Chapter 9

Jenna heard the anger and hurt in Sarandon’s voice when he asked if Ritka had been fooling around with a mated wolf before they’d lost their mother. True, the mated wolf might not have been their father, but Jenna could see how upset he was just at the thought.

All the Silver men were waiting to hear the truth. So were others, while some continued to read as if they didn’t want to look like they were sitting on the edge of their seats to hear the news.

Jenna hoped the wolf Ritka had been seeing wasn’t Sheridan, for Sarandon’s sake. She wished she wasn’t sitting so far from him. She’d never expected pack members to fill chairs on either side of the table, and she’d wanted to have room to spread out the diaries she was going to read.

“The year before you were born,” Jake said.

“If he wasn’t already dead…” Sarandon growled.

“She might have been seeing someone else,” Jake reminded him. “Not Sheridan.”

Sarandon just grunted, and Jenna swore he looked like he wanted to slam the diary he’d been reading against the wall.

Everyone who had finished with a diary, including Jenna, began looking for the ones closer to the date Jake had been reading to learn who the mystery male wolf was.

Sarandon looked like he was still having a time deciphering Ritka’s handwriting. He was turning the pages so slowly, as if he were wading through molasses to get to the end of a page. She figured he couldn’t set it aside or he might miss something. Or make someone else go through Ritka’s boring commentary, just to ensure every page was read.

“She mentioned him in this one also, no name,” Darien said, frowning. “I have the diary for the year after Jake’s. That’s the year you were”—most glanced up at Darien—“hell, you were born.”

Jenna glanced at Sarandon. He was staring at Darien but only nodded and went back to reading the diary. Sarandon was still trying to finish his first diary. Poor guy. He must really be having trouble deciphering Ritka’s handwriting.

Darien kept reading.

Jenna had found mostly entries about Ritka’s nursing duties. Jake was still studiously reading the diary that told about how she had fallen for a mated wolf. He suddenly cleared his throat.

This time, everyone looked to see what he had to say.

“She learned she was pregnant.”

Jenna felt sick to her stomach. No one flipped through any more pages. All were quietly waiting to learn more.

Jake took a deep breath. “Ritka said she never thought she’d get pregnant, but she’d only been with the man who was the love of her life, no one else. She wished he’d leave his mate, yet she knew he wouldn’t. Not only because he was sheriff and had a position to uphold—which, hell, he should have thought of before he started screwing around with Ritka—but he said he loved his mate and Ritka was a mistake. She wanted to kill him. She doesn’t know if she’s just pregnant with one baby or more. She’s clearly upset. Devastated. Not sure what to do. She’s thought of exposing him for the fraud he is. She’s afraid he might kill her.”

“They were together later, weren’t they?” Jenna was confused.

“Yeah,” Sarandon said. “She must have given up the baby to another pack and kept it secret from ours.”

“She would have been showing.” And Jenna thought if Sheridan had been close enough to her, he might even have heard the heartbeat.

Darien said, “In this diary, Ritka said she moved into her sister’s pack and told Sheridan she couldn’t stay with the Silver Town pack, not when he was going to have babies and wouldn’t leave his mate. He was furious with her, and she was furious right back. She didn’t tell him she was pregnant. She was afraid he’d kill the baby, even if she got someone else to take care of it. She knew he wouldn’t want any ‘damning’ evidence of his adultery.”

“Her sister was Evie, but does anyone know what pack she was with?” Sarandon asked. “Or her last name if she’d mated?”

“Maybe an earlier diary would have that information,” Brett said. “I’ve got one that’s about ten years before the one Darien has. I didn’t think I’d find anything relevant in it, but you never know when one little bit of information might yield what we need to learn most.”

There were several who agreed.

Sarandon kept eyeing the diaries Jake and Darien were reading.

CJ tossed the diary he’d been reading into a box. He looked pissed.

“It’s two in the morning already,” Darien said, raising a brow as he eyed Sarandon. “You and Jenna have a long drive ahead of you, and I don’t want either of you falling asleep at the wheel.”

She appreciated that Darien worried about them, but she was also amused he was treating her like she was a member of the pack.

“I’m good,” Sarandon said. “Maybe someone could drive me back home tonight. Jenna can go to bed now and drive the first part of our trip tomorrow while I get some shut-eye.”

