With school starting in two weeks, Marshall all signed up to go to university with Avery, Meg making plans for the new menu and doing all that she could before the sale of 'Around the Corner,' was finalized, and Adam at a standstill on his new apartment until more deliveries were made it was time to drive out to start watching the first pack they are going to spy on. The Cameron Pack was led by none other than Alpha Brad Cameron.
But the first stop was a Pack Run. Avery had never been on one before and was excited! She and Adam had gone and Adam had gone once with Marshall to show him where they ran and then Marshall and Meg had gone but never had all of them gone running together!
Avery was vibrating with nervous energy the entire drive and bouncing in her seat the last five minutes of the forty-minute drive. Adam kept glancing at her with a tiny grin. Whenever he looked at her like that she knew he was thinking of his tiny daughter Amber that died and it made her happy-sad that she brought him some measure of comfort with her antics that remind him of her. Then she would always looked at him fondly and call him Uncle Adam and teased him about something.
Finally, they were there and everyone got out of the car and they locked up and started walking up the nature trail together till they got to a deserted location where they split up boys and girls and ditched their clothes. Once they were all in Wolf form they took off with Avery in the lead. Their Wolfs acted exactly like real wild Wolves in this form and it took a lot of effort to do anything human in their wild form. Like carry a bag or try to talk through the mind Link. They were basically bystanders now almost without a voice just like their Wolfs were bystanders when we were in human form.
This is something I thought about with Adam jumping in front of my car. His Wolf would have had to have been in agreement with him about the decision to do that in his Wolf form. He must have been so lost for so long.
I thought about Eric's emails as my Wolf happily ran. He does not seem to be moving to the next stage of grief. He seemed to be stuck on step four of the seven steps. He has been spending hours every day watching the surveillance videos that had not been deleted yet on the DVR looking for me. He has been obsessed with my disappearances and reappearances and it probably was not going to be long till he finds some of my hiding spots. I did not foresee this possibility and did not remove any of my bins of supplies.
At least I had the benefit of knowing every thought that went through his head because he still emailed me when he got up and when he went to bed. Before he left anywhere and when he got back. After each meal and when he could not sleep. He told me interesting stuff too considering he thought he was writing a dead person. He took his time and explained things clearly.
He knows I did the pranks and he has worked out my Maze. He has found one of my tree houses. I kind of want to rush him to find my baby monitors because maybe he would hear something interesting from his step dad's office. He even knows I went in the stairwell and didn't come out so it's just a matter of time.
Tiffany, his ex-girlfriend found her Mate and is not getting together with him in the hope that Eric will choose her and he is really angry about it. He says he told her that he will never stop loving me and that if she throws away her chance at a Mate after he lost his mate, she is just throwing his loss in his face.
After a few hours, I looped everyone back aground to our clothes, and just Meg changes and we wait to try to get our Wolves to cooperate while Meg takes some pictures. We get one exceptionally nice one of me and the boys on a rock and one of just me and Adam and one of me howling. Then we all change into our human form and get dressed. My Wolf is filled with so much joy that even my thoughts about Eric don't bring her down.
Now we get in the car and drive to the town nearest the Cameron Pack. I have a few ideas about how we can gather information before we try my 'crazy plan' and show up as visitors from Romania. The first one is all on Marshall because in the 'crazy plan' he is only my driver so he might get away with playing two roles. Meg is going to be my personal assistant and Adam will be my Uncle and my guard.
While driving in the car Marshall asks me about the pranks because Adam told him I told some stories to him about it. Meg wants to know too so I start telling them about some of my favorite. There are a lot of questions about how the predictive text ones work so I ask Marshall for his phone unlocked.
"First you go to Settings, then General, then Keyboards, then Text Replacement, then + Sign, in the line for Phrase I type my name," A V E R Y, "and in the short cut I type, Avery is the best Alpha in the world!" I say laughing! "Now every time you type my name it will automatically try to finish with that! So how you use this as a prank is you put their girlfriend's name in and 'is a fat cow' and every time they type her name it will try to finish with that. If they don't know how to fix it they might even eventually accidentally send it!"
"But how did you get their phones unlocked?" asked Meg.
"Simple, I used their face while they were sleeping," I explain. "I also really loved glitter and saran wrap and food extracts."
"What, why?" said Meg?
"I put glitter in their car vents and on their bodies while they were sleeping or in their shampoo and I covered their shampoo and other bottles with saran wrap so when they go to use it nothing comes out and I put other smells in their body wash and it missed up their scent. Showering was really dangerous for anyone that was mean to me at my old Pack. Only do the 'glitter in the car vent' thing to someone who really deserves it though, it basically ruins the car. You will NEVER get it all out. For years Beta Frank had light blue very fine glitter on him from his car. It blew out the vent every time he used the AC or heat." I said laughing.
We pull into a nice hotel a little before dinner time on a Monday and check-in and change and then head to a busy dinner to eavesdrop on the locals. If we are recognized later we can admit to scouting out the Pack before calling on them. So we hang out there eating dinner and then head to a Pub to play pool. We meet a few people willing to talk and ask about local cults and town legends. We don't find out much.
Tomorrow Marshall is dressing like a teen and heading to school as a new student and I can't wait to see how that goes.
Eric POV
I am standing in the stairwell again just wondering what Avery was doing in here. I sit on the stair tread and run my fingers over the ruff black strip meant to help people not slip and fall. What was she doing in here? Did she really come in here and sit just out of range of the camera for hours and hours every day? I look around again and it's all so plain and boarding. There is nothing here. Just stairs and walls and doors. The only thing that is kind of interesting is that the locked cabinet doors are not on any of the videos.
I walk over to one and tug on it. Maybe I should get some kind of cutter and break-in.
