“Is there something else?” he gently pressed. He knew me so well.
“It's nothing really―just something I've been wondering about.”
“And that is?”
“What if London wasn't an isolated incident, Sean? What if there are other packs doing the same thing, and they've just kept it under wraps better?”
“We contemplated that too, but have found no evidence to support that theory.” Again, I hesitated. “Is there something you know that I don't?”
“No, but it does seem possible, maybe even probable, doesn't it? If whoever is behind the technology was selling it, why wouldn't one market it to as many alphas as one could? Why just London? What was so special about them?”
“Well, for one, they had someone maniacal enough to want that kind of power,” he said, offering a valid argument. “Not all packs are led by coldblooded killers, Ruby. It's just been your unfortunate experience to be well acquainted with those of that ilk, Cooper notwithstanding, of course.”
“Fair enough. I...I just thought it was something worth looking into,” I said softly, standing up to leave.
“Then I will,” he replied. “I will have some of the boys pay unannounced visits to some of the more notorious packs around the world. I'll be sure they check for dog tags or anything else suspicious that all pack members have on them.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
I started down the street, heading toward the apartment.
“What happened with Tobias,” he started, his voice barely even a whisper. “It will never happen again, understand? Ever.”
“I know.”
“I will not let it.”
I smiled.
“Getting cocky in our old age, aren't we?”
“Always.”
He hung up without saying goodbye, a habit I was well used to by that point in our relationship. We weren't really the types to linger on the phone.
As I walked through Portsmouth, shivering slightly while the wind whipped between the buildings, I wondered if there were any possible way to get Sean and Gavin to unite. They were both smart and savvy and cunning, and both knew that sometimes a little rule-bending was needed to get things done. If the enemy of our enemies was our friend, then maybe, just maybe, I could get Gavin to put aside his hatred of Sean long enough to see the wielder of this wretched technology brought to justice―Patronus Ceteri style. To do that, I would first have to actually get Sean and Gavin to meet.
Another clusterfuck for the list.
Chapter 7
“I'm going to be flying solo today at the shop,” I yelled down the hall to Cooper while he made breakfast for the troops. I didn't envy his alpha position at all, especially not since Lyla's arrival. He had some serious tension-relieving to do amongst the pack if he ever wanted them to be okay with her being there, however temporary that situation proved to be or not be. If Cooper could vouch for her, I was willing to get on board with her staying, although that meant two of the boys were about to be roomies since my plans for the third floor only had three small rooms built into them.
“Where's Peyta?” he asked, poking his head around the corner. “And don't think your wedding comment flew over my head last night. Spill it. Now.”
“The wedding would be why I'm Peyta-less.”
“Ah. I'm guessing Ronnie factors into that equation somehow.”
“Good looks and brains; you really are a catch, Coop.”
“No turning back now, Rubes. You had your shot at all this awesomeness. You chose door number two instead.” Again, he poked his head around the corner, but this time it donned a shit-eating grin.
“Yes, yes, I blew it. I know. Now, if you're finished gloating, I need to go to work.”
“What's a Peyta?” Lyla asked, emerging from Cooper's bedroom.
“Peyta is an adorable teenager who's apparently about to marry into the PC,” Alistair said flatly.
“Is she human?” She couldn't hide the surprise in her voice.
“Nope. Healer. Long story,” I replied, walking past Cooper to snatch a piece of bacon off the pile in the kitchen. There had to be at least three pounds of it there. “To address your original question, Coop, World War III went down between P and Ronnie. Jay called and filled me in yesterday. I guess they aren't really on speaking terms, so Peyta is staying with Jay in Boston. Indefinitely.”
“The Jay I met?” Lyla asked, putting the pieces together.
“That would be the one.”
“Good choice...,” she muttered under her breath.
Suddenly, all the cooking noise in the kitchen ceased.
“Do you need some help at the store?” Alistair asked, breaking the silence. “I'd do just about anything to get out of hanging sheetrock.”
“I'm fine, Ali,” I replied, turning to find him hovering beside me. I smiled at the sight. His unassuming good looks combined with his utter cluelessness at times made him terribly endearing. He was the butt of nearly every joke in our pack, but I believed that he secretly loved it. If I hadn't known any better, I'd have thought those traits were just an act to get attention.
But I did know better.
“Do a bloke a favor, Ruby. Tell them you need me.”
“We can hear you,” Cooper hollered from the kitchen. There was a touch of heat to his voice that I didn’t feel was warranted. “And you have work to do upstairs.”
“Bugger,” Alistair cursed.
“Sorry, Ali. I love you, but Coop's right. We need that bathroom upstairs finished soon, or I'm kicking you all out,” I said, patting his cheek lightly. “Homeless won't look good on you.”
“You're not my favorite anymore,” he lamented, heading back to his seat on the sofa while the others heckled him.
“I love you too.” Collecting my jacket and lip balm, I headed toward the door. “I'll pop up at lunch, Coop.”
“You didn't have breakfast!” he argued, peeking his head around the corner at me while I reached for the apartment door.
“I had bacon!”
“One piece?”
