The Alphas Game - Complete Set (4 page)

“As much as I wish, it just can’t be done. We can’t afford it, way too much overhead. I’d have to let some good people go, on top of that can you imagine having to pack up all of my files?”

“That would be a nightmare.” The secretary was looking better, the night of healing appeared to have returned her color and given her some time to recover from her shock.

Chapter5

I’ve been doing some research about fairies, the bad kind of course. As a result, I’ve learned a lot about the various breeds of them. I didn’t know that there were so many kinds and the thoughts that shifters and vampires are types of fey creatures. It’s a rather strange thing to study, but there are so many strange things going on with this. There is a wealth of information available about them, but it all seems to be kind of vague, almost as if people are trying to pass off myths and legends as facts. The truth is that no one seems to know much about them and it’s not very hopeful for me. They have so many different names for the more destructive fairy folk, but the only ones I have a chance of pronouncing is the word unseelie. The unseelie are fairies that are very similar to their counterparts, aptly named the seelie, but their nature takes a much darker bent. They symbolize the dark parts of nature, destruction and death while the seelie symbolize  the rampant growth that can happen in our world. There are so many ins and outs of their culture that I don’t stand a chance of ever understanding it all, even with Hope trying to tutor me. Even she didn’t know everything about it that I would need to know, the problem is that I don’t think that they understand the ins and outs of it all, they just know it instinctively, a product of their chaotic nature.

Hope had just left, and Rosie had found out everything that she could stand to find out that day. It had been an exhausting study session, one of the most intensive that she had ever been involved in. She had gotten a small taste of fairy culture when Hope’s grandfather had hired her to assist in the secretary’s divorce from an abusive shifter, but it wasn’t as intense as this was. She didn’t know that there were so many strange idiosyncrasies. The people that they were dealing with seemed to thrive on chaos and make their homes in some strange realm between reality and fiction.

She was just picking up her phone to dial Kevin when the doorbell rang. “Hope must have forgotten something.” She walked to the door and peeped through the little hole in the door that had been made for that purpose. “What is he doing here?” She debated answering, but thought that she had news to tell him anyway and that she might as well get it over with.

She opened the door, hoping that she was going to get an answer to her question. Kevin’s eyes looked strange in the florescent lighting of the hallway. The security lights gave his dark blonde hair a greenish glow. “I was just about to call you.”

He looked like there was something on his mind, but he wasn’t ready to say it to her yet. As a result his voice was subdued, obviously full of deep thoughts that he couldn’t find the words to express just yet. “I just came over to see if you’d found anything yet.”

“Yeah, actually, quite a lot.” She was pretty excited by it, and led him to the couch where everything was spread out in front of her seat, sitting on the table. “I’ve been doing some research.” She started to sort through the paperwork, eager to show him the research she had compiled. The back of her mind still wondered why he had come over, but she didn’t want to ask. It was pretty clear that he wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.

“What did you find?” His attention focused on all of the paperwork that was scattered over the coffee table. It was a mess to anyone who didn’t know the distinct managing of chaos that belonged to Rosie’s system.

She held up one of the books, it had a bar-code on it from the local library. It was one of mythology and fiction from the Celtic world, but it served the purpose she needed. The rest of the world could consider it fiction or myths from a long dead civilization. “I found out that we are dealing with fairies, definitely, but these are the darker ones. The ones that will go out of their way to hurt people instead of just letting it happen when it happens. This might not end well.”

“Uh-huh.” He wasn’t really listening to her, vaguely glancing at the cover of the book. Instead he was just leafing through the giant scattered piles of papers and books that were piled on the particle board coffee table that looked like it was older than the person living in the apartment. She tried to help him sort through all of the disorganized research that the last two days had been spent doing. His eyes widened as he went through all of the things they had found out. The detective let him work in silence for a while, wondering what had happened to him; trying to peek over his shoulder to find out what he was looking for. She didn’t see anything specific, but the silence crept through the room, overtaking everything and making every creak of the furniture, every inhalation, each exhalation sound like a rampaging herd of rhinos.

