Chapter Twenty-Four
Holden
H aving a boneless, satisfied, and fed Rian sleeping in my arms was my favorite thing in the world. It was weird to wake up without Cindy somewhere on the bed with us, but I knew she was completely safe and likely cuddling with Luca somewhere.
We needed to get up soon, because I had to face whatever was going to happen at work today, and Rian needed to prepare for turning Luca later. He’d decided to order in some food for Ben and Max, knowing they’d be very much drained—mentally and physically—after their part in Luca’s turning.
After making love early in the morning hours, we’d stayed up talking. It had been good to talk after taking care of each other in a gentler, slower, but equally as loving way.
Rian had some fears. The main one being the off chance that the turning wouldn’t take. That Luca would die by his hand today.
I didn’t believe it for a second. Was there a chance? Of course. But I refused to believe fate would do that to either of them. To any of us.
Ben and Max would be there, because I doubted there was nowhere they’d want to be. They’d gotten to know Luca as a person instead of the rock star especially Max had admired for years.
Rian stirred, gasping for air the way he often did right after waking up. I wondered if it was a Rian thing or a vampire thing, to not breathe so deeply some nights, and then needing to fill their lungs so violently upon waking.
He cuddled against my side. “It’s so weird to not have Cindy here,” he mumbled sleepily.
I felt choked up in the moment. I loved him so damn much.
“Mhmm,” I managed to reply as I squeezed him closer.
“What time is it?”
“Waking up time for me.” I sighed. I needed a quick shower to wash the lingering scent of sex off me, as much as some part of me wanted to keep it.
“Today’s the day, huh?” He pushed himself upright, sitting next to me with his curls wilder than ever—likely from my grip at various times in the past twelve hours—and the sheet pooling around his waist.
“You’re so fucking stunning,” I said, the awe in my voice clear as day.
Rian turned his head to look at me, a faint blush coloring his pale cheeks. “Why thank you, kind sir.” Then he leaned closer and pressed a kiss over my heart. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
The more time I spent with Rian, the easier it became to detect those fleeting moments when he looked into my eyes but clearly saw Hunter looking back. They were fewer and farther between these days, and I understood more than I could express. This morning, he was only seeing me.
We got up, and I showered while Rian brushed his teeth. Then we swapped places. He went to make me coffee while I finished getting ready for the day.
There were no groceries in the kitchen, because I’d stopped buying them after one too many fridgefuls of wasted food. At some point I’d started to trust that I wasn’t coming to my place anymore, and stayed over and had most of my meals at the pack house. This place hardly felt home anymore, and I could easily see how it had less to do about the location and more about the people inside it or the lack thereof.
“Promise me to get something to eat at the diner before you go to work, okay?” He held the coffee hostage as he pleaded his case. “You’ll need to have energy for whatever fuckery is happening today. I mean, we could always postpone the other—”
“No, absolutely not. You need to turn Luca today.” I held my hand out for the mug, but he wasn’t budging. So I did what any logical person would and leaned in to kiss him. As he got lost in it, I gently pried the mug out of his hand.
“Hey!” He looked annoyed and amused.
“I’ll go have breakfast. It won’t matter if I’m a bit late.” Not that I would be, we were up early. “If you change the sheets before you turn him, that’d be great. Nobody needs to learn how strong the scent of sex actually is first thing after being turned.”
Rian cackled. “Oh gods, I didn’t even think about that.” His eyes widened a little. “It could totally affect his mood and if the brothers are here….”
I almost snorted coffee out of my nose. “How about we don’t have me return home to an impromptu orgy, honey?”
Rian laughed so hard he had to grab the island for support.
I was stupidly in love with this man. Holy crap.
I told him I’d drop by around lunch time if I could, and reiterated my promise of getting breakfast at the diner.
Then we proceeded to kiss each other silly for about five minutes by the door.
And then I left to work. Via the diner. Because I knew he was right about being fed before the fuckery.
T he cleaning crew appeared at nine and started to work. I didn’t know any of them, which told me they were hired from somewhere outside of town, maybe even outside of Warren.
