Page 8 of Two For the Show
We don’t want the whole troupe to know that I bonded Alex. It would raise too many questions, now that she’s gone.
“She did us a favor?” Jude asks slowly.
Travis doesn’t let up. “Hell yeah, she did! An Omega in heat would have fucked shit up here, boss. It was a mistake to hire her, but lucky for us, you can rectify it now.”
Jude narrows his eyes and props his hip up on the corner of his desk. “And how do you suggest I do that?”
Travis runs his hand over his buzzed blonde hair. “Hire an Alpha doctor, of course. Eventually, some of the guys wouldn’t have been able to control themselves around her, and I’m sure a circus full of dudes in rut not something you would’ve wanted to deal with. Trash took itself out.”
The dead Alpha walking pushes to his feet and smooths his shirt down his lean stomach. “We done here? I need to get to Chet so we can run sound and light checks.”
“Yeah, we’re done here,” Jude says sharply.
After Travis slams the door behind him, my boss turns on me with tight lips. “He’s part of this, isn’t he?”
“I’d put money on it.”
“So, who do we have this narrowed down to?” he asks, crossing to the kitchen and grabbing two bottles of water out of the fridge.
Jude hands me one, and I crack it open before answering him. “Travis, Chet, and Elvis.”
Elvis was a surprise to me. He’s one of our roadies, very soft spoken and has never made any waves. He was so nervous when Jude questioned him that I have little doubt that even if he wasn’t directly involved, he knew what happened.
Travis and Chet, though? I’m not surprised.
“Alright. Then we get them all together and put the pressure on them. Or we tail them and see if they meet up. Let them hang themselves. But we need to know for certain that the threat has been removed or she’ll never come back.”
He pulls out his phone and starts swiping at the screen. I have no doubt he’s looking at more news articles and blog posts about the “devastating” disappearance of Dr. Alex Shields.
Jude has tortured himself with articles about her. They talk about her, her schooling, her career, all in the past tense, like it’s all but a foregone conclusion that she’s dead.
“You know she was a flautist in the high school marching band?” he says. “And she was on the debate team.”
“Did you find her yearbook or something?”
He turns the phone around so I can see the screen. “No, people who knew her are coming out of the woodwork to talk about her. She’s been missing for months now, and while it’s still too early to presume that she’s dead, the media is saying that the outlook is abysmal. So everyone is going on and on about this woman that they knew fifteen years ago.” He runs his fingers through his hair as he stores his phone in his pocket. “Want to know the weirdest thing, Matteo? There’s not one talking about who she is now. Not a single friend said they knew something was up when she missed brunch, or anything like that. She must have had no friends.”
I slump down on the couch, and he follows me, draining his water bottle. “Why do you think that is?”
“My sister doesn’t have friends,” Jude tells me softly. “That’s what abusers do. They isolate you from your friends and family, so you feel like you have nowhere to go but into their arms. But it’s not a quick process. How did no one notice?”
“She worked a lot, right? Med school, internship, residency, and then the stress of being an emergency doctor. I feel like that’s a lot of hours and doesn’t lend itself to many friends anyway.”
He crumbles the water bottle in his hands. “I fucking hate that she got the guts to leave an abusive situation, and she ran right into another one here.”
“You decide what you want to do with the guys?” I askcautiously. I was surprised at the bloodthirsty nature Dario possessed, and though I’m not worried Jude will suddenly turn into a murderer, he’s been on edge since Rich showed up a month ago.
Our Prime Alpha buries his face in his hands. “I don’t know what to do, honestly. What will send a message that this isn’t okay without sending me to jail?”
“Well, I don’t think we have to worry about them pressing charges no matter what we do, since we know they assaulted her. They’re going to want to protect their own asses, right?”
“We have no proof. We don’t even have a complaining victim,” Jude reminds me. “So if I beat the snot out of them, what’s to stop them from going to the police?”
I shrug and stand up from the couch. “No idea. But we’ve got to figure something out.”
I don’t bother knockingon the door to Quinton’s trailer. Letting myself in, I’m immediately choked by the fog of marijuana smoke.
“Q!” I call out, making my way to the closed bedroom door. “Dude, I thought you were sticking with edibles?”
