Downpour (Alpha Love - A Paranormal Werewolf Shifter Romance Book 1)

by Olivia Stephens

  “Well, here I am. But I was just on my way…” Sofie tries to signal past them and closes the door behind her, but Luke doesn’t move.

  “It’ll only take a minute. I wanted you to meet Dr. Franklin. He’s a top ecologists and someone that Shale has worked with before. So we know exactly how good he is.” Luke introduces the short, mole-like looking man, clutching a briefcase as if his life depended on it.

  “Nice to meet you Dr. Franklin. I’m Sofie Braun, the geologist on the team.” Sofie smiles kindly at the man, but the hand that she shakes in hers is limp and cold, like a dead fish.

  “In fact, Sofie is one of the best in her field.” Luke looks at her like a proud father, but Sofie isn’t under any illusions that he has any fatherly feelings towards her. “She’s also the one that got us on the track of the wolves in this area, isn’t that right Sofie?”

  Sofie nods slowly, wondering why Luke is milking this introduction. She had expected him to be in a foul mood the day the ecologist showed up because if they were to find anything, that would be the end of the drilling site. He wouldn’t have any choice but to move on and leave Spring Canyon as it is.

  “Fascinating.” Franklin has a way of saying the word as if it were anything but. “Well, with no official sightings of wolves in this area I wonder, my dear, if perhaps you were mistaken?” His voice is lugubrious, and the expression on his face makes him look as if he’s sucking on a lemon.

  “I suppose that’s for you to decide.” Sofie tries to keep her voice breezy, smiling tightly at the two men. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to speak to our technical advisor on an urgent matter.” She slips past the two men, walking purposefully down the corridor towards Finn’s room.

  “Anything we should be concerned about, Sofie?” Luke’s questioning voice that seems to be saying that he knows more than he’s letting on makes her stomach roll.

  “No.” She turns around slowly and fixes Luke with a pointed look. “It’s just something I was hoping that Jennie could help with, but I haven’t been able to get through to her for the past few days.” She tries not to appear satisfied at the way Luke’s face darkens at her words. “Guess she must be busy.” She shrugs, before heading back down the corridor.

  “Guess so.” Luke’s voice is low, but the anger in it is clear. She curses herself for being so stupid and bringing Jennie up, but it was as if she couldn’t control herself, like the man brings out the very worst in her without even trying.

  She doesn’t even bother to knock on Finn’s door, not wanting to spend any more time in that hallway, knowing that Luke is watching her every move. She bursts through the door to find Finn in the middle of doing his hair in front of the mirror. He jumps about a foot in the air when he sees her.

  “Jeez, Sofie. What, your parents never taught you to knock?” Finn sees the grimace on her face and realizes that this isn’t a social call. “What’s going on?”

  Sofie takes a breath, wishing that she’d rehearsed this before barging into his room. She doesn’t want to sound like a paranoid freak, but the words just come spilling out. “Jennie’s been fired because I sent her a sample that I should never have sent her, and Luke knows, and he’s checking up on us through our phones.” She closes her mouth as Finn makes a calm down gesture with his hands. So much for not getting him involved, she thinks.

  “Sit down. Slow down. You’re sounding a little crazy.” Finn sits Sofie down on the bed and steps away from her slowly.

  “I know how this sounds, Finn. But seriously, have you ever known me to be a conspiracy theorist? You’re usually the one trawling the net for stories about what the government is ‘really hiding from us.’” She knows how much Finn hates her use of air quotes, especially when they’re about him.

  “Okay, stop with the bunny ears. Tell me what you think is going on.” Finn crosses his arms, waiting.

  “Shale is monitoring our calls, our messages, and I’m pretty sure our emails and internet searches, too.” She takes a deep breath, ordering her thoughts. “Luke knew that I’d sent a sample to Jennie before it had even arrived at the lab, and he knew that we were keeping it off the books. There’s no way he could have known that without having read the messages between us the day that I sent it.”

  Finn nods slowly, following her logic. “Well, I knew about it because Jennie messaged me, asking if you were alright. It’s not the only way they could have found out.” Finn seems to be musing to himself. “Anyway, the equipment is all theirs, and most companies have access to their employees’ company phones and laptops. That’s not so strange, is it?”

  Sofie knows what he’s saying, but the significance of what that could mean is lost on him and she can’t tell him why. “Just trust me when I say that although it may not be strange, it’s not good. They used that information to get Jennie fired!”

  “And how do you know this?” Finn frowns at her, as he boots up his laptop.

  “Jennie sent me a letter.” She can feel Finn roll his eyes. “Yeah, I know. How retro, right? But it was the only way she felt safe telling me what had happened.”

  Finn’s expression of dubiousness gives way to understanding and, ultimately, belief. “So what do you want me to do? I’m guessing there’s something that you want otherwise you wouldn’t have burst in here like the hounds of hell were after you.”

  Sofie smiles at the irony of the phrase. “Is there any way that you can tell if the searches you did on wolves and the stuff you found on the missing people were hacked?”

  “Yes, but I don’t get why it matters. What difference does it make if Shale knows we were researching wolves or not? They know you have a hunch about the animals and that’s why they brought an ecologist down!”

