Chapter 59 - Debate
"We should just kill her" I looked to Alpha Harris to immediately say something, but he pressed a finger over his lips to silence me. How effective he was at doing that.
"And her friends and colleagues and the Accords? How do we handle that?" He asked Jeremiah.
"Of course, we would dispose of the corpse properly, not where a single living soul could find it. And how is it that they do it? They will just declare her missing."
I looked to Alpha Harris. 'Could I talk now'? He nodded his head virtuously.
"And what happens when her family and colleagues start to look for her? And they ask every possible person she came in contact with?" I asked.
"That's simple. Isnt it? Obviously, we'll deny everything. Amidst the commotion, and chaos, we'd have bought a little more time." he explained his feeble and flawed thinking. It took everything in me not to start slinging slur words.
"Buying time, eh? Interesting way to put it. You'd definitely be buying some time, only shit time that is. And you'd be overpaying at least a million times by the second. Let me ask you this. What happens if, during the investigation, there's a text from this agent to her work office:
Oh, I'm heading to the abandoned neighbourhood where those damned house squatters don't want to move out. Or a phone call of that nature. And it was the last thing she said while still alive. You cannot comprehend the amount of shitstorm that will bury the pack" I lectured. But Jeremiah shrugged his shoulders, presented a little scowl on his face, and grunted. Unwavering.
"Then we just kill her colleagues. Anybody that we think is associated with her" he said nonchalantly.
"Are you out of your fucking mind?" I berated and looked over to Harris, who was still silently observing.
"What? Tell me" Jeremiah commanded me.
"Where do I start? Do you realize the human pool you're talking about? Do you have any idea how social these people can be? To what extent are you even going to determine that? Is the woman she met on a bus stop here included as a part of those we would kill?" I asked, using my tone to reinforce to him how extremely stupid the concept was.
Jeremiah looked at Harris. "I don't think it'll be that hard. They keep records of things like that on their phones anyway. We could send a hunting party-"
"To do what? Casually stalk and follow those people home without incident? You think you can blend in with civilised society so easily?" I asked him.
"You forget, Ms Naomi. I managed to get admission into your University. Even you didn't suspect a thing until I gave you a reason to" I hadn't thought about it, but yeah, he was pretty much right. How did he even manage that? It would have taken forever and some elbow grease to gain admission this late into the semester.
"None of which still undermines that this is a stupid stupid idea. Considering, by some ill-fated miracle, that she didn't mention anything to anybody, and that everybody she ever talks to about anything is on her phone and not verbally, and somehow, you succeed at killing all these people, whether in broad daylight or some other thing, what for goddesses sake, are you going to do about the Accords?" I resounded.
He had a sort of petulance about the way his lip quivered.
"Go on. Enlighten us" I taunted.
"That's one of the simplest things we could do" he clarified.
"What?!"
"The accords prevent werewolves from killing the humans. But it doesn't control other things? It has no jurisdiction, for say, a stray knife whizzing through the air from some ensnared streetlight, and lodging itself in the victim's heart." explained Jeremiah. Harris stroked his chin again. I was still dumbfounded.
"You want to turn the warriors into hitmen?" I asked. But he seemed to have become wholly uninterested in me and turned to face Harris directly.
"They won't find out anything. They only monitor news of werewolf-related incidents. Not why some poor women were murdered at the hands of a serial killer" he told Harris.
I laughed. "You can't be serious. Do you know the packs that enforce the accords? They are going to find out."
"It's not like they watch over all the Canadian packs 24/7. In fact, I'm willing to bet there are only one of two major packs now in the entirety of Winnipeg," explained Jeremiah.
"How would you know that?" I started, looking at Harris, and carefully about not letting slip any lines of the traitor story he told to me. "We don't know who they are. It's fallacy to assume you can predict the outcome of something you cannot even see" I explained.
"Everything. From the senseless killing to the hiding, the ŕisk is stupidly massive. We can't do any of that" I said.
"Then, what do you propose we do? Your big idea? Where the fuck are we going to see 1 million dollars to even think about buying any of the properties here?" started Jeremiah. "We're werewolves goddamnit. We can't spend our days cowering in a stupid house in broad daylight! It's sickening!" he boomed.
"Alpha" I started "This is the most horrible thing I've heard all my life. We can't take the chance a million things could go wrong" I explained to Harris.
"The more we stay like this, the more the situation chips away at the spirit of our people. Soon, it may reach a bursting point" warned Jeremiah.
"Is that so? You seem to have good firsthand information, Jeremy" said Harris.
"It's just brush talks from here and there. Today, who knows what Catherina might've done. She was mighty close to opening that door, and I was anxious to protect her too." replied Jeremiah.
Harris leaned back and closed his eyes, a thinking posture. I could feel his enormous ribs lowering and rising for a few deep breaths of air, and after the third exhale his eyes opened and he returned to Jeremiah. "Jeremiah, take Naomi. Naomi, take Jeremiah" "To do what?" we asked in unison. "You guys have to find the third solution"