Page 94 of Stolen Omega

“Did Mrs. Ortega give you her statement?”

“She gave it over the phone.”

I know he’s not going to tell me what she told him, and I know she would have asked him to list me as a suspect. She has a serious distrust of Alphas. Seeing how distant she is with her husband, I always assumed that stemmed from her relationship with him. It could be based solely on the fact that she doesn’t want her daughter to find a mate and decide a family is more important than her music, but if that was all she was afraid of, she’d be worried about any relationship Zelena formed, not just potential meetings with Alphas.

I put my hand into my pocket, about to text Russ to tell Seth to stop trying with the encryption, when a limo rolls to a stop right outside the Silver Leaf’s entrance doors.

“Well, it’s about time,” Detective Pascal mutters.

The driver gets out and opens the back door, giving Alma his hand to help lead her out of the limo.

She steps onto the pavement and moves toward us, her expression colder than ice as she slows to a stop ahead of the hotel’s entrance. I take a few steps forward while she waits for her husband, and I hear the detective sigh as he follows me.

“Mrs. Ortega, thank you for coming out here.”

She doesn’t give her usual nod of response. She’s as immaculately presented as ever, in her tasteful, custom-made clothes. A diamond necklace sparkles around her neck, an expensive trinket bought with her daughter’s earnings. She wears matching earrings, and her hair, as always is neatly styled up and away from her face. Her cold expression takes something away from her beauty that makes her appear much older than she really is.

Her husband comes out of the backseat of the car slowly enough to seem reluctant to be here. He moves to Alma’s side and stands there limply, his gaze tired and unfocused. He looks older than he is, too, but for completely different reasons.

Alma stares at me. “How did you allow this to happen?”

“There was a change of driver tonight. He passed the security check. Harry Castle rode with him. When I didn’t get the usual confirmation that they’d arrived back at the hotel, I called Castle. He didn’t answer. We were close to the hotel on the tour bus …”

“We?” she asks, raising her eyebrow.

“Myself, and the rest of the security team,” I clarify.

She nods. “And?”

“And I checked with the gate security only to find out the van had been removed earlier in the day by Castle himself and it hadn’t been back. So, I got in my car and went to where the van’s tracker signaled that it was. A dirt road on the way to Silver Grove. I found the tracker on the road.”

Detective Pascal produces the bag with the tracker in it, showing her he has it.

She doesn’t seem impressed, turning her frosty gaze back to me.

“At what point did you decide Harry Castle was in on the kidnapping?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

“I saw two sets of tracks on the road near the tracker. Neither belonged to Castle. I couldn’t find him at the site where the tracker had been discarded. It seemed probable that they’d picked up another man, and that they were potentially going to or through Silver Grove to drop him off. At that point it seemed like a good idea to check Castle’s house.”

“Hmm,” she mutters, looking me up and down as if she can’t stand the sight of me.

“I accept full responsibility for what happened tonight,” I tell her. “I shouldn’t have allowed the change of driver, security check or not.”

“Why was Castle given his post?”

“He was given his post because he was trustworthy. I’ve never been more devastated to be proven wrong.”

“Trusting people is a weakness,” Alma says. “Who else do you trust on the team?”

“No one, not fully,” I tell her, hating that protecting Russ might end up getting him questioned by this bitch and the police. He’s already shown he couldn’t handle that.

“What about Russell Kent?” she asks.

“What about him?”

“Do you trust him?”

Fuck. What does she know?

---