  “Finn, can you just trust me that it makes a difference? Luke will do whatever he can to get what he wants, and he wants whatever is underneath the ground in that canyon.” Sofie shuts her mouth before she says anything more, anything that could raise even more of Finn’s questions. This must be how Ashton felt talking to me, she thinks.

  “Sofie, it’s just another drilling site. We do this all the time. How many sites have we surveyed and approved? Ten? Twenty? Thirty? What’s got you so attached to this one?” Finn leans over his laptop, pressing the keys in quick succession and then he stops, like a thought has just occurred to him. “It isn’t that gorgeous asshole that brought you back from the woods that night, is it? Has he been preaching some hippy-kumbaya crap to you?”

  “First of all, his name is Ashton, and he’s not an asshole. Secondly, I don’t care how many other sites we’ve okayed for drilling, that all feels like it was a lifetime ago. Can you just trust me when I say that this place is different?” Sofie pleads with Finn, knowing how much easier it would be to persuade him if she could just tell him the truth. She comforts herself by thinking that he wouldn’t believe her anyway.

  Finn doesn’t say anything, just returns to his screen tapping in a series of codes, letters, number, punctuation marks. It all looks like gibberish to Sofie. After a couple of minutes, he speaks up, confirming her suspicions. “Everything that I’ve searched since we got here has been sent to a remote location. Good thing I haven’t been watching any porn!” He winks at her before going back to the computer.

  “So what does that mean? That they know everything that we’ve been looking at?” Sofie tries to keep the panic out of her voice. Just because they have the information about the mysterious disappearances in the local area, doesn’t give Luke any suggestion of the pack, of their secret.

  “That’s exactly what it means my little chickadee. Let’s see if it’s just this laptop or if it’s everyone’s. Give me a sec.” He taps in some more information and lets out a low whistle. “Ho-ly shit.”

  “What? What is it?” Sofie jumps up to look over Finn’s shoulder. She sees an email to Darwin from a law firm, telling him that they can’t continue to work for him if he doesn’t settle his bills with them. “What am I looking at?”

  “I’ve a
ccessed Darwin’s email account, his personal address,” Finn explains not so patiently.

  “Well, this isn’t the first time you’ve done that.” Sofie looks at him sharply.

  “Yeah but just for fun! Anyway, this is the first time I’ve seen that I’m not the only one looking.” Finn points to a red dot in the top right hand corner of the screen. “I’ve set it up so that when there’s access from an outside source that little light goes on.”

  “Well, it’s on now. So, Shale is monitoring Darwin’s private emails along with everything else.” Sofie pulls her eyes away from the correspondence between him and his lawyers. It looks like things aren’t going well with his divorce. His wife is taking him to the cleaners for everything he has.

  “You haven’t figured it out yet, have you?” Finn looks at her, smirking, clearly enjoying having the upper hand, as he always does when it comes to computers and tech.

  “No, but I can see that you’re just dying to tell me.” Sofie rolls her eyes at how much he’s milking this.

  “Don’t pout, it doesn’t suit you,” Finn instructs her, sounding like a grandmother. “This is Darwin’s personal computer. It doesn’t have anything to do with Shale.”

  The enormity of what Finn is saying slowly dawns on her. “Holy shit,” she echoes Finn’s statement.

  “My sentiments exactly. Big brother really is watching. But, I’ve always enjoyed the whole only child thing.” Finn is concentrating hard on whatever it is that he’s doing, his typing speed is off the charts, and he hums as he works.

  Sofie knows better than to interrupt him when he’s clearly on a roll. She thinks about what Shale is doing or, more accurately, what Luke is doing. He’s invading the private information of his employees. But for what? He doesn’t do anything for fun, there has to be a reason behind it. Then, it hits her. “Leverage.” She says the word out loud, so appalled is she by what she’s thinking.

  “Huh?” Finn looks at her from over the top of his thick-rimmed glasses.

  “Leverage, that’s why Luke is spying on us. He’s trying to find out everything he can so not only is he one step ahead all the time, but he has the dark corners of our lives covered, too. I’ve always known he was an asshole, but this is on a whole other level.” Sofie shakes her head. “This is illegal. We can go to the cops with this.” The thought gives her a burst of energy, and she straightens up, like she’s ready to walk out the door now and find the nearest law official.

  “Slow down there, Erin Brockovich. Now, I’m all for taking down ‘The Man,’ but how are we going to prove this? We can’t just turn up and say, ‘While we were hacking our boss’s computer, we noticed that someone else was hacking it too,’” Finn points out.

  She knows that he’s right, but she hates it. “What can you do about it? Can you stop them from accessing our files, our phones, our...lives?”

  “I can, but I won’t.” Finn shakes his head, and Sofie looks at him in disbelief. “If we stop them then whoever is sitting at the other end of that line will know that we’ve found them out. Then what happens?”

  “Then, they erase what they’ve been doing and find another way to get the information they want.” Sofie supplies the answer without even having to think about it.

