Chapter 2 The Price Of No

Sage's POV Professor Aldren was halfway through a formula when three members of Nightfall security entered the lecture hall. They didn't knock. The silver wolf insignia on their jackets was enough to make Professor Aldren lower his marker and step away from the board. At Blackthorn University, school rules applied right up until Alpha authority walked through the door. The man in front scanned the rows. "Sage Bennett." Every head turned. I had spent the last twenty minutes refreshing Wildfire's employee portal, hoping my missing report would somehow return. It hadn't. The only thing still attached to my name was the temporary badge record placing me inside Engine Seven's work zone. I closed my laptop. "Am I under arrest?" "We need you to answer some questions." That wasn't an answer, but when he motioned for me to stand, nobody in the room objected. Professor Aldren looked uncomfortable. The student beside me moved her backpack so I could pass, careful not to meet my eyes. Whispers followed me down the steps. "Is this about Zane's crash?" "She just started here. What could she have done?" "I heard she was at the garage last night." By the time I reached the door, phones were already appearing beneath desks. Blackthorn could turn a glance into a scandal before lunch. Nightfall security escorting the new Omega out of class would keep them entertained for at least a week. The guard reached for my arm. "I can walk." His grip tightened anyway. "Let her." The order came from the doorway. Zane stood at the far end of the corridor, one forearm wrapped in a clean white bandage. A dark bruise climbed above the collar of his T-shirt, and there was a shallow cut near his temple that hadn't been there yesterday. He looked as if he had slept badly, if at all. The guard released me at once. Zane's gaze traveled over my face, paused at the collar of Sloane's hoodie, then returned to my eyes. Something in his expression shifted when our scents crossed the distance between us, but it vanished beneath cold control. "Bring her to the garage," he said, then turned away without waiting to see whether I followed. Apparently, my ability to walk applied only when I was walking after him. - The Wildfire garage no longer felt like the place where I had been handed a lucky job. The main doors were closed, and only a handful of people had been allowed inside: several crew members, two Nightfall officials, the security detail, and a broad-shouldered woman in a navy suit who introduced herself as Investigator Hale. No curious students crowded the walls, yet the room still seemed full. Everyone there belonged to Zane's world. I was the only person who didn't. Engine Seven sat beneath the fluorescent lights with its damaged front end stripped down. The sight of it made my stomach turn. On a nearby monitor, the practice footage had been paused a second before impact. Zane leaned against a workbench. The position might have looked casual if his jaw hadn't been clenched. Investigator Hale picked up a tablet. "You entered the Engine Seven bay at seven forty-three last night using a temporary employee badge." "Yes." "You left at eight seventeen." "Yes." "There is no inspection report under your name and no maintenance request concerning the brake line." "I know. Someone deleted it." A crew member near the tool cabinets scoffed. Zane didn't look away from me. Hale turned the tablet around. My badge number appeared beside the access time. Below it was Engine Seven's inspection history, clean and complete, with no sign I had ever filed a warning. "Deleting an entry requires senior access," she said. "You were issued login credentials yesterday afternoon. Did you share them with anyone?" "No." "Did anyone watch you enter your password?" "Not that I noticed." Zane pushed away from the workbench. "Convenient." "I didn't say it was." His eyes narrowed as he crossed the space between us. Up close, I could smell antiseptic beneath the cedar and smoke, along with something metallic that might have been dried blood. "You were the last person recorded near my car," he said. "Your report doesn't exist, and the brake line you claim you found nearly put me through a concrete barrier." "I didn't claim I found it. I found it." His hand closed around my throat. It happened so quickly that my back struck the edge of the workbench before I understood he had moved. He didn't squeeze hard enough to cut off my air, but he didn't need to. The strength in his fingers made the promise perfectly clear. Everyone went quiet. The contact sent the same current through me that I had felt in the corridor. Heat spread beneath my skin in a sharp, traitorous rush, and something seemed to pull tight between us. Zane felt it too. His pupils widened, and his thumb shifted against my pulse as if the beat had startled him. For one second, the fury in his face gave way to confusion. Then it came back harder. "Why?" he asked quietly. "Give me one reason I shouldn't believe you did this." "Because I reported it." My voice came out rough. "I entered the fault into your system and told the mechanic supervising me." His grip loosened. I pushed his hand away and stepped sideways, rubbing my throat. The nearest lights gave a faint flicker. I stared at the floor until they steadied. Zane noticed. I could feel him watching me, but Investigator Hale spoke before he could ask. "Who supervised you?" "I don't know his name. His patch was covered with grease." A man in a Wildfire shirt moved forward from the other side of Engine Seven. He was tall and solidly built, with close-cropped brown hair and the irritated expression of someone pulled away from important work. "I'm Marcus Vale," he said. "Head mechanic. I supervise new garage staff, and I wasn't here when you arrived last night." I studied him. "You're not the man I spoke to." "No," he agreed. "I've never seen you before." The certainty in his voice made the back of my neck prickle. "The man was shorter," I said, turning to Hale. "Mid-fifties, gray hair. He had a pale scar across the back of his left hand, and he wore a Wildfire mechanic's shirt. He knew I was the new assistant, knew which checklist to give me, and told me to inspect Engine