"I needed a swim to de-stress," he replied, shrugging. His wolf egged him forward, and if it weren't for his recent shifting he wouldn't have said it, but words started to come out quickly. "I do have time tomorrow, if you're still interested," he couldn't bite down the words before they all escaped.
"Oh?" She sounded happy, she looked happy, and suddenly, Carter couldn't take his eyes off of her.
"Yeah, if you want, I'll pick you up around six," he added.
"It's a date."
Chapter 5
A date!
She had a date, and she was so freaking excited.
Willow wandered back to her room that night, still high on the excitement of it. She was sure that Carter was naked when he said that, at least mostly sure, and it made it even better. She couldn't wait to see what he looked like entirely naked. His muscles and slicked back, dark hair had been almost too much when she had found him in the lake. He looked like a merman who was there to lure her into the depths.
She would have let him.
Willow ordered food to her room, taking note of the fact that 'fresh rainbow bass' was available to be ordered at any time, something that felt special to West Valley.
Clicking on her laptop, she settled in for another night of looking around in the local news. It was like going to yard sales when you don't need anything; sometimes you stumble upon treasure.
Missing livestock here or there, people speculating on what a dry winter it was, she kept going until she reached Valentine's ads. It was April.
February tenth caught her eye, and she clicked open the article.
"Charles Wells missing, aged 27," the article read. Wells. The name sounded familiar, and she wasn't entirely sure why. Opening the front page of the site in a new tab, she saw immediately why.
"Alexander Wells, aged 25, missing," it read. No mention of a missing relative. Willow read through each article slowly, but found only a couple personal details.
They went to the same high school, had both spent their lives entirely in West Valley, had parents who had passed. The matching details went on and on.
They were brothers.
They were absolutely brothers.
So why wasn't that mentioned in the newer article? Willow pulled up another tab and did a search on the site of any article with the name 'Wells' in it.
Three more articles.
All missing.
Two more of them she could see as siblings. A married couple vanished at the same time and were the oldest of the set.
The parents.
Willow opened her notes on her phone and started furiously typing any correlations she could find. Why wouldn't the paper mention that one by one the family members had been vanishing? Why wouldn't the police have issued a report on the family?
It was too bizarre.
Too obvious.
The photos of all of them were disturbingly similar. It was obvious they were related. Each with dark brown hair and green eyes, besides the oldest woman, the mother of the children.
Willow immediately drafted an email together, linking the different articles and including screen-caps she took of the parts that correlated. It wasn't just lazy journalism, it was negligent. For her own records, Willow screen-capped the full articles and saved them, reading them over and over to be sure she wasn't wrong.
The old couple vanished, and then one by one their children, she assumed, were vanishing.
Were they just leaving the community?
Were the children, which were now fully adults, searching for their parents in the woods and getting lost themselves?
Suicide after losing family?
She looked through any other missing person articles she could find, but nothing looked like it fit them.
They were their own strangeness.
Willow finished the last of her dinner and sent off the email, hoping for answers by the morning.
She tried to get her mind off it, going back to her work in progress on the resort, but soon her fingers were typing away at the URL of the website.
The articles were gone.
She refreshed the pages, clicked the links in her email to go directly to them, even checked if her laptop was still connected to the Wi-Fi. None of that was the problem.
Within twenty minutes of her email, every single missing person article, except the newest one, had been taken down. She shot another email to the paper, but it didn't go through, saying she was blocked.
Willow sighed, wanting to throw her laptop through the window next to her room's bed. What the hell?! What the actual hell was going on?
Taking a deep, steadying breath, she searched their names on Google.
One of the children showed up on a social media site, but his account was private. She tried to get what information she could off his public pictures.
In the background of one of them, she saw a familiar wolf sculpture. His eyes perfectly matched the color of wolf's painted pair.
Willow opened her pictures on her phone and was able to spot the exact sculpture.
He was from West Valley.
Wherever he went, he hadn't updated his account since her screenshot said he went missing.
None of the other names even brought up obituaries.
She wasn't sure what was going on, but Willow didn't like it.
Chapter 6
She was tired of not knowing.
The not knowing was the worst of it.
The next morning had come quickly, lighting her curiosity with a fervor. There were no new emails. No messages left on her phone even though she left her number. No notices on the news site of something malfunctioning.
No other articles missing, other than the ones she needed.
She called the number on the site, but it only hit voicemail.
She had a facemask scheduled for noon, and another spa regimen scheduled after that, but she didn't care about any of it. Her job was good, but it was boring. It was old. She needed to know where this line led her.
In her dreams, she saw an article about her, saying she was missing. "New Tourist Vanished: spa reviewer took a bite of the mountains and was bit back," the article read. It was only from these dreams that she realized she had those same bright green eyes as the missing family.
