Page 79 of The Pack's Knotty Runaway
“Shipping a bag isn’t a crime.” He aims for bored and lands somewhere short of it. His tongue darts across his lips, and the fear-sweat comes up another notch.
“The bag arrived with a note in it,” Bram adds. “Addressed to an omega with a documented history with your client. That’s harassment by proxy, and the stalking statute reaches agents.” The booking photo goes down next. “Wade Fenton. Impersonation, pled to a fine. Trespass in two counties. I read the whole narrative, by the way. Creative.”
Wade’s jaw moves and produces nothing.
“And a few days ago,” Bram continues, “somebody paid a sixteen-year-old forty dollars cash to wreck our staging bay. Alpha, thirties, brown hair, a stranger to a town with no strangers in it. That boy will pick your face out of a photo array in about four seconds, and his mother will drive him to the county building herself to do it, if we ask.”
You can just about hear the carry-the-one happening behind Wade’s eyes.
“Conspiracy,” Bram says. “Contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Criminal mischief.” He pulls the desk chair out and turns it toward Wade. “Sit down, Wade.”
“I want a lawyer,” Wade says.
“You’re not under arrest.” Bram’s voice doesn’t move. “You can call anybody you like. And Monday morning this file lands on the county prosecutor’s desk either way. The only question being decided in this room is what your name’s doing inside it when it lands.” He lets that sit.
Here’s the part I keep behind my own teeth. The file is thin. A counter slip, a kid’s description, an old rap sheet. Every line in that folder is true, and none of it is enough, and the whole gameis getting Wade to believe otherwise. Hell, we don’t even have formal proof Derek’s behind all this. I’ve got to say, though, I’ve spent my whole life watching Ash bluff people, and it turns out he has nothing on Bram (when he’s motivated). I just pray to God this guy’s as sold as I am
Wade stares at the camera for a long beat.
“I find people.” He finally says. “That’s the job. Somebody skips out, somebody’s owed money, I find them. It’s legal.”
“Finding her was legal,” Bram agrees. “Everything after it has a charge code.”
“Especially paying a teen to sabotage us,” I say. My hands want to be fists, and I make them stay open at my sides. Wade must feel the vibe and just looks at the floor.
The radiator ticks. Out the window, somebody’s dog is hollering at the creek.
“He didn’t tell me what she was to him,” Wade says. “Said the girl took off, the family’s worried, that’s the story I got. I had her in a day, and it should’ve been the end of the job.”
“But,” Ash says.
First word he’s spoken since the truck. Wade’s head comes around.
“But the client had follow-ups.” Wade wipes his mouth. “First the retreat reservation. He’d already written the letter, her name signed at the bottom. All I did was mail it.” His shoulders twitch. “I knew that one was over a line. But it’s paper. Nobody bleeds from paper.”
My back teeth grind together. That letter caused her great distress.Paper, nobody bleeds. My ass.
“Then the bag,” Bram says.
“Then the bag. It came to me by courier, note already inside. He wanted it mailed from Lakeview. Said it’d land harder if she ever learned it came from home.” A beat of silence. “But most of all, he wanted her to know she’d been found. Make her scared.”
“And the kid?” I ask.
Wade breathes out through his nose. “The texts started changing. He wanted things broken. ‘Make her sanctuary leak money.’ ‘Slow their season down.’ I don’t do that, I find people. But...” He hesitates. “He pays fast and doesn’t haggle. So I hired the kid. Forty bucks to break some stuff. Kid stuff.”
“Show me the texts,” Bram says.
Wade walks up to his nightstand, where a phone lies.
“Also, I want everything you’re telling me written down,” Bram adds. “Start to finish, in your own hand. Signed, dated, sworn. A statement a court can use.”
That’s the one that lands. Wade comes sitting right back.
“No.” He shakes his head, slow. “Talking to you in a room is one thing. That’s air. You want me to put my name on a sworn statement, against him, that walks into a courtroom?” He almost laughs. “That ends me. Part of the whole job is being the guy who never talks. I sign that and I’m finished in this business.”
Ash hasn’t moved from beside the door. Arms crossed, no smile on him.
“Look, it’s very simple.” Ash says. “Write and sign a statement, and you’re a witness a man lied to and used. Don’t, and you’re the man who stalked an omega for cash. That’s the whole choice, Wade.”
