Muscle and Bone - Mary Calmes Page 0,81

has to get married before Saoirse can.”

“Yes.” There was no reason to correct him, to clarify that omegas didn’t get married, they were bonded…though here was Avery, for whom that rule did not apply.

“So your sister wanted to jump the line,” Wade stated as he crossed the room to stand in front of Bridget, “and she was gonna do it by having Remy Talmadge put her into a fake heat.”

“Yes,” Bridget rasped, her eyes filling as she stared at the detective, reaching for him before she could stop herself.

He took her hand in both of his and stared into her welling eyes. “Tell us what you did,” he prodded her gently.

Quick shuddering breath. “I sent my bodyguard to put the fear of God into Remy Talmadge, and to make sure he stayed away from any girls with platinum hair.”

Wade eased her closer to him, glancing at Avery, who was nodding. The pieces came together quickly after that.

Lucas Grant, Bridget’s loyal bodyguard, whom I had never met—but was assured by both Avery and Bridget was built like a brick wall—was the man bouncing my cousin off the sidewalk. He had delivered Bridget’s threat with his fists, and on the night of the murder, had gone with Bridget to Remy’s house to look for Saoirse after Bridget received a call from her mother reporting that her youngest had snuck out.

Lucas finished with Remy, grabbed Saoirse, her platinum curls dyed black, threw her over his shoulder, and carried her to the car, where he stuffed her into the back seat with her sister. The two of them had screamed at each other all the way home, and then Lucas had locked Saoirse in her room before he spent the rest of the night calming Bridget down.

“There’s surveillance footage of our house you can look at,” Bridget informed Wade. “And it’s all time-stamped. Our neighbors have cameras too, if you need more evidence, but none of us killed Trent Highmore. We had no reason to. Saoirse never got in the house, I had no idea Highmore was even there, and I can promise you Lucas didn’t either.”

“Where is Lucas?” Avery asked her.

She made a tsking noise of disapproval. “He needed a little extra cash this month to cover his brother Ray’s gambling debts, so he’s providing security at a sampling party downtown.”

When Avery turned to look at his partner, probably to explain what that was, he must have noticed my disgusted expression. “Find sampling parties morally reprehensible, do you?” he baited me.

“Perhaps instead of trying to get a rise out of me, you might want to illuminate what a sampling party is for your partner.”

I got a grunt before he turned to Wade. “Some omegas who debuted two or more years ago attend sampling parties, sex parties for alphas where everyone’s allowed to screw without benefit of a contractual obligation.”

“Wait now,” Wade growled. “We were talking about this yesterday, or whenever the fuck it was at this point, and you said that an omega can’t have sex with an alpha unless the alpha signs a contract first.”

“That’s the law, yes,” Avery explained.

“Then what?”

“Between two consenting people, in secret, in a private setting, the law can be broken,” I summed up.

Wade gestured at me. “Which I get, but a sampling party is a lot of people, in a lot of rooms, with, I assume, private security, so how does that even work?”

“It’s by invitation only, so they have a head count and then hire however many people they need, based on that number.”

“You should go to those,” Saoirse yelled at her sister, banging her fist on the arm of the chair. “You should go and whore yourself out and secure a fucking match!”

“Saoirse,” Avery began, trying to soothe her. “You don’t mean what you’re––”

“She’s been out twelve fucking years, Avery! How has she not made a match in twelve fucking years?”

I thought about Avery, who was thirty-two now, who had made his debut two years before Bridget, and his friend Linden, who I suspected was the same age as Avery. The richer, more beautiful, more desirable the omega, the longer it seemed to take to find a perfect match, as many of their families wanted to wait and see if there was a wealthier alpha just around the corner. Some were bonded quickly, of course. I’d seen beautiful male and female omegas debut at eighteen and bond in their first year.

Over the years, though, I’d seen a change. Alphas were waiting longer and longer to