recognize it for what it is. A runaway’s prep kit.

Dante and I made plenty of those over the years. And ran plenty of times without a fucking thing.

But that’s what it is.

“She got a letter from the fucking Council,” he says. “They’re marrying her off to some schlep in Hover Valley. He’s old.”

“Name?”

I repack the bag. She’ll have money somewhere else, papers someplace on her. And the fact Dante has a letter addressed to her backs that up.

But no way a girl like her is a seasoned runner. At least, I amend, on her own.

Her father, though, if he was Elias Enver...knew how to run.

“Craig Edmonton,” Dante says, still sounding all the circles of hell pissed off.

“Haven’t heard of him.”

“Knight’s looking into him.”

Knight? The way Dante says it, the name is like a dirty word. He’s pissed at the fucking guy. “She’s not Council, as I said,” I finish.

It’s an easy tell if someone is. Closets of appropriate clothes, files sometimes if it’s a sensitive thing where paper is better over computers. Or a work computer.

None of those things here.

Just some empty booze bottles, an attempt at a nest and not much else.

“So do you think she’s being used by them?”

“Against us?” I ask.

It’s an interesting theory, but it’s not one I’ve thought about. Now I am.

“Not sure yet. The Edmonton alpha could be some way to send her our direction. Pretty little thing, untouched, in heat. She’s a time bomb.”

“They’ve tried before.”

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