a long moment. “Okay. Once I saw how many omegas were there, I knew there was no way I could put them all into heat, so I made a call to my friend Trent.”
No one said a word, all of them waiting on him, all with notebooks in hand, poised to take down every new word he uttered.
“Trent was the only one I told about my business, because I knew I could trust him to keep it quiet.”
Of course Highmore wouldn’t tell; he was a predator himself.
Remy had taken a couple of the omegas back to his bedroom where the camera was set up, and was readying them when Highmore came in with two more.
Finding out that Remy had been putting omegas into fake heat, was getting paid, and then was blackmailing them if they secured a mate, was nauseating. Having to listen to the play-by-play, I was thankful I hadn’t eaten.
“I had to explain to Trent that most of the omegas were virgins. He didn’t need to give them oral, he just needed to use his fingers, gently, and that would be enough.”
My stomach lurched, and I rolled my neck to try and displace the tension that had settled at the top of my spine.
Avery cleared his throat. “So you gave him those instructions, and was he good with it?”
“He was. Once he started, the omegas calmed down, and soon they were all whimpering and whining, like they do, and he was great. He told them good luck and good hunting and got them out. He was even faster than I was, and we got them done and sent on their way, but then there were stragglers.”
Silence in the room. I could hear the ticking of the Breguet Classique 5177 my grandfather had given me when I graduated from Oxford. I was glad, in that moment, he wasn’t Remy’s grandfather, only mine and Stone’s. I couldn’t wait for Avery to meet him.
“First there was a girl at the door, so young, I didn’t think she was eighteen. I was fairly certain I hadn’t seen her picture in the paper; I comb through the society pages so I can match the announcements with a face, for reference. But she was young, like I said, so I was going to ask her how old she was, but before I could even get the words out, there was a man, the same one who’d been there earlier that night, and the week before, and he yelled, grabbed me by the jacket and yanked me outside.”
“You didn’t know him?” Avery questioned.
“No, I…I mean, I recognized him by his size and build, but I don’t know who he was. I don’t know his name. And I’d never seen him before he came to my house the first time.”
“Did you get any pictures of him?”
“Yes, but it didn’t matter.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. He was wearing a hoodie and a gaiter or balaclava or—I don’t know, but I just couldn’t see his face at all.”
“Okay,” Avery prodded gently, “please continue.”
“The first time he knocked on my door, he threw me up against the wall when I answered, said he knew what was going on, knew what I was doing with the omegas and didn’t give a shit, but what he did care about was a girl with platinum hair.”
Avery and the other three detectives were all listening intently, no one saying a word, not wanting to interrupt my cousin.
Remy swallowed hard. “He said as long as I turned away any girls with platinum hair, he wouldn’t tell my cyne what was going on.”
Avery looked up then, and our eyes met briefly. Something, a thought, perhaps an emotion—I couldn’t discern which—flickered in his, there and gone before he returned his focus to Remy and continued the interview.
“Which scared you, because he knew who you belonged to. He’d done his homework.”
“Yes,” he whispered shakily.
“Okay,” Avery stated, clearing his throat. “So this man warned you about a specific girl, and he came to your house just that once before tonight?”
“Yes, just the once, and then, as I said, twice tonight,” Remy declared.
“Twice tonight,” Avery repeated. “And then what happened?”
“She screamed when the man came up behind her.”
“So she screamed because she was scared?”
He shook his head. “No. She was screaming at him. Definitely at him. She was telling him something about how it wasn’t fair, that it was her turn. I don’t—he scared the crap out of me, so that was all I was focused