Chapter 28

Cody

The Alpha and Dawson walk in to my office, and I don't waste a minute. I've found several different videos that we need to be looking at, and strangely, everything that happened, seemed to happen at nearly the exact same time, as if it was choreographed or timed intentionally.

"So look here, this is the camera out behind the stables where the stairs are to Dawson's place and the walkway to my house. Look at the time stamp," I freeze frame it, it's at exactly midnight. "There's a wolf creeping along the wall of the stables, you can just see them sprint up the stairs, but the camera only catches the first five steps, it's out of picture after that. So whoever that was, must have shifted after they got to the apartment door. If you look, they have a bag in their mouth, so I'd guess it's holding the can of spray paint." The Alpha nods and I continue.

"Here is another camera, this one faces the corral nearest the front stable, again the time stamp is exactly midnight. See the wolf that jumps the fence from the East? They head straight for the main stable. The thing is, only three horses were let out from there, so I'm thinking they got spooked, because two minutes later, you see a naked man running away from the stable and then he shifts and darts off into the trees. So we know at least one is a man." I switch to another camera angle. "Again, time stamp at midnight. Every single thing that happened, it was at midnight. Now I can tell you, I walked back from the pack run a couple minutes after midnight, so I think maybe the one who is running from the main stable either heard me coming or smelled my scent and that's what spooked him."

"Alright, this camera is on the front of the stable under Dawson's balcony. It faces the walk-thru where we have a lot of the work horses, including Ashlynn's. You can see a wolf walk along the wall, then turn into the walk thru. On this other camera angle, it's faces the first gate to the pasture. Thirty seconds before this happened, you can make out someone, simply because of the moonlight, but it's for sure a woman. They open the gate from inside the pasture, and likely they opened other gates further out first, as they made their way closer to the barn. These are all the locations where the trackers said it was a female scent. So at minimum, we have three wolves involved. The she-wolf who went into the barn, never came back out this way, which means, she went out the back side of the barn. I do not see her on camera again. There are also several areas of the ranch where there are no cameras, but we know for sure at least three were involved." I lean back and wait for the Alpha to say something.

Dawson steps closer to the screen that was angled towards the corral, "Can you zoom in and freeze frame the guy?" I shrug, and press the zoom. "Look there," Dawson points to the guys upper arm and I see exactly what he's looking at. A tattoo of a wolf howling. If that doesn't scream dead giveaway, I don't know what does.

"So if we find the owner of that tattoo, we've got one suspect." The Alpha steps back and gives me the nod. "Let's find them."

"If you have to go onto another packs land, you need to let me speak to the Alpha there first, but let's start on our own land, to include sending scouts to town." Alpha Gabe turns to walk out, but as he opens the door he turns back around. "Oh and I will be calling Alpha Chris and asking him if we can meet with Bonnie and her soon to be mate. We will take the scouts with us who know the scents." He turns and walks out.

"Dawson, I don't know what you did to get this girl riled up, but now she's involving other wolves. Of course, that seems odd, since she's acting like she wants to be with you, yet sabotaging you at the same time," I'm watching Dawson to see if I can gauge his feelings on this, but he just looks as confused as I feel.

"Yeah I don't know. I'm trying to wrap my head around it." Dawson is now pacing the room. "Unless," he stops and lifts his head and looks at me. "Ashlynn clawed her when she tried to attack her. If it wasn't healed, she'd need to explain it to her boyfriend and she couldn't very well tell the truth." I get where he's going with this, but it's speculation at this point.

"Let's see what the trackers come up with. In the meantime, I think a few ranch hands need to go into town and do some surveillance. They will be less suspect than you or I." With that I stand and make my way out the door, Dawson in tow. Time to get some answers.

***

Ashlynn

Ashlynn

I hadn't seen Dawson since the Full Moon run. That was the day before yesterday. I know that yesterday they were pouring over video footage and they had seen something, according to my Uncle. He said they had a plan in play but he didn't want me to worry to much, it was being handled. It was actually dinner time and they had invited me to come to the main house for dinner. It was going to be my Uncle, the Luna, and my Mom. I hoped it would be an uneventful, drama free meal. I think I'd had enough drama to last me for awhile. I slipped into a pair of jeans and a sweater. It was starting to cool off in the evenings and I didn't want to be walking back in a light dress. I made my way to the house, and when my Uncle called for me to come in, they were already seated at the dining room table, sipping wine and chatting.

"Hey there, am I late or something?" I asked as I slipped into an empty chair. My Aunt Jenna poured me a glass of wine and shook her head no.

"Not at all, we got an early start," my Uncle said. "Just chatting about everything going on. How are you? Did you get some rest after all the excitement the other night?"

"Well if you call sleeping for like twenty hours, then yes I guess I did," I raised my glass in cheers and took a sip. The coolness of the cold riesling slid down my throat.

My Uncle chuckled at that, "Well obviously you needed it. And thank you for helping round up the horses. I hear your two horses are quite trained. You scared a couple of the guys, they thought you were going to get run over by stampeding horses." I laughed at that and shrugged my shoulders.

My Uncle turned to my Mom, "So Carolyn, how did you find the full moon run? Were you comfortable?"

My mom squirmed in her chair and quickly glanced over at me, though I couldn't figure out why. "It was fine actually. Cody was very much a gentleman and made me quite at ease with the whole thing. It's been such a long time since I've done that, it was freeing. I think I will do it again for sure." Mom smiled shyly and I wondered what had happened on her run. I must ask later, when my Uncle isn't around.