Rosie sighed and sat back in her chair. “What are you looking for?” She didn’t know if he was searching for something specific or not, but knew that he was messing up her organized stacks, even if they didn’t look organized to anyone other than her.

The answer sounded casual. “I’m just going back over what we have now. I want to see if we missed anything.”

“Find anything that we missed yet?” Rosie asked him, eager to find out what he was looking for, but he didn’t seem to be focused on anything specifically, instead leafing through everything she had gathered.

“Not yet, but I’m still looking.” The conversation was becoming more normal as time went on and Rosie started to think that perhaps he was just in a slightly strange mood. “Grey told me that you found something new.”

“Yeah, I was about to call you about that.” Rosie’s voice grew more upbeat. “It’s about the type of fairy. We’ve verified that they’re working out of this area, but we don’t know who it is specifically. I was thinking that we could cross reference the name that we got with the type of fairy and see if anything comes up.”

“How did you find this out?”

“Hope’s grandfather is a fairy, don’t you remember?”

“Oh yeah, I keep forgetting.” He looked at her, deeply examining every feature of her person. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about something.”

Rosie’s attention was pulled in by those words. She sat up, ignoring the paperwork in front of her, and looked straight at the FBI agent. “What did you need?” She had been waiting for this, and wasn’t going to miss the answer. He mumbled his reply and she didn’t quite catch it. “What?”

He cleared his throat and spoke a little louder, hoping to not have to say it again. “I’m sorry.”

“I know you are.”

“Do you think you’ll ever be able to forgive me?”

“I probably will, once I get a chance to calm down about it.” Rosie was being honest. The fact that he had broken into her home upset her to no end, but as time passed she found herself more willing to forgive the transgression, understanding the reason behind it. “What hurt me most was the timing of it.”

The FBI agent hung his head. “I’m sorry about that. I really am. I wish that I could go back in time and fix it, maybe give us a chance to be together.” The revelation was shocking; she hadn’t expected to hear anything like that.

Rosie’s eyes started to water.  It took her a few minutes to figure out how to respond to him. “I can give you another chance.” She scooted next to him, putting her arm around his shoulders and kissed him.

This wasn’t one of those fiery hot passionate kisses, but instead it simmered slowly, rising as they stayed together. The lion-maned FBI agent wrapped his arms around the woman, this woman that confused and intrigued him, carefully pulling her closer to him. He prayed that she wouldn’t pull away from his embrace. Their bodies immediately responded to each other, telling stories about desires that they both had believed to be gone. The detective leaned in, pushing Kevin back onto the couch. He lay back and she straddled his hips, bringing her body down and intensifying the kiss that they were sharing.

He ran his hands up and down her back, stopping on her hips to grip them, feeling the strength of her legs supporting her. When she came up for air they looked at each other, deeply into the others eyes. “Let’s take this to the bed.” It didn’t matter who made the suggestion, but they knew that they needed each other so it was gladly accepted.

They rushed into the room, stripping haphazardly as they moved. There was a line of clothes thrown behind them as they left the living room and entered the hallway where he stopped to kiss the detective. It had gone from being a quiet sort of adventure to something wild and risky, full of laughter and lust. Rosie was down to her pants and Kevin remained in his shirt and socks. “Between us we have one outfit on.” Rosie joked with him.

“Let’s fix that. I’d rather have nothing on.” He started to unbutton his shirt, restarting the race to the bed. Rosie shot off, pulling her pants down. She was in the lead as they entered the bedroom, and had less than ten feet before they reached the bed.

Just before the witch made it on to the bed she tripped over the leg of her pants, threatening to tumble to the side of the mattress and slam her head into the nightstand. She didn’t have a chance to react, before attempting to right herself, the shifter swept her up, lifting her out of the offending clothing and placed her gently on the bed. Once she was secure and in no danger of falling he pounced over her with a slight growl forming in the back of his throat. Rosie smiled up at him as he crawled up her body, slowly overtaking her. He leaned in, kissing her shoulder blade, her neck, her chin before finally landing on her lips. The intimate moment was driven by a deep desire, a craving that would only be satisfied by the two of them being as close as possible.

