Chapter Three
Chloe
My cell phone rang, right on schedule.
“Hi, Gram,” I greeted as I answered.
“Hi, darlin’. How are you doin’ today?”
“I’m good. How are you?”
“Fine as I ever am. How’s the fishing going?” she asked.
I looked out into the trees surrounding the cabin as I answered. “Frustrating. I’m having trouble getting a single bite.”
“Maybe you’re using the wrong bait.”
I shook my head and sighed in frustration. “No, I think my bait is fine. I just think I’m going after the wrong fish.”
“Hmmm. So what kind of fish should you be going after?”
“The biggest I can find,” I replied.
To anyone listening, our conversation would seem a bit odd but not necessarily out of the ordinary. What they wouldn’t realize is that we weren’t really talking about fish at all.
“Think you can track him down?” she asked.
“I’m closer than anyone realizes.”
“Well, let me know how that goes.”
“I will. Love you, Gram.”
We disconnected and I turned off the burner phone, setting it down on the railing that ran around the front porch. I took a deep breath and looked out over the property that Gram had arranged for me in Oklahoma. Outside of Tulsa, the small cabin and surrounding acreage were secluded. My closest neighbor was several miles away. There were trees all around the cabin and a small pond in a meadow several hundred yards away. It was tranquil and exactly what I needed.
Leaving the pack had thrown me off balance. I hadn’t expected it to be this difficult. I missed Calder and Ricki and their wild pups, but most of all, I missed Lachlan. Though he made it clear he’d rather not deal with anyone as he grieved the loss of his mate, he’d slowly begun to open up to me. We would sit together for hours by the lake on the MacIntire compound, sometimes in silence and sometimes reminiscing about our childhoods.
Being here at the cabin reminded me too much of what I was missing.
Realizing that I was sliding into the dark swirl of thoughts that had plagued me since I left the compound, I pushed myself away from the railing, snatched up the burner phone, and went inside the cabin. I wasn’t here to nurse a broken heart or wallow in loneliness. I had a job to do.
I missed my parents fiercely. In the past two years, there were so many times I wished I could have talked to them or asked for their advice. They weren’t traditional wolves by any means. Though my father was the alpha of the MacArthur pack, my mother had a huge role in his leadership. She tempered his ferocity and helped him understand the perspectives of others.
Though the name of the MacArthur pack hadn’t changed, my grandmother had been hearing rumors that nothing else was the same. Darrell Whelby took over the pack after my parents’ death, and I’d hoped he would follow their example. He’d been their second in command for nearly twenty years. I grew up around him, played with his children. He was the current chief of police in Prater and every one of the four officers who worked with him was a pack member.
People said Darrell ruled with fear and cruelty, yet no one had approached the Tribunal to have him removed, so I didn’t know how true those claims were. They didn’t fit in with the Darrell I knew, but I couldn’t be sure. After years as the enforcer for the Austin pack and then the MacIntire pack, I’d done things I never thought I’d do. Things that would have sickened me when I was younger but I knew they had to be done. Sometimes I even relished it. A good enforcer often had a dark side. It was a necessity in doling out punishment to those who broke the rules.
Then there were the whispers that Darrell had something to do with the death of my parents. That was what had truly gotten my grandmother’s attention. My father, Matthew, was her only son. His death had broken something within her. She’d wanted to come to Oklahoma when the rogues that killed him were caught, intent upon meting out her own brand of justice. Unfortunately, Darrell and the pack mates with him had slaughtered them during the fight.
Though Sophia MacArthur was frustrated that she didn’t get to spill their blood with her own hands, she was satisfied in the belief that justice was served.
Until a few months later. An anonymous voice on the phone had insisted that Darrell Whelby had been involved in the plot to kill my parents all along. It was enough to set my grandmother on the path that led me here. She’d quietly dug into Darrell’s past and the months leading up to that horrible night.
What she’d found was enough evidence to make us both question exactly what had happened.
It had taken two long years to get here, but we were finally going to get some answers.
For the past week, I’d been snooping around online, looking for any information on Darrell and other members of the pack. I was amazed at the kind of shit I found on their social media accounts. I didn’t have all the information I wanted before I approached Darrell, but I had a better idea of what their habits were and how to find them.
Unlike the MacIntire pack, the MacArthur pack didn’t have a compound. They all lived in Prater, Oklahoma. There were a few humans in the town, but the majority were half-bloods. One of their parents or grandparents had been a shifter but their blood had been so diluted they could no longer transition. They knew us for what we were and didn’t care.
The arrangement shouldn’t have worked, but it did.
Unfortunately, that was going to make it more difficult for me to be sneaky. With so many shifters in one place, I’d never blend in. Those who knew me would recognize my scent immediately and those who didn’t would still know that I wasn’t a pack member.
My only option was to approach the pack as the prodigal daughter and hope that they would welcome me back into the fold. There were many who hadn’t wanted me to leave the pack, who’d thought I was abandoning my birthright. They hadn’t understood why I didn’t want to lead.
But my parents did.
Especially my mother. I had the same itchy feet that she had in her youth, always wanting to go, to do, and to see. It was a rare trait in a wolf shifter, but one that she understood all too well. She knew I would be ready to settle down eventually and that I would be back, even if no one else believed it.
Now I just had to convince them.
I picked up my burner phone and turned it on. Slowly I typed in Darrell’s number. My thumb hovered over the button to connect the call as I took a deep breath. On my exhale, I pressed it and lifted the phone to my ear.
Darrell answered on the third ring.
“Chief Whelby.”
“Hi, Darrell, it’s Chloe.”
There was a long pause before he exclaimed, “Chloe MacArthur! Girl, it’s been years since I’ve heard from you. How are you doing?”
I managed to put a quaver in my voice when I answered, “Not so good, Uncle Darrell. I, uh, had some problems in the MacIntire pack and…” I trailed off, trying to make it sound as though I were holding back tears. “I-I have no where else to go.”
There was another long silence, this one rife with tension, which immediately made me suspicious. Finally, Darrell spoke. “Well, you come on back to Prater, darlin’. We’ll take good care of you.”
“Thank you so much, Uncle Darrell,” I said softly. “It means so much to me.”
“When can we expect you?” he asked, his own voice growing affectionate.
“Is tomorrow too soon?” I asked.
He laughed a little. “Not at all, darlin’. I’ll see you then and we’ll find you a place to stay.” He paused for a second. “I’m not trying to pry here, Chloe, but why are you coming to us instead of your grandmother, Sophia?”
I had my answer ready. “She’s furious that I’m leaving a third pack. She didn’t want me to leave Mom and Dad to begin with, but she said that this is the last straw.” I sniffled. “She said she’s done with me.” It was all a lie of course, but Darrell wouldn’t know that.
While Gram didn’t understand my wanderlust, she loved me enough to let me go my own way. Mostly because she knew I was too much of her granddaughter to be dissuaded. When Sophia MacArthur wanted something, she found a way to get it. I was just like her in that respect.
“Oh, my poor Chloe. Well, you come up here tomorrow. If you don’t mind something a little old and run down, I have a small cabin outside of town that you can use. That way you’ll have a little privacy while you get your head together.”
“That sounds perfect, Darrell. Thank you so much.”
“Call me when you get into town, okay?”
“I will,” I promised.
“See you tomorrow, Chloe.”
“Tomorrow, Darrell.”
I disconnected the call and set the phone on the table in front of me. Then I smiled.
It wouldn’t be long before I had the truth.