She didn’t blame him for wanting to learn all he could about this business with Ritka and his father. She was even angry with Sheridan for hurting his own sons, and the cousins too. In fact, it must have had an impact on the whole pack because of the position he’d held in Silver Town.

If they couldn’t trust the sheriff to do what was right, who could they trust?

“I’m good,” she said. As long as she got five hours of sleep, she could manage. So if she went to bed around three and they left around eight, she’d be fine. Besides, this was too interesting to give up right now. If they hadn’t found any clues about Ritka and Sheridan’s past, she would have gladly gone to bed.

Sarandon looked growly at her, but she didn’t think he was upset with her. “Another hour,” she said.

He shook his head and looked back at the same diary. Maybe he’d made it halfway through it. He might just be an incredibly slow reader. She suspected Ritka’s penmanship had a lot to do with it.

Sarandon let out his breath in a huff and said, “Anyone else have anything more?”

“She says she moved in with Evie, and she was so angry Sheridan didn’t give a damn that she was leaving. In fact, he seemed relieved. She wanted to hire a hit on him. She wonders if she should just hire one on your mom,” Darien said, his words spoken with a darkness Jenna hadn’t heard before.

CJ swore under his breath. “What if the ‘hunting accident’ that was the cause of our mother’s death wasn’t an accident after all?”

“Sheridan wanted the hunter strung up for accidentally killing her,” Eric said. “So we know he had nothing to do with it.”

Darien shook his head. “Hell, my father was the one who convinced Sheridan it was just a hunting accident.”

“Here I had always felt sorry for Ritka because she had loved our dad—some years after we’d lost our mom, but he’d been too heartbroken to take a mate again.” Sarandon looked down at the diary he was trying to get through. “If she did have Mom murdered because she wanted to get her out of the way and thought that was the only way Dad would consider mating her, then she deserved what she got. Karma’s a bitch.”

“Yeah,” several muttered.

“We were eight when the hunter shot and killed Mom as a human,” Brett said. “Does anyone have Ritka’s diaries before that incident, during, and after? It was in the fall.”

“I’ve got it,” Sarandon said. “I’m just into June. I’ll fast-forward.”

“Wait,” Jenna said. “If she had anything to do with it, why wait all that time before she hired a hunter to kill your mother?”

“He was leading her on,” Eric said. “I’ve got the diary for the year before. She says here over and over that Sheridan promises to make an honest woman of her.” Though, with wolves, that was an impossibility. They didn’t divorce or leave their mates. “And he was good to Mom whenever I saw him interact with her. So I believe he was having a fling on the side with Ritka because she was easy and he had no intention of leaving Mom, even though such behavior is unacceptable. Ritka might have been fantasizing he’d abandon Mom but knew he couldn’t desert her. Certainly, he would have been drummed out of the pack, lost his job and his family, and been completely ostracized.”

“And when Ritka thought the only way to take your mother’s place was to hire a hit on her?” Jake asked. “It would have been too obvious if Ritka had paid him to get rid of you all too. This way, it appeared to be an accident. If it had looked like a hit, Uncle Sheridan would have known who had the most to gain from killing his mate and getting rid of his sons. No matter how he behaved, he still loved you.”

Sarandon was still reading, not fast-forwarding like he said he would. “Hell.”

Everyone looked over at him.

“She said she didn’t want to do it, but if she was ever to get her kids back and raise them as his children, she’d have to take some drastic measures.”

“Kids,” Darien said, flipping through the pages of the diary. “Yeah, here it is. She learned at the end of the year that she was pregnant with twins, was living with her sister, and no matter how much she wanted to raise her son and daughter, Alex and Faye, she couldn’t stand being apart from Sheridan.”

“She returned then and left the kids with her sister?” Eric asked.

Darien gave a sad nod. “Yeah, at Christmastime. It says her sister pretended to be their mother so Sheridan wouldn’t ever suspect they were his kids and want to kill them. Ritka hoped that in time, he’d be thrilled to know he had a boy and his first little girl.”

How awful that must have been for both Ritka and the kids.

“Does it say anything about how she longed to see them in the years after that?” Jenna asked. “I don’t see her mention them at all in the diaries I’ve read, and they were written after the shooting incident.”