He positioned himself between her knees, carefully pushing against her folds until with a satisfying wetness he was allowed entrance to her glorious nature. They moved together, thrusting and moaning and pushing, trying to extract every bit of joy from the feelings their bodies were experiencing. They needed this,  that much was certain; they needed every bit of the expression, the release that they were finding.

She moved closer to him, pulling her body up closer to him in order to feel more of him inside of her. She felt him move, his body gaining the jerky momentum as he was desperately trying to maintain control. She didn’t blame him; it was hard for her to keep it together as well. She stopped fighting the waves of pleasure that had built up inside of her, releasing a gushing wave of pleasure in the form of screams and clenching muscles. Kevin couldn’t take the sensation any longer and grunted his own orgasm, flooding her with a piece of himself.

He rolled off of her right after, pushing his hair back as he ran his hand over his forehead. “That was amazing.”

“I know, it was.”  She rolled to her side, facing him with a smile on her face. They stared at each other as their eyes started to close, slowly drifting off to sleep with his arm thrown over her body.

She woke up someplace entirely different. She didn’t know where she was, but could feel the cold air surround her, the concrete warmed to her flesh underneath her and the cold metal of the handcuffs on her wrists. She stayed still, trying to observe everything that she could, but it wasn’t much use. There were some noises from some sort of ventilation system, but not much else.

Carefully she tested her bonds. They weren’t directly attached to anything, but rather a chain was attached between them linking it to the pipe that was stuck out of the floor. The pipe went about a foot off of the ground before it ended in a tee. The tee section went about another foot in either direction, making it impossible to slide the chain off of its tie. The chain must have been almost five feet long giving her some space to explore as she started to test the limits of the world she was caught in. “What happened? Where’s Kevin?” She asked herself the question, groping to find some way to escape.

Chapter6

Grey and Kevin still aren’t quite getting along. They haven’t gotten along since we managed to liberate the wolf from the clutches of the evil fairies and the nearly violent control that they had over him. Understandably the traitor has been greeted with an extreme amount of distrust by the man he used to trust with his life. The fact is that Grey still trusted Kevin, and would forever, but it would probably take a while for Kevin to get himself together. I don’t know how to help these guys, but it would be nice if they could get it together long enough to save me from this.

“Did she call you today?” Grey had stepped into his partner’s office to see if Grey had heard from the detective that they were working with on this project. His cubicle was further down in the row, but Kevin had managed to secure himself a complete office, someplace that he could put his random collections in.

Kevin shot a violent glare in Grey’s direction as he hung up the phone. He had been trying to pull in some sort of lead, hoping to take down the fairies behind this so that he didn’t have to work with the wolf anymore. After his last request for a new partner had been placed on a semi-permanent pending status, waiting for the outcome of this investigation it was important for him to get it solved as quickly as possible. “Nope, I haven’t seen her since yesterday. She probably doesn’t have anything new or she would call.”

“Hope just called me looking for her.”

“She could have just needed a break. She’s had a rough time lately with this case.” He shuffled the papers around on his desk, making it clear he wasn’t interested in small talk. The unspoken knowledge was that Kevin needed a break from his partner.

“She wants us to come over and talk to us. The woman’s really worried.” Grey insisted, knowing that the woman wouldn’t stop calling until they gave in, considering he had been on the phone with her several times since he had gotten in.

Kevin grunted, but he knew that he wasn’t going to make the secretary worry by refusing to show up. His argument was with the wolf, not the fairy. “Fine, I’ll meet you over there. I’ve just got to finish a couple of things up.”

They arrived in separate vehicles, with Kevin ten minutes later than Agent Randolph. When he walked in he could see that Grey was already sitting in one of the hole covered chairs that hadn’t been replaced yet. Hope was pacing in front of her desk wringing her hands. “Something is wrong. This isn’t like her.” The woman had worried hands and concerned eyes.

Kevin immediately regretted having waited so long at the office in order to avoid his partner. “What do you think is going on?”

Hope turned to the lion and her excitement grew. “Do you still have the key to her house?”

