The Alphas Game - Complete Set (12 page)

Chapter2

There’s no doubt about the fact that he is a handsome man, powerful and strong. His hair always seems to take the form of a lion’s mane, no matter how much he tries to control it. His bestial side, brooding and dangerous is always so very close to the surface. He’s a hard man to resist, and his eyes are the most captivating. They hold secrets, and I have no idea what they are. I’m a girl that likes to uncover things, find out the secrets that control a man or a woman and use them to do the right thing, to right a wrong, to stop a tragedy, or what I do most of the time, to serve justice. Sometimes, however, I just like to uncover things, and as he rolls up his sleeves and his strong hands come into my vision I realize exactly how much of him I want to uncover.

“Let’s watch a movie while we wait for Grey to come back.” There was a catch in her throat.

“What kind of movies do you watch around here?” The werelion peered around the room, examining his surroundings for some evidence of a television set. It didn’t take him long for his eyes to alight on the large wooden cabinet. “Is that new?”

“I didn’t think you’d notice.”

“I practically lived here for a while, don’t you remember?”

“It seems so long ago now doesn’t it?” The conversation was still a little nerve wracking. She could feel the tension flowing out of their bodies and into the room like a magical sheet, dulling all of the important things and barely being covered by the small talk that they were making. 

“It does, doesn’t it?” He walked over to the armoire and opened all of the cabinets.

“I have Netflix, you know.” She laughed and turned on the television, carefully manipulating the remote to bring up the options that it offered.

“It’s always so hard to choose from here.” He was looking at the starting page, there were so many options that were available, it held a world of possibilities.

“I know; I always have trouble figuring out where to start my search.”

He chuckled; it was a small sound, existing only in the space that was under his breath. “We could always just pick a random word and see what it brings up.”

“That sounds like a plan. I do that a lot.” They settled on the word grievance and managed to find a procedural drama, an extended show that had been on the air for years. Deciding against that they went through the steps once again, picking the word snakes, this time the television directed them to a movie about snakes invading various forms of transportation and the sorted details of removing them from the vehicles, and they watched the mind numbing movie with minimal conversation.

Kevin’s phone rang about half way through the not too complicated plot. “It’s Grey.” He hit the answer button and said his name.  Rosie paused the movie and listened to Kevin’s side of the conversation.

“What’s going on?”

The muffled voice on the other end of the line wasn’t decipherable, but Kevin’s answer was. “He’s got more paperwork for us? That’s insane.” More muffled noises came out of the phone. “OK, I’ll keep an eye on her while you take care of it.” He hung up without saying goodbye. When you get close enough to a partner, simple niceties like that seem to slip away.

“What’s going on?” She already knew, but she didn’t want to seem like she had been eavesdropping.

“Oh, like you don’t know.” He nudged her with his elbow.

“Are you accusing me of something?” The offense was mocking.

“Yes, yes, I am.” His words were matter of fact, but he had a smile on his face. “You were eavesdropping.”

“I would never eavesdrop.”

He held up his hands. “I’m sorry. You are absolutely right. You weren’t eavesdropping. You would never do anything like that.”

“You are absolutely right. I would never do something like that. I don’t act like that. Now, are you going to tell me what he said?”

“Fine, you win.” There was laughter hiding in his voice. “The Director managed to come up with a lot more paperwork for us. He’s getting started on it. He’ll be by to pick you up in a couple of hours. Is that going to be OK?”

“I can live with that.”

“It might be later.” He was warning her. “Grey tends to get really frustrated with paperwork and tries  to rush through the entire stack in one sitting.”

“That seems like him.”

“He always wants to get unpleasant things out of the way as quickly as possible.” Kevin scooted an inch closer to Rosie and noticed that she didn’t move away. It gave him hope that she might have actually forgiven him. “You want to turn the movie back on?”