Seven." Marcus frowned. "Nobody fitting that description works for Wildfire." "He was here." "Then how did he get inside?" the crew member by the cabinets asked. "How did he know you were coming?" "I don't know." "Or there was no mystery mechanic." Zane's gaze stayed fixed on me, so intense that looking away felt like surrender. Investigator Hale tapped the tablet. "Your application notes that you requested immediate work due to financial hardship. Your mother has significant medical expenses." My face warmed. "That isn't a crime." "No, but it can be a motive. The Wilder family has enemies, and offers have been made for information about Zane's movements." "If someone paid me to sabotage his car, I wouldn't have logged in with my own badge, reported the loose line under my own name, and left myself on every camera in the building." "You might have panicked," Zane said. "Then I'm either clever enough to erase a protected report from your system or stupid enough to announce my own crime. Which version have you decided on?" A sound suspiciously like a choked laugh came from somewhere near the office. Marcus covered it with a cough. Zane didn't look amused. I took a breath and made myself continue. "Someone knew I was starting last night. They knew which car you would drive this morning, and they knew how to remove my report while leaving my access record intact." Hale's expression remained guarded, but she was listening. "They didn't just damage your brakes," I said. "They built a trail that ended with me." The side door slammed open. A dark-haired guy hurried in with a laptop tucked beneath one arm. I recognized Crew Vance from campus, although we had never spoken. Zane's best friend, future Beta, and the one person regularly photographed beside him who never looked as if he wanted to punch the camera. "Sorry," Crew said, slightly out of breath. "Theo made me run the file twice before he'd let me bring it over." He set the laptop on the workbench and turned it toward Zane. "The footage does show Sage near Engine Seven," he said. "She leaves at eight seventeen, and nobody appears on camera afterward. That part looks straightforward." My stomach dropped. "But it isn't." Crew dragged a timeline across the screen. "Seven minutes of the feed were overwritten with a freeze-frame loop. See the clock in the diagnostic display? It jumps, but nothing else in the image moves. Theo only caught it because the compression changes here." He enlarged a section of the video. I couldn't see the difference until he pointed it out, and then it became impossible to miss. "Someone altered the footage after she left," Crew said. "That doesn't prove she had nothing to do with it, but it means she may not have been the last person near the car." The crew member who had accused me folded his arms. "Or she had help." "She might have," Crew said calmly. "She might also be exactly what she says she is-the easiest person to blame. We don't know yet." It was the first fair thing anyone had said since security entered my classroom. Zane watched the frozen footage, his face unreadable. Then he looked at me. "Insufficient evidence isn't innocence." "I never said it was." Investigator Hale collected the tablet. "Until the audit is complete, her garage credentials should be revoked. We can suspend her from Wildfire and place her provisional pack status under review." "Revoke her access to the cars," Zane said. "She still works here." Hale paused. "You want a sabotage suspect inside your garage?" "I want her where I can see her." The answer came too quickly, as though he had made the decision before anyone asked the question. Crew glanced at him, then at me. A flicker of curiosity crossed his face, but he wisely kept it to himself. Zane stopped in front of me. "From now on, you report directly to me. You don't touch a car unless Marcus authorizes it, and you don't leave the garage during a shift without telling me." I stared at him. "You think I tried to kill you, so your solution is to keep me close?" "My solution is to see what you touch, where you go, and who contacts you." "You have security for that." "I trusted this garage yesterday." His eyes moved briefly toward Engine Seven. "Today I don't." That was almost reasonable. The rest was not. "What exactly am I supposed to do?" "Everything that keeps you away from an engine. Coffee. Deliveries. Files. Equipment. Any task too small to waste a crew member's time on." "You're turning me into your personal errand girl." "I'm keeping a suspect under observation." "You make attempted murder sound a lot like an unpaid internship." Crew looked down, but not before I caught the beginning of a smile. Zane stepped closer. "The position is paid." "Then I quit." Silence spread through the garage. Zane's expression barely changed, yet the air around him seemed to tighten. "No." I almost laughed. "That isn't how quitting works." I picked up my bag and turned toward the door. His hand closed around my wrist before I had taken two steps. The current struck again, stronger this time. Zane went still behind me. His fingers tightened, not painfully, but with the instinctive certainty of someone stopping a thing he hadn't intended to let go. When I looked back, his eyes were fixed on the place where his skin touched mine. He released me abruptly. "Your mother works at Blackthorn General," he said. The last trace of humor disappeared from the room. "What does she have to do with this?" "Her contract is new, just like your membership in Nightfall. Both are provisional." Cold settled in my stomach. "Alpha Kael offered us protection." "And a sabotage investigation involving his son would be enough to put that protection under review." Zane lowered his voice. "I can have your mother suspended from the hospital before the end of the day. I can make sure the council examines every document attached to both your names." "You'd punish a doctor for something you can't prove I did?" "I'd make sure you didn't disappear before I found the truth." His tone was controlled, almost matter-of-fact, which made the threat worse. He had found the one person I couldn't afford to gamble with, and we both knew it. Zane held my gaze. "Still want to tell me no, Omega?"