Kevin pulled his keys out of his pocket. He did a quick search even though he already knew the answer. She had taken her key back after he had broken into her office. “Nope, I don’t have it. Don’t you have a copy?”

“I do, but someone has to stay here and watch the office.”

“What are you going to do here?” Grey asked her, rising in his naturally flirtatious and masculine way. “You wouldn’t get any work done. Come with us and we’ll check out her apartment together.”

Kevin held the door open and let them climb into Grey’s car before he verified that the door was locked and everything was secure. He then climbed into the back seat, feeling his mind argue about the wisdom of being anywhere near his former partner even if there was a missing woman whose life might be at stake. “Let’s go. Do you know how to get to her place?”

“No, not really.” Kevin started to give directions, knowing exactly the right time to tell the driver about turns. They had worked together for too long not to know how to do that sort of thing. Grey drove with the lights on while Hope tried her best not to start crying. She couldn’t get over the fact that somehow she knew that there was something wrong. Something was terribly wrong; she couldn’t get that out of her mind. “I can’t believe that she would do something like this.”

“It might not be anything bad. She might have just slept in.” Grey tried to comfort her, reaching over from the driver’s seat in order to place his hand on her shoulder, but the comfort didn’t last as he had to take his hand away in order to fight with the traffic that seemed to be extra difficult on this day. “Wow, we’ve got all of the jerks on the road today.”

Kevin tried to initiate small talk, complaining about the drivers in order to distract the young woman in the front seat of the car, but it didn’t seem to be working. That was the problem with small talk. At moments like this it just seemed like an excuse not to face the problem. It didn’t make things any better but no one wanted to admit it. Kevin didn’t know why the woman was so upset about this. Rosie wasn’t exactly the type of woman to keep a regular schedule, but he wasn’t going to make her secretary feel even worse by shutting her down at a time like this. “We’ll be there soon. It’s probably nothing.”

“I don’t think so. She calls me every day when she’s on the way to the office. For five years, she’s called me every day and today she doesn’t. There’s something wrong. She doesn’t like to make people worry so she calls a little bit more than a normal person would. I haven’t heard from her since I left her place last night.”

“You were at her place last night? Was there anything strange going on? Did she seem tired or afraid?”

“No, she was going to call you to tell you what we found out. You should have talked to her after I left.”

“She didn’t call me.” Kevin bit his lip. This was starting to sound a little strange. He pulled out his phone and checked for missed calls, but there were none from the detective. “Nope, I didn’t miss it.”

“Do you see what I mean now? I’m not going crazy. This isn’t like her.”

“I know that she was upset yesterday when I was helping her clean up, but it didn’t seem to be unusual. I mean considering what happened to her office.” He licked his lips, remembering the kiss that they had shared in her office while they cleaned up all of the glass that covered the floor. Everything was so strange. He hadn’t known the woman for that long, so he couldn’t make a judgment as to whether or not she would just disappear, but the truth was that people left their lives all of the time. It was a sad fact that a lot of friends and family didn’t want to admit to themselves. He was sure that they were going to find the woman at her house, sleeping or sick, but he knew that her secretary wouldn’t be happy until she laid eyes on her boss.

The apartment had a slightly eerie feel when the government issued black SUV pulled up in front of it. The old brick building didn’t look any different, but there was an atmosphere that hung around it. It was unwanted anticipation, like the kind that you find yourself trapped in the moment before another car crashes into yours. In that moment you know you are going to be hurt, but can’t do anything about it. It’s too late to get out of the way.

The dread increased as they made their way to the detective’s apartment, growing so intense that they paused before opening the door. There was no sound inside, but the light spilled out from underneath the door. “She’s going to know that we went inside.” Kevin thought twice about going into her home because of the entire debacle that had happened last time he invaded her space.

“I have permission to do this and I brought you guys with me.” She pulled herself together long enough to knock on the door. Everyone was silent, listening carefully for any sign of life inside the apartment. There was no sound and Hope was shaking as she desperately tried to place her key into the lock. She struggled to get it aligned properly, scratching at the doorknob instead of opening it. It took several minutes for Grey to reach over and take over, managing to get the door open. The moment the door opened the part fairy secretary burst into the front room. “Rosie! Where are you?”