“Sure.” She hit the play button and turned her attention back to the screen. He adjusted in his seat once again, testing his theory. Once again she didn’t seem to notice the fact that he was moving a little closer. He wanted to speak, to tell her how he felt, but he couldn’t find the words.

He shifted away. He was nervous, afraid that the charm that he had been held under was still affecting him somehow and the thought worried him. He was afraid that he might harm her and suddenly he wanted to get away, to escape from the fears that he felt welling up inside of him. She looked up at him, curious about the reason he moved closer then moved away. “Is everything alright? Would you like a drink?” She was starting to feel a little nervous as well. She rose off of the couch and walked into her tiny kitchen, pulling two sodas out of the refrigerator and brought them back to the couch.

“Thanks.” The words sounded dull, like there was so much more that he wanted to say, but it just wouldn’t escape from his mind.

“You two are so different, aren’t you?” She laughed.

“What do you mean?”

“You have so much trouble expressing yourself. I always thought that it was so odd that you can’t talk about things like that.”

“I talk about my feelings.” Kevin defended himself. He doubted that he would be able to defend that; he couldn’t remember the last time he was in a good mood. It had to be before this case, before everything seemed to go wrong, but still a part of him knew that Rosie wasn’t at fault for all of that. He wanted to run on the savannah, proud and free like his ancestors did before him, but that wasn’t possible. He was in Tampa, on the ocean and there wasn’t a large empty tract of land in sight.

“No, you don’t, not really.” She had him cornered and was ready to strike. “Why won’t you ever say anything that’s not negative?”

“I don’t do that.”

“You actually believe that, don’t you?” She was being confrontational and she knew it, but she didn’t care. She wanted to get something out of him, anything that showed that he felt anything but shame or pain.

“Yes, I do believe that. I talk about my feelings. You haven’t spent that much time around me, so how would you know?”

“What are you talking about? You lived here for a week while I took care of you. I would think that that would mean that we know each other pretty darn well.”

“For a week it’s still possible to maintain your best behavior.” Kevin shot back; part of his job was doing some study into human behavior and he knew how long it was possible to only show the best parts of yourself.

“What are you talking about? You were the whiniest injured man I had ever met.” She pointed at him. Her finger touched his chest. “You whined about everything that happened. You were miserable, trapped on that couch.”

“Could you blame me?” He defended himself.

“I don’t know. I would never have behaved that way if you were taking care of me.”

“I don’t believe that. You don’t like being restrained at all.”

“That’s not true, I can handle being restrained.” Her eyes started to glitter with naughty promises and Kevin noticed them. The look on her face was driving him crazy and he didn’t know what to do about it. He didn’t respond, instead he kissed her and it was long deep and passionate. He was spurred on when he felt her arms start to wrap around him, bringing his body closer to hers. He loved the fact that he was so close to her. He appreciated her touch, her warmth, the special way that she made him feel like he was on top of the world.

His hands started to wander, first they moved up and down her back, carefully tracing her spine up and moving gently down over her shoulder blades. It was almost like he was tracing one wing at a time onto her back. She noticed this and wondered what it meant. Did it symbolize something? She didn’t ask, instead she focused on the feelings that his hands were giving her, tiny little tingling motions that seemed to reverberate through her entire body.

She could feel a humming start in her nether regions. It was a gentle feeling, one that slowly rose to a level that made her feel like he was doing things to her body that she would never have imagined. His mouth moved down to her neck, slowly kissing, making her body respond to him as his hand slipped under the hem of her shirt, heating up her lower back with his passionate embrace.

She could feel his manhood starting to respond to her body, pressing against her stomach and making it start to do flips around the inside of her body. Her heart rose to her throat and the kiss grew more intense, his tongue dug into her mouth, embracing her tongue. She melted into the moment, leaning on him and he held steady and firm, holding her weight with great ease.

She wanted nothing more than to fall into bed with him again, but could not get the suspicions out of her head. She tried to ignore them, kissing him with more passion, more abandon, more strength, but it didn’t work.

“I’m sorry.” She pulled away.