“I'll grab something later. I promise. Gotta go!” I replied as I slid through the door, shutting it as quickly as possible behind me. With a sigh of relief, I made my way downstairs and outside to open up the adjacent shop door. I couldn't have cared less about eating in that moment. I just wanted to escape the drama that was sure to ensue during Cooper's family meeting.
* * *
The morning was uneventful, which was a welcome change, indeed. It seemed as though the Universe was sticking to her rule of threes. I'd had a trio of random drop-ins at the shop the previous day, though Sean's was more than welcome, so I'd met my quota. I should have been clear.
Should have.
The afternoon had been off to a great start. I was busy and had an alarming amount of sales. By the time I was ready to close for the day, life was looking up. But, as luck would have it, things took a nosedive shortly thereafter, though it was due to an unlikely source.
“You're a hard woman to get alone, Ruby Dee,” Alan mocked as he entered the shop. He knew it was about closing time and turned the sign to signify that fact—he also locked the door behind him. The idea that this was a social call was quickly reduced to wishful thinking on my part. When he rummaged through his pocket and removed a folded, wrinkled piece of note paper, I knew my night was about to get interesting in a hurry.
Exactly what I needed.
“I'm guessing that's not your honey-do list from Kristy, is it?” I asked, trying uncomfortably to joke my way through my growing nerves.
“Speaking of my honey, I don't have long,” he replied, coming to join me at the front counter. “She's going to wonder where I am if I'm not home in the next ten minutes.” His tone was uncharacteristically nervous when he delivered his statement. Something had Alan rattled. “At any rate, this is the note I told you about.” Like I needed to be reminded. I'd been wondering about that note ever since the night he'd brought it to my apartment. Too
bad I had been too blind at the time to read it. “It came with a key that I didn’t mention the last time I saw you.”
“Key to what?”
His expression tightened.
“I'm working on that,” he replied. “But first, this.”
He held out the note toward me, still folded, but as I went to take it from him, he pulled it back quickly.
“I need you to remember something, Ruby. This is not the man I knew. Something was very, very wrong when he wrote this.”
“I understand,” I said with a comforting look.
“I just don't want his good name tarnished by this.”
I nodded with a tight smile as I reached once again for the paper in his hand. The suspense was killing me. Whatever madness McGurney had scrawled on that note had spooked Alan on some level.
Having had a couple weeks to prepare, I did not expect to be shocked by what I read. Not like I was. Still, I found myself in a cold, clammy sweat, my jaw sagging while I read what could only have been described as a short and barely coherent briefing on werewolves. Line by line, I read erratic but detailed accounts of what he'd seen, where he'd seen it, and when it had all gone down. “Conspiracy” and “government knowledge” were thrown around countless times in that short note. Thankfully, it did make him sound paranoid to a lay reader, but to me it was a playbook on what the other team was up to. Unfortunately, it didn't say exactly who the other team was or who played for them.
Once I finished reading, I laid the paper down on the counter, trying to collect my thoughts for the inevitable interrogation that was to follow.
“So?” he asked, encouraging me to spill my guts.
“I don't know what to say, Alan. What can I say? He clearly snapped under some kind of pressure. This,” I said, gesturing to the note, “was not written by someone firing on all cylinders, no disrespect intended.”
He sighed heavily, running his hand through his shortly cropped hair.
“I know that, Ruby, but...”
“But what, Alan? I don't know what you want me to tell you. I'm sorry that this happened to him, really I am. Had I known that it would have come to this, I never would have enlisted your help, thereby endangering his sanity and, ultimately, his life.”
“I knew that man better than I knew my own father. He was special ops in the Vietnam War and could talk about what he'd seen and done like it had had little to no effect on him whatsoever. That man would not have cracked easily. Whatever mess you got him involved in jacked his head up royally, so what I want from you are answers because Jim McGurney was a good man. I owe his widow an explanation.”
Sean and Cooper had long told me that my acting skills sucked big time. Knowing this to be true, I needed a miracle or an Oscar-winning performance to get me out of the hole I'd dug for myself. Doubtful that I would receive either, I tried something that Alan clearly didn't expect.
“It's true,” I whispered, averting my gaze.
“Excuse me?”
“I said it's true. All of it.”
When I brought my eyes up to meet his, all I saw was utter confusion. My plan was working.
“Ruby, do not fucking insult me. I'm not here to play games.”
“Neither am I. You wanted answers. There's your answer.”
He looked at his watch and let out a frustrated growl.
“I have to go...Kristy is going to start hunting me down in a minute,” he said, snatching the note up off of the counter. “This is not over, Ruby. I don't know what you're trying to hide, but know this: I'll find out with or without your help, and if you pick the latter, we're done. You. Me. My family. It's done. And this time, I mean it.” He mumbled something under his breath that I couldn't quite make out as he stormed toward the door, leaving a trail of hostility in his wake.
After the echo of the slammed door stopped reverberating through the store, I let out the breath I'd been holding. My bluff had worked in the short term, but I knew it would not hold up for long. All I had effectively done was buy myself time, but in the process, I had pushed Alan to dig deeper into something that would either shatter his mind as it had McGurney's or get him killed. Neither were acceptable options to me. Angry with me or not, I didn't want him getting hurt or, worse yet, killed, leaving a wife and child behind to grieve his untimely death.
