Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Trevor
As the morning dragged on, Trevor fought the urge to pace, agitated and frustrated by the continuing delays in meeting with the contact. “Why isn’t Fredrik answering his mobile?” he asked Wilford.
“I don’t know, sir,” he said.
“Do we even know which vessel he’s on?” Trevor asked. “Are they in the harbor already? Perhaps we can hire a boat to take us to meet him if they aren’t far offshore?”
“No, sir,” Wilford said.
“Where does the family live, then?” Trevor had never met the rest of the family, only the father, Geir, and that was years earlier.
Wilford pulled up the address on his tablet and showed Trevor. “Approximately thirty minutes outside of town by car.”
“Then let’s move,” Trevor said. “You stay here with someone and try to locate Frederik. We’ll go on ahead to their home and talk to his mother and sister.”
“He said his mother and sister aren’t aware of what’s going on. He insisted he didn’t want to worry them since their father’s on deployment and out of contact.”
“Then it’s time they were made aware, because this is a very worrying situation,” Trevor said. “Do you have their contact information?”
More tapping on this tablet. “Yes, sir.”
Trevor pulled out his phone and tried calling both phones, but the calls went to voicemail. He left messages on both before turning back to Wilford. “The father?”
“I already called him this morning and left a message. Voicemail. I doubt we’ll receive a call back from him soon.”
“What about a home number?”
“No, sir. No landline.”
Trevor knew frustration could be as dangerous as impatience when it came to executing plans, but he was on his last nerve.
“As Pack Alpha, I’m pulling rank and talking to his mother and sister.
I’d rather be doing something than uselessly sitting around.
Call me as soon as you make contact with Fredrik. ”
“Yes, sir.” Wilford picked a man to stay, then Trevor and the rest piled into the three rental cars they’d obtained and headed out.
Garrison, Trevor’s Head Enforcer, drove the vehicle Trevor rode in. “I have a bad feeling about this, sir,” Garrison said. “I wish Peyton hadn’t gone ahead alone.”
“Yes, well, so do I, but the man obviously knows how to assess risks as well as, if not better than, we do. He is a Prime, after all.”
“Something’s not right about this situation,” Garrison insisted.
Since the slaughter at the safe house, Garrison had changed—understandably so—but Trevor wasn’t sure those changes were positive ones.
Like the fact that Garrison now second-guessed himself all the time, almost to the point of indecision, out of fear he’d make the wrong choice.
“Peyton would have notified me immediately if there was an issue with Wilford,” Trevor said.
“No, not with him,” Garrison said. “This situation is too…convenient. I don’t like it.”
“Explain.”
“Faegan’s previous tactic is to lose himself and blend in, either in human form or as a dog.
While he’s taken to the wilds to put distance between himself and us, he never stays there.
Why would he suddenly set up a semi-permanent camp in the wilderness here, of all places?
Especially where we know he doesn’t speak the language?
Where it’d be nearly impossible for him to blend in with the locals?
Near a town or city with greater populations, that I could see him doing.
Able to move in and out of busier areas as needed.
Immediate access to transportation and the ability to blend into crowds. ”
Trevor didn’t like the fact that Garrison was giving voice to dark tendrils of doubts attempting to lodge themselves in Trevor’s mind.
“We’ll talk to the mother and sister and find out where our contact is,” Trevor said. “Remember, this is rural Norway. Life moves at a slower pace here. Especially this far north. From what I’ve gleaned, they make Shetland residents look positively frantic in comparison.”
Garrison slowly shook his head. “I’m telling you, sir, I don’t like this.”
The family home sat alone in a lightly wooded hollow flanked on one side by a sheer rock face.
No immediate neighbors, and not a large enough parcel for farming, but Trevor immediately recognized it would give a shifter and his family the kind of privacy that would likely be far out of reach of the average urban shifter.
A long, rutted driveway led from the road up to the house, where an ancient mud-spattered Toyota Land Cruiser sat parked on an area of gravel near the front door.
To Trevor, it appeared there should be at least one more vehicle, based on the grooves he saw worn into the gravel and grass in the parking area.
Despite the chilly morning, no smoke wafted from either of the two chimneys poking from the roof.
The curtains in all of the visible windows were pulled closed.
When the three vehicles were shut off and Trevor opened his door, an eerie silence immediately met him, setting his hackles on edge before he’d even set one foot on the ground.
“Wait,” Trevor called out to everyone as he slowly emerged from the vehicle, Garrison doing the same on the other side.
Remaining shielded behind the open doors, Trevor called out. “Vera? Katarina? Frederik? It’s Trevor Clarke.”
Only eerie silence met them.
“Honk the horn,” Trevor said to Garrison, who reached in and tapped it twice. “Vera?” Trevor called out again. “Katarina? Frederik?”
Still nothing. Not even a dog barking.
