Chapter 33 Rawling
THIRTY-THREE
RAWLING
“That security guard is kind of an ass.” Bardoul adjusted his jacket.
“That’s the point,” Phelan agreed as Jack insisted on holding Eira.
“How did the school agree to let you bring in a private security firm?” Channon pulled up a chair. Phelan rubbed his fingers together. “Oh, of course, money.”
“Mmmm, Father said he’d withhold a significant donation if our request was refused.”
Money talked in the human and shifter world, and especially here at Sombertooth, and while my father-in-law adored me and my daughter, he spent a lot of his waking hours focused on money.
Eira giggled because Jack was bouncing our daughter on her knee and Bardoul was tickling her tummy. When we moved to our new college, we’d planned to live off campus, so we’d miss the community we’d built here. Though I had to admit, the community was my doing.
Atticus had been Phelan’s best friend before I arrived at Sombertooth, and while my mate wasn’t part of the Sable Hounds, he’d hung around with some of those guys and others who did archery.
But Channon, Bardoul, and Jack were his friends now because of me, and I was pleased I’d brought everyone together.
While it’d be sad to say goodbye, I’d look forward to all the hellos in our future.
Holden arrived and grabbed a soda from the fridge.
He’d been here often enough that he understood he could get his own refreshment.
Neither Phelan nor I were going to wait on him, and though neither would be overly friendly toward one another, Phelan didn’t fume when Holden appeared. Thank gods we were past that.
Eira was passed to Channon who instructed her how to behave when she first met her wolf.
As she had two wolf shifter parents, it was pretty much confirmed she was a shifter, though there was a possibility she’d be latent.
Atticus’s folks had thought I was, and if that happened, we’d guide her on how to be proud of herself and her heritage while being her beautiful unique self.
“Take the baby, Jack. I can’t say what I’m going to when I’m holding this little girl.”
But on hearing that, Phelan got up and cradled Eira in his arms while resting his head on her chin.
“Bardoul and I spoke to Kendric again.” Channon clenched his hands.
The conversation paused, with the only sound being Eira “talking” to Phelan.
“Are you ready for this?”
There was a chorus of noes and yeses.
“The day Mika vanished, he told Kendric he had a meeting with Professor Shaw.”
Even Eira seemed to sense she should stop her baby babbling.
“Why?” Holden was making notes on his phone, which he’d told us were in an encrypted app. Smart but scary that he was so wary of his phone being hacked or maybe commandeered.
“He didn’t know why, just that the professor had asked to see him.”
“That makes no sense.” Phelan put our daughter in her bassinet. “Mika’s beef was with Coach, not the professor. How did Professor Shaw get involved?”
“And when he vanished and his body was found, nothing was ever mentioned about him seeing Professor Shaw.” Bardoul folded his arms.
I sidled over to Phelan and tucked my arm in his.
“And that was when the rumors began that a hunter had killed Mika,” Holden added.
Bardoul shrieked. “What if the professor is a hunter?”
We’d come full circle back to the subject of hunters. While we knew I wasn’t one or was no longer a hunter, the subject was distressing, and it reminded me of how upset I’d been about me and Eira and what the implications were for Phelan and me.
“It’s too much of a coincidence that Coach was taking money under the table, Mika’s father confronted Coach or was going to, and Mika turned up dead after meeting Professor Shaw.” Holden studied the notes on his phone. “Are Coach and the professor friends?”
“They were students here at the same time,” Phelan told him.
“And we’ve seen them talking.” I recalled the first week of semester when they’d been chatting.
“What are you thinking?” Channon tucked his legs under him.
“What if the professor killed Mika?” Holden glanced at me, and my belly dropped. I gulped because this wasn’t going to be good.
“As a favor to Coach?”
I had an inkling of where Holden might be going with this. I’d never wanted to voice my fears, not even to Phelan, but I couldn’t hold back now.
“Let’s back up a bit. Based on how I provoked the professor in class and how he mentioned Charlie and was as I call it, spitting venom about her, it’s not beyond belief that he was so angry with her and Arnie that he—” I couldn’t put it into words.
It was too horrifying. I buried my face in Phelan’s shirt and shed tears.
“That he killed your adoptive parents in a fit of rage.” Phelan finished the sentence for me.
I wiped my eyes and glanced around the room. No one looked at anyone. My friends studied their hands, feet, or the walls.
“It happens far too often. A rejected lover kills the former husband, wife, or mate, plus if there’s a new partner, they’re murdered as well.” Channon stared directly at me.
“But why would he kill Mika?” Bardoul asked. “Mika wasn’t even one of his students.”