I had been the cause of enough death in my time. I didn't want yet another on my conscience.
With that thought weighing heavily on me, I pulled out my cell phone and sent him a quick text: I'm sorry for what I said. I just don't know how to tell you what you need to know. We need time to sit down and talk about this properly. When can we meet?
Moments later, he responded: Will discuss later.
His response wasn't a total blow off, so I took it to be a positive sign. I could sense that Alan didn't want to be at war with me. He had become like family—an older brother of sorts―and families fought. But, family or not, he was going to get his answers and his bad guy. If I stood in the way of that, I would no longer be an ally. I would become an enemy. I didn't want to be his enemy, but I didn't know how to help him without putting him in harm's way.
Though the idea made me nervous, I needed to talk to Sean.
Deciding that was the best course of action, I shut down everything in the shop and made my way outside, locking up as I exited. I dialed his number and awaited a response, leaning against the building while I silently reviewed everything I could remember about McGurney's note. When Sean picked up, I realized that I hadn't been reviewing it in silence at all.
“What do you mean 'the wolf looked at me and smiled'?” he asked, trying his best to contain the rage I knew was growing inside him.
“Sorry! Calm down. I was thinking out loud, apparently.”
“As long as you weren't fantasizing, I'll allow it.”
“Cute, Sean. Very cute. I was, in fact, trying to remember something. Something you need to know. Now.”
“Fine. I'm on my way home. I'll meet you at my place.”
“I'll be there.”
I hung up the phone without saying goodbye, pulling one of his favorite moves on him before he could do it to me. When I succeeded, I grinned with satisfaction. Then I quickly texted Cooper to let him know I wouldn't be home; I didn't want to give him a heart attack when I didn't show up. The poor guy was stressed out enough.
It was only a couple of blocks to Sean's, so I quickly made my way over, being cautious not to take the shortcut down the alleyway. My night had already taken a dodgy enough turn. I didn't feel like unnecessary risks were a good game plan. Even though I knew that Scarlet was back for good and ready to preserve our vitality, I had become accustomed to not having her there to bail me out of the trouble that easily found me. It left me more paranoid than ever.
As I rounded the final corner to his apartment, my phone vibrated in my pocket. Hoping it wasn't Sean with a cancellation due to the London drama, I fished it out of my purse and hit the talk button.
“Off to the beast's lair, I see.” Gavin's voice carried softly through the receiver as if he was purposely trying to diminish the implications of what he was saying.
“Always a pleasure,” I groused in return. “What do you want, Gavin?”
“What I always want, Ruby. For you to leave that one alone. I don't know how many ways I can tell you that he poses a danger to you before you will start to listen.”
“Well, it looks like at least one more time,” I retorted, pulling the outside door to Sean's building open.
“So it would seem.” His tone had become irritated and laced with disapproval. It made me feel like a rebellious teenager. The one I never had gotten to be.
“Where the fuck are you, anyway? Why do you always know where I am?”
“A detail for another time, I think.”
“Listen, I hate to cut this short, but Sean is headed home. We're having a little meeting of sorts.”
“About you leaving him, never to return again?”
“
Nice try. No. About something different.”
“What we discussed last night?”
“No!” I left the “because Sean and I kinda talked about that last night” out of my reply.
“Would it have anything to do with the note the detective just gave you at your shop?”
My heart nearly stopped, though it shouldn't have. I had long felt he knew everything—at least where I was involved. There was only one way for that to be.
“Christ, I really hope that you have some level of decorum with your stalking, Gavin. I'd hate to discover that you have snapshots of me getting dressed stashed around your house.”
It was a feeble attempt to disguise the unease I felt. I wondered if it was possible that he knew what was written in that letter and, worse yet, what lengths he might go to in order to keep information like that from becoming public if he did. He was a werewolf of sorts too. Or at least that's what he had claimed to be. He didn't want our secrets outed any more than any of us did. I knew Gavin to be shady and calculating—two things I didn't like in an adversary, not that I was certain he was one yet. Either way, I didn't want Alan in his crosshairs. Gavin may have crucified Sean for his previous sins, but somehow I was pretty sure he had a box full of secrets and evil deeds all his own. Evil deeds that he would replicate if the situation called for it. If I was right, I feared that Alan wouldn't survive long.
“Don't be crass,” he scolded, sounding truly offended. “The only picture you need to be concerned about is the one I gave you. Perhaps you can talk to Sean about that when he shows up tonight.”
“I'll think about it,” I replied casually.
“See that you do.”
He hung up on me as I had on Sean only minutes earlier. After punching in the code on Sean’s apartment security keypad, I made my way inside and collapsed on his couch. Gavin's words taunted me, and I pulled the photo out of my purse as though he was willing me to do so.
I would be careful about opening wounds that are better left scabbed over, Scarlet warned. Some actions can't be undone.
There was a sadness in her voice―an understanding―that I could not ignore. I dropped the picture back in my purse, only taking the quickest glance at it before it disappeared from sight.
STRAYED Page 6