Page 4 of Omega Shattered
"She disappeared from the heat den on Fifth Street," Laura told me.
"How did the guards miss catching her?" I raised an eyebrow. "An omega in heat isn't moving fast."
"She . . . took the van."
I frowned at that. Omegas weren't allowed to drive, so most of them had no idea how to. The fact this omega had a forbidden skill meant there could be a lot more we didn't know about her.
It didn't matter. I was good at my job and I'd track her down quickly enough and get her back where she belonged.
Leaving the office, I looked over the information on Ramsey's previous pack. They'd signed her over to the ORC after she'd run away twice. That was more than enough reason for most packs to give up on an omega. It also meant I had a renegade on my hands and if she was running off and stealing vehicles, no pack would take her. They might as well deliver her straight to the heat dens at this rate.
"Oh, I'm sorry, sir," a thin, reedy voice startled me as I nearly plowed right through the beta guard I hadn't seen with my nose in the folder.
"My fault." I stepped aside and he lunged forward, brandishing a long electric prod. A frightened omega scurried away as the baton snapped with blue sparks.
Ignoring the spectacle, I strode outside to my car and settled into the comfy seat before pressing a button on the dash. A small screen flashed and a keyboard slid out of the center of the dash. Kade had set this up for me and it saved a lot of time when I had to hunt someone down.
"Told you you should have come with," Kade's voice sounded over the speaker when I called.
"Yeah, well, an urgent job came up. I need help . . . can you hack the cameras around the heat den on Fifth Street, yesterday, around 3 pm? I have an omega who took off in the ORC van."
"What the fuck? How did she know how to drive?"
I didn't respond, hearing the clicking of his fingers flying over his own laptop. The man was a genius and in another couple of minutes, the footage popped up on my screen.
"Looks like she knew what she was doing," he muttered.
On screen, the betas helped carry heat-stricken omegas into the heat den and the van suddenly lurched away from them, speeding down the alleyway and out into the street.
"Can you follow it?"
"Already done. She dumped it in the Heights." He sent another piece of footage to me. "Headed into the woods there and my software isn't picking her up anywhere else."
Frowning, I watched the tiny omega slip out of the van, glancing around before she took off running at a surprising speed toward the woods. Her dark hair bounced, and I realized, as I jumped the video back again, that she was barefoot, like all the other omegas in the center.
"She couldn't have gone far," I muttered. "You're sure there's nothing else around the woods, Kade?"
"Nothing I've picked up on the software. I'm sending you the footage now to review manually." He shot it over and then hung up.
I'd figured this would be a simpler job. An omega in heat couldn't get very far, but the omega I'd seen running for the trees was definitely not in heat. There was no stumble, no hunching over . . . which meant she'd faked it. She was smarter than most of my targets already.
Flipping through the paperwork, I searched for the date of her last heat. Nothing showed up, despite her being at the center for 11 months. Something was off here, but it didn't matter. I wasn't paid to investigate heats, I was paid to return the omegas to their rightful owner.
"This is going to take a lot longer than I thought," I growled at the screen. Pulling away from the curb, I drove to the park that sh van was gone, picked up by the beta crew. Their footprints covered the park and the entrance into the woods, obscuring any clues I might have picked up if I'd been called in first thing.
Swearing, I headed further into the trees, keeping my eyes peeled for anything that might give me a hint of what the sneaky little omega had done. The scuff of beta footprints hid any signs of bare feet until I crossed the little bridge over the creek. That'swhen I saw it. The omega had moved to one side and there were a bunch of marks like she'd hopped around and swished things over the ground. A tiny piece of blue fabric was caught on the bush beside the creek and when I examined it, I realized it was a bit of uniform. Considering that she'd gotten this far, it made sense that she'd stopped to wrap her feet, probably with part of her uniform.
When I emerged from the other side of the small forested area, it was onto a suburban street. Comfortable homes lined the area. There were no traffic cams, but a quick sweep showed me that several of the houses had doorbell cameras, including on directly across from the park.
I strode over to the house and rang the doorbell, holding up my security badge.
"Yeah?" a tired woman's voice sounded, with a baby wailing in the background.
"I'm a security officer from the ORC, and I need to view your doorbell footage from yesterday afternoon," I told her smoothly.
"Really?" The woman sighed, and a moment later, the door opened. "Do you need to come in, or can I just give you my phone?"
"The phone's fine," I assured her, and she shoved it at me, bouncing the fussing child on her hip. While she ducked back inside, I scanned the footage. It didn't take long to find exactly what I was looking for, a dark figure moving out of the woods. It was already twilight in the video, and it was hard to see the figure, but no one else had come out of that area.
