Page 42 of Omega’s Fealty

I let them walk me. I keep my face still and keep my eyes on the gravel.

The flashes go on and on. Under the blanket I can hear my own name being shouted in three or four different voices.

Police tape is lifted for me and I am bundled into one of our cars, one with diplomatic plates.

The screen is up between the back seat and the driver as it always is, and the back is empty, as it always is.

Then I am in. Alone again.

Or almost alone. There is the usual camera on the top of the screen. The door shuts and the noise from outside stops as though someone has turned it off.

I sit in the middle of the back seat with the blanket still over my head. The leather is cold through Roan’s sweatpants.

We pull away. Through the tinted glass the flashes go on for a moment, dulled to gray, and then we are past them and onto the road.

I put my hand up under the blanket and under the hood and find the bite.

It is swollen and hot. I press down and the pain goes down into my chest, the way it did in the dark this morning when I woke up on top of him and there was nothing wrong in the whole world.

He said five minutes.

I press harder.

Dealt with. That is what the man said. Not dead. Dealt with.

If he were dead, he would have been a shape on the ground or a body. Unless they moved him.

There was time to move him, but surely they would not have. I am no expert on American law enforcement but I watch enough of their TV shows. They put tape up and draw around it in chalk. They get their CSI teams in. I’m sure of it.

Dealt with. That could mean anything. It doesn’t mean he is dead.

Chicago is going by outside the window, but I don’t know where we are going until the car pulls up into the same parking garage of the hotel that I left only days earlier.

I am met by neutral-scented security alphas as soon as the door is opened for me.

One wrinkles his nose as I pass him. He knows. I glance at the face of the other, but his expression is carefully blank.

They both know.

They can smell Roan on me. Perhaps they can scent the bonding bite.

I recognize their faces too. They’re not my usual crew. They’re part of Reinhardt’s security team. Havel is still nowhere to be seen. I still don’t know how the kidnappers took me. It is possible Havel is dead. Or has been arrested. Or charged with neglect.

I can’t ask. These are not his men. I don’t know if I would get a straight answer.

They take me in through the back, past hotel staff standing against the wall with their hands behind them and their eyes on their shoes. No one dares look up as we pass.

We go up in the service elevator, rising to the top of the building.

I am escorted to the door of my suite, then they bow as I go in alone, locking the door behind me.

I am back where I started.

My schedule for that night is still on the desk. The television is off. The blinds are still open on the city, the way I asked for them.

There is something new: a camera in the corner of the ceiling above the desk, just a small dark dome. The red light under it is on.

I look at it, and it looks at me.