Chapter 121 The Truth Crashes Down 2

"Serena Winthrop isn’t on the project roster." Jordan swallowed. "Not as staff, not as a contributor, not in the acknowledgments. I don’t know if she was removed or if she was never on it."

Alpha Sebastian lifted his head slowly. Serena had already dropped out of his mind entirely.

"Eira runs it," he said. "Eira runs the whole thing."

"Yes, Alpha."

His hand jerked. His thumb caught the link, and the phone came out of his grip and hit the floor mat face up, article open.

The still frame at the top of the video. Eira in the center, Davies on her left, Claire on her right, a black mic sitting just under her chin. Head slightly up. Looking straight into the room.

Serena had mentioned an Eira on the project once. Months ago. In passing. Just the first name, the way you’d mention weather.

He’d never once thought to ask.

"Alpha." Jordan checked the mirror. "Where to?"

Alpha Sebastian bent down and picked up the phone.

"My parents’."

The car pulled out. He watched the gate close behind them in the side mirror, and then he pressed play.

Reporter: Dr. Crawford, how long have you been on this project?

Eira: Seven years. It was my mentor’s program. I came on as a graduate student and I never worked on anything else. When he died four years ago the program went dormant. When it restarted, I took it over.

So that was what she’d meant. I lost my job.

She’d told him that at a dinner table. He remembered thinking he’d have to ask his father about finding her something.

Reporter: You’re young to be running a federal program. Was there ever a point you thought it was too much?

Alpha Sebastian stopped breathing.

Eira: Yes. But nobody understood the architecture better than I did. So it was going to be me or it was going to be nobody.

Reporter: What kept you going?

Eira: Something my mentor said. He told me that as long as we’re buying our processors from somewhere else, somebody else decides what we’re allowed to build. He said the country doesn’t own anything it can’t make. I’ve thought about that every day for seven years.

Applause off camera.

Alpha Sebastian had lived with that woman for four years and never heard her say anything that weighed a pound. He’d assumed there was nothing there to say.

He kept watching.

At the end, the questions went personal.

Reporter: You’re twenty-five, and you’ve given all of it to this work. Any plans to settle down? Take a mate?

Alpha Sebastian held his breath.

Eira: No.

His face emptied.

Reporter: Not the marrying type, or just not yet?

Eira: I’m going to pass on that one.

Reporter: Fair enough. Thank you, Dr. Crawford.

The video ended and went black, and his own face was in it.

Alpha Sebastian sat there.

"Jordan." His voice came out wrong. "She sat in front of a federal camera and said no."

Jordan didn’t answer.

Alpha Sebastian forwarded the article to her with one line under it.

[Why did you tell them you’re not mated?]

Sent.

Then, under it, gray text.

Not Delivered.

He opened the thread. Red circle with an exclamation point sitting next to the link.

He tapped it. Tried again. Same thing.

He called her.

It didn’t ring. It went straight to a recording. The person you’re trying to reach is not accepting calls at this time.

He sat with the phone against his ear until the line went dead.

His jaw locked. "Jordan. You call her."

Jordan dialed and put it on speaker. Same recording, same three seconds in.

"She’s got me too, Alpha."

Alpha Sebastian didn’t answer. The car got colder anyway, and Jordan cracked his window an inch without being obvious about it.

Jordan gave it a careful beat. "She’d have seen the file Sterling handed out. About you and Miss Winthrop. That’s probably what the block is—"

"I know what the block is."

Jordan shut his mouth.

The man had lost a federal contract nine hours ago and taken it standing up. Two blocked numbers and he was coming apart in the back seat.

"Change of plans. The Thorne estate."

Jordan didn’t ask whether this was a reasonable hour for an unannounced visit. He turned the car around.

The Thorne estate was dark when they pulled up. Every window. No car in the drive, porch light off, and two days of mail sitting in the box.

Alpha Sebastian got out anyway and went up the walk.

He got about four feet from the door and stopped, because there was nothing there. Whatever scent she’d left on that porch was days cold and had rain over it. The house had been shut since the weekend.

He stood there a minute in a dead man’s driveway with his hands in his pockets.

Then it hit him, all at once and from a strange angle.

He didn’t know where else to look.

Not one other address. He didn’t know if she had friends. He didn’t know where she went on the Sundays she wasn’t at his mother’s table. Four years, and this house was the only place he could name.

She’d never gone anywhere before. She’d always just been where he left her.

--

Ten minutes later, they were back on the road.

Neither of them said a word.

By the time they reached the Hale estate, it was a little before two. The downstairs lights were still on, all of them, which never happened.

The front door was unlocked. He got two steps into the entry before he heard his mother in the sitting room, low and fast, the way she talked when she was scared.

"So what do we tell him? The severance already went through. It’s on the pack registry, Roger."