It pops open in my hand.
How could I have been so stupid? I quickly look around and then pull the door all the way open and look in. There is a faint scent of Avery in here. I hop in and shut the door behind me. It clicks shut with a magnet and there is even a lock-in here. I slide the latch so it locks and unlocks and locks again. Avery built this. I take out my phone and turn on the light and look around. I see some scraping marks on the floor and a Tupperware bin. It looks just like the one I found in the maze with some prank supplies in it.
I open the bin and pull out an odd assortment of stuff. A blanket, a camping mat, and a LED batterie operated lamp. I switch it on. I unroll the mat and wrap the blanket around myself. There is very little of her scent in here and no other scent at all. She was the only one ever here and must have kept her scent mostly turned off here. I was wrong about the chase through the woods on the last day when I thought she could not hold her scent back for hours. That means that she wanted us to find her that day.
I look at the rest of the stuff I have been pulling out of the bin. The things I find most interesting are a notebook and four baby monitors. Why are there baby monitors in here? I continue looking around but there is nothing here but the bin. I look in the notebook. It has an index. That is so bizarre. What 15-year-old girl writes and index and page numbers in her unicorn rainbow notebook?
It seems to be old spying notes from a few years ago when she followed the Beta around for what looks likes weeks. I flip back to the index. Her handwriting is so cute and curly and the ink is pink. It's all boring until I get to the part about her plan to learn to ride a dirt bike. She must have been about twelve when she did that. That would have been a lot of 'bike' for her to handle for how small she was.
I sit down more comfortably on the sleeping mat and wrap the blanket around myself. I have not felt this content in so long. Avery. She sat here. This is her stuff and her blanket and no one found her here and no one will find me here either.
I read about her following the Beta to a nightclub. What an active imagination she had. Drug dealers and a Lady Pimp. Cage fighting and big stakes gambling. Where did she come up with this stuff?
It's all in the same careful scrip as the coming and goings of the Beta for weeks for tedious stuff. She must have gotten bored and made up this stuff and somehow believe her own story later when she told me about this in her email. My funny little mate, she must have been so lonely.
I put everything back where I found it and listen carefully and when I am sure no one is there I crawl out and shut the door. I had been sitting on the stairs just inside the door on the first floor so this cabinet door opened between the first and second floors so there should be more.
I go up to the crawl space between the second and third floor and open the door to the cabinet unsurprised now that it pops open in my hand. I crawl in and lock it behind me. I flip on my phone light and look around and it's the same. I open the bin and it's almost the same too. Only in this one, I find something horrifying.
Avery apparently printed out 'Incident Report Forms' and fill them out on herself every time she received an injury dating back to when she was about 11 years old. There are hundreds. The top one is The Drowning. Date, Incident Type, Type of Injury, Location of the Incident, Names of People Involved in the Incident, Cause of the Incident, Incident Details, Follow-up Prank, Recovery Time, and Recommendation. There were even color pictures printed of burns, bones sticking out of her body, scratches from my mother (dozens of them), pictures of bruises, cuts, and slaps.
There were pages with drips on them and I can smell the salt from dried tears. Most of the tears seemed to be on Incident Reports involving her father and horrible things said about her. Even my three 'Incidents' are here. With pictures of her thirteen-year-old face with my handprint on it. Listed in the 'Cause of the Incident' was that she had walked in on me talking to some girls. I only vaguely remember it. I also apparently called her a bastard which hurt her feelings. She wished I was her real big brother and that I would have protected her. My Wolf was howling in agony.
There was a sheet at the end with everyone's name typed out and a few written in at the end and tally marks by their names for how many 'Incidents' they had been involved in. Sure enough, I was in there, when she was thirteen and I was sixteen. But she looked about 10 to me in the pictures.
What kind of pack were we that this was acceptable behavior? Most Incidents were from my mother and sister and our Beta. That makes no sense, why does our Beta hate her so much. I flip through and almost all the ones with bones sticking out or bloody burns are from the Beta starting right at the beginning but I know he hurt her before she was 11 years old. Now that I love her I am burning with anger and confusion. Why would a grown man take to beating a small quiet girl?
I put everything back but leave the report by the door. I will grab it and take it with me after I check out the other cabinet doors. I listen and climb out and go up one floor and repeat the process and it is much the same. I go up to the cabinet door between the fourth and fifth and right away I can tell this one is different.
For starters, there is a lot more of her smell her and a camping cot hidden behind some kind of ductwork for the AC or heat, and there are three bins lined up in here. But it is still the same in that it is clean and organize. I pull the camping cot out and sit on it and pop the lids off the bins till I find the lantern and turn it on and turn my phone flashlight off. Once that is on I see something else I have not seen before. Electrical cords. There are six of them and they are zip-tied to 2x4's and they are labeled. A.O., B.O., E.O., A.B., V.B., and Electricity. The Electricity one had an adapter on it with room for 6 plugs.
I look up and check to make sure I locked the door behind myself. I can feel my Wolf's interest in this ministry. This is the most awake I have felt in weeks. I sit and think about it for a while, I know it means something. I am fully aware now that my little mate was actually a crafty little fox. I decide I need more pieces to the puzzle so I lay out everything in all the bins. I find a few more treasures, one in the form of a bracelet Avery made from colored thread. I put it on and smile.
Then I sit on the cot with the sleeping mat on it and wrap the blanket around myself. She deserved more than this. I think this was her favorite spot. I know she spent a lot of time in the stairs from the CCTV and from seeing all four hiding spots I know she spent the most time here.
AO-BO-EO-AB-VB What does this mean? I think I am going to go delete the CCTV of me going in the stairs, then go get my laptop, I can even keep it charged in here, and then I can write Avery a message from here.