There was a lot of teasing about the locker rooms and things, and then a call came I needed to take—yet another regular welfare check, because what was life without those? This person, an elderly man who was crochety as fuck and liked to be armed at all times, didn’t trust anyone but me for some reason.
As I drove to his place, I idly wondered who exactly called for the check. Frowning, I called Penny. She answered the call in her usual peppy style, and I smiled. At least some things you could count on.
“Hey Penny, it’s Holden. I’m going to the Greenberg house. Can you quietly check who made the call?”
“Huh,” she said, then quickly recovered and brightly added, “Of course, I can do that for you right now!”
I heard her clicking around on her keyboard for a moment. “It would appear we don’t have that information at the moment. Would you like me to try and look closer?”
“No. Thanks. I have a feeling they want me out of the station so no matter what, keep your cool, okay?”
“Sounds good. Talk to you later!”
I ended the call and grimaced. Well, might as well check up on Mr. Greenberg while I waited for whatever was coming.
I ’d just left the old guy in his rocking chair by the fire I’d stoked for him, when my radio buzzed.
“Go for Deputy Drumm,” I said, my heart picking up speed.
“Deputy Drumm, this is Sheriff Gerrell. I would like for you to come to the station in Warren at your earliest convenience. If you’d like to have a union rep there, I would recommend you make the call immediately.”
Ah well. So that was how they were going about this.
“Alright. I’m about… thirty minutes out, but I’ll drive directly there.”
“Sounds good. See you when you get here.”
I immediately pulled over on the narrow, snow-covered dirt road and pulled my union rep’s details up on my phone.
“Holden?” Larson asked, confusion in his tone.
“Hey, Larson. Please tell me you’re available today?” I flexed my hand, then made a fist, then flexed my fingers again, ignoring the trembling I could see.
“Uh, I’m not, but I can make it so.” I could hear him snap his fingers, likely to get his assistant’s attention. The man wore many hats, and was busy more often than not. “Two seconds.”
I heard muffled words, then his voice came back. “Okay. Start from the beginning and tell me what you need.”
Because time was of the essence, I got back on the road as I told him what I knew.
“There’s something fishy about all of this,” Larson murmured when he was up to speed. “I’ll meet you at the station.”
“See you there. And thanks.”
“Hey, we know things they don’t know. Trust me when I say you’re safe and they’re the ones in trouble.”
I exhaled as we ended the call. He wasn’t wrong, but it was my integrity they were trying to question here, and that was a hard pill to swallow.
Instinctively, I called Rian.
“Babe?” Rian’s tone was worried immediately. “Is it going down?”
I chuckled a bit wetly. “This is the first time you used any pet name for me, I think.”
“That can’t be true. I’m sure I’ve—wait, what’s going on?”
“I’m driving to the Warren station. Was told to bring a union rep so I called my guy and he knows everything. It should all be fine, no matter what it is, but….”
“But you worry,” he concluded my thought.
I could hear the familiar ticking of the clock I had in the living room.
“Yeah.”
“It’ll be fine. You have proof you’re being framed for whatever. Just… be safe okay? That man is a speciest and….”
“Yeah, I know. Okay. I’m about to pull into the station. I’ll text Ben if this takes a long time. You go about your day as planned, okay?”
“Alright. I love you.”
“Love you too.”
I parked next to the other cruisers in the lot and got out. One of the deputies I knew pretty well was coming out of the building as I was entering. The look he gave me was almost disgusted.
I nodded to him, and he scowled as he hurried past.
My skin began to crawl. Maybe I had done something wrong?
As soon as I entered the lobby, I saw Larson standing there with a lawyer who normally represented the sheriff’s office if something happened. Well, shit.
I walked up to them, projecting calm, I hoped.
“Ah, Holden, right on time,” Larson said and shook my hand.
I was glad I’d had the wherewithal to wipe my hands on my thighs when I left my car.
“Larson.” I held my hand out to the lawyer. “Nicholls.”
“Deputy Drumm.”
It was all very cordial. Then, without further ado, we went to the conference room on the second floor.
