“Which means this shifter killed her while still in human form,” Hann stated. That statement alone tore each and every shifter in that room apart. This wasn’t right. Camilla Phillips never should’ve died like that, caught as an innocent bystander in a war that she didn’t even know about.
Ethan heard Hazel take in a shaky breath. He was barely able to understand, either. But it was slowly becoming reality as he sat down in one of the chairs in Hann’s kitchen.
“I didn’t want to believe it,” Hann added, shaking his head. “I prayed that the weird feelings I had would be put to rest when the police found out what happened. Now, it seems those horrible thoughts Ross and I were having were actually correct.”
Ethan found himself desperately missing Hann’s easy-going smile that was always present on the alpha’s face. It wasn’t there. It was nowhere to be found.
“This is terrible,” Hazel exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air in frustration. “What are we going to do? What am I going to tell Matthew?”
“Nothing right now,” Ross told her. “We need to do our own search through the woods. See if we can find something that the police missed. It’s very possible, now that we know the murderer is a shifter. We can do a much deeper and thorough search. We know what we’re looking for.”
The group nodded collectively as they all silently realized they would have to find the murderer themselves. There was no way Matthew would find the killer, no matter how good a detective he was.
“Do you . . . do you think it’s a rogue? Or . . . not?” Ethan had to voice his concern. He had to voice the idea that was running around in his head. Chills crawled down his spine as he began to think the worst.
“I sure as hell hope it’s a rogue just playing with us,” Hann told him, that sadness growing with each word he spoke. “I pray. It’s horrible, and it’s already one of the worst situations we will all face. But if it’s someone from the pack? Or someone living among us? That would tear us all apart, much like the town of Jerome is tearing each other apart as we speak. We need to find out who did this to that innocent girl–for us, and for the people of Jerome. We have to.”
“I think it’s safe to say that this needs to stay between us,” Ross told the group, becoming the leader of the investigation right then and there. “The rest of the pack doesn’t need to know . . . right now, at least. It will just start chaos that we won’t be able to control. I’ll tell Kato, Britta, Annie, and Lukas–and that’s it. Keep this between us.”
“Of course,” Ethan responded, nodding. Now that Ross had that determined look in his eye, he felt a bit better. He felt like maybe they could find out who did this.
Maybe. Hopefully before it destroyed the whole pack.
“Let’s find this bastard,” Hazel added, nodding with the glimmer of hope in her eyes.
Ethan felt better with Hazel by his side. They would find whoever did this. And they would bring justice for Camilla Phillips.
Chapter 11
Hazel met with Matthew later on in the day, but she was still shaken to the core over the new evidence that Hann had brought to light. No matter what she did, the letter was always in the back of her mind. When she was doing laundry that morning, she thought about it. When she called Lea to let her know that she couldn’t hang out later, she was thinking of it. When she was making lunch, popping a frozen meal into her microwave, she was thinking about it.
She was thinking about it. And she couldn’t stop.
And now that she was face to face with Matthew, who was smoking and gesturing to his board of suspects, which had neither grown nor shrunk, she didn’t know if she could keep it in any longer. She couldn’t stop thinking about it.
And she really wanted to tell Matthew. He was going crazy over the whole thing, and he had absolutely nothing to go on. She knew that, if she told him, it would make things worse. Matthew didn’t know about shifters. He didn’t know about her. And if she broke and told him about the whole other world that lived just behind those trees, she didn’t know what he would do.
Probably commit her to an asylum.
“Are you okay?” Matthew asked her, making her jump as she refocused on the situation at hand. She cursed at herself in her head for being so spazzy and out of it. She could tell Matthew noticed that something was off with her.
“I’m fine,” she told him, trying to reassure him and throw him off the scent. “Just haven’t gotten a lot of sleep recently, that’s all.”
She hoped he would believe her. However, one look at his face told her that he wasn’t buying it one bit.
“You should try to sleep more,” Matthew told her as he lit up another cigarette, leaning back in his office chair as he stared at her. He had his metaphorical detective hat on. This wasn’t good.
“It’s a bit hard when the lead detective of the murder case of the decade in Jerome is asking me to meet with him at two in the morning every day,” Hazel shot back, a bit annoyed that he even said that. He knew that the schedule he was working on was messing with her, but he didn’t care one bit.
“I think best at that time,” he responded, shrugging his shoulders as if it didn’t bother him at all. Hazel truly didn’t know how he was able to work at that hour and still show up for work later on in the morning. She assumed that he sometimes just didn’t go home.
“Have you ever thought that maybe I don’t?”
“Maybe if you calmed down on all the sex before meeting with me, you would be able to nap prior to our meetings,” he shot back, smirking slightly as he took a drag of his cigarette.
Hazel couldn’t believe he just said that to her.
“Maybe if you weren’t so jealous, we would get more done in the morning,” she threw back at him, though they both knew that Matthew wasn’t jealous at all.
“Good one.”
“I try.”
“Now, tell me what’s wrong with you.”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“That was a lie, and I’m offended that you would even try that on me. Do you know something that you’re not telling me?”
Hazel hated the way he was now looking at her. With interest and with the knowledge that Hazel was, indeed, hiding something from him.
