Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore novel Chapter 170

Chapter 170

Chapter 170

RIVERA

The pack house was larger than I’d expected from the outside.

I stood in the east corridor on the ground floor, far enough from the main hall entrance that I wasn’t visible from inside it, close enough that I could hear the quality of the crowd noise through the closed doors. The building had the particular smell of a space that had been used for significant events over many years–wood polish, old stone, the faint residue of a hundred gatherings absorbed into the walls.

My earpiece was in. Elijah’s voice came through it at intervals, calm and efficient, the running commentary of someone who’d done this kind of positional work many times and had reduced it to its essential elements.

“Thorne is at his position. Rear right of the main hall, standing. No movement.”

“Copy,” I said quietly.

I had a partial view of the main hall through a gap in the doors–enough to see the crowd, the platform, the specific geography of where people were standing and sitting. Thorne was visible at the far edge of my sightline, exactly where Elijah had placed him on the pre–assembly layout. Standing near the right wall with the easy posture of a guest who was here to observe and had no other agenda.

He looked, from here, exactly like what he’d claimed to be.

I had known he would. That was the thing about people who operated at his level–they were good at looking like what the situation required them to look like. The ability to be unremarkable was a skill, and Thorne had developed it over a long career of being unremarkable in situations where being unremarkable mattered enormously.

Matthew walked onto the platform, and the room went quiet.

I watched through the gap in the doors.

I hadn’t expected to be affected by it. Had positioned myself here for operational reasons, not to observe a pack assembly for its own sake, and I’d been telling myself for the past hour that whatever Matthew said to his pack was background noise to the actual work of tonight.

But when he started speaking–when I heard the first few sentences through the doors and understood what he was doing, understood that he was actually saying it, not building toward it or framing it or managing the landing of it but just saying it–I found myself listening in a way that had nothing to do with the operation.

I failed you.

Chapter 170

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I stood in the east corridor and listened to Matthew Morrison tell his pack the true thing, and I thought about Bianca, who had sat outside this building earlier tonight in the car she’d borrowed from the safe house pool and watched him go in, and had come back to me afterward with a face I couldn’t fully read.

I’d found her in the car park when the assembly doors opened. She’d been leaning against the car, watching the building with the particular stillness she had when she was holding something significant

1. in.

“Did you see him?” I’d asked.

“I saw him go in,” she’d said. “That was enough.”

I hadn’t pushed. Had given her the distance she seemed to need, and we’d positioned ourselves according to the briefing, and the assembly had begun.

Through the doors, Matthew was talking about his son. About what Theo had taught him by being honest. About how a four–year–old’s willingness to say the true thing had informed what an adult was trying to learn to do.

I watched Thorne through the sightline gap.

He was listening. His expression was what it had been when I’d first observed him—mild, engaged, a guest interested in what was happening. Nothing in his posture suggested the calculating quality I’d been looking for. Nothing that would read as out of place to anyone who didn’t know what they were looking for.

“Still no movement,” Elijah said in my ear. “Thorne stationary. Childcare floor is quiet. Callahan confirms all present and accounted for.”

I exhaled slowly.

An hour passed.

The assembly moved through Matthew’s speech and into the question period, which was longer than I’d anticipated and more substantive. I caught fragments through the doors–specific questions about specific failures, specific answers that didn’t deflect. The crowd noise changed as it progressed, losing the tense waiting quality of the opening and becoming something more engaged, more present.

Whatever Matthew had prepared for tonight, he’d prepared it well.

Thorne remained at his position. Watched. Didn’t move.

“Two vehicles still stationary,” Mikael’s voice, through the earpiece. “Haven’t moved since they parked. No communication activity I can detect.”

“Roy?” I said.

Chapter

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I stood in the corridor and thought about that.

Quiet anchor sites. Stationary vehicles. Thorne standing in a room watching a pack assembly with the unconcerned attention of someone attending a professional development event.

Something was wrong with this picture. Not wrong in the sense of something threatening happening- wrong in the sense of something not happening that we’d been certain would happen.

The assembly wrapped up around nine–thirty. The crowd noise shifted to the diffuse sound of a large group dispersing, conversations starting up, people moving toward exits. I tracked Thorne through my partial sightline as the doors opened and people began coming out.

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