Maybe that was why she'd felt so drawn to them.
Willow had always sought out similarities in other people.
She'd been adopted soon after she was born. Her adoptive family was loving, sweet, and supportive, but they all were blond and blue-eyed. She looked different, and she knew it. Willow had always longed to find blood relatives, find anyone who looked like her and was like her.
Anyone who could be part of who she was.
Their green eyes, the kind of green only the angriest sea could replicate…she felt an attachment to them, and because of that, she wanted to see this through.
Sliding on the only pair of jeans she had packed, Willow put the address of the paper into her phone's GPS. Just under a mile away. She'd walk.
It was another beautiful day out, the blue sky stretching for miles and miles above the fishbowl of mountains. Willow pulled her long, brown hair up into a ponytail and put in her ear buds, listening to anything that she could find to pump her up.
She didn't want a confrontation.
Didn't want to tell anyone how to do their job.
But if someone was deleting these articles, removing this clear trail just because they made a mistake and didn't realize, she was going to be pissed. Journalism is supposed to be telling a story – the truth – to the people and getting it as widely known as possible.
An entire family was picked off one by one, and the fact that they were related was never mentioned.
What happened to their belongings?
None of the articles said who they were survived by; none of the articles said what part of town they lived in. None even said where they went missing from, just that
they were missing and wanted.
Her spite and frustration carried her faster than she expected, and soon Willow was in front of the newspaper's office without thinking through what to say.
She paced back and forth between, psyching herself up and walking in with as serious a face as possible.
“Good morning, can I help you?” an older man at the receptionist's desk asked.
“Yes, actually,” Willow started, trying to remind herself to be sweet. More flies with honey than vinegar. “I noticed a discrepancy with the website, and I was hoping to have a word with whomever does the editing on it,” she said sweetly, sliding her phone into her pocket.
“Actually, I've taken over the site maintenance just a couple days ago,” he said, sitting up a little proudly.
Oh.
“Did you receive an email last night about the missing family?” she asked, letting herself relax. It was probably a mistake. He was new to the job. He was older. He didn't look like he knew what he was doing on the computer.
“Yes, I did! I went ahead and took down the pages for the edits. I'm currently working on them,” he replied, smiling sweetly. “Thank you for pointing those out by the way, Miss…uh…” he paused, waiting for her to say her name.
“Willow,” she offered, almost annoyed that he hadn't just gotten it from the email. “Do you realize you blocked me?” she asked, itching to step around the desk and just edit the articles herself.
“Oh? I thought I added you as a plus contact,” he said, looking almost immediately confused.
“No, sir. That's a simple mistake,” Willow replied.
“Miller, not ‘sir,’” the old man smiled, offering a hand.
“Ah, well, Miller, have you received any news on any of the missing person reports?” she asked, shaking his hand. She felt his fingers tense around hers for just a moment.
“Since it's an ongoing case, since they all are, I can't exactly just share the information with you. The police don't have any suspects and don't know what's going on exactly, so it's being kept very quiet,” he said, lowering his voice as he went on. He looked serious as the grave, like he was watching her every move.
How would he tell her that she couldn't know?
This was unacceptable.
“I see,” she lied, wanting to find the quickest way to excuse herself out of the room. “Thank you so much for your time, then. I'm going to head back to the resort.” She threw a thumbs-up to motion toward where she came from.
“All right,” his entire demeanor changed, and he seemed a lot friendlier. “West Valley is always happy to have tourists. Thank you so much for your visit,” he said, leaning back in his chair.
“Thank you,” Willow said, heading out. She decided to try the police station just then. Something about that Miller felt wrong, and she wanted to know what was going on.
She went the wrong way, heading back to the resort, until she was completely out of sight from the newspaper office. Pulling out her phone again, she looked for the quickest map to the police station.
A three-minute walk.
The station was small, well maintained, and mostly empty.
It was really starting to feel like “empty” could describe most things in the town.
“Hi, my name's Willow Royd,” she said, approaching the front desk. The young man working the desk looked her over quickly, almost dismissively.
“I'm Officer Keech. How can I help you this morning ma'am?” he asked. He was handsome, but the boredom that was clearly on his face took away from that.
“I noticed a correlation in the newspaper…well, on the site, that implied an entire family was missing. I was looking, and I don't see any actions being taken to find the family as a whole,” she explained, keeping her breath steady so she didn't look crazy. She didn't want to be confused for one of those morbid fans who do nothing but go around trying to investigate real murders.
The officer's face dropped into a smile.
It felt unnerving, fake.
“You're talking about the Wells family,” he said, writing down something she couldn't see.
“Yes! Yes, I am,” she agreed, hoping for more information.
