He hadn’t wanted to involve another pack just yet. Whatever this was had happened on his land and with his equipment. He’d already failed once to appear in control of his people. Friends or not, he didn’t want to involve anyone else until he knew for sure what was happening.
Ace had made a sizeable hole in the soft earth, and each strike of the shovel into the moist ground seemed to bring up more water.
“You think someone hit a water main?” Aiden asked.
“It appears so, but what were they trying to bury out here so hastily that they thought it could just be covered with dirt?” Ace responded.
“Let’s find out,” Brady said. He set to work digging alongside Ace.
“This is poor timing,” Jay whispered under his breath, but the whole group could hear him.
“Indeed,” Ace grunted as he struck again, plunging his shovel into the muck.
“I thought we were neutral ground,” Jay pointed out. “Isn’t that the reason the whole council is here?”
“I’d hate to think another member of the council was doing something sneaky,” Ace replied.
“Leif is locked up safe back in his cell. I made sure of it myself as soon as our meeting ended,” Jay offered, before anyone had thought to ask the question.
“Someone will need to go through the security footage on the perimeter cameras. See who else besides Emma and myself came out here tonight,” Ace ordered.
“Of course,” Jay replied.
Brady dug his shovel in again, and with a grunt he hefted a pile of mud, uncovering a face.
Ace’s jaw dropped in shock.
“Is that–” Jay started to say. He cocked his head sideways as if trying to get a better look, and squatted down toward the pit that they’d created with all the digging. “Regina?”
Just as soon as they had uncovered her face, water rose up and buried her features again in mud. “Whoever it was who dug this shallow grave hit a pipe,” Ace growled, and let out a string of curses. This was the kind of thing that could ruin them. All hopes of neutrality and diplomacy would fly right out the window with a prominent member of the council being murdered.
“I don’t smell blood,” Aiden said curiously. “We need to determine the cause of death.”
“I’ll need time to examine the body for an accurate assessment,” Emma said.
Ace and Brady worked to free the lifeless body from the muddy earth. They laid her out carefully on dry ground, giving Emma a chance to take an initial look.
Ace wandered around the perimeter, searching for any other signs of tools or footprints, anything that might give him a lead on potential suspects. The only tracks he could locate, though, were the fresh ones he and Emma had created during their run.
“Just a guess right now, but I’d say she was poisoned,” Emma noted as she stood up, plugging her nose against the stench of muck and death.
“Poison will be difficult to trace,” Aiden added quietly. He and Emma exchanged a curious glance that looked to Ace as if they both knew something he did not.
More problems he didn’t need.
“Get an excavator and a plumbing contractor out here to fix this leak ASAP,” Ace shouted in frustration at his brother. His stress level could not go any higher. The last thing this failure of a council meeting needed was a mysterious death, especially of one whose fate had been linked to the outcome of the council’s decision. “And we’re going to need an accounting of every person’s movements this evening,”
Jay looked annoyed to be spoken to in such a harsh way, but to his credit did not disrespect Ace by returning the tone. He pulled out his phone and immediately began making calls.
Ace turned on Aiden. “Where are your mates?”
Aiden and Brady looked to each other and then to Emma. “Weren’t you supposed to be with them?
“I bowed out. Didn’t feel much like partying.”
Ace looked closely at Emma. “I found you out there on the patio. How long had you been standing there?”
“Are you accusing me?” Emma replied in shock.
“No one is accusing anyone. I am asking a simple question, and I need an answer.” He rarely pulled out the Alpha tone, but he wasn’t about to let feelings get in the way of answers.
Emma scrunched up her face as a flash of anger washed over her features. “I came out minutes before you did. Check your security cameras.”
“We will,” Ace answered. “Due diligence and all.”
Ace seethed with anger, remembering what Emma had said earlier about how badly things could get if an all-out war happened. And it seemed someone was trying to orchestrate exactly that. But who?
20
Emma MacBride
“Since I have you here with me, let’s go over a few things.” Ace’s tone had calmed quite a bit since coming in from the woods, but the threat of his temper still hung in the air.
Regina’s body had been laid out on a makeshift gurney and wheeled directly into the solarium. The lighting could have been better, but at least it was a space big enough for Emma to move around as she inspected the recently deceased.
“Without a full autopsy, I can’t be certain the cause of death.” She walked slowly around the body, making a mental note of anything that might be a clue. Strange mottled splotches of ruddy skin contrasted with pale bluish colored zones. The cold would have had something to do with that. Waterlogged corpses often appeared bloated as well but she couldn’t count on normal in this case, and the time of death was only a few hours prior at best. Her mind was working a mile a minute to decipher the visible evidence. “As I said before, my best guess is poison. Something fast acting.”
She passed around the head of the corpse and bent over to inspect the eyes and nose. Almost immediately she picked up a bitter smell, but it had been diluted by the burn of alcohol fumes wafting from her nasal cavities. Regina had drunk quite a bit at the meeting. That too would further complicate an investigation.
Ace paced the solarium like a caged animal, muttering, “Who would have done this? And why? Did Leif get out?”
