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“I guess…”
They ate their dessert in silence for a few minutes, stealing timid glances at each other from time to time. They weren’t completely comfortable being together at the same table for so long, with no one else around. Despite the slight tension, however, it was still nice, so they ate and drank slowly, none of them hurrying to go back to their room.
They heard the front door open and then close with a bang. Avelyn jumped at the loud sound, and Jocelyn turned around to see who was coming. Kevin stormed into the room, followed close behind by Ryan. Their clothes were wet, and Kevin’s long blond hair dripped with small, translucent raindrops.
“Josie, Miss Avelyn,” Kevin greeted them while Ryan only nodded in their general direction. “Sorry to barge in like this. I was hoping Max was with you.”
“He went to his office,” said Jocelyn. “Is everything okay? Max didn’t tell me you two were supposed to come back today.”
“No,” said Ryan. “We weren’t. Something happened in Stuttgart. We drove back as fast as we could.”
“You know we have phones, right?”
“We had to be sure,” said Kevin. “We made a couple of stops between Stuttgart and Dunkelstadt to verify our theory.”
“What theory?” asked Avelyn. Her heartbeat had picked up the pace. She had always seen both Kevin and Ryan calm and calculated, but now they were clearly distressed, and their behavior scared her more than the cryptic things they had said.
Ryan took the last few steps that separated him from the table and poured wine into a random empty glass. He drank it in one breath. Kevin threw Avelyn a weary glance, then turned to Jocelyn.
“You better come with us in Max’s office.”
“Wait!” jumped Avelyn. “I wanna know!”
Jocelyn stood up. Her eyes were filled with worry, and all the muscles in her body had tensed. “Better stay here.”
“Stop treating me like a child!”
“We’re not treating you like a child, but you have gone through enough in the last few days. It might be nothing, and these two thick-headed idiots are just making a fuss.”
Ryan threw his Alpha a curious glance. Kevin was looking down at his boots.
“I’ll let you know, okay? Or Max will tell you himself tonight.”
Avelyn reached over the table and caught Jocelyn’s wrist before she turned around to run up the stairs.
“Please don’t keep me in the dark, Josie.”
The she-wolf looked down at her hand, then her green gaze went up to Avelyn’s blue eyes. “Never again.”
***
“Are you absolutely sure?” asked Max while pacing the room. Jocelyn was perched on his desk, arms crossed over her chest, while both Kevin and Ryan had taken a seat on the long sofa.
“Yes,” said Kevin. “Six disappearances in Stuttgart. While it’s a big city and shit like this happens, there were also three in Filderstadt, three in Aichtal, which is a rather small town, and one in Dunkelstadt. They can’t all be coincidences, and they’re not. Young women and men, between 25 and 30, no witnesses, no one has any idea where they might be, no leads. So, yes, we’re sure.”
“Crap,” whispered Jocelyn.
“Do you think they’re dead?”
Kevin hesitated, but Ryan took over, his thick, yet soft voice sounding confident and somewhat reassuring. “No. If they were dead and she did it, we would have found the bodies by now. Heck, the cops would have found them before us. You know she’s not very good at removing her traces. I think she kidnapped them.”
“Why would she do something like that?” asked Jocelyn, although she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.
“That… I can’t tell you,” said Ryan.
Max finally stopped in front of the window and looked up at the starry night sky. At that moment, he couldn’t decide which of the past three days had been the worst in his whole life. Things were getting worse by the second, and what he hated most was that he couldn’t do anything. He didn’t know what or how. If Sabine had really kidnapped those people, then the situation was worse than he thought. The moment the Council found out about what was going on and made the connection with Clan Blackmane, they would all be in deep shit. Sabine was clearly an insane rogue wolf, but it was Max who had set her loose. Even worse, they would know he had tried to hide it from them.
“We can’t allow this to continue. We need to make sure the kidnappings are really her doing, and, once we establish that, we have to find her. By whatever means possible. Find her and take care of everything ourselves. We can’t let the Council find out, because I swear to God, I have no idea how to explain any of it.”
