Page 25 of Stealing Sloane

Sloane straightened her shoulders. “Ronan keeps his cards close to his chest, never reveals anything to his peons, or shares his plans with anyone but his Beta, Garret McCall. But I’ll piece together what I can.”

“Great.” Lizzie fished out a pad and a pen from a nearby drawer and handed it to her. “Whatever you can recall, every small detail, will help.”

For the next two days, Sloane worked for hours, trying to list down everything she could remember about Ronan and how he ran the Boston clan. Lizzie, too, worked on their case, in between her other work at Lone Wolf.

“You still haven’t found anything mentioning my parents?” she asked Lizzie. It was early evening on the third day, and Sloane was running out of information about the clan, as well as patience.

“I’m sorry, Sloane, I’m frustrated too.” Blowing out a big breath, Lizzie leaned back in her chair.

“You shouldn’t be working so hard,” she scolded. “The baby?—”

“Is fine,” Lizzie finished. “All he or she needs is a burger or four. I’m sorry?—”

“It’s not your fault. It’s been over twenty years since my parents were murdered. I don’t even know Aunt Ella gave me their real names.” She had been incoherent by the end. “Maybe there’s nothing to find.”

“Maybe not any actual evidence, but now we know almost everyone associated with the clan’s criminal activities.” Lizzie tapped her finger on her chin. “Surely the people involved in the murder are still around.”

“Garret is, but he’ll never break.”

“Surely he had help. One of them could confess and turn on him.”

“I suppose.”

“We’ll keep trying.” Lizzie reached over and put a hand over hers.

“All right, but let’s get you some dinner first, huh?”

“Sounds like a plan, I’m starving. Let’s order pizza.”

Pizza turned out to be six pizzas, with Lizzie polishing off five on her own.

“It’s still so wild, seeing you eat like that,” Sloane remarked as she took a swig of beer and finished her third slice.

“Right?” She patted her rounded stomach. “Ugh, couple more weeks.”

“Do you know if it’s a boy or girl?”

“No. Can’t, I mean. That’s another quirk of having a True Mate baby. Sonograms can’t pierce the protective magic around me. But at least I know I’ll be having a healthy Lycan baby. Or hybrid? I’m not sure. None of my hybrid nieces or nephews have shown any magic yet.”

“What age did you know you were a hybrid?”

“About seven years old. I was standing next to an ATM when it started talking to me. Thought I was going crazy, but then it started spitting out money because I told it I wanted to buy a doll.” She chuckled. “But at least it wasn’t as bad as Jacob’s first time manifesting his powers.”

Both she and her wolf perked up at the name. Truth be told, she had been itching to fish information from Lizzie about her brother, but stopped herself each time.

Not that I’m worried about him.She was only curious about his job.Yeah, that was totally it.

“Oh? What happened?”

“Mom was cooking in the kitchen one day when—” She stopped short, her face going blank. Sloane recognized that look, one that she got when her smart watch assistant, which she had named Eames, spoke to her.

“So, what happened to Jacob?” She was dying to know what his powers were. “Did he talk to the toaster and make it burn the bread?”

Lizzie blinked. “Olivia’s here.”

Damn it!“Olivia? Who’s Olivia?”

“My cousin.” She stood up. “Er, sorry. She just showed up downstairs. Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

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