“What the hell?” Emma nearly jumped, hearing the question of Leif’s whereabouts. “Please tell me he’s still under lock and key!”
Ace stopped in his tracks and met her eyes. “Yes. He’s secure. I’m just....” He let out a strained sigh.
“Worried,” Emma said, finishing his sentence.
“Yes. And taking it out on the wrong people. Please accept my apologies.”
“No. I get it. I do.” He could have chosen to be the Alpha and steamroll the situation, but his honesty and sincerity struck a sincere chord with her. “This is sabotage. Plain and simple. We have to get to the bottom of this.”
Silence fell hard between them, so much so that the crackle and spark of flames in the fireplace was almost deafening.
It seemed neither of them wanted to say a word, as confirmation of the truth meant their problems had increased tenfold.
Emma returned to circling the corpse, wishing she had a pair of gloves so she could perform a more in-depth inspection. The bitter smell might definitely be a clue to the type of poison used.
“It takes a lot to kill a wolf. Stronger metabolisms and rapid regeneration make our species almost immortal.” She spoke out loud, not necessarily intending for Ace to chime in. “Regina was no innocent little pup. She was a fully capable Alpha female. No visible wounds. No signs of strangulation. No broken nails to suggest a struggle.”
Ace broke through her train of thought. “She’d have gone down easily enough, especially poisoned. That’s a coward’s weapon.”
“Know any cowards?” Emma groaned with frustration. She was talking around in circles with nothing to truly go on. “It would have had to be a hefty dose to have worked effectively and so quickly. Whoever gave it to her would have been close enough to her to put it in a drink or food. I don’t see any needle wounds or signs of a fight.”
“We’d know if it was in the food. Others would have falle
n ill,” Ace offered.
“I doubt it was in the food.” That had her mind spinning even faster, trying to remember the food and drink they’d had. Who had served them? Who had been sitting near Regina or had access to her toward the end of the meeting?
“The wine, maybe?” Ace asked. “She did drink quite a bit of it.”
“But so did others,” Emma responded dismissively. Poisons, especially in large doses, would have had to be administered quickly and close to the time of death to remain undetected.
“Then whoever it was who poisoned her was not only close but a trusted ally to have given her something tainted without question.” Ace looked worried.
If only she had seen whom Regina had walked out with. “The guards! She had two security guards with her at the table. Where are they?”
His eyes lit up. “Yes. We’ll send for them and get their side of the story.” Ace walked toward the doors of his office. “Will you please wait here? I might need you again.”
Emma smiled at the innocence of his request. Not the command of an Alpha, but the genuine appreciation of her counsel.
21
Aeson Silverman
“Did you pull the security tapes?” Ace asked, as he sat down at his desk.
Jay’s head tilted sharply against his shoulder, pinning a phone to his ear, while his hands were busy typing out a message on another phone in his grasp.
Thankful to have his brother around, Ace waited patiently for a moment of quiet before updating him on the latest news.
“Death by poison. On our watch. That’s not going to look so good to the rest of the council.” Jay slammed one of his phones down. “And it was probably someone on the council who administered it.”
“Don’t be so quick to point fingers. Emma says it looks like a fast-acting poison might have done it. Something she’d have eaten or drunk moments before dying.”
“Emma said that, did she?” Jay mocked him.
“Yes. A medical doctor gave her initial opinions on the situation.”
“Oh, don’t get like that. I was just teasing. Last time we talked, you’d pretty much struck out with her. She’s still talking to you, so that’s a great sign.”
“We have more important things to deal with than whether or not a girl is speaking to me,” Ace groaned, but in the back of his mind there was a small part of him smiling that they’d had more than one conversation that hadn’t ended in her being mad at him. Too bad the timing sucked.
“Wait – did you said food?” Jay’s eyes grew large with delayed realization striking hard. “Did anyone else eat...”
“No.” Ace quickly shot him down. “This was clearly targeted. We’d have known by now if Alphas were dropping like flies.”
“That really isn’t doing much to make me feel better.” Jay reached out for a bottle of water on the desk and chugged it down in one go.
“Relax, will you? I don’t think we need to worry about more deaths just yet. But–”
“Of course we have to worry. Someone killed an Alpha right under our noses. And did it quietly.”
“Would you let me finish?” Ace asked.
Jay let out a sigh and crushed the plastic water bottle in his hands.
“We need to pull in Regina’s bodyguards. They wouldn’t let her out of their sight all night. If someone had to be close to her to poison her–”
“I’m on it.” Jay nodded and began tapping out another message into his phone. “If it was them, then that will bring up all kinds of other questions. Like... why?”
“If it was them, then we have one less thing to worry about. An unsolved mystery is the last thing we need, with warring factions arriving tomorrow and a hopeful widow coming to claim power she doesn’t deserve.”
“Maybe it’s a good thing to have a killer on the loose, with all that trouble coming in.”
Ace speared Jay with a murderous look.
“Joking. Joking,” Jay laughed.
Ace hadn’t found any of it funny. If his stress level got any higher, he might be the first wolf to die of a heart attack. “I’m still going to need those security tapes too.”
