Page 77 of Knotted their Beauty

“The body of an unidentified male was found in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park a few short hours ago by park rangers.”

I let the news play while I pull out my phone and start scrolling, knowing damn well if it’s on TV, the internet is going to be a gold mine.

Sure as shit, it is.

“Lennox!” I whisper-shout. “Lenny, get your big ass in here.”

He comes lumbering down the hall quickly, his worry laced with anger as he enters the living room. “What the fuck is your deal?”

I shake my head and motion for him to be quiet before I point toward the huge screen on the wall. I give him a few seconds for it to soak in then show him my phone, the two of us scrolling through the unauthorized photos of one of the more brutal deaths I’ve ever seen.

“No,” Lennox whispers as we both lean in, almost cracking our skulls together as we look over the skinned body. “No way, this wasn’t Ves.”

But I'm already nodding. “Hell yeah it was.”

“But it looks like… holy shit.”

Yeah, our omega made that crime scene look almost exactly like it belongs to the serial killer he’s been hunting.

“Authorities have yet to release an official statement but this reporter doesn’t need that to come to the obvious conclusion. The Orphan has struck again.”

“That was smart,” I grunt as Lennox nods. “That was really fucking smart.”

“Sure was. What better way to shift focus and throw everyone off than blaming it on the very well known psycho who’s currently terrorising the state?”

Exactly.

Ves said he and his team made a little headway, said that they started connecting some dots that weren’t obvious before. I bet he used that along with what he already knew to cover his tracks.

It makes perfect fucking sense.

I know there are serial killers who haven’t been caught, murderers who died before anyone figured out who they were, and if there are everyday assholes getting away with it, you can bet your ass a profiler for the FBI is going to be next level.

“Is it weird that I’m proud of him?”

Lennox shakes his head with a soft chuckle. “Nope, ‘cause me too.”

“We probably would have been in the way.”

“Definitely.” He pulls up a video of someone running along the police tape at the scene, watching with a grin the entire four and a half minutes it plays. “Not that I’m doubting either of our abilities to get out there and fuck some shit up, but⁠—”

“We would have left something behind, maybe made some mistake we didn’t even know we were making.”

“Exactly.”

Then another thought occurs to me. “He was protecting us.”

Lennox nods. “He was absolutely protecting us. Us, and them.” He motions down the hall toward Cali’s room. “Ves was making sure none of it could be traced back to us.”

“And that we’d still be here if it gets traced back to him.”

My words hang in the air as I flip to another station, the hard reality of them heavy and a little suffocating.

Ves has to know that’s a possibility, no matter how small. No matter how good he was, or all the measures he took to make sure no one will ever find out what really happened.

If they somehow figured it out, if someone on his team or at the police department managed to link it to him, Ves could lose everything. He would lose everything, and he put that all on the line to make sure his daughter was safe, and his pack was taken care of.

I bet that asshole already made the adjustments to his life insurance policies, and his will.