“Coach had a motive but not the professor as far as we know.” Holden got up and walked around. “So with the little information we possess, I’d guess if he did—”
“He owed Coach a favor.” That was me putting a full stop on that thought.
“Or she was blackmailing him.” Bardoul was more pale than usual.
Phelan shook his head. “So we’re saying Coach wanted to stop Mika’s father from going to the authorities, and the plan was to kill his son so he’d be devastated and back off.”
“But Coach couldn’t or wouldn’t do it, and somehow she knew what the professor had done to Charlie and Arnie and she blackmailed him.” Channon nibbled a nail.
“Are we making huge leaps and accusing a professor of murder and another of being an accomplice?” Phelan was whispering.
I dragged out the infamous whiteboard again, and we went over everything we knew about the professor and Charlie.
“That would be why Rawlins was no longer friends with Professor Shaw.” I tapped the bit about Rawlins’s chocolate allergy that we’d talked about last session. “He suspected his former friend killed his sister and brother-in-law, my adoptive parents.”
Last semester the professor had admitted he and my godfather had lost touch, but he said it was because Rawlins was focused on me.
Phelan put his arms around me and said everyone should leave as he pressed his lips to my head.
“No, let’s delve into this more because Phelan, Eira, and I are leaving in a few days and this is our last opportunity to piece this together.”
But we couldn’t contact the shifter council on a whim. We had no proof of any of this, only circumstantial evidence.
“Coach had a motive to kill Mika based on what Kendric said.” Channon took the pen and wrote that on the whiteboard.
I thought back to the emails and leaflets I’d received about Sombertooth before I applied to come here.
“Didn’t you say that Sombertooth never did marketing because the waiting list was so long and there was no need?” I asked my mate.
He nodded.
“Consider this. The professor sent those, wanting me to be a student here. But why? Why would he want the child of the woman he wanted to mate—the woman he may have killed—to come here. And he mentored me during the first semester.”
I scribbled notes on the board.
Phelan’s phone beeped, and we all jumped. Eira squawked, and I picked her up.
“We have another visitor, one who isn’t on the approved list.”
“The professor.” Bardoul was hiding behind a wall of cushions.
“Nope.” My mate shared a glance with me.
“Oh no. What does he want?”
“To share some brotherly love?”
“Atticus,” everyone chorused.
I had Phelan tell the guard to keep Atticus here. If he wanted to see me or Phelan, he’d create a ruckus if we refused. “Tell him ten minutes.”
“I hate waiting,” Atticus yelled from outside the door.
“Keep shouting and I’ll make you stay there longer.” I wasn’t bringing him in when we had grasped what we thought was a possible truth. “Or I’ll bring out my wolf.”
I want to see him.
No, you don’t. Not now.
“Fine.”
Thoughts were swirling in my head, and I tried to pluck them out and arrange them into a cohesive story, but they were playing games with me.
“I’m going to ramble.” I beckoned everyone into the bedroom so Atticus couldn’t hear me. “And what I say might be word salad, but just listen until I’m finished.”
I tried to put myself in the position of a spurned mate. I couldn’t and would never contemplate murder as a solution, but I did my best. The sticking point was the satchel he’d given me that supposedly belonged to Rawlins but that we’d proven was Charlie’s. Why would he give that to me?
The professor thought of Charlie as a possession so she belonged to him. It wasn’t guilt, that I was certain of. But perhaps it was more of what he’d wanted to accomplish. It was erasure. He’d killed her, and he handed back the bag under another man’s name, denying her history.
He stripped my mother of her identity, and as her adopted son, he was asserting his dominance and keeping me uninformed. Even after killing her, he decided what part of her survived, which was very little.
Everyone was sitting on the floor in a circle, looking more and more shellshocked as I related what I was thinking.
“But you foiled him by first mating a shifter from a powerful family, giving you status in the shifter community.” Jack was fiddling with one of Eira’s toys. “You had a child, and the final humiliation for the professor was you finding your very powerful wolf.”
“The professor wanted to own what was left of Charlie’s story and deny you any right to it, but it didn’t end the way he envisaged.”
Atticus was sure to be beating the door down in a minute, but I had one last question.
“How did the professor know about the ring?” I pulled the four pieces from my pocket. The engraving was too faded to read. “He knew I was human and I had to wear it.”
“Maybe the person outside the door can help you with that,” Phelan said. “His uncle was good friends with the professor.”
Shit, what if I had Atticus and his folks to thank for the ring that shielded me? Their last contact with me until we met after Eira’s birth was when I was a few days old.
“Bring him in.”