Hey, kittens!
Have you nominated your favorite Wattpad stories for The Fiction Awards yet?
You don't know how to? You don't know what The Fictions Awards are?
I'll explain in the A/N at the bottom!
PS: In case you've forgotten some of the terminology in this series, I'll post a brief glossary in the first comment. For now, here are two names that might've escaped your mind since they'd only been mentioned before:
Anne - a shifter who left the Silver Bullets to be with her mate Jason, even though the pack didn't approve of him. She's the first person who comes to Keri's mind when Keri is thinking of unfavorable mate pairings, even though Anne left before Keri was born so Keri has only heard of her.
Jason - Anne's mate and the leader of a small, shady pack of drifter werewolves.
The wipers chased the last of the water drops off my windshield so I turned them off. The light drizzle had stopped just as the first houses in the Silver Bullets' neighbourhood had greeted me. A few more minutes and I'd be at my destination.
I checked my rear view mirror for other vehicles or young, careless pups running around and realized I was frowning. It wasn't that I had a problem going over to Keri's place, but nearing it had reminded me of the conversation I'd had yesterday with her cousin.
"What? You want to shove your nose back into the serial killer's case?" Kelly sat on the edge of my desk. "There hasn't been a murder in months and..." She looked around the precinct to make sure no one was eavesdropping on our conversation. "And," she quietly went on, leaning towards me, "the Sentinels still count it as an ongoing investigation."
"But more recent cases with more promising leads are their priority," I pointed out and she sighed.
"I know but... Do you have to go through the Silver Bullets member records again? Keri has only just taken a break from this case; do you have to remind her and bring it so close to home?"
"You want me to stop doing my job out of consideration for your cousin's feelings?"
"Well, no, but..." She huffed and tapped her foot against the dirt-covered floor tiles of the precinct. "Fine. I'll call her to get the records out. She'd want to be there when you go through them though."
"I'll call her," I insisted, then, when she raised an eyebrow in question, I clarified: "I'm also sure Keri won't just hand me pack records and leave me to my own devices. If I call her, it will be easier to arrange to meet when we are both free."
Kelly nodded and pushed herself off my desk.
"You got a point there," she admitted as she stretch. "I'm going to grab a coffee; want me to bring you one too?"
"Cream, no..." I began, but the girl cut me off.
"Yeah, yeah. Cream, no sugar. Same as Keri, so it's easy to remember."
I turned the heating off, parked in front of Ker's house and got out of my car.
The drizzle must've missed this part of town, I thought as the dry earth crunched beneath my feet. A minute later, I'd gone over the porch steps and was knocking on Keri's door. She opened almost immediately, her face framed by a couple of strands of brown hair that had escaped from her bun.
"Come in," she invited, stepping to the side.
"The office?" My question was redundant; we'd always met for business and we conducted it in the office, unless her Council was present, in which case we'd sit in her living room. Those two and a bathroom were the only rooms I'd ever been to, although I'd taken glimpses of the kitchen as I'd passed by it. I'd never stepped foot on the second floor.
Keri led me to the office and opened the door, letting me walk in before her. A stack of folders was already waiting on her desk and I took the top one as I claimed a chair. Keri also sat down, the desk separating us, and pushed her reading glasses up her nose.
"You'd already been through these today?" I asked, guessing that was the reason her glasses were on.
She nodded.
"And I didn't discover anything new," she informed me.
"You could've waited for me," I said. "What are you going to do now while I reacquaint myself with these?" I waved my hand at the pile.
"Answer questions you might have while making sure you don't misplace anything," she bluntly replied.
I opened the first folder. It contained files with dates: of birth, of death, of mating and marriage ceremonies, of when someone had moved out of the pack. I closed it and threw it on the desk, reaching for the stack again. I removed the one on top and then took the one beneath it. THOMAS was written in capital letters on the label and it was the reason I'd come here for.
I skipped through the older files in the folder, until I reached the one I was searching for. This time the label read Anne Thomas, born Anne Hardy.
I heard Keri sigh, but I didn't lift my gaze to her, my eyes going over information so familiar, I could recite it in my sleep.
"She left before I was even born," Keri said, knowing whose file I was reading.
"And there's barely any info on her since, even in the Sentinel's archive." I rubbed my face. I'd only gotten a couple of hours of sleep after my double shift and then I'd found myself on my way here. "Odd, isn't it? The Sentinel Order has access to the police, FBI, CIA, and they have psychics, but they can't find Anne and her mate."
"The psychic gets random visions; she can't force them to come to her to reveal whatever information she needs."
"They have more than one psychic and a bunch of people with all sorts of supernatural skills... Do you think one Gifted could negate another Gifted's power?" I looked up to the woman on the other side of the desk. "To somehow block the psychics?"
A little smirk appeared on Keri's lips.
"I'd thought about that too and I asked the Sentinels." She leaned forward, her elbows on the sturdy wooden desk. "It's possible, but the few registered Gifteds who have such an ability are either Sentinels or working with them."
"What about unregistered ones?"
She sighed again.