“No,” Hazel said with the most confidence she could muster. Her heart was faltering, though. She really wanted to tell him.
“That’s another lie,” he said, shaking his head in disappointment. “You wanna tell me what the hell is going on?”
Hazel didn’t have a chance to say anything else before there was a quick knock at Matthew’s office door. Hazel managed not to sigh in relief under Matthew’s suspicious gaze, though she desperately wanted to. She was, quite literally, saved from spilling everything to Matthew.
An officer stood on the other side of the door, only opening it when Matthew grunted that he could come in. The whole precinct knew that they had to always wait for Matthew’s approval to enter. They could never just waltz into his office. If they did, it would end badly.
“Sir, there’s someone here to see you about the Phillips’s case,” the officer told Matthew, not even glancing at where Hazel sat. “She says that she has some information.”
Hazel’s blood ran cold. What the hell was going on? She met Matthew’s eyes to see surprise in there, just like her. She also saw determination and a sense of adrenaline. Hazel knew she would be ecstatic–if she hadn’t seen that letter addressed to Hann just that morning.
Something was off. Hazel had a bad feeling about it. But she couldn’t just come out and tell Matthew anything. She couldn’t even give him a hint about anything. Hazel didn’t know who was out there asking for Matthew, and it took everything in her to not burst past the officer to see who was on the other side.
“Take her to the interrogation room,” Matthew told the officer, though his gaze never left Hazel’s. “I’ll be right there.”
The officer left, closing the door behind him, while Matthew continued to stare in confusion at Hazel. She kn
ew that he was confused as to her emotions, but she didn’t care at that moment. She needed to figure out who the hell this person who had information was.
“Let me go with you,” Hazel demanded as Matthew slowly rose to his feet, a new cigarette dangling from his fingertips.
“You don’t get to go in the room with me,” Matthew finally told her after staring at her for a second, lighting up his new cigarette slowly. “But I can’t stop you if you watch behind the glass.”
That was all Hazel needed.
“Holy shit,” Hazel whispered to herself when she saw who was on the other side of the mirror.
Sitting in the interrogation room, with a scared and sad look on her face, was Lorelei.
Lorelei was a shifter that came to stay in Maine to learn how to fight and help out the Moonlight Maine Pack in any way that she could. She currently lived with Finn, and her other pack mates, Tatiana and Desmond.
She was the last person Hazel ever thought would be in an interrogation room, waiting for Matthew, and having evidence that pertained to Camilla Phillips’s murder.
Hazel had no idea what was going on, and she pulled her cellphone out of her pocket to see if someone had texted her to warn her. Nope, no texts. So, what in the world was Lorelei doing there?
Sitting with her legs crossed and her arms folded on the table, Lorelei looked nervous. Hazel knew that Matthew would catch that. Her foot shook from either impatience or nervousness, or both. Her hair was tied up into a high ponytail, elongating her pale face and making her look a little older than normal; though Hazel knew she couldn’t be older than twenty-three years. She was wearing a pink sweater that made her look like a schoolgirl, and her bright blue eyes were slightly hidden behind the huge glasses that she was wearing. Hazel knew that she wore contacts but preferred her glasses on most days.
Hazel couldn’t imagine what in the world she was doing there. She wished she had time to pull her aside and ask her what she was doing, but Matthew walked into the interrogation room right then.
With her mind swirling with possibilities, Hazel began to think about why Lorelei was even there. There was . . . there was no way she was the killer . . . . Right?
Hazel shook the thought from her mind. There was no way. Lorelei just wasn’t that type of shifter. She wasn’t violent, and she much preferred to read her books and educate herself than fight in a battle.
Hazel couldn’t help but think that it was always the quiet ones, though.
“Lorelei James?” Matthew asked as he sat down, a thin file in hand. Matthew had another new cigarette dangling loosely from his fingers, unlit. He softly laid a lighter down on the table.
“Could I have one?” Lorelei asked, nodding at his cigarette. “A cigarette, I mean?”
“Of course,” he responded, grabbing the packet from his pocket and handing her one. Hazel watched, behind the one way mirror where they couldn’t see her, as she lit her cigarette up with his lighter. Lorelei proceeded to cough after the first few inhales of smoke until she finally seemed to get the hang of it.
“I don’t normally smoke,” she told Matthew when she saw him narrow his eyes slightly. “Well, I’ve never smoked before. I guess I’m just really nervous and thought that it would help my nerves. It seems like it’s not.”
Regardless, Lorelei inhaled again, this time succeeding in not coughing immediately after. Matthew nodded and lit his own cigarette.
“Why are you nervous?” Matthew asked her, leaning back in his chair and crossing his legs.
“Well, this murder has shaken the whole town,” Lorelei began, fiddling with the cigarette.
“From what I hear, you don’t necessarily live in town,” Matthew stated. “You’ve only lived in Jerome for a few months, and while your house is on the outskirts of town, you’re never really socializing in it, are you?”
“Well, I’m new to town, that’s right,” Lorelei said, her fingers twitching as she held the cigarette between them. “But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t feel the death of that innocent girl as hard as the rest of the town.”