“You couldn’t get it out of your mind could you?” He plopped down on the sofa.

“No, could you?”

“Not at all.” She dropped her head, looking down at the floor, unable to think of a lie that would work to spare the man’s feelings. “I just couldn’t do it, not really. I’m sorry.”

He walked up to her, dropping to his knees at her feet and grasping her hands in his. He gazed up, looking deeply into her eyes. “Trust isn’t something that’s easy to regain. I’m not mad. I was at first, but I realized that I would probably feel the same way. There would be betrayal so deep that no amount of reason would make up for it.”

“What are you trying to tell me?” She was bewildered; he had never seemed capable of speaking so clearly, so eloquently.

“I’m trying to tell you that I won’t be mad if you don’t want anything to do with me. I would understand, but I wouldn’t be happy with it.” He sighed, it was a low sound camouflaged by the words that he was saying. “I’m going to go.”

“OK” It was all that she could say as she leaned back against the arm of her chair, unable to figure out what was going on. It was as if the world had suddenly turned upside down for a moment, Kevin was talking about his feelings and forgiving her, giving her his blessing to move on. She knew that she didn’t particularly need his blessing, but it was nice to know that he had given it. Her stomach fluttered a reaction of the nerves that were plaguing her as he walked out the door, without looking back.

She sat in silence until Grey arrived, completely still and in the same position that she had been in when Kevin walked out the door. “Hey, are you OK?” Grey asked as she opened the door.

“Just been thinking.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, if you don’t know what you’re thinking about it should be a problem.” He reached for her bag; she had managed to pack it before Kevin had arrived. “Do you have everything you need?”

“I’m pretty sure.” She picked up the bag and he took it from her, leading the way out of the apartment and to the car.  They drove in silence and she prepared herself for the long sleepless night that was coming. When they arrived there was more silence, quiet solitude, more oppressive than a dictator. She went into the apartment, and stretched. “I’m off to bed.”

“Yeah.” Grey could sense that there were deep thoughts going on in this woman and he let her walk into the bedroom without a word, he let her think those deep thoughts until whatever had gone wrong was resolved.

She climbed into the bed without undressing, but laid there for hours, thinking over and over about what they were going to do. “I have to stop them, but how do I do that?”

She continued asking herself the same questions over and over, but no answer came to her until the first dredges of light made their way into her window. That was when an idea came to her and it was brilliant, or at least she thought that it was. She knew that she needed to get some rest first and finally found herself drifting off to sleep, dreaming of all of the clues that she was bound to discover.

Chapter3

When you are sneaking off on your own, it’s important to evade both the bad guys and the good guys. Especially when you’re sneaking into a dangerous place that is still technically a crime scene, even if they’ve taken all of the evidence they’re willing to sort through away already. I know there’s something else there. There has to be. They say that it’s too dangerous to go into the basement again, but I don’t care. We’re going to find something down there. Of this fact I am absolutely certain. I know that it probably isn’t the best idea that I’ve ever had, but it doesn’t matter. It has to be done. I have to do this because the guys in charge of the crime scene investigation seem to be taking their sweet time moving the rubble of the explosion out of the way in order to check out the basement that I was being held in. Yes, I’ve heard the rhetoric, I’ve heard them talking about specialists and how it’s not safe for untrained personnel to go into the building and that they have to clear out the dangerous rubble in order to check it out, but I feel like every day we’re losing a little bit of the evidence that could help us.

Rosie slipped through the darkness and saw the guards around the line that told her not to cross. She wasn’t going to listen to that advice, however, no matter how good it was. She knew what she had to do and was ready to do it. Picturing how well this could end and trying to ignore the ways that it could go wrong, she exhaled, slowly and silently, quickly measuring the distance she was going to have to move out of the cover of other buildings and other standard standing structures of the neighborhood like mailboxes and trees that had been planted under a grate in the sidewalk. It was a sad sight, but she didn’t have time to focus on that right now.