  “But never fear, Sofie dear! Although I won’t close down their access, I can make them think that they’re still monitoring our tech, but all they’re getting is a feed of repeated information.” Finn looks at her and sees that he lost Sofie a few paces ago. “I’m going to set it up so there’s information going in and out of their server, so they still think they’re connected, but it’ll just be emails, messages, whatever, that I’ve created. They won’t see any of the real stuff that’s coming into or going out of our phones and laptops.”

  Sofie holds Finns head between her hands and plants a loud kiss on his forehead. “Finnbarr, you are a genius.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” he grumbles although there’s a ghost of a smile on his lips.

  “How long will it take?” Sofie looks between him and the laptop.

  “I’ll have to go device-by-device so a little while. I guess I might’ve caught that bug you had yesterday.” He smiles conspiratorially at Sofie.

  “Can you start with my cell?” Sofie hands over her phone. “There’s something that I need to do.”

  Finn turns back to her, making it clear how serious he is about what he’s saying. “If you’re going to ask me to do this, then I need to know why.” He sees the conflict playing out on Sofie’s face. “Give me something, Sofe.”

  “Finn, trust me when I tell you that I really can’t.” She wrings her hands, trying to make him understand. “You’re my best friend, and I wish that I could share this with you, that I could share it with anyone, but I can’t, not now at least. It’s not my secret to tell. But will you just believe me when I say that it’s important? That’s all I can say.” She shrugs, biting her bottom lip and hoping that it’ll be enough for Finn, for now at least. She’s under no illusions that he won’t ask her again and soon.

  “Come back in a half hour, and it’ll be done.” Finn takes the cell from her and turns back to the computer.

  “Thank you.” She says the words quietly to Finn’s back. She can tell from the set of his shoulders that he’s annoyed, angry at being left out of the loop, that she doesn’t trust him enough. She makes a promise to herself that one day she’ll tell him everything, and he can decide whether to believe her or not. One day, but not now. One thing at a time.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Finn was true to his word. Just like always, he came through for her. After he’d given her back her cell, now free from prying eyes, she’d had just enough time to send off a quick message to Ashton, telling him that the ecologist would be at the canyon today, that they needed to be ready.

  With Finn out of action with his stomach bug, Sofie became the designated driver. Darwin bundles into the car, looking like he’d barely slept.

  “You alright, boss?” She steals a look at him while she pretends she’s adjusting her seat.

  “Fine, just a little tired.” Darwin passes a hand over his eyes, and Sofie sees that it’s shaking. He notices it too and his mood turns brusque. “Let’s go then, no point hanging around.”

  “Aren’t we waiting for Franklin?” Sofie wonders if Darwin really is losing his shit over the divorce.

  “He’s riding with Luke.” Darwin looks out of the window, away from Sofie as he says the words.

  Sofie doesn’t respond, just turns the key in the ignition and heads out towards the canyon. It wasn’t unheard of that an employee would ride in Luke’s limo, that’s what she’d done just the day before. But after everything that had happened up to this point, Sofie was finding it harder and harder to give Luke the benefit of the doubt. If Franklin was riding with the CEO of the company, there was a reason for it.

  When they get to the site, Franklin seems like anything but an experienced ecologist. He clearly isn’t someone who likes to get his hands dirty, and Sofie can’t help but wonder where Luke dug this guy up from.

  “I can show you towards the woods, where I heard the howling?” Sofie suggests figuring that she can kill two birds with one stone, collect another rock sample and make sure that Franklin doesn’t miss the sighting that has been carefully orchestrated for him.

  “Right, yes, that would make sense, wouldn’t it?” He looks at her making it clear that he’s waiting for her to tell him what he should be doing.

  “Yes, I think that would be best.” Sofie looks at Darwin to see if he’s catching how incompetent the new scientist in their midst seems to be, but he’s looking up at the mountain, his eyes lost in thought.

  “I’ll accompany you both.” Luke hangs up the cell call he’d been on since arriving at the site.

  “Great!” Sofie tries to keep her smile from turning into a grimace. “Well, let’s do it.” She picks up her equipment and trudges towards the woods, praying that the pack have had enoug
h time for one of them to make an appearance no matter how brief. If they don’t, then it’s game over.

  ***

  Sofie heads to ‘Shots’, barely able to contain her grin despite being a little stung that Finn was ignoring her. She knew that he was in his room when she’d knocked, she could hear the video game playing, but he didn’t answer. Wasn’t that what I’d done to him just the night before? Shut him out? She’d asked Darwin if he wanted to go along with her, and he smiled vaguely, saying that he’d catch up. Sofie didn’t believe for a second that she’d see the older man that night, but right now, she’s just desperate to get there.

  When she walks through the door, she instantly spots the group she’s looking for. Ashton, Gus, and Hector are talking easily and laughing, like all their worries are over. They were celebrating and that’s exactly what they should be doing. The plan was a success, Franklin and Luke had both seen the wolf in the distance. Sofie had wondered who it had been, it didn’t look like Gus in wolf form, but then she was new to all of this. With the sighting Franklin would be forced to advise that the area should be protected, which meant no drilling. It was inevitable; they’d saved the canyon and the pack along with it. As if Ashton can sense her thoughts, he turns around and smiles that devastating smile of his.