As we waited there for Gerrell, me being the only non-human in the room, I could hear Gerrell walking closer in the hallway.
“…yes, I’m going to take care of it, Princess, I promise. Yes, I’m about to go in. I’ll see you later.”
Then the door opened, and Gerrell walked in.
“Right, sorry to keep you waiting, gentlemen,” he said, an affable smile on his face.
“It’s alright,” I said in a similar tone. “It’s important to take your wife’s calls.”
He blanched, then quickly gathered himself again, trying his best to hide a scowl.
“Right, right, let’s get started, shall we?”
We sat on opposite sides of the conference table, with Larson and me on one side and Gerrell and Nicholls on the other.
“So, we’ve been summoned,” Larson said before anyone else could say a thing. “What’s this about?”
“Well, you might not know this, but there’s an inspection coming up soon,” Gerrell started. “Because of that, I wanted to give the stations some help with making everything spick and span. This morning, while the crew was cleaning the Luxton station and got to Deputy Drumm’s office, they found something quite worrying.”
Larson hummed. “Okay. Can you elaborate on that?”
Nicholls cleared his throat. “They found a small bag of what we believe is fentanyl under Deputy Drumm’s desk. When they called for someone to check it out, the receptionist, Miss Parker, immediately shut everything down and called Sheriff Gerrell.”
I cheered internally. Penny had done exactly what she should’ve.
“Right, and so I grabbed one of our crime scene guys so we wouldn’t contaminate anything, and went to the station. We secured the bag of drugs, and then went through the desk drawers, and found another, slightly bigger bag of similar looking substance in the very back of the left side bottom drawer,” Gerrell said confidently.
He was enjoying himself so, so much.
I glanced at Larson whose eyes glinted with amusement.
He looked at the others and asked, “So first of all, did you not have fentanyl strips to test the substance?”
Gerrell’s eyes widened slightly. “Oh, I guess the crime scene kit must include some, but we took the bags to the lab—”
“So you don’t, at this moment, know what the substance was in those bags?”
Nicholls took over. “No, not for certain.”
“Secondly, who has touched the bags, and were they wearing gloves?” Larson continued.
Holy shit. Holy shit.
“Uh, the cleaning person who found them, me, and the crime scene technician. We all wore gloves,” Gerrell recounted.
“Excellent.” Larson scribbled down a few notes, staying silent for long enough for me to see sudden worry pop up on Gerrell’s features.
“How is that excellent?” Nicholls just had to go and ask.
I grinned. I had sent the video to Larson from the car, and he took out a tablet from his briefcase.
He lined it up, pressed play, and turned the tablet around.
“Because,” he started, as the others were trying to figure out what they were looking at. “It should be relatively easy to pull fingerprints off the baggies to prove that this video, taken the day before yesterday, is, in fact, real. How would Deputy Harris’ prints be on those baggies otherwise?”
I leaned back in my chair and watched the expressions morph on Gerrell and Nicholls’ faces.
Gerrell went white. Then he swallowed hard. I could practically feel his gears spinning and trying to find something, anything to explain everything.
Nicholls, however, looked pissed off. The look he leveled at Gerrell was lethal.
“From what I’ve learned today, I’m pretty certain Deputy Harris was a plant at the Luxton station,” Larson said calmly as he restarted the video and propped the tablet against a water pitcher. “So what I want to know next is this: Sheriff Gerrell, what the fuck is going on here?”
Nicholls held up a finger. “Let me call Deputy Harris. Get him to come here.” Then he looked at me. “Since your station will be a man short, you can return to your duties, Deputy Drumm.”
I looked at Larson questioningly. “We done here?”
“Oh yes, for now, at least. Thank you, Holden. I’ll give you a call later, or if we need you earlier.”
I got up, gave Gerrell my best “fuck you all the way to unemployment” look, and left the room and the station.
I was shaking again, this time from the tail end of an adrenaline rush, when I called Rian from the cruiser.
“How did it go?”
I smiled. “It went well. I have no reasoning for his actions but right now I don’t care. The way he reacted to the video where that idiot Harris handles two baggies of what they think is fentanyl without gloves—”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” Rian interrupted me. “What if the baggies broke?”
