Page 131 of Awakened
But seriously, you’re into the Beast? Uh . . .
Whoops. I revealed a bit more than I wanted to. Forget what I said.
Never.
Light footsteps creaked the floorboards, so I stashed the phone. Standing at the bottom of the stairs, Hope and Chastity looked like twins. The only difference was that Hope had put on a bit of muscle living with Bonnie and Mimi.
Hope took a step in front of her sister. “You wanted to talk to Chastity?”
“Yes, I have a few questions. Can you guys take a seat?”
I pulled my legs to my chest to make room on the couchbeside me. Hope sat directly next to me, creating a barrier between me and a scared Chastity. She wouldn’t look me in the eye, her hand gripping her sister’s so hard that Hope’s fingertips were purple, but Hope didn’t show any signs of noticing. In fact, her shoulders and back were ramrod straight, and all her focus was on me.
I reached out, gently squeezing her shoulder with a small smile. “Hope, I’m not going to hurt her. You have my word.”
She relaxed, her face softening a fraction. “I trust you, Beta—I mean Les.”
Hope had a hard time letting go of the rigid pack structure and behaviors of the Old Church. From what I had seen of her sister, she wouldn’t be much better.
“Thank you, Hope.” I squeezed her shoulder one more time, then turned to her sister. “Chastity, I just have a few questions about the last three months. We had several women go missing from other packs. Did any new women show up in the Crescent Pack? Maybe some men found their mates?”
Her eyebrows pulled together, and her lips thinned out. “There was only one new woman, but with the lockdown, I never met her. Honestly, when Father came back from The Gathering without Hope, he locked me up in the house.”
I nodded. It had been a long shot anyway. “Did you hear any talk about The Gathering? About what happened?”
Her frown deepened. “No. Father said Hope was gone but wouldn’t elaborate. No one has really talked to me in weeks. The drive to the Blue Moon Pack was the first time I left the house in months.”
That poor girl had been through so much. I wanted to get details, but she didn’t know anything. Good thing I had a jump drive with all the information I needed burning a hole in my pocket.
“Okay, no problem. Why don’t you guys go out back with Brandon and Zach? They’re supposed to be starting the grill.”
Hope smiled in relief, but Chastity’s body shook. It was clearthe idea of strange males was too much for her. Hope whispered in her ear and dragged her toward the kitchen. Waiting until I heard the back door close, I took out the burner.
SCD: You know, the beast still comes out.
This guy is ridiculous.
Yeah, yeah. I’m going to upload the files now, standby.
10-4, little buddy.
I hobbled to my computer bag by the front door, then teetered back to the couch. Propping my foot up on some pillows, I plugged in the jump drive and started uploading the files. As they completed, I opened them one by one.
The first folder was a collection of Matthew’s favorite porn, aptly named TIG OLE BITTIES. Ridiculous. He could’ve just bookmarked the webpage, but no. He downloaded sixty-nine movies. I was too afraid to see what the sicko had in his spank bank to open any of the files, so I moved on.
A lot of folders were boring pack paperwork, like transfer requests, bills, and the deeds to parcels of land. Ten minutes into the download, I found a folder named FEMALES.
Way to be covert, big guy.
The folder contained three spreadsheets. The first was a list of all “enemy” packs and their ranking members. The Amazon tab had a lot of colorful language in the comments.
The second spreadsheet was a list of all the single wolves that were at The Gathering. Again, my name was separate and surrounded by quite a bit of abusive language.
Glad I made an impression.
The final spreadsheet was a separate list of all the mateless women in the country ranked in a seemingly unintelligible order. Scrolling over, I finally found a column withfuture dates. The next column had different Old Church Packs’ names. Highlighted at the bottom were the names of all the women who had gone missing over the past three months.
It’s a fucking kidnap list. Dates. Placement locations.
