In the Company of Wolves (SWAT, #3)(18)
He didn’t seem bothered by her snarky jab. Instead, he motioned toward her drink. “That.”
“My cinnamon dolce latte?”
“I found a partial Starbucks receipt with your scent on it in that crate at the warehouse. It had the name of that drink and a time stamp on it.”
She stared at him, trying to understand how he’d gotten from a scrap of paper with a few meaningless bits of data on it to actually sitting in front of her in a single day.
“You had a receipt with a time stamp and you found me just like that?”
He gave her what could only be a sheepish look. “Not exactly. It took a bit more work than that. First, I hacked into the credit card processing company that handles the Starbucks stores in the Dallas area, then dug through hundreds of card swipes until I came up with a list of stores that made a credit sale matching the cost of your drink and the time stamp. Then I slipped into the traffic and online security cameras around each of those stores and spent a few more hours watching grainy surveillance videos until I saw you walking down Canton Street a few minutes after buying your coffee.”
She couldn’t believe he’d spent all that time tracking her down just so he could talk to her. “But…how did you find out my name?”
He shrugged, looking slightly embarrassed. It was crazy seeing a guy as big as Eric looking like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“Once I confirmed which Starbucks you went to, I was able to dig a little deeper into your credit history. It’s not hard to get a name when you do that. Though I had no way of knowing if it was fake or not. Is Jayna Winston your real name?”
She nodded. There was no reason to lie. He could obviously verify her name if he wanted to. He was good with a computer, and she’d never made an effort to hide her identity in the years since leaving Detroit. She hadn’t left much of a footprint before joining the pack, and afterward, they didn’t hang around any place long enough to leave an indelible mark.
“So you decided to come and hang around Starbucks until I showed up?” she asked.
“Pretty much.” He sipped his coffee. “I got to the area a couple hours ago and sniffed around a bit to make sure I was right. All the werewolf scents in the area told me I was, so I backed off and waited for you to make another coffee run. I figured I wouldn’t have to wait too long.” His mouth quirked. “You seem addicted to your lattes.”
“You did all that—hacking into computer systems, watching endless hours of video, hanging around a coffee shop half the morning—just to find me? Why?”
He stopped smiling, his blue eyes suddenly serious. “It seemed like you were in a lot of trouble back in that warehouse. I thought I should find you and try to help.”
Since going through her change almost five years ago, Jayna had gotten freaky good at figuring out when people were lying to her, and right now, those instincts were telling her that Eric wasn’t being completely honest. But those same instincts told her that she could trust him in spite of that. Whatever he was hiding, it didn’t involve arresting her.
“What makes you think I’m in trouble?” She broke off a piece of the coffee cake he’d bought her and nibbled on it. “Maybe I’m the kind of girl who robs warehouses all the time.”
His mouth curved into a half smile. “You’re a lot of amazing things, Jayna, but you’re not that kind of girl. Your heart was thumping a thousand miles an hour when you saw me in that warehouse, even more when you heard over my radio that the other members of your pack had abandoned you.”
She snorted. “Trust me, those guys aren’t my pack.”
“Then why were you running with them?”
Jayna didn’t know why she was hesitating, especially after the omegas had left her to fend for herself. She didn’t owe them anything.
“It’s not by choice,” she finally admitted. “They’re a group of omegas my alpha brought in to serve as muscle for the Albanian mobsters my real pack and I are stuck working for.”
His mouth twitched. “That sounds like something out of a James Bond movie, you know that, right?”
That was way funnier than it should have been given the situation, and she had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. “I’ve never been a really big fan of James Bond movies.”
“Really? I’ll have to see what I can do to change your position on them, then.” He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “But right now, I’m more interested in what an omega is.”
Jayna almost choked on her latte. He was an alpha and he didn’t know what an omega was? “You don’t know?”
Eric shook his head.
He really didn’t. “An omega is a big, strong werewolf like an alpha, but they don’t have the natural pack instincts you do. That’s why those guys bolted and left me the moment the crap hit the fan at the warehouse. They don’t care about anyone but themselves.”
“Huh.” Eric took a swallow of coffee. “That explains why they didn’t fight as a team.”
“They’re more likely to throw each other to the wolves,” she said, then added, “No pun intended. That’s why werewolves like me don’t like to hang out with them. They don’t have any loyalty to anyone.”
Eric studied her for a long time, and she wondered if she’d said something wrong. Then he tilted his head to the side, a cute, quizzical look on his face.