Chapter 152

Sarah POV

“A pattern?” I asked.

Agent Travis nodded and then looked over to Zane, who nodded in understanding. We were sitting in Zane’s study, with Zane behind the desk and Travis and I in the large chairs before the desk. Travis’s report was spread out on the desk so we could all see it.

“Yes, the tip was left in a plain, print-free envelope laser-printed out on Xerox paper, nothing to go on to help trace its origin,” Travis said. “So they called me and started following up on it. By the time I got to the station, they’d started a trace on the numbers, and the tip was right.”

“One of these two phones, which they think are burner phones, has been used to take out an ad on Cavendish.com twenty-four hours before the attacks?”

“Yes, before the charity auction, before the shooting, before the rogue attacked Grace, and before the bomb.” Travis pointed to a printout. “Always the same, “Go time, gentlewolves,” and always placed in the free ads section, so there’s no payment method to trace either.”

I nodded, but I was only thinking about one thing:

Sarah,

I believe I’ve spotted a pattern in the attempts on your life and would like to talk with you about them. I know I can’t ask you to meet me, but perhaps a phone call? Zane has my number.

Yours,

Scott Cavendish

Had it been Scott? Had he tipped off the police when I wouldn’t agree to a phone call?

“Can I see the actual letter or a copy of it?” I asked.

“Yes,” Travis said and selected a piece of paper from the pile. “Here you go.”

“Thank you.” I took it and read:

To Whom It May Concern:

I’ve spotted a pattern in the attempts on the life of Sarah Astor and those around her. If you will look at the Cavendish.com’s free Want Ads section on the days before…

I stopped reading. The phrasing couldn’t be a coincidence.

“What is it?” Zane asked, looking at me.

“It’s Scott.”

“Behind the attacks?”

“No.” I closed my eyes and took a break, then I opened them back up and looked into two of the most serious faces I had ever seen. “Scott emailed me not long ago and used this same phrasing, ‘I’ve spotted a pattern in the attempts on your life.’ It can’t be a coincidence.

“But he didn’t tell you about the pattern?” Travis asked while Zane’s expression went dark.

“No. He, well, he wanted to talk to me on the phone. I don’t trust him enough to do that.”

“Understandable, after the auction,” Travis said.

“Was there a message before Marshal Kim was murdered?” I asked.

They looked surprised. Perhaps they’d put Kim out of their thoughts, but unlike for them, Kim’s dead body was my first. Truthfully, he was never all that far from my thoughts.

“Give me a moment,” Travis said while getting out his phone. He nodded at us, got up, and walked into the hallway to place his call.

A fourth member of our meeting, an alpha named Alicia Wetmore, was going through her phone while seated on the couch against Zane’s far wall. I wondered if she were comfortable there because it gave her an overview of the room. She was a member of an inter-territorial anti-terrorism taskforce, BRANCH, which I’d heard of, although I didn’t remember what the letters stood for.

Zane looked at her and then at me with a “We’ll talk later” expression. I nodded.

Travis came back in and looked at me. “Good call, Sarah. Yes, there was ad post, ‘Go time, gentlewolves,’ the morning of Kim’s death. I’ve got them going through all the posts from the last seven months to see if there’s another one we missed. And, of course, we’ll be monitoring the site for any new posts.”

“I’m going to be increasing the security detail on Grace and Chloe,” Zane said. “I don’t care if their school doesn’t like it.” He looked at me narrowly.

“I have to be able to live my life, Zane, and that means not staying inside the villa 24/7. I can promise you I’ll be as careful as possible, but we have no way of knowing what these people want.”

“I suggest we use this meeting to employ a new tool,” Wetmore said from the couch, a tablet open in her lap to what looked like a new Word document. “Namely, me and my fresh set of eyes.”

“Sounds reasonable,” I said. “How do we do that?”

“Let’s go over things from the top. Think very carefully. Was the charity auction/human trafficking night the very first time someone reacted negatively to Miss Astor?”

I winced.

“What?” she asked.

I looked at Zane apologetically. “This began with an accusation by my employer, Ella, that I had stolen some jewelry from her. Zane was able to show it was the chef who had stolen, but he had been working for her for years and never did anything like that before.

“Also, well, I’ve heard she’s rehired that chef.” I shot a look at the men. “I mean, there was no question but that he did have her earrings on her, and I don’t see her giving someone a second chance for no reason.”

“You think maybe Chef Pierre put her up to it for some reason?” Zane asked. “To frame you?”

I shrugged. “I have no idea, which is why I didn’t mention it before. Little that Ella did ever made sense to me. Maybe he begged or something.”

I looked back to Wetmore to see she was typing on her tablet without looking at her fingers. It was a skill I’d never mastered.

“Anything after that?” she asked me.

“Well, Zane and I had some unpleasantness when he discovered Chloe in my apartment, but we moved through that quickly.”

Zane looked embarrassed.

“I’m sure it was a shock,” Wetmore said, though I could tell she wasn’t really thinking about her words. “How bad did it get?”

“He, well, he took me to the police station, but I convinced him while we were standing in the lobby to let me explain.”

“It was Chloe,” Zane murmured.

“Alpha Zane?” Wetmore asked.

Zane sighed. “Chloe came in, drenched in sweat. She’d chased the car, and she begged me to listen to her mother.”

He shot me a smile. “I was glad I did.”

“OK, so probably word went around the station that the Pack Alpha brought a human into the station and argued with her, and then in comes Chloe Cavendish, and then you all went home together?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. Zane nodded. Travis was frowning at us.

“And the next incident?”

“The auction,” Zane said.

“Well,” I said, and everyone looked at me. “There was Ms. Liesel, the housekeeper, who wasn’t pleased about having a human in the household. Zane replaced her with Mr. Eliot, and she’s now working as a housemaid.”

I frowned. “Though, come to think of it, I haven’t seen her lately.”

“She gave her notice a month ago,” Zane said. “I have no idea where she is now.”

“Last name?” Travis asked, looking a little irritated as he stood up with his phone in his hand.

“Liesel Chartres,” Zane said.

Travis nodded and walked out into the hallway again.

“And after that?” Wetmore asked me.

“The cave-in at LunaWorld.” I wanted to laugh or weep. It sounded so ridiculous when we listed it all like this.

“I read about that,” she said, typing steadily.

“A beam near us failed, and a subsequent investigation showed it was due to poor maintenance,” Zane said. “I had the park closed down, and inspectors found three other beams with deferred maintenance. I gave the park a loan to make repairs, and they’ve been repaying it steadily.”

Wetmore nodded and typed.

Travis came back in, looking a little dazed.

“What?” Zane asked.

“Liesel Chartres is dead. A car accident, hit and run.”