No answer came as the question echoed through the empty house. Grey looked over at the coffee table. “Is that what you guys had been working on?”

Hope wasn’t really paying attention. She was racing through the house, opening every door that she could find. “Where is she?” She got to the bedroom and looked inside. “I think she was here last night, but she didn’t make her bed.”

“She always makes her bed.” Kevin commented coming up to look into the room. “I remember that from when I was staying here.”

“You stayed here?” Grey asked his partner, coming up to join the crowd in the hallway, paused before going into the most private space in the woman’s home.

Kevin didn’t want to start that conversation so he ignored it. He had recovered there after Grey had injured him. It didn’t matter that the wolf had been under the control of fairies. “I smell sex.” He couldn’t stop the sting of jealousy from his voice. She had been with someone else. He wondered who it was.

“Let me in the room and I’ll sniff it out. I’m the bloodhound,  remember.” Grey pushed past the other two and made his way into the room. He immediately caught wind of two very familiar scents. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were here last night?” The question wasn’t meant to be accusatory, but to Kevin’s more sensitive nature it sounded like a fully fledged trial.

“I wasn’t here last night.” Kevin asserted his innocence, his voice growing defensive as he spoke. “I haven't seen her since yesterday.”

“The only people that I smell in here are you and her. That really does smell like you were here last night.”  Grey shrugged. “I don’t know what’s going on, but it seems strange if you’re positive that you weren’t here last night.”

Hope looked around, finally settling her gaze on the werelion FBI agent. “You don’t expect me to believe that do you?”

“I expect you to believe that because it’s the truth. I wasn’t here. She never called me. I didn’t sleep with her last night. I haven’t seen her since yesterday morning. I swear; it’s the truth.”

“Then how do you explain this?” The fairy approached menacingly. “I know that you two have been together. How often have you been coming around? Do they have you charmed like him?”

She hit him right where it hurt. His pride was bruised. His natural arrogance flared up, ready to start a fight. “I haven’t been with her since I broke into the office.”

“Wait a second.” Grey interjected before a fight broke out and someone got hurt. “Are we sure that it was Kevin. He’s not someone who would make something like this up.”

“Unless he killed her.” Hope’s words flew out of her mouth like a series of poisoned daggers flying straight at his heart. She was beyond angry.

Grey put himself in the middle. “Let’s worry about finding her first then concern ourselves with laying blame. I don’t think he did it, but if he did he damn well was controlled and it wasn’t his fault.”

Kevin tried to remember while Hope started to make some calls. He couldn’t find anything hidden in the crevices of his mind telling him that there was a problem. They had identified her scent mixed with his in the bedroom and he would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit that he smelt the strong scent of intermingled sex on the sheets. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t figure out what.

“Tobias.” Hope’s voice was curt, trying to hide the worry. “Have you heard anything from the boss?”

The rat was breathing heavy on the other side of the phone, his mouth way too close to the microphone so that even the shifter on the other side of the room could hear what he was saying. “She ain’t called me lately, baby.”

Hope shuddered when he called her baby, but she needed information so she did her best to ignore it. “Do you have any idea where she might be? She’s been taken.”

“Does that mean you’re free tonight?” The greasy little man asked.

Hope’s voice grew indignant. “No I am not free tonight. I have to find my boss, and you have to help me or three quarters of your income goes out the window.”

They could picture Tobias’ entire demeanor change as he realized the implications to the private detective’s disappearance. “Okay, okay, I’ll see what I can dig up for you, but I can’t make any guarantees.”

“I’m pretty sure that this has something to do with the case that we’re working on right now, so you might see what you can find out about that fairy.”

“I’ll do what I can. The only thing that I know right now is that they’ve been taking hostages and prisoners, hoping to trade for information to be let off the hook for something they’ve done wrong.”

“Do you have any idea where they’re keeping these hostages?” Hope asked, her heart fluttering with the news even if it was unverified and from the type of source that no self-respecting cop would take seriously.

“My best guess is that Chinese place I told her about. I don’t know if she’ll be there, but it might be worth checking out.”