“It shouldn’t be, unless he tripped and fell and the bag ripped and he doused his face on the way down. It can’t absorb through the skin, which he must’ve known to not use gloves. Just shows that stupid men have stupider allies,” I snarked.
“Holy shit, Holden.” The relief was evident in his tone. “He sure wouldn’t make a good criminal.”
“It’s not over yet, but I feel like maybe Gerrell is. I doubt he can talk his way out of this. There’s bound to be an investigation, because there’s no fucking way the idiot Harris won’t sing like a canary to get his ass out of trouble.”
“’Sing like a canary,’ what are you, sixty?” Rian snarked.
“I dunno. You used the word ‘elflock’ the other day to describe Kye’s hair, so I wouldn’t start this game, honey.”
“Hey, that’s not even really old—”
“Honey, if nobody else in the pack of eight people knows what a word means, it’s safe to say it’s an age thing.”
“Okay fine. Now go and be awesome while I make sure everything is ready here.”
“Will do. Talk to you later. And good luck!”
I made it back to my place late enough to arrive at the same time with the brothers’ dinner delivery.
I’d ended up having to go make an official statement. For the time being, we were sheriffless, but I was sure that would change pretty fast. Luckily Larson knew not to suggest I take over—not that I was certain I could given the circumstances—and someone else was coming from Erie to fill in for the time being.
There was no news on Gerrell, other than he had been suspended while the investigation ran its course, as had Harris. Luckily, we’d be getting Mikayla back next week, which would help a little. We’d discovered Granville hadn’t been in on the plot. He was happy about staying in Luxton because his mom lived in town and he could stay with her for now.
As I shared the veritable feast Rian had ordered with Ben and Max, I filled them in on the situation.
Luca was still human and nervous as hell, but there was determination in his gaze.
We all sat on the couches, Luca and Rian on one and myself and the boys on the other.
“I took tomorrow off,” Ben said. “For family reasons.”
Max’s cheeks flared red, but he kept his gaze on his spring rolls.
Luca opened his mouth, then closed it when Rian touched his arm.
“Okay. So do you guys want me to stay or should I go to the pack house?” I asked, wondering what they needed the most here.
To my surprise, it was Luca who looked at me and said, “I want you to stay. For Rian.”
I nodded and smiled at him. “Sounds like a good idea.”
“I think we’re going to the bedroom so we can lie down. Then once Luca is back, I’ll call for you two to come in so there’s no gap in between. He should be more stable that way, and Holden can wait right outside in case we need an extra pair of hands,” Rian said, his serious determination taking over the more he spoke.
“I’m good with that,” I replied, then looked at the brothers. “You two need anything specific?”
“I need to be the first one Luca feeds from,” Ben said in a tone that brooked no argument.
Rian agreed easily. “Sounds good.”
Max shrugged and glanced everyone in turn. “I’m just happy to be here.”
We burst out laughing, which shook the rest of the hesitation from everyone.
I gathered the trash and went to take it into the kitchen. Rian followed me and hugged me from behind.
Turning around, I gathered him into my arms and murmured into his ear. “It’ll go perfectly fine, honey. There might be surprises, but what’s life without a few curveballs, eh?”
He chuckled, then kissed me gently. “Okay. I can do this.”
“Yes you can.”
I watched as he walked to the living room side of the open space and held his hand out to Luca. “Ready?”
“No, but I doubt I’ll ever be, so let’s do this,” he replied.
His tone was weaker than it had been the previous day, and his breaths came shorter and more shallow. Yeah, it was definitely time.
I watched as the love of my life led one of his closest friends into the hallway and to my bedroom.
As the door closed, I went to the boys and sat on the coffee table. I held out a hand for each of them, and they accepted the touch easily, clinging onto my hands while holding onto each other as well.
“And now we wait,” I murmured.
They nodded, trepidation in their gaze. We stopped talking, our hearing concentrated toward the bedroom.
Our futures were about to change yet again. I couldn’t wait.