LRR Hood

by Cassandra Johnson

  “Alright, smart ass. I didn’t think of it.”

  “Well, where’s his phone? Let’s go through it and see if there is anyone worth considering for information.”

  Marik didn’t like admitting it but the little blonde was correct in her assumption, he hadn’t thought of going through the phone, yet. But he was getting to it. He knew without a doubt though that his brother was already long gone from New Haven and he was desperately trying to catch up with him, he just didn’t know where to start.

  Still, in his coat he took the phone out and unlocked it going through the contact list idly, his finger scrolling through familiar names of people that he knew, coming across his father’s name he leaned back in his seat frowning.

  “What’s wrong? No luck?” Elle was wondering if she needed to take the phone from him and start going through it herself and frankly if she had been left to her own devices last night she would have already gone through the device by now. It wasn’t as if she had anything better to do.

  “Nothing’s wrong just…” He paused looking at the call log. Before the phone calls between himself and Elle, his father was the last person that Gaerik talked to. “Gaerik and our father are close, he’s completely against turning him in.” Marik finally said setting the phone back down on the table top.

  “I guess it is understandable. No parent wants to believe the worst of their kids even if they are guilty. I remember when I was a kid I used to play with this little girl who was a bit of a trouble maker. Once when we were riding our bikes she fell, and I hit her but what she told her parents was that I had purposefully tried to run her over with my bike. Of course, her parents believed her when she lied but my grandma?” Elle chuckled softly. “I remember she cussed our neighbor lady all the way down the street back into her own drive way that day telling her that her grand baby would never purposefully hurt their daughter. Parents don’t want to believe their kids would lie.”

  Slipping into her seat again she took her mug and took another sip, inhaling the aroma for a moment as the thick, soothing peppermint tea coated her sore throat. Gesturing for the phone, she slid it over the table and began to go through it, sipping her tea, poking through the pictures, the call log and then finally she began to go through the text messages.

  Regrettably, she shouldn’t have gone through the text messages. Some were mundane, the usual every day ones like, ‘I’m on my way,’ ‘I’m going to be late,’ but then there were ones that peaked her interests but she needed to be a damned code breaker to read them because they were all spoken in such an odd way, like they were written in such a way that if the phone were ever lost no one would be able to decipher what the two correspondents were talking about. Obviously, these weren’t for prying eyes such as hers. Sighing gently, she grabbed another napkin from the basket and dabbed at her nose, flicking her finger cross the screen and to another conversation.

  Elle’s cheeks felt warm and tight as she read, scrolling up to see how this particular conversation started and felt her eyes widen.

  “Find anything good?”

  Mark was watching her from across the table, but it was the subtle change in her scent that told him Elle had stumbled into some ‘sexts.’

  Aware that she was being watched Elle punched the home screen button and set the phone down on the table. Apparently, Gaerik enjoyed writing love notes with his tongue.

  “Really?” Marik looked at her, laughing as he sat back in his seat. It wasn’t so riveting that his brother sent a dirty text or two. It was watching Elle’s face reading them, it told quite the story.

  Standing up slowly she pressed her hands to her cheeks gently to cool them.

  “I need to write that down while it’s still fresh in my mind. Do you think if he goes to prison I can go and pick his brain for smut? Because those texts could make a best seller listing.”

  “You’d visit him just to get your…” Marik trailed off scrutinizing her for a moment as she fluttered around finding a note pad and a pencil.

  “What? No!” Elle looked at him shaking her head. “Don’t be stupid. I’m a writer, and sometimes it’s more satisfying to get a man’s perspective.”

  “Whatever.” He was starting to think this was a bad idea. In fact, he didn’t like the idea of her spending any extended amount of time with his brother at all.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lucian was a cheater, though it never said so in his journals even being in love with another woman for him without adultery was still considered cheating the way that Gallen saw it. Long ago before the Council was formed his father was the Alpha, and there were certain people, humans who lived among the wolves and were friends to them. Lucian had been in love with a woman named Grace, she and her son as well as her daughter-in-law had been friends of the pack when a traitor had infiltrated their hallowed walls. It was supposed to be a simple meeting among the packs, but things quickly became heated, and a fight broke out. Men and women were slaughtered. Grace’s son and his wife were both killed. It was a set up. The pack Alpha of New York wanted to take over Connecticut and rule both states, but of course, Lucian wouldn’t have allowed that, so he sent a spy to infiltrate the pack and find out their secrets. Grace Marshal wasn’t there the night that the massacre occurred, but Allan and Quinn, as well as their young daughter, had been. The little girl lived, saved by one of the she-wolves. Lucian quickly got her out of the state and sent to a safe house near her home town in Arkansas, Lucian hand delivered the baby girl himself. In his father’s journal, he said that he was afraid to leave the child in the care of anyone else after the disloyalty that occurred when he had let his guard down even for a second allowing another into their pack whom they knew nothing about, especially knowing from what pack he said he was fleeing.

