I chew on this.
“But wouldn’t people also be suspicious of me? Now that I’m clearly a target, I’m also clearly a liability. Why would a town rally behind someone who’s bringing violence to their doorstep?”
Dr. Winters thinks about it.
The pause is brief—the processing speed of a mind that has been navigating small-town politics for two decades and has already run the scenario I’m proposing through every relevant variable.
Then she smiles.
And this smile is different from the others. This one has strategy in it.
“How would they be suspicious,” she says, “if you transferred here to be with your pack?”
I stare at her.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re with the detective, the commander, and the deputy officer, aren’t you?”
I nod.
Slowly. The wordwithperforming a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, carrying implications that range from “temporarily registered for medical access” to “emotionally entangled in ways that I am not currently equipped to quantify.”
I don’t correct the “rookie” characterization of Oakley. He looks young. The auburn hair and the easy grin and the winks that he deploys like punctuation make him seem like someone fresh out of certification. But the man holds a third-degree black belt, administers medication with field-medic precision, and outran my attacker across a paddock last night while I was unconscious in the bushes.
Oakley Torres is many things. A rookie is not one of them.
“Then obviously,” Dr. Winters continues, leaning back on the stool with the self-assured posture of someone presenting a closing argument she’s already won, “it would make sense for you to have transferred here. Not as a reassignment. Not as punishment. As a choice. An Omega officer relocating to be with her newly registered pack. That’s a narrative this town understands. That’s a narrative this townsympathizeswith.”
She lifts a finger.
“What if the real story is that you were never in a relationship in the city?”
I want to ask how she knows that.
The question forms in my mouth, fully loaded with the defensive suspicion of a woman who considers personal information a security asset and does not appreciate unauthorized access. But Dr. Winters gives me a look—the specific, knowing, slightly amused expression that answers every question about her information sources with two words.
Small-town gossip.
Of course. In a community this size, the information network operates faster than any official channel. She probably knew my coffee order before I arrived.
“It wasn’t a truthful relationship,” I admit, and the words come out flatter than I expect—clinical, diagnostic, the language of a woman who has already processed the grief and is operating on the post-mortem. “It was for benefits. Institutional access. Heat management. Never registered.”
“Butnowyou’re registered,” Dr. Winters says, and the emphasis on the word lands with the percussive precision of someone placing the final piece in a strategic framework. “With the guys. On the system. Official. If anyone does a simple records check, they’ll see that the registration was processed and confirmed the day of the explosion.”
She lets that sink in.
“Which gives off a very specific impression. Someone targeting a newly registered Omega on the day her pack becomes official? That reads as personal. As vendetta. The town won’t look at you and see a liability—they’ll look at you and see a woman whose fresh start was violently disrupted by someone from her past. That makes your pack look protective, not guilty. And it makes the town wonder if the violence is because you decided to leave your old life and live your new one.”
She’s good.
She’s really, really good.
This woman has been running community intelligence operations from a private medical center for two decades and nobody’s caught on because she does it with a stethoscope and a smile.
I see where this is going.
The strategy crystallizes in my mind with the same clarity that case architecture does when the evidence finally cooperates—the pieces arranging themselves into a structure that serves multiple objectives simultaneously.
