Chapter 166

Sarah POV

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Sarah, I know you’re not talking about me.”

She was right. Nothing we were talking about dealt with her at all. This was a clear case of “Don’t shoot the messenger.” But it was hard for me to care that I was being irrational. I felt I was owned a little irrationality.

“I’m sorry,” I said next, reflexively. “But they were in a hunting pack. They’re saying all of them were lying?”

“We’re talking about an online conspiracy theory. There’s no logic to it. You know that.”

“Just because I know it’s true doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

Wisely, she didn’t answer that.

I took a few deep breaths.

“OK, right.” I took a few more breaths. “So, they’re saying Zane killed the rogue wolf because why, exactly?”

“Well, the theories vary.”

“Of course they do.”

“Sarah, seriously, this is what they do. You know it. The internet lives on lies.”

“Yes, it does,” I said. “But I don’t have to like it.”

Lainey laughed. “Of course you shouldn’t like it. And they’re all assholes.”

“OK, so Zane supposedly killed the werewolf who attacked his daughter to cover up some whatever conspiracy, and please tell me at least that this is primarily humans saying this garbage.”

“I’m sending you the video now.”

“Joy.”

I let the video nine-second download and watched it on my phone. It was grainier than the Bigfoot clip, and basically just showed a pack of wolves chasing another wolf into traffic.

“OK. I’ve got a meeting with Travis and Rucker,” I said.

“Do you want me there?”

“No, I’m good. We’re meeting tomorrow, right?”

“I can come up today if you prefer.”

“No, that’s OK.”

“You’re saying ‘OK’ a lot.”

“Yes, but I’m having a little trouble taking this one in stride. See you tomorrow, Lainey.”

I hung up and sat down. My office was as lovely as ever, and I looked out over the hedge maze. I tried to take that loveliness into myself.

It was an online conspiracy theory, and it was as stupid as all the others. The earth wasn’t flat, Americans weren’t being tracked by microchips from our vaccines, and the Queen of England wasn’t a lizard.

“OK,” I said. People were going to say horrible things. I just had to deal with it.

A bird, a little sparrow, flew past my open window. If the world were a little more interesting, it would have been a nightingale. Close enough.

About an hour later, Zane, Travis, Rucker, and I met in Zane’s study. The two agents were now openly a couple, I noticed. If Zane were surprised, he didn’t show it.

“We’ve been able to discover quite a bit on Marshall Kim,” Travis said.

“Before that,” I said, which provoked three puzzled faces, “have you all seen the online theory that Zane killed the rogue werewolf to cover up his involvement in the attack on Grace?”

“What?” Zane demanded.

“Yes,” Rucker said. The men frowned at her, and she shrugged. “People have noticed something is going on with all the attacks on this family, and they’re making up theories.”

“People are saying I attacked my own daughter?” Zane asked.

“People are saying everything and anything,” Rucker said. “You’re famous, so they’re going to say whatever.”

I nodded. “OK.”

Now they were all looking at me again, and before I knew it I was shrugging and putting up my hands.

“I’m trying my best here,” I said. “I really am.”

“Sarah?” Zane asked.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I had no idea what words were going to come out of my mouth next. They seemed to just fall out my lips, as though they were pushing each other in some sort of line. “Strangers online are telling each other Zane’s some sort of mastermind villain, I’m a slut, the girls are robots—I don’t know what’s real anymore!

“I’m just trying to get through the day without going insane. Can someone tell me how to do that? Someone wants to kill me, or kill the girls, or destroy the pack, or—I don’t know! How should I act now? What should I do?”

The logjam of words ended, and I was just sitting there and feeling like an incredible idiot.

“I’ve been waiting for that,” Travis said. “About time, really.”

I looked at him. He looked back.

“What?” I asked.

He smiled, and it was very kind. “You’ve been plucked from this obscure life with your adopted daughter, and now you’re a human goddess-mother to the daughters of the Pack Alpha. You basically can’t blow your nose without someone taking a photo and putting it online as proof you have pneumonia.”

“I saw a post yesterday on Instagram that you bought new shoes,” Rucker said with a nod. “And there was a debate about your feet.”

I put my head in my hands. I breathed in deeply several times.

“Sarah?” Zane asked.

“Just . . . give me a minute,” I said.

Everyone was quiet. I felt my heart beating.

“OK,” I said. I looked up at everyone, and the world was steady under me again. “Sorry.”

“Everyone deserves the occasional freak out,” Rucker said. “Honestly, you wouldn’t be a person if all of this didn’t get to you. You’re allowed to be uncomfortable with all the attention and fame. You didn’t ask for it.”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t, and just sometimes, well, I don’t know.”

Zane smiled at me then. “I was pretty much born knowing I’d be a Pack Alpha, and sometimes I wake up and can’t believe my life is this ridiculous.”

I stared at him for a moment.

“Really?” I asked.

He nodded, and I wondered if he and I were as obvious as Travis and Rucker.

“You’re doing the best you can,” she said. “You’re just trying to live your life.”

“Thank you, Alicia,” I said back. It was bizarre, but I did feel better. “All right, what did you learn about Marshall Kim?”

Travis sat up and handed over a file, obviously grateful we were back on track.

“It seems clear now that Kim did take Chloe and put her on your doorstep. The police have been working very closely with us, and some previously unidentified fingerprints in the girls’ nursery were matched with Kim’s. Obviously, as the gardener, he had no business being in there.

“He was a member of the staff, and all of them had their fingerprints tested at the time,” Zane said, frowning. “Why didn’t they match before?”

“It looks like a matter of poor oversight,” Travis said. “They found the fingerprints after the staff had been tested, and the officer in charge of rechecking them against the staff missed it.”

“Did the officer then subsequently die in a hit-and-run?” I asked.

“No, but they did retire. We’re looking into their finances, but nothing seems suspicious, except that the officer’s record had two previous reports of gross incompetence,” Rucker said. “Why he was put in charge of such important forensics at the time is also a matter of concern.”

“It might have been simply that the entire department was frantically working on finding Chloe at the time,” Travis said.

“So, Kim took Chloe, and someone paid him to do it,” Zane said. “But why leave her with Sarah?”

He turned to me with a rueful smile. “Of course, I’m grateful they did, considering the alternatives, but why take my daughter and then leave her with someone who would care for her so well?”

“It does suggest some sort of connection between you and Kim,” Rucker told me.

I opened my mouth to object, but she held up a hand. “That’s not an accusation.” She opened her laptop and turned the screen toward me.

“You never really got a proper look at Kim,” she explained, which was true. The man had been dead when I saw him, and all I really saw was a man lying face-down on the floor.

She called up a photo of a man, obviously from his driver’s license, and I felt like someone had kicked me in the gut.

“My goddess,” I breathed out. “It’s Manfred.”

“Who?” Zane asked.

“My foster brother. We were just kids, but we knew each other for three years.”

“So,” Rucker said. “You’re sure it’s him?”

I nodded. “Absolutely.”