There was her moment, she recognized it immediately, and moved. Her previous experience served her well, telling her when to act and when to wait and her body obeyed her every command and she was able to slip under the yellow tape with almost no sound. The guards seemed to be ignoring everything around them. She couldn’t help but shake her head about it, if these were the guys that we were counting on to guard crime scenes, it must be the reason why there’s such a crappy solve rate. That was the easy part of it. She knew that getting into the basement of the destroyed building was going to be even harder because of how quiet she was required to be. She didn’t want to alert the men standing guard on the ruined structure, even if they weren’t paying attention to anything around them. They were private security, people who were paid only to guard crime scenes, but that didn’t mean that getting caught wouldn’t get her into serious trouble.

She slipped through some large pieces of the building and could feel tiny shards of glass crunching under her feet. Carefully examining her path in the dwindling light she saw what looked like a path down to the lower reaches. They had started to clear away some of the debris and she was pretty sure that she might be able to jump through a hole onto the stairs heading down to the basement. At least she hoped it would work that way, she hadn’t really gotten a good look inside when she was there.

Moving closer she heard something else move too so she froze. The sound continued after she stopped moving, making it very clear that she wasn’t hearing anything. Her heart started to race. Turning her head slowly, she saw that it was just one of the guards digging into a paper bag with the logo of a popular fast food joint on it. He wasn’t paying attention to anything that was happening in her direction so she took advantage of the noise that he was making to slip further into the rubble. It took less than a minute for her to reach her goal. Squinting into the darkness she was able to see a small ledge that was only a short way down. She didn’t have a lot of time to debate, the guards could see her if they ever turned towards the crime scene.

She slipped into a sitting position, with her legs dangling into the hole. Hoping that she had judged the distance properly in the dark she slipped her butt off of the ledge, twisting her body as she hung on with her hands. She hung there for a few moments, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the much dimmer light. There were no street lights or setting sun down in the dark basement, but she had brought a small light with her. It would allow her to investigate. She dropped down and slipped the tiny penlight out of her sleeve.

The light wasn’t much but it was enough to let her see more of her surroundings. She shuddered at the sight of the toilet and the mess that was still in it. The original shiny steel was covered in what she hoped was a layer of rust. Turning away from that sight she laid her eyes on the bed. She saw the blanket that she had used during her captivity and immediately reached into her small bag. Pulling a set of gloves out of one of the sleeves she grimaced at the noise of the latex snapping onto her hand. Turning off the light and freezing she listened for someone coming to check out the area. Nothing seemed to stir up top so she turned her light back on and started to look around again.

There didn’t seem to be much here and she was starting to feel like it was all useless, but she started to root through everything anyway. There didn’t seem to be much in the room, but it was hard to determine until after she made her way through all of the rubble.

Examining the room she tried to determine where to start. She decided to start near the area that she had been trapped and work her way out of the center of the room along the wall. She touched the bed, knowing that there might be something under it she started to dig around, looking for anything that might tell her where they should go next. She wanted to find some magical clue that told them where Alfi and Ysella were so they could catch them and life might go back to normal. She felt a tug at her heart when she thought about this case ending. Both Grey and Kevin would walk out of her life, possibly forever once it was over. It was almost enough to make her second guess herself, but she quickly got herself put back together and started to work.

Climbing under the bed she was overwhelmed by the amount of dust that was trapped under there. Trying to restrain her coughing, she moved her head and reached back into her bag. She had figured that it was going to be pretty dusty in places and had brought a small paper mask; it would work and took up less space than a full respirator.

Under the bed was pretty empty except for some rubble that had shifted there during the building collapse. Moving it out of the way she was disappointed that she didn’t find anything. She sighed and moved on, looking into the filthy toilet with the white water from dissolved building materials. She hoped that it was rust hanging on the edge of the toilet, covering just about every surface, and started to check around it, careful not to brush any part of her body against it. Fishing around in the disgusting fixture she found nothing of use, just some pieces of what she hoped was the ceiling and chipped off rust. She moved to the outside of the bowl, carefully feeling the edges. Her heart raced as she found a strange ledge on the edge of the toilet. Fingering it she shifted her body so that she could have a look at it.