  Dressing, Gallen knew that history was not repeating itself, but the similarities in the killings were so hard to ignore. All women, all left out in the open; the pack didn’t know it then, but it had all been part of a plan to distract them while the New York wolves tried to move in on them. The meeting that night had been about a killing that resembled one of a wolf attack. It was only supposed to be a simple discussion between the packs, but things had turned bloody in the end. It felt so much like what their pack was going through now with the murders going on in New Haven. Marik was convinced it was his devil may care, brother, while Gallen did not believe his son could do such a thing. These attacks were ruthless and sloppy. There were accidents, of course, young wolves turning for the first time but that was what the Council was in place for, to determine whether the attack was with purpose or an accident, they carried out justice. But these senseless slayings took Gallen back to those days when the bodies of women kept mounting higher and higher. No one trusted each other, all too afraid that the next face they saw would be their last. Gallen was just a boy at the time, but he remembered hearing the whispers that quieted whenever he and his friends interrupted a conversation between the adults. He remembered asking his brother what was going on, “You’re too young to understand.” That was what he always told him. Cal would have known what to do now, but it was useless to wish for his brother now.

  Returning to his study, he looked at the journals once more before closing them all and stowing them away. Looking at his phone, he cracked his neck slightly before calling Marik.

  ~

  Again, his pocket began to buzz, and Marik was forced to look at the caller ID. He hadn’t spoken to his father since yesterday when he went to see him. Marik already knew that his father had warned his brother but denying the call felt too disrespectful. Answering he put the phone to his ear.

  “I’m busy right now is this important?” Marik asked making no bounds that he had other things he was more interested in than talking to his father.

  “He didn’t do it, Marik, I don’t have the proof yet, but son, I know that this is hard, and you and your brother haven’t been very close in a long time, but he is your brother. Please, give me a chance to prove to you an
d the Council that Gaerik is innocent. I honestly believe that he is being set up.” Gallen spoke fast, the need for expedience weighing on his shoulders like the weight of the world on Atlas.

  His nostrils flared slowly along with the set of his jaw, casting his eyes over the guardian... Turning his gaze to Elle, he held up his hand before disappearing into the living room for some privacy, leaving her to the mad note book scribbling she was doing, tongue pinched between her lips while she sat there, snickering into the sleeve of her robe.

  “If you really think that, then you are more of a fool than any of us. Do you think that I want to believe he is capable of this?”

  “Yes, I do. You’ve had such a low opinion of your brother for the last few years I think it is very easy for you to believe the worst of him. Marik please, I am begging you. Come home, let me show you what I have found and tell me that it doesn’t smell the same as the situation that is happening with your brother. Gaerik would never kill for sport, and if there was an accident, he would come to us first. He would go to the Council, let them handle the investigation.” Gallen said. “If not for your brother’s sake than do it for me, son.”

  The beginning of a growl rumbled in his throat as he pressed his hand to his hair staring around Elle’s living room, his blanket and pillow still laying on her couch.

  “What information do you think you have that is going to change anything?”

  “None yet, but I’ve been reading your grandfather's old journals. You don’t remember this, but there used to be humans in the pack. There was a massacre, and two of the humans were killed. It was all a set up by the Alpha of New York, he wanted to take over Connecticut, but it all went wrong. I know it doesn’t make sense, but to me, this doesn’t feel like something that one of our own would do. Think about it, son. No wolf born from the packs would ever leave a kill to be found, nor would the Council allow it. It puts us all at too much risk. This is the work of a bite in. They can’t control themselves or their urges, not like we can. That is who is doing this. This is who you should be hunting Marik, not your brother. We need to find this rogue wolf and put him down before anyone else is killed.”

  Gallen realized how pathetic he must have sounded pleading for his son to believe, his heart pounding in his chest, hoping against hope that his words didn’t fall on deaf ears.

  “I-.” Marik was stunned. From the time he was a boy he’d never heard about these journals. Gaerik was close to their grandfather, but Marik hadn’t been. He was always too busy reading his own books to listen to his grandfather. The more he listened to his father the more he could see it from his perspective, this didn’t look like the work of someone who was in control of themselves. Gaerik was wild but not that kind of wild, his brother embodied a kind of controlled chaos. “Alright, I’ll hear you out.”

  “Thank you.” Gallen sighed nearly falling into his desk chair with relief.

  “There were two human survivors of the attack that night, one was a good friend of your grandfathers. Her name was Grace, I may have met her once or twice but no more than that. The other was a little girl, her granddaughter. I think I saw an address in one of the journals. Maybe we can get in contact with her or the girl, she would be a young woman by now. Let me see.” Gallen put the phone on speaker and took out the journals, thumbing through one and finding it. “Yes, here it is. Grace Marshal, 20 Military Road Proctor, Arkansas.”

  Marik turned considering the kitchen. Her grandmother had told her stories of wolves when she was a girl to keep the bad dreams away, her parents were dead, and she was from Arkansas.

  “Dad…the grand-daughter. Did grandpa say what her name was?” Marik asked, uncertain of what he was thinking or doing as he watched her. Did his brother know that somehow her family was a part of their pack’s history? Maybe Marik had been wrong all along, he wasn’t stalking her. At least not in the way that Marik believed.