That’s when the whiff of a scent hit Trevor at the same time it did Garrison, if the other man’s expression was any indication.
Trevor and Garrison looked at each other over the roof of the car before Trevor turned toward the others, who were also now out of their cars.
He pointed, selecting four of the men and whispering to them just loudly enough that he knew they’d hear him.
“Circle around back and check it out. Quietly. The rest of you follow us.”
“Let me go first, sir,” Garrison said.
“No,” Trevor grimly said. “Walk with or behind me, but I’m going first.”
They slowly made their way to the front door. With every step, the unmistakable stench grew stronger, and a low, droning hum filled Trevor’s ears.
Trevor didn’t bother knocking because he instantly recognized the dark, dried patina on the doorknob. Pulling a tissue from his pocket to prevent leaving fingerprints, he forced himself to reach out. The knob turned, and Trevor pushed the door open.
As it slowly swung inward and revealed the grisly tableau before them, his next words died in his throat as he and Garrison took in the scene from the threshold.
“Bloody hell,” Garrison whispered next to him.
Without turning, Trevor called out, “Lennox! Mattingly! Call Wilford and Ledeux, tell them what’s going on, and have them head to the parking area where Peyton went.
We’ll meet you there shortly. We have to find Peyton.
Right now. If he’s not at his car, wait for us to arrive. No one goes out alone.”
The other men bolted for their cars.
In the living room, the bodies of three people, who had obviously been dead for quite some time based on their color and the stench, lay splayed on the floor, each surrounded by dried pools of blood and gore and clouds of buzzing flies disturbed by the air current wafting through the room from the act of them opening the door.
An adult woman, a teenage girl…
And a young man.
“I don’t care if he’s on the bloody fucking moon!
” Trevor screamed into his phone. “Find Geir Haugen now! If necessary, pull every string we have at our disposal. If we must send someone from Scotland Yard or INTERPOL in a helicopter over the bloody North Sea to put eyes on him, find me Geir Haugen!” Trevor hung up on his government contact and fought the urge to fling his phone into the windscreen.
Next to him in the driver’s seat, Garrison’s grim visage mirrored Trevor’s current mood. “You don’t think Geir Haugen’s responsible for this, do you?” Garrison asked.
“No. But it certainly lends credence to the mystery camper being Faegan Lewis, doesn’t it now?” He took a deep breath. “We need Geir brought in immediately. Firstly, to break the news to him. Secondly, to place him under protection.”
Geir wasn’t answering any of the other phone numbers they had on file for him, and this wasn’t news Trevor wanted to break to him in an email or text message. Even telling him over the phone wasn’t an option he liked, though it might end up being the only choice.
Because of the circumstances, they absolutely could not involve human law enforcement.
There was an old bear shifter doctor they would contact in Lillehammer to help them get death certificates and bypass law enforcement.
If for some reason that couldn’t happen, they could use packmates to carry the family members’ passports and impersonate them, travel to the UK, and then Trevor’s people in the UK could file paperwork and cite their deaths as the result of a car accident.
Trevor and Garrison had cautiously made their way inside the home and confirmed not only were the three bodies those of Fredrik, Vera, and Katarina Geir, but it looked like they’d all been tortured, with Fredrik kept alive longer than his mother and sister before his throat was slit.
Vera and Katarina had been dead for at least three or four days based on their more advanced level of decomposition.
Fredrik had been deceased for at least twenty-four hours because his rigor mortis had already passed.
Trevor had a trusted clean-up crew en route by air from the UK, but he couldn’t remain at the house and wait for them, and didn’t want to leave a man there and reduce their search force.
They’d found a set of keys in Vera’s purse that locked the doors, then they checked all the curtains to make sure they were closed, secured the windows and doors, and retreated, hiding the keys outside where the cleaning team could find them.
They were approximately ten minutes behind the other men heading to the parking area.
It was vital that they locate Peyton. Wilford had been duped by the caller, who obviously had intimate knowledge regarding shifters. The Haugen family was the only shifter family living close to this town and were—had been—the most remote wolf shifter family in this region.
With this development, Trevor suspected that Peyton—or himself—was the true target.
Undoubtedly, the caller rightfully suspected both men would respond and take charge of this operation.
Why else engage in this level of subterfuge?
Why not contact Geir Haugen directly, imply his family was at risk, and not say anything, drawing him home to capture him?
Not to mention, Geir didn’t hold a position of significant military importance regarding intelligence information.
And someone who held the level of knowledge the caller did about their search for Faegan Lewis no doubt knew Peyton and Trevor were deeply involved in the operation and not simply leading it from afar.
“Do we call the Targhee Pack and alert them, sir?” Garrison asked.
“No,” Trevor said. “Not yet. His mate and sister are new mothers. No need to alarm anyone, should we safely locate him.”
“And if we don’t locate him?”
Trevor grimly sighed. “Then I will have difficult calls to make.”