“Well, we thought it best that we keep their information singular and upfront, so that people don't feel blindsided by a bunch of faces or names at once,” he explained. “If we can get just one tip about the family we'd appreciate that, but so far, no dice.” Officer Keech sat back in his chair and watched her face. His expression was dutiful.
“That makes sense,” she said, not sure if it actually did.
“Now, do you have any information on these missing people?” he asked, picking up his pen again.
“No, no, I was just wondering what information there was,” she apologized.
“That's not something I can just tell anyone who walks in,” he shook his head. “If you find any information, though, do let us know!” he capped his pen. “Otherwise, try Carmen's restaurant, Lakeside, while you're in town. She has the best fish you could want,” he offered.
“I might. Thank you,” she agreed, nodding before leaving the station.
Something about him felt wrong, as if he was just saying what he needed to get her out of the office.
She didn't want that. She wanted to get answers.
Willow stared down at her phone, flipping through her screenshots of the articles. The picture of the youngest brother in front of the wolf statue showed up again, and she knew her next step. She'd ask around and see if any of the locals had answers for her.
She stopped in four different shops within twenty minutes, going door to door, and none of them would talk to her about the missing family. A couple people seemed genuinely surprised. One seemed apprehensive and told her to just ask the police, like Miller had.
None of them seemed to have anything to tell her.
Aggravated, and getting hungry under the noon sun, she collapsed onto a bench and stared down at her phone.
What could make an entire family disappear?
She spent her whole life searching for her family, for people like her. She couldn't imagine being the youngest child in that family and having to watch everyone in your family vanish one by one.
Willow's stomach growled, and she decided that where to eat lunch was her next mystery.
“Hi, are you the reporter who just came into the area?” a woman asked, approaching her. The woman didn't look any older than forty, her age gracefully sitting in the lines by her eyes.
“I am,” she was only partially lying. She was a journalist, yes, but just for resorts.
“I hear you've been asking around about the Wells family?” she asked, sitting down on the bench beside Willow.
“Yes, I have. There's been a lot of strange things going on,” Willow said, relieved to find someone who would treat her like an actual human being.
“Tourists should keep their noses out of the affairs of those who live here,” the woman said quickly and haughtily.
Willow's head whipped toward the woman quickly. “What?”
“I'm just saying,” the woman said slowly, staring off at the mountain range, “don't stir the pot just to stir it. This town may be a vacation for you, but keep in mind the locals have lived here for years and years, and we don't take kindly to those who shove their noses where they don't belong,” her voice was almost a growl now.
“Do you know something about the Wells family?” Willow asked, against her better judgment.
“I know that they're none of your business, and it would serve you best to keep it that way,” the woman said, leaning toward her. The woman had an air of someone who could snap her in two, and she moved closer to her.
The street was empty besides them.
Willow could smell danger in the air and felt less safe than she ever had. Maybe the lady was just strange. Maybe she was just misunderstanding the situation. Whatever it was, Willow had never felt less wanted anywhere i
n her entire life. She began to get ready to leave, figuring out the path to run to get to the resort, when a car fled down the road toward them. It quickly stopped in front of the bench, and the passenger window rolled down slowly.
“Willow, get in,” it was Carter.
“I'm fine,” Willow said, not wanting to have to be saved.
“Get in. Now!” Carter repeated. Something in his voice told her she needed to listen to him, even if she didn't want to. Without looking back at the woman on the bench, Willow climbed into the car and buckled up, unhappy as Carter sped her away.
Chapter 7
“Who are you?” Carter asked as they drove. “Who are you really?” he added. He hated having to sound like he didn't trust her, but she'd upset most of the pack with her questions. Within half an hour, at least six shifters mentioned overhearing her ask about the Alpha family. A human was snooping in their affairs and they wouldn't stand for it,
“I'm Willow, with Travel to Unravel. I'm just reviewing the resort,” she explained. She sounded uncomfortable, but honest. It didn't make any sense to him.
“If you're just working for the resort, why are you asking so many questions about a missing person case?” he asked, honestly wanting to know.
“How did you know about that?” she asked, turning quickly to him. There was a light in her eyes, a fire, that scorched his heart.
“My friend, James, works at the police station, said a woman like you had stopped in, and that a couple other people had mentioned you talking to them about the case,” he explained. He wasn't sure how to say that several shifters, even those she hadn't spoken to, had overheard and were angry.
It didn't matter that the pack didn't know what happened, or that they had sought the help of humans. What mattered was that a human was asking about an entire shifter family.
It was his duty to not let this slip.
She couldn't know.
Willow was a journalist, first of all, which meant that she had access to ways of getting information out there. She might be discredited, like so many others are every year, by the public saying shifters were an impossibility.
White Star (Wolves of West Valley Book 1) Page 3