“And why are you here, again, Miss James?” Matthew asked, narrowing his eyes even more.
“I’m here because I have some information that, recently, has proven to be something . . . well, something suspicious.”
“I’m listening,” Matthew responded and leaned forward. He was no longer sitting back in his chair like he had all the time in the world. No, now he was sitting up straighter than normal with a sense of determination in his narrowed gaze.
Hazel knew what he was thinking. This could be the moment where everything changed. This could be the moment where he gained valid information that could lead to valid evidence, which could lead to a valid arrest when they found the killer of Camilla Phillips. Hazel could see that realization turning around and around in Matthew’s mind, and she desperately wanted to bang on that window and scream that something wasn’t right.
Because Lorelei being there with some new evidence all of a sudden? Well, that just didn’t make sense to Hazel.
It didn’t make sense at all.
Lorelei probably didn’t know about the letter that Hann received, as they all were planning on keeping the new information on a need to know basis. Lorelei was just a shifter in Maine. She wasn’t on a need to know basis . . . yet, at least. So, why was she there, then? Why, of all days, did she choose a week after the murder to decide that she actually did have some evidence that maybe was relevant to the murder of Camilla? And why, of all days, was it the same day that Hann got his letter from a sick shifter?
“I tried to tell myself it was nothing,” Lorelei began, launching into her story as her fingers shook. “I tried to tell myself that the police would find the killer and everything would be okay. But, you guys haven’t yet, and I began to think about the incident more and more. Finally, I realized that it was something.”
“Why not tell us before?” Matthew asked, his eyes narrowed and his voice gruff.
“I believed the situation was nothing,” Lorelei sighed. “It may have been nothing. I thought it was nothing, at least. At the time. But, when that poor girl was found murdered, I thought about the situation again. I began to think that maybe that was something. And now, I’m not sure if it’s just my mind playing tricks on me or if it really was something significant. But I thought it wouldn’t hurt to tell you.”
Hazel shook her head and began pacing around the room where no one could see her. The whole situation just didn’t make sense to her, though she reminded herself to just be patient and wait for Lorelei to spill. And Lorelei was right–they’d had a ton of people say that they saw something bad or mysterious on the night of Camilla’s murder. They only led to absolutely nothing, though. Neighbors accused neighbors of being out chopping wood at weird hours, strangers passing each other in the night screamed about seeing blood on their face. The list went on and on, and Matthew and Hazel came to the conclusion that everyone was blaming everything for Camilla’s death.
So, was Lorelei one of those people that made something out of nothing?
Hazel didn’t think so. Lorelei was smart. Intelligent beyond belief. Probably the smartest shifter in Maine. If she saw something that was weird, chances are she saw something that was weird.
“Go ahead and tell me, then,” Matthew encouraged her, using a comforting voice that Hazel knew he only used in the interrogation room. The guy was gruff beyond belief–until he wanted answers, that is.
“I saw a man,” she whispered. “He was wearing all black with a backpack slung over his shoulder. He was walking out of the woods as I was putting out the garbage for the next morning. I always forget to put out the garbage until it’s too late, so I’ve been trying to put it out earlier. It was about two-thirty in the morning, and he was leaving the woods as if he had all the time in the world. He wasn’t concerned about anything. Just . . . so relaxed. I remember thinking it was weird, because it was so late and because of the way he was walking. Now, I’ve seen tho
se kids go in the woods together, but they’re always so worried about being caught. They never seem too confident like that man that I saw.”
“Can you tell me what he looked like?”
“I didn’t get to see him,” she whispered, her eyes wide. “But-but he saw me. And-And I swear he smiled like he knew I was watching him. I hurried inside and woke up my roommates, telling them about what I saw as we all walked back outside. Except he was gone, and there was no evidence that he was even there to begin with. I just assumed it was all in my head. You know how your mind can play with you in the weirdest ways when you’re scared. So, I just thought it was some kid or something. But I had to tell you. I couldn’t just act like it was nothing any longer.”
“Do you have anything else to say? Anything that could help me?”
“No, I’m sorry.” Lorelei looked like she was on the verge of breaking down. “I feel awful for keeping this to myself for so long. I guess I just thought you’d think I was crazy or something, which is so dumb of me. I’m sorry. But . . . well, I do think that this was someone passing through. He had a big backpack, as if he was living out of it. Is there any way this could’ve been a drifter? Maybe Camilla Phillips was in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
Matthew nodded as he thought about the possibility. “Maybe. But I thank you, anyway, for telling me, Lorelei. Even though it’s late, it’s still worth something.”
Matthew stood up and shook Lorelei’s hand, and she looked like she would break from his strength. Hazel waited behind the window as she waited for Matthew to join her, which she knew he would soon enough.
Her mind was reeling. She couldn’t understand anything. Did Lorelei go to Hann with this information first? Did Hann send her here to set up the idea that it was a drifter, alone in the night, who stumbled upon Camilla? Where they trying to plant that idea that the guy would never be found?
Hazel didn’t know. She couldn’t see Hann doing something like this. But she also knew that there was the very real possibility that the killer would never be found–at least, the human police department would never find him or her.
Moonlight Wolves Box Set Page 55