Page 146 of Lonely Alpha

I worried that he wouldn’t accept. I’d be furious if he hurt her feelings by rudely turning her down—because Mercury didn’t seem good at kind denials.

It would be a setback, but one we could overcome.

The setback that we were struggling to overcome was Kiara’s family and their insistence on having her bond the Ashby pack. We hadn’t figured out what Kiara’s father gained from that alliance, considering the Ashby’s lack of criminal ties, but maybe Liberty had something.

I drove into the open warehouse, waiting until the garage door was closed behind us before turning off the car and getting out.

“This is where the two of you get coffee?” Ambrose asked dryly. He slammed the passenger door shut, raising an eyebrow at me.

The warehouse was nothing like a coffee shop. It was a wide-open space with not much going on. A couple of cars sat unused and broken down in the main room. They’d come with the purchase.

My heels clicked against the concrete floor as I strode off to the side, toward an office door with a boarded-up window. Swinging it open, I gestured for him to go through first. He did, but froze in the doorway. I had to skirt around him to see what it was that had stunned him.

Liberty sat perched on the office desk, her signature red bag of cleaning supplies beside her. A man was strapped to a chair beside her, an IV stuck into his arm. Jasper pushed up his glasses and crossed his arms over his chest with a sigh.

“Hey, Leigh,” Libby said, hopping to the ground. “Didn’t realize you were bringing company. Hopefully you trust Ambrose, but if you don’t, Jasper might be able to inject him with something to fuck up his memory.”

Ambrose stiffened and I growled, placing myself between him and my errant employees. Liberty chuckled.

“Who the fuck is this?” I demanded, gesturing to the guy in the chair.

He was surprisingly calm for someone tied up. Maybe it had something to do with whatever was running through that IV line. His eyes weren’t hazy when he looked at me, scanning me up and down. He almost looked… happy.

How could anyone be happy to be strapped to a chair? Unless this was some kink thing, but I got the sense it was more like a kidnapping.

“Reynold Carter,” Liberty said. She spoke matter-of-fact, like I should know who he was already.

“You’re going to have to go into more detail than that.”

“The man who told the police about your dark bond with Kiara.”

I glanced back at Ambrose with wide eyes.

Goddamn Dash.

Unless Liberty had hacked her way into this information herself, it was obvious that the most disobedient and chaotic member of the Loranger pack had tipped her off.

“Why is he here?” I demanded.

“Look, Dash thought he would have some information we might be interested in, and I agreed. A friend and I picked up Reynold from his house yesterday morning.”

“And you’ve been holding him hostage?”

Liberty wasn’t always the most above board. That candy apple red bag of cleaning supplies had seen some shit. Kidnapping was far beyond anything I’d seen her do before, though.

The amount of trouble we could get into if this got out… She may have given Soren and my mother more ammo than they already had against me.

“Hostage is a strong word,” she said.

She reached out a hand to ruffle Reynold’s hair. The man didn’t flinch. I was struggling to comprehend what was going on here.

“We’re helping him with a detox,” Liberty clarified. “That’s why Jasper is here. Torture and murder aren’t really my wheelhouse, but I figured if we could give the guy something he needed, he might give us what he knows. As it turns out, he needed a detox and a ticket out of New Oxford to escape his debts.”

The IV setup made a hell of a lot more sense now.

“Let me guess. A debt to the Connollys?” I confirmed.

“The one and only,” Libby said. “And he had some interesting information from when Tobias came to give him a task.”

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