“I don’t know. August and I turned it upside down, but didn’t find anything.”
Liam’s already dark gaze blackened.
While Rodrigo and one of his men cut open the driver’s door, the heat of a body spilled over my back, and then an arm went around my shoulders and twisted me around.
“Don’t look,” August said.
I didn’t fight him.
“Why were you together, and why are your clothes and hair wet?” Liam growled.
“I went for a run. A long run.” My words hit August’s solid chest. “I wasn’t planning on coming back. I might not have if August hadn’t retrieved me.” I wondered for a moment whether Liam would’ve even cared if I’d vanished forever. Keeping my eyes locked on one of the buttons on August’s shirt, I added, “Frank, Evelyn called. She said I could stay with you tonight.”
Frank rubbed his hands against his jeans. “Yes. She’s waiting for you.”
“I know you probably need to be here, but can you please take me to her?”
“Sure.” He exchanged some quiet words with Eric before starting back up the steep incline.
I disentangled myself from August and went after Frank, desirous to distance myself from this dark mountain that smacked of death and distrust.
“I got something,” I heard Lucas bark over the sound of an approaching siren.
Both Frank and I paused and glanced back down into the ditch. Something flat and black gleamed in his hands. A phone.
“Is it Everest’s?” Frank called down.
“It’s not turning on.”
“Give it to Cole,” Liam said, his gaze rising to mine. “If there’s anything to retrieve on it, he’ll find it.”
His accusation was so palpable that my expression turned to stone.
Did Liam think I’d exchanged other messages with Everest? Did he think I’d colluded with him in stealing the Sillin?
I shook my head and turned away.
My elbow was propped on the armrest in Frank’s car, and my head rested on my palm. “Was Jeb-was he informed that Everest… ouldn’t finish my sentence.
“He called me for news. Said he was coming, but I told him to stay put. That I’d go to him.”
Jeb had been doing so much better. Granted the improvement in his mood had been fueled by anger, but still.
“You honestly didn’t send Everest that text message?” Frank asked after a beat.
I hated that he didn’t trust me. Then again, it seemed like no one besides August trusted me. “I swear I didn’t. Whoever texted him did it remotely.”
Frank sighed. “Did anyone have access to your phone last night?”
“Liam did.” However angry I was with Liam, I knew he wouldn’t have sent a message from my phone.
Frank knew it too. After a stretch of silence, he said, “You are your mother’s daughter.”
I picked my head off my palm. Well, that came out of nowhere.
“Maggie had so much spunk. Drove your dad crazy.” He returned his gaze to the road beyond the windshield, an emotion I couldn’t quite put my finger on eddying over his face. “Drove a lot of men crazy.”
A lot of men? Geez, I hoped he hadn’t had a crush on her.
He didn’t say a word the rest of the way to his secluded, two-story log cabin a couple miles away from Headquarters. I vaguely remembered going to Frank’s house with my parents when I was much younger-a lifetime ago.
Before getting out of the car, he said, “Be patient with Liam. This is an adjustment period, not only for you, but for him too. Between the stolen Sillin and learning what it means to be an Alpha, he’s under a lot of stress.”
I bristled. I couldn’t believe he was asking me to be patient.
I was about to shut the door when he added, “And, Ness, be careful about pitting Liam against August. Boys, especially wolves, they’re territorial and jealous, and well, I’ve seen this pattern before, and even though the mated pair didn’t end up together, it caused a serious rift in the pack.”
Whoa. Talk about another abrupt subject change. I took the opportunity to ask, “Who were they?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore. They’re all dead now.”
“All of them?” And here I was certain he’d been part of the unfortunate love triangle.
Frank set his gaze on the gloomy forest dipping beyond his house. “I should head to the inn. Jeb’s waiting.”
Just as he said this, a voice I knew oh-so-well rang out in the night. “Querida?” Evelyn was standing by the front door, backlit by the soft glow of Frank’s living room. Her plush robe was knotted tightly around her, and her black hair fluttered around her pale face.
I shut the car door and strode into her open arms.
When Frank drove away, she cocked an eyebrow. “Where is he going at this hour?”
I sighed. “I don’t even know where to start.”
She pulled me into the house, sat me at the wooden kitchen counter, and warmed water on the stovetop, but then she must’ve decided against making tea, because she dumped the contents, grabbed the carton of milk from the fridge door, and poured some inside the deep sauce pan. While it warmed, she wrapped her hands around my clammy ones.
“Tell me everything.”
And so I did. Well, almost everything. I didn’t tell her about the confrontation back at Tracy’s. It would just make her resent the pack. When I was done with my account, the milk had bubbled over the sides of the pan and hit the flames, making them sizzle. She jolted toward the stove, spun off the gas, and stood there, lips mashed together. After a while, she plucked a wooden spoon from a terracotta jug and skimmed the skin off the warmed milk before dividing it between two mugs.
As she set them on the counter, she took her seat next to me again. I cupped the warm ceramic and lifted it to my mouth, singeing my lips and tongue. I plopped the mug back down, and milk splashed over the rim. Instead of cleaning it up, I dragged my fingertip through the spilled liquid and drew circles over the wood.
“You think Aidan is behind all of this?” Her black eyes glazed over as though she were remembering another time-probably the time when she was married to the man.
“He’s the only one who benefits from Everest’s death.” Unless my cousin was wanted dead for what he’d hidden in my room.
Blinking away the haze, she got up to get a kitchen towel to clean the spilled milk. “Someone needs to put an end to that man’s life.”
“If he dies, his lawyers will release information about the pack to the public.”