Lessons in Love

Chapter 57: The Office

POV: Beta Ben Westlake

We shut the schools down for the rest of the week, but Riley had insisted on continuing to train her girls. Three more girls had joined their ranks thanks to my father’s attack on the girls’ school. Rick had stayed in the hospital for another two days and had been pacing his hospital room Friday morning waiting to be let out. It had made me smile to see him well rested and raring to go. He still hadn’t been able to tell me what Smokey had told him he needed to do to catch the rabbit, but I could tell whatever it was, was on his mind.

“Goddess, how long does it take to print discharge papers?” He grumbled.

“Relax,” I said with a smile. “She’s not going to make you stay here. You’ve passed all the wellness checks. She probably just got caught up with a patient.”

Rick rubbed his forehead. “I just want to get out of here. I want to go home and shave.” He scratched at his chin, which was fully covered in dark brown hair.

“It kind of suits you.” I said with a shrug.

“It itches.” He growled, scratching along his jawline. I laughed at him, and he glared at me. He was about to say something, disparaging I’m sure, when the door opened, and Dr. Morris came in.

“Sorry about the delay, Delta Rick.” She smiled, holding out a clipboard and a pen. “It’s been a busy morning.” Rick quickly took the clipboard and signed his name where she pointed.

“That should do it. As I mentioned, if you have any trouble sleeping, please come talk to me. There are other remedies aside from sleeping pills we can try.”

“Thank you.” Rick muttered and headed for the door. Rick had had a hard time sleeping in the hospital. He had managed to get some rest, but he seemed plagued by nightmares. I knew what he must have been seeing in those dreams. I hadn’t been able to forget the pictures of the mangled bodies and dismembered limbs either. They had given him some medication to help him sleep, but it had only made things worse. The meds had made him feel the way he had the other day after drinking the spiked whiskey. It had made him even more afraid of falling asleep.

The two of us walked back to the packhouse together. “So,” he said. “Catch me up. Properly.” He growled the last word at me. I had been sharing some of what had been going on, but I hadn’t wanted him worrying about it all until he was out of the hospital.

“Well, everyone knows we’re Alpha-less at this point. My father has done a bang-up job of spreading that tidbit. We aren’t in hot water with the council for not reporting it right away. I provided them a full report yesterday on everything that had happened since we discovered they were missing. Elder Nolan Woodrow called me personally to see if we needed reinforcements.”

“Do we?” Rick asked.

“Probably,” I said, raking my hand through my hair. “I don’t want the council here yet. If they show up, they could take control and that’s the last thing any of us want.” The council didn’t move quickly. They were slow to make decisions and it could be years before they decide on who should lead us. Or worse, they could dissolve our pack into one of our neighbours. It would likely be Ridgeline or Flain River as we bordered both.

“What a mess.” Rick grumbled as we headed into the packhouse.

“We haven’t been able to find Marcus and Eleanor yet, but we think it’s a shell game out in the woods. Tyler has been helping us on the north border. They find evidence of them being held in a shack or a cave along the border but haven’t come across them yet. We’re also finding similar evidence in the West near the Vine Valley Pack border.”

“Great, Alpha Simon isn’t going to lift a finger.” Rick growled. Simon was a pompous ass who flaunted money and title while his vineyards yielded less and less each year. The Goddess only knew how his people managed.

“We’ve scheduled a pack meeting for later today. We need to address the concerns of the pack.”

“Are we proposing an election?” He asked as we climbed the stairs.

“The council has agreed that we have two weeks to find them or Marcus’s succession plan, or we’ll have to forfeit the pack to the council.” I said. “As per standard practice and regulations, of course.” I added, rolling my eyes. We made it to the third floor, and I moved toward my office door. Rick stood on the landing, looking at his door.

“Have you been in there?” He asked, not taking his eyes off the door.

“Yes,” I said. “I searched it. He’d tucked pictures in just about every place you could imagine. You’d have been finding them for months.” I growled.

“He? You mean George? Or did you find out who put them in there?”

“Best guess is Henry.” I said. “We had eyes on my father all night. It wasn’t him. Henry had the time to do it. He was here in the packhouse unattended, and we now know he was working for my father.”

Rick nodded, still staring at the door to his office. He squinted his eyes in thought, but it looked like he was trying to see through the door at the office behind it.

“Do you want to go in?” I asked quietly, stepping toward him. He let out a soft growl and decisively stepped toward his door, unlocking and opening it. He flung the door open wide and stared at the floor, right where the pictures had been. He let out a sigh of relief and stepped into his office.

“The only thing I didn’t check was the safe.” I said. “I can if you want to give me the combination.”

Rick moved mechanically across the room and moved the painting that hid his safe. He keyed in the combination, opened the door a hair, and