“Yeah.... About that.” Jay groaned and set down his phone. “There’s nothing incriminating.”
“What the hell do you mean?” Ace found himself shouting.
“Regina walked out into the woods on her own. That’s all we picked up from multiple camera angles.”
“So she just walked out into the woods and died? In human form?”
Jay shrugged. “That’s all I got.”
“Do we have an account of who came and went through the back gardens this evening?” Ace asked, hoping for any tiny clue.
“Fallon, Rachel, and Yanira left together through the front entry. Mom...er... Vivian took her own car, presumably to join the other ladies. Emma stayed behind. Security shows her standing on the patio, but not leaving until you both stepped out together.”
“Leif?” Ace asked cautiously, praying the answer would be no.
“Still safely locked in his cell,” Jay scoffed. “Give my team some credit, will ya?”
“Tito?”
“Went to his room after the meeting. Hasn’t come out since.”
“Has anyone checked on him?” Ace hoped he hadn’t met a similar fate. The last thing they needed was someone poisoned in their room.
“I’ll send someone.” Jay picked up his phone again and tapped a message on the screen.
“Any of the other pack’s support staff acting suspicious?” Ace asked.
“Nothing visible on camera.” Jay shook his head. “Most people took the opportunity to settle in for the night after that dinner party.”
Ace felt like he was grasping at straws. Nothing added up. “Did Regina come here with any enemies?”
“Rachel had a history with her,” Jay answered back. “But she away with the other ladies. They took off immediately after dinner. We’re planning on questioning her when she returns.”
“What about emissaries from the other packs?” Ace asked. “Any reason for anyone to want Regina out of the picture?”
“You thinking retaliation from the Midwest?” Jay looked confused. “She’d have had no dealings with them that I know of.”
“Alphas’ mates often deal with inter-territory disputes. Maybe she made an enemy of someone over the past years, and they wanted to make sure she was out of the picture when they come to claim their territory.” It was as farfetched as he could possibly go to connect dots that didn’t exist, but short of any real clues for motives, he had to think outside the box, even if it meant creating a whole new box to think outside of.
“I can put a call in and see if any travel plans have been registered for us, but I’m guessing the three emissaries aren’t here yet. They weren’t due in until tomorrow at the earliest.”
“What does that leave us with?” Ace blew out an impatient breath.
“Leif.” Jay shrugged.
“But you just said he was locked up,” Ace sighed with exasperation.
“Yeah. He is. But since he’s the one defending his innocence, he’d want to take Regina out because she’d have been intimately aware of the connection to Charles and the attack of the Olde Town. It’s our only connection.”
“But locked up, how would he poison someone and bury the body?” Ace asked.
“I don’t know.” Jay shrugged. “Let’s look at the logbooks and check the entry codes to see who’s been visiting him. That might give us a place to start.”
“Or have us chasing our tails.” Ace groaned. “Whatever. Do what you have to do!”
“This is going to take more than a night’s worth of investigating,” Jay warned him.
“Well, figure it out, because I’m going to have to explain this to the rest of the damn council. Where were Aiden and Brady this evening? They have a stake in this whole Charles issue. Regina was pissed Brady was taking over what she claimed was her territory.”
“Playing pool all night in the
game room.” Jay sighed.
“Question them too!”
22
Emma MacBride
Pacing the solarium as she waited seemed like too much a waste of time. They needed answers, and she was in a position to actually help find them. Quick as she could, Emma ran back to her room looking for her med kit.
If they’d been back home, she would have had full use of her infirmary, but fieldwork was common enough among her kind, and she’d learned over the years to pack her bag with worst-case scenario equipment that would make any trauma doctor jealous.
Gloves on, she was just beginning to work the buttons on Regina’s blouse when the doors opened and Fallon rushed inside.
“Next time I will listen to your intuition.” She reached out to hug Emma but stopped short, seeing her hands hovering over the dead body.
“It was probably best you guys did get out.” Emma grimaced. “Hey, did you speak to her before you left? She was supposed to go with you, right?”
Fallon looked hesitant to respond. “She looked pretty drunk by the end of it. Swaying as she walked. I didn’t even bother to ask.”
“Was she with someone or alone when she left the dining room?” Emma worked the buttons free and exposed Regina’s bra and stomach, noting slight bloating around the belly and more of the splotchy coloring all over her trunk.
“The Tweedles were following her, I think,” Fallon answered back.
Emma snorted at the nickname, which was totally inappropriate but completely true. “I think they’re being brought in for questioning.” She pulled her scissors out and started cutting the sleeves and legs on Regina’s clothes.
“You going to strip her down naked here in the solarium?” Fallon sounded shocked.
“Where else am I going to do this? I need to get a good look at her to make a better determination of what killed her.” The fabric shredded with ease, revealing more splotchy skin underneath.
“I guess I’m just used to you doing this in private.” Fallon shrugged. “Need any help?”
“You want to put on a pair of gloves?” Emma snickered.
Being Alpha_Olde Town Pack Page 13