“Damn it.” She cursed after looking at it closer. “I don’t think that I can get in there.” She was whispering, hoping that no one was close enough to the hole to hear her speak. She grimaced and dug into her bag once again, changing her gloves and pulling out a tiny light on a flexible strand. It should let her see if there was anything in there. She also produced a small pair of tweezers.

She glared into the little hole, but didn’t see anything. Groaning she shone the light, hoping to see something hidden in the corners, but there didn’t seem to be anything. She still stuck the tweezers into the gap in the metal trying to feel around. The metal tool caught on something in the tiny space and she twisted and turned her tweezers, shifting them back and forth, until she managed to grab onto whatever was trapped under the toilet.

Her heart started to flutter when the tiny piece of plastic slipped out of the hole, but it turned out to be only a bread tie, obviously there had been something attached in there, but it wasn’t there any longer. Wondering what had been held there she placed it back into the hole. She wasn’t going to move the evidence, but she did know that unless she took it with her she wasn’t going to be able to use her powers on it and she wasn’t willing to take evidence that she wasn’t positive would work. She mentally cursed and started to look around, trying to decide where to search next.

With great trepidation she stepped towards the bar in the middle of the room. Without thinking about it she rubbed her wrists. The scars on them were still fading from her ordeal and that pipe frightened her a lot. She drew in a breath and made up her mind, she had to check it even if she didn’t want to do it. The weight of the pipe wrench in her bag was suddenly more noticeable, heavier somehow. Reaching down, into the cool dark fabric she touched the metal. It felt icy cold in her fingers, slipping through them as if it was coated in ice. She pulled her hand out of the bag and rubbed them together, only to realize that it was her hands sweating. She knew that the pipe had been put together fairly well and had brought a pipe wrench with her in order to try to take the pipes apart, but now she wasn’t sure that she wanted to be anywhere near them. She forced herself to move closer and looked at the pipes. From this close they didn’t look that dangerous, there really wasn’t anything inherently harmful about the fixture, it was only the actions that were taken with it that were harmful and there was no one around to chain her to it.

She started to run her hands over the pipe, looking for something that she might have missed. She didn’t find anything so she tested the seal in the pipe with the large wrench that she pulled out of her bag. There was no way she was going to get into it. She cursed and decided to start checking the walls. There weren’t many that she could get to, but she did her best, searching for secret entrances. There had to be a door that exited out of the basement, because she had heard a door open at floor level. There was no door at the bottom of the stairs and now she was able to notice that the sound didn’t come from the same direction as the stairs. It came from somewhere else in the room. She stood in front of the toilet, almost as if she was about to sit down and closed her eyes, trying her best to remember the sound. The spatial orientation helped her identify what direction in the room the sound had come from. She picked her way through the rubble, careful not to fall or trip as she made her way to the wall. It was covered in a light pink wall paper with dark red flowers all over it. She thought that it was odd that such pretty wallpaper was in a basement. “Why would they do that?” The words came out as a curious whisper.

The wall was actually fairly clear and she noticed that the rubble had been shifted. There seemed to be a clear triangle with drag marks in the dust. “A door.” She took note of it and started to feel around. It didn’t take her long to find the seam of the ripped wall paper. There was an almost invisible cut that allowed a panel to be flipped open. She shone her light into the hole.

What she saw in the hole made her heart soar with excitement. She had managed to find the door handle. It looked so ordinary it was almost shocking. She took a deep breath in order to calm her beating heart and reached her hand inside, ready to open the door. Her mind raced to a dozen different possibilities, including the handle being a trap that was going to have her hand cut off by a guillotine, but she shrugged that off, knowing that only happened in movies.