"I guess we'll never know. If a Gifted is discovered, they are immediately registered. If someone is hiding their Gift from the Sentinels, then it's possible. It's unlikely for a Gifted to be helping Anne, Jason and the few other wolves that were with them though; they are drifters without much cash so they wouldn't be able to pay the Gifted. Also, from what I've heard about them, they wouldn't help out a stranger so I doubt they ran into a Gifted, saved their ass and the Gifted decided to repay them. Besides, why would Anne and Co. hide from the Sentinels?"
"Maybe they are not."
My statement brought her eyebrows together.
"Maybe they are hiding from the Hunters. If they are a no-good bunch, then it wouldn't be surprising that a Hunter or two would be on their tails. Gifteds sometimes become Hunters so maybe Anne and the others got themselves a Gifted civilian to protect them from a Gifted Hunter and whatever mojo the civilian used, it's blocking the Sentinels as well."
Keri made a face that closely resembled an emoticon my nieces texted me whenever I said something particularly dumb.
"It's not 'mojo'," she insisted. "You make it sound as if they brew potions from bat wings and salamander tails, and dance naked under the moonlight."
"Eh." I shrugged. "Give them a few strong drinks and some might do the latter."
Keri blinked at me.
"Did you just make a joke?"
"I tried to." I rubbed my eyes, but they still stung from the lack of sleep.
"Oh." Was all she said.
We stayed silent for a few moments, Keri cleared her throat.
"Was that all for today?"
I grunted.
"Can't wait to get rid of me, huh?"
"No, it's just that we've been over all this before. There's no new info on the murderer and no new info on Anne and her pack of drifters, and no new evidence to suggest they are connected in any way."
"True. There's nothing new," I agreed. "But we must've missed something. These murders were about your pack."
Keri shifted uncomfortably, misplaced guilt written all over her features. I remembered my words to Kelly - You want me to stop doing my job out of consideration for your cousin's feelings? - tapped on the now closed folder in my hand and went on:
"By all accounts, the Silver Bullets have no enemies and don't associate with dodgy people - human or otherwise - except for Anne's drifters and Everett's son. Thanks to the Sentinels, we know the killer is a woman so we've ruled Alec out, which leaves us with Anne, maybe with the help of Jason and Co. The fact that they've disappeared from the face of the Earth doesn't work in their favor. They are most likely either mixed up in something and hiding or dead."
"But why would they want to hurt us?" She gave the deepest sigh yet, loud and full of confusion and frustration. "We never did anything to them. The pack advised Anne not to go with Jason, but in the end she left and that had been that."
"I suppose you are right," I admitted. "We just don't have any fucking suspects." I threw this folder too and it slid across the desk, Keri managing to catch it before it fell on the floor.
"Sorry." I said in answer to her raised eyebrow and the strict teacher look on her face. "But it has to be someone connected to the Bullets. Someone, somehow..."
"There haven't been any murders for months," she said softly, echoing her cousin's words from yesterday.
"I know. But the killer is out there." I glanced at the window behind her as if I'd see the culprit waving at me from the other side, grinning joyfully that they'd escaped us. "I know it. You know it. I can't just let it drop. Neither can you."
My last sentence seemed to surprise her.
"Kelly knows that you still occasionally go over your pack records and the Sentinels reports," I clarified.
"You said it yourself: she's out there." Keri leaned back in her chair and wrapped her arms around herself. "What if she comes back?"
"Which is exactly why I keep going over the little we know. I don't want anyone else getting hurt or dying."
"Those poor people," Keri muttered, staring at the floor.
I nodded on impulse, realizing a moment later that she couldn't see me. I didn't speak though; I didn't know what to say. Solving crimes was something I was good at, but consoling victims and other innocents involved?
Not really.
I waited for her to turn back to me, but when she didn't, I cleared my throat and said the first thing that came to mind:
"I could use a bloody drink right now."
I half expected her to frown as she often did when I'd declared that midday and for a moment it seemed she'd do just that, but then she rose from her seat and said:
"What the Hell, I could use one too."
What are the odds that at least one of them will get drunk? :D
Do you want them to and if so, why?
Okay, about this chapter: what did you think?
Do you think Callum is on the right track with Anne and Co. or is he so desperate to find the killer that he's grasping at straws?
What could Anne's motive be for targeting the Bullets?
Do you think Callum and Keri should keep investigating or should they try to move on and hope for the best?
Did you enjoy Callum's POV?
To be honest, I still haven't decided if the next chapter will be from his or Keri's...
Please VOTE if you liked the chapter!
And now: about The Fiction Awards.
They are a place where you, the readers, nominate your favorite stories. Once nominations are done (deadline: June 11), people vote on them and the stories with the most votes win so, basically, YOU are the ones who have the power to help out your favorite Wattpad writers.
➝ How do you nominate a story?
1. Go to the Nominations chapter in The Fiction Awards book (link in the first comment and given as an External link) on the @thefictionawards profile
2. Scroll down to the awards list
3. Highlight the award you want to nominate a story for (for example: Best Action Story) and leave an inline comment with the story title and the author's user name (for example: Totally Kick-Ass Story by @Random19823yhdhkudn).
That's it! You can nominate more than one story thus sending out your love to many of your favorite Wattpad authors.
Have fun wattpadding and nominating! ❤