  “Hold on, I think it’s here somewhere.”

  Marik could hear pages wildly being turned as he sought out the name of the girl, but Marik already knew, he just needed confirmation for his suspicions.

  “Ellie! That’s it. He called the little girl Ellie. She was about a year old at the time he says, and she was with her parents the night of the massacre. One of the she-wolves hid her and got her to your grandfather. I wasn’t there that night, but I remember the aftermath of it all. Very few of people survived the attack, on either side.”

  “I’m leaving now, and I am bringing someone with me,” Marik stated before hanging up and stuffing his phone back down into his pocket quickly as he moved into the kitchen with a purpose.

  “Elle, I need you to come with me to my father’s house.”

  Shaking her head gently, when all of this was said and done, and hopefully, she wasn’t visiting a prison she was going to need to have a sit down with Gaerik for sexual inspiration for her books. Picking the bowl up from the floor she smiled rubbing Gregory’s head gently as she took the dish to the sink, her brows gently coaxing upward as she looked at him. Marik looked like a man on a mission as he stood in her kitchen, hands on his hips and staring her down. He didn’t look like a man who was going to take no for an answer.

  “Why do I need to come with you?” She asked curiously, turning as she gently tugged at the lapel of her robe, her fever beginning to break. She was starting to sweat now as she slowly peeled the sleeves from her body and tossed the robe over the back of a kitchen chair fanning herself while she waited for an explanation. Marik was after all still a stranger to her. While Elle knew she had a habit of becoming attached to people very quickly, but she still didn’t know Marik from Eve.

  Why did she have to make everything so difficult? First the phone now this, if she had just forked over the phone before he wouldn’t even be standing in her kitchen today, or would he? Marik couldn’t say that for certain. Elle was at the center of this just as much as his family was. Holding him off from finding his brother that may have possibly stopped him from making the biggest mistake of his life. If in the end, he truly believed his brother was innocent, which he still wasn’t absolutely certain of, then that would mean that someone was purposefully setting Gaerik up and was using him as a willing stooge to take his brother out.

  “My father can explain it all better than I can but he has some news about my brother, and since you’ve agreed to help me I thought you would want to come,” Marik explained knowing that he was telling her another gigantic lie that he really didn’t want to, but if he could just persuade her to come with him, he could let his father explain everything.

  “Can Gregory come along?”

  Play it safe, the collie had kept her safe once when a deranged man showed up on her door step; well technically she’d found out that he wasn’t that deranged, but Gregory had kept her safe. Who could say how that scenario might have played out, she might have ended up with something a lot worse than a cold.

  Wavering Marik stared from her to the guardian and back again before nodding his acceptance that the guardian was coming with them, he might provide some help in convincing Elle that they weren’t all a bunch of crazy people.

  “Yes, fine. Gregory can come to.”

  “Great.” Elle smiled quickly before looking at the dog feeling rather pleased with herself.

  “Hear that, boy? We’re gonna go for a ride. Just let me get dressed ok. I really hate it that I am not putting my best foot forward meeting your father, but sometimes you just gotta make lemonade.” She laughed gently before trotting to the bedroom to dress and make herself look a little more presentable.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “How long does it take you to get dressed?”

  Marik stood outside her bedroom door listening but hearing no sound; almost twenty minutes passed while Elle disappeared into her bedroom saying something about making lemonade and that was the last he’d heard of her. Leaning his ear against the door he listened closer, there she was; the sound of her slow-moving feet shuffling over the carpet. R
apping his knuckles against the door gently he grasped the crystal door knob and turned it, the door squeaking as it opened just a crack. Marik caught the view of her back, the clasp of her bra disappearing beneath the forest green sweater she pulled down over her body.

  “Are you almost ready?” He asked opening the door and coming to stand in the frame.

  “Almost, sorry it took me so long. I think the NyQuil is beginning to make me a little drowsy.” Elle explained as she stood up, grabbing her jacket from a hanger in the closet. “Having a little difficulty concentrating on the task at hand.” Laughingly she inhaled a deep breath and cleared her throat as he stepped out of her way allowing her out of the room.

  Marik flipped the light switch back off and followed behind her as she made her way through the kitchen, taking her purse from the back of the same chair she’d hung her robe up on. Looking around the kitchen for a moment she felt like she was missing something, snapping her fingers gently Elle grabbed her cell phone and put it into her pocket, making sure she had her house keys inside her purse.

  “Ok. We’re ready. Right, Gregory?” Elle asked looking at the black collie who since her exit from the bedroom seemed to be shadowing her. Patting her pockets somewhat she gestured for Marik to lead the way, following him as they stepped outside and she locked her door.

  Elle didn’t know if she would have been doing this if she hadn’t known that someone else would be driving. Truth be told the blonde really wasn’t up for this, but she had made a promise, and now she had to stand behind it. That was what good people did, and while Elle couldn’t say she had always played by the rules, she did try her best to be a decent person.

  Marik moved ahead of her unlocking the Range Rover with a push of a button he went around to the passenger side, opening the door as he helped the petite blonde inside her seat, letting the guardian into the back seat before it was his turn to climb inside.