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ChapterThirteen
“Iknow who Midas is,” the deep male voice said through the speaker on Romeo’s phone. “You’re his number two?”
“Yes,” he answered. He walked into the spare bedroom, which he’d converted into an office, and sat at the desk. Wiggling the mouse, he watched as the screen woke and the article he’d pulled up from a Los Angeles news website appeared on the screen.
Woman mauled to death, authorities call for an end to shifter violence against humans.
The article hadn’t shown up on the search he’d initiated while he was waiting for Adam to get him the LA alpha’s information. He’d searched through pages and pages of results and found nothing on Kerry Talbot from five years ago. It wasn’t until he left the mainstream search engine and used one traditionally reserved for people who were trying to skirt the law, thedark web, as people often referred to it. There he found several articles that had apparently been suppressed by mainstream media.
“I wanted to ask you about a woman who died five years ago.”
There was a significant pause, and Romeo thought Alpha Skinner might have hung up on him.
“Why are you asking about that?”
At least the male hadn’t denied anything.
“Her sister’s my truemate. Something’s off about the story as she tells it. I found a few articles about it, but they’re clearly biased toward humans.” He leaned back in the chair and scrubbed his hand through his hair.
He missed Ashley, but this was important.
“I’m surprised you were able to find anything.”
“It wasn’t without difficulty.”
“What are you going to do with the information?”
“Tell Ashley the truth.”
“She knows the truth.”
“Are you sure?”
Skinner paused, then said, “Actually, I’m not. I know her parents were told what really happened because I told them myself. What they did with the information is not my concern. There was loss of life on both sides, and I’m sorry for the events that spurred the results, but my conscience is clear.”
Romeo listened as the alpha told him what happened to Kerry that night five years earlier.
Holy. Shit.
* * *
Ashley’s phonebuzzed as she drove aimlessly around Cleveland, her mind jumbled, her thoughts racing in a hundred different directions. She wished she had someone to talk to, but she didn’t have any friends in Cleveland.
Well, Romeo.
But he was hardly a friend right now because she’d raced away like a coward instead of facing him. No one in the Humans Against Shifters organization was her friend, at least not in Ohio. Back in LA, she had people she considered friends, but in this moment? When she was at a crossroads and would betray someone she cared about no matter what choice she made? She didn’t have a single person to talk to.
Her heart ached as she thought about Kerry once more.
She’d spent the years since getting her vengeance trying not to think too hard about her sister because it just made her sad. Probably because the old adage was true: vengeance didn’t beget a clean conscience.
Her phone buzzed again.
She lifted it from the cup holder and glanced at it, seeing it was Brent. She hadn’t expected it to be Romeo because she hadn’t given him her number, but still a part of her had hoped it would be him.
She pushed the button to answer the call on speaker.
“Yes?”
