Page 111 of The Case of the Missing Love Stone

“We need to find out who else has been exposed to similar bundles,” I say.

The medic gives Maribel a grounding cloth carrying Grant’s scent and arranges the men where she can see them. Ellis talks about their first trip together, his voice rough but steady. Grant’s purr rolls low through the cottage, warm enough to ease the sharpest edge of her panic.

Scarlet stands beside me while we finish the evidence bags, her shoulder resting lightly against my arm.

When we step onto the porch, late-afternoon light gleams through water dripping from the eaves. Festival banners flutter down the street, pink and cheerful against the muffled crying inside the cottage.

Tom follows us out. “Lena’s pack is worse.”

Scarlet grips the porch rail. I lay my palm over the back of her hand, and she turns hers beneath mine and threads our fingers together.

“Tell us,” she says.

“Lena keeps insisting her alpha already left. Her beta started showing symptoms this morning: headache, nausea, scent drop. The medic says the whole pack is destabilizing.”

Wes looks toward the cottage door. “Did they use a bundle?”

“Not that we know. Her cousin bought one yesterday and brought it to the bakery.”

Scarlet draws a slow breath through her nose. “The booth may be using the town’s fear to place the same materials in several locations,” she says.

Wes nods. “We trace the booth permit, the Magnolia crate, and whoever printed the flyers. We compare Maribel’s bundle with the post office samples and see if we can recover one that made it to the bakery.”

Tom settles his hat back on his head. “When I get back to the station, I’ll pull the vendor records and have a deputy see about tracking down the bakery bundle.”

A movement across the street catches Wes’s attention. A tourist raises a phone toward the porch, then lowers it when Wes looks over. The tourist thinks better of it.

Scarlet turns toward me, fatigue visible in the way her shoulders lower. “Can we go home after this?”

Home. The word catches my attention because she uses it easily, without correcting herself.

I lift our joined hands and press my mouth to her knuckles. “We need to get samples out for testing to Pepper and the lab, but then yes, sweetheart.”

Wes opens the truck door for her. Scarlet pauses beside him, lays one hand against his chest, and kisses him with quiet affection before climbing inside. His eyes stay on her after she climbs inside, and cedar deepens through the humid afternoon air.

I slide into the back seat beside her. She settles against my shoulder while Wes checks the mirrors, the rear camera, and the road behind us before pulling away.

Maribel’s sob follows through the cracked cottage window, thin and wounded beneath the bright snap of festival banners.

Beneath the charm of the upcoming Month of Heart festival, pack bonds are paying the price.

Chapter 26

Scarlet Sage

The cottage keeps me upright until the front door closes. Then Maribel’s voice follows me through the entryway, scraped raw from calling her own beta a stranger. I see Ellis kneeling in front of her again, offering memories like handholds while the bond told her to be afraid.

Rain taps the porch roof. Mud dries in cool streaks over my calves. Roman reaches for my wet cardigan while Wes crosses the kitchen with his phone pressed to his ear, already talking to Tom about patrols, camera angles, and the blind stretch between the greenhouse and the cypress path.

I should take off my shoes. I should drink water. I should help.

My gaze catches on the evidence wall. At the edge of the wall, my grandmother’s handwriting waits beneath plastic. Held too tightly. Release worsens after false protection. Consent mark fails when only one side agrees. The phrases look different, now that I’ve heard Maribel’s cries.

Wes ends the call. Rain beads across the shoulders of his black shirt. “Pepper sent over a preliminary comparison.”

Roman’s hand settles at the back of my neck. His palm is warm, but my skin feels stretched too thin around my bones. “What did she find?”

“The material from Maribel’s bundle matches the residue from the arrangement left at your greenhouse,” Wes says. “Same synthetic carrier found in the GatorX samples. Same plant binder Pepper isolated from the dock vegetation. We’ve got her coordinating with the BESTF lab. They’ll send official confirmation in the next twenty-four.”