“She says she’s moving back to Silver Town and leaving her sister to raise the twins. Evie never had children, and Ritka said that was the only way Evie and her husband agreed to take the kids in. No interference from Ritka. They didn’t want Sheridan showing up on their doorstep and killing them and the kids because he didn’t want any evidence of his adultery. Ritka agreed—for the same reason, but also because she couldn’t give up Sheridan and thought he’d change his mind about them when the time was right,” Darien said.

“Never. Dad was as hardheaded as they come,” Eric said.

“Okay, well, I understand why she might not see her kids, but I’m surprised she really didn’t seem to care about them. Even if I had to do something awful to protect my kids, I would have been writing how I felt about it. She already wrote about them, so it’s not like she was afraid he’d find her diaries and read them, or she wouldn’t have written what she did and kept them,” Jenna said.

“The diaries were hidden under a floorboard in her bedroom closet,” Peter said. “Sheridan never found them.”

“Good thing for her,” Darien said. “I just wish we’d found these sooner. We’ve got to learn where her kids are now and offer for them to join us or at least get to know us.”

Sarandon’s jaw gaped. Eric and CJ looked just as shocked.

Brett was the first of the brothers to speak up. “There’s just one little problem. If this boy is the one who stole Sarandon’s ID and then framed him for the identity theft—”

“He’s dead meat,” Eric said. “No welcoming him into the family, damn it. And this ‘boy’ is a year older than us.”

Several grumbled in agreement. Darien said, “We need to learn what this is all about before we hang him for what he’s done, if he’s done this.”

“You have any doubts?” CJ asked, sounding just as angry.

“No,” Sarandon said, opening the diary to the back. He pulled out a photo and passed it down the table.

Jake snorted. “That’s the guy. Dead ringer for Sarandon when he was that age.”

When the photo reached Jenna, she was looking at a little boy of about two, his mouth downturned, sulky, and a little girl, also dark haired, with a happy-go-lucky smile. Jenna hadn’t seen a picture of Sarandon at that age and now she wanted to. She turned it over to find it said Alex & Faye, 2 years old.

Silva began going through all the diaries no one had touched yet, and Jenna suspected she was looking for older photos. Some had gone back to reading the diaries.

Sarandon said, “If no one has found anything else important to share, we’re going to bed.”

Everyone looked at Sarandon, most wearing surprised expressions, a couple of the men smiling. Silva winked at Jenna, as if going to bed meant she and Sarandon were sleeping in the same bed.

Jenna wanted to set everyone straight, but she figured they’d know before long she wasn’t coming back. “Do you want to take our diaries to your place for a little late-night reading?” Jenna was too OCD not to finish hers.

“Yeah, but only if you finish mine too,” Sarandon said.

She chuckled. “Sure, I can do that.” And much quicker than he was getting through it. She felt really bad about the business with his father. She could tell everyone was upset about it. At least, everyone sympathized, and they didn’t see the Silver brothers in a bad light for the sins of their father.

Everyone said good night to Jenna and Sarandon, and Darien added, “I’ll let you know if we learn anything further. I’ll text it to you. You need to get your sleep.”

“Yeah, thanks, Darien.”

“Good luck with catching your suspect,” Darien said to Jenna, “but let us know first if you do.”

“All right.” Only because their half brother could very well be the man impersonating Sarandon. Was he just like Sheridan? A troublemaker?

What about the other man who had been with Alex in town? Jenna suspected he was in the same pack as Alex and Faye, and that’s why they were together at the tavern. Alex had to have learned his father’s people ran this pack. Maybe that his “mother” was his aunt instead, and his birth mother was dead.

She could understand why Darien wanted to reach out to him. And why Sarandon and his brothers wanted to strangle him. Would Darien have felt differently if the suspect had targeted him instead? She suspected not, and that’s what made him a fair pack leader.

“You think it’s him, don’t you?” she asked Sarandon on the way home.

“It’s him. When I was looking at that photo of him, it was like staring back at myself. I was a handsome devil back then.”

She smiled. “You still are.”

He glanced at her and smiled.

She was glad she could cheer him, after all they’d learned about the family secrets tonight. “You don’t really want to kill him, do you?”

“Yeah, I do, in a manner of speaking. Look at the mess he’s gotten me into. And the mess he’ll be in when we catch up to him. I keep thinking of how we had a pack to help raise us after our mother died, even if our father hadn’t been there for us. Alex did too. His aunt and uncle raised him. So why come after anyone in the pack? Revenge? Why? After all these years?”

“He must have only recently learned of all this. Wolves like to belong to a pack. Really fit in. Maybe others in the pack knew the situation. Think of it. His aunt wasn’t pregnant, but his mother was. She’s suddenly not pregnant, and two babies are being raised by the aunt and uncle, so you know that the rest of the pack had to have figured it out.”

“True.”

“And even though your pack didn’t treat you poorly because of your father’s actions, who knows how the kids would have been treated in that pack? Maybe the adults were okay, but we believe in permanent matings. So how do you tell your kids that those kids are the same as their own?”

“Are you trying to convince me the guy deserves a second chance?”

“No. Just that he deserves to be heard. If he’s as corrupt as your dad was and there’s no hope for rehabilitation, that’s another story. What about the hunter?”

“He’s got to be long dead, unless he was a wolf,” Sarandon said. “Darien told us his father had it investigated and said he was human. It could be that Ritka intended to hire someone and it never happened. And the man who shot my mother coincidentally did so around the time Ritka was spouting off in her diary.”

“Or she did hire him.”

“If so, he’s dead, with as many years as we live. So there’s no one to take down, or I would have been the first on his doorstep to do so. Though Eric would have wanted the honor. I can just imagine us capturing Alex, bringing him home, and Lelandi questioning him with all her psychological reasoning. Maybe she can reach him. Maybe we can speak on his behalf and get a sentence reduced, make him pay back the people he stole from, do community work. And try to see if he’ll fit in.”

“And his sister?”

“His sister too, but she might be mated in another pack and not be interested in getting to know us. I wouldn’t be surprised, given the circumstances.”

“I agree.”

Sarandon pulled into his driveway and then into the garage. “Sorry about the going-to-bed business. I was just thinking it, but after I said it, we got so many smiles that I figured I should have worded it differently.”

“I assumed trying to explain what you meant would just cause further speculation.” When they walked into the house, Jenna said, “Listen, Sarandon, why don’t you just sleep on your bed. I’ll be fine on the couch.”

“You mean I changed the sheets for nothing?”

“They probably could have used a wash.” Though they had smelled of sexy male wolf and springtime fresh.

“I changed them yesterday.”

“Oh. They did smell good.”

“Me, or the sheets?”

She smiled, not about to tell him the truth.

“You’re not feeling sorry for me, are you?”

“No.”

“Yeah you are. I’d rather you were still eager to chain me up and take me as your captive.”

She laughed. She was glad he could joke about it, because she was feeling bad about him. “You would, would you?”

“Yeah.” He winked at her and headed to the laundry room.

She followed him in there, still holding onto the two diaries she would finish reading before she fell asleep tonight.

He removed the wet clothes and put them in the dryer. “You probably never accidentally leave your clothes in the washer, do you?”

“And they sour? Yeah, on occasion, get to doing other things and forget about them. Then have to rewash them.”

“I’m glad I’m not the only one. My brothers swear that never happens to them.” Once he was done, he got sheets and a comforter out for the couch.

She helped him make his bed. “Are you sure you’re all right, curled up on the couch?”

“Are you offering the bed?”

“Yes, and I can sleep here.”

“Only if you were to join me in there.” He began stripping off his clothes. “Holler if you find anything in either of the diaries, will you? I’ll drive first thing in the morning so you can get some more sleep.”

“I will. Night, Sarandon.” She headed for the bedroom before she did anything foolish like kissing him good night or dragging him to the bed with her. She entered the room and shut the door, then set the diaries on top of the oak dresser.

She quickly stripped off her clothes and took a shower in the master bath. When she left the shower stall, she realized her overnight bag was still sitting in the living room. She could holler for Sarandon to bring her bag, sure he wouldn’t be asleep yet. Or she could dress in her street clothes again. Or she could slip down the hall and across the living room in a towel and grab her bag, hopefully not disturbing him, and return before he ever knew she’d been there.

She was a wolf. Slipping into the room would be easy to do, and he’d never know. Towel secured around her body, she opened the door and gave a startled cry to see the hot wolf in his boxer briefs, her bags in hand, his free hand raised to knock on the door.

He smiled at her in such a wolfish way that she wanted to laugh. “Thank you.”

“No problem.” He handed her the bags and waited.

She took the bags and quickly leaned over and gave him a sweet kiss on the cheek. “Night.”

“Night,” he said on a heavy sigh, then closed the door for her. She hung the towel in the bathroom and dressed in a long T-shirt.

Grabbing the diaries off the dresser, she took them to the bed and slipped under the covers and continued reading the rest of the diary she had started. After skimming the rest of the diary and finding nothing, she started reading Sarandon’s.

Two pages into it from where he’d left off, she read:

I could kill my sister! All these years, she’s said she’s been taking care of my son and daughter, but a friend in the pack told me the truth. Alex was given up to another childless couple because Evie only wanted to raise my daughter, even though she knew I wanted them to be raised together. What must he have felt like, raised for a while with his sister and what he thought were his parents and then given to another family at my sister’s whim?

I want to bring them here. I do! I don’t chance bringing the kids home. Sheridan said he wants no more kids and he’s happy with our arrangement. What can I do but go along with it because I hopelessly love him. He keeps saying when the time is right, we’ll announce we’re mating, but not before then.

Jenna read the rest of the diary, but Ritka didn’t say another thing about the kids. Only about Sheridan coming to see her when he could and hoping that no one would get suspicious.

Jenna wondered how that had worked out for them. She couldn’t imagine keeping something like that secret from a pack. Wolves were too curious by nature. Yet from everyone’s shock from learning about this, at least among those who were there tonight, she assumed Sheridan and Ritka had pulled it off.

She bookmarked the section about the kids with a piece of paper from her notepad. Should she tell Sarandon now or wait until morning? He said he wanted to know if she learned anything tonight. How would she feel if he didn’t tell her what she’d wanted to learn right away?

She sighed and crawled out of bed, grabbing the diary and heading for the door. She hoped the news was important enough for her to wake Sarandon. For her, it would have been. Maybe he wasn’t sound asleep yet.

When she opened the bedroom door, he called out from the living room. “Did you learn anything important?”

Glad she had decided to tell him, she joined him in the living room where he’d turned on one of the lamps and patted the couch for her to sit down and tell him the news.

Since the couch was made up for bed, she felt she was joining him in bed. Why did that appeal?

He actually wrapped his arm around her shoulders and said, “So what’s the news?”

She read him the passage.

“Okay, so it sounds like Alex could have some family issues. If he ever learned that not only did his ‘mother and father’ give him up to another couple, but they were really his aunt and uncle, and his real mother had given him up. Not because she wanted to, but because she wanted to stay with Sheridan more than she wanted to be with her kids.”

“That’s all I found in the diary. Nothing in the one I was reading. I’m getting some water. Want some?”

“Thanks, no. You’d better get to sleep too. Darien’s orders.”

She smiled. “Good thing I don’t belong to the pack.”

When she didn’t get up right away, he said, “You heard my sob story. Do you have one? I feel I’ve bared my soul to the world tonight, confiding in you.”

“And you need me to reciprocate, or you’ll feel you’ve revealed too much about yourself?”

“Something like that. It can cause terrible anxiety, sleeplessness…”

“I hate to mention it, but other than my father being shot and surviving it, I don’t really have any dark secrets to share.”

“Only some you don’t want to share.”

“True.” She didn’t want to discuss her dead mate and babies any further. “Darien’s orders.” She patted Sarandon on the chest. “Get to sleep. You’re driving first thing.” Then she left the couch to get some water.

“You don’t think you’ll come up with some ideas in the middle of the night and need to bounce them off me, do you?”

“Why do you ask? Do you think it would be better if you joined me in your bed?”

“You wouldn’t have to go so far to tell them to me.”

She laughed and got a glass of water. “Night, Sarandon. We have a long drive ahead of us. I hope everything goes fine and your name is cleared and you don’t land yourself in jail.”

Then she went to bed, but she kept worrying that the Colorado Springs police would arrest Sarandon because he looked so similar to the other man. She just hoped the witness statements and his fingerprints would be sufficient to clear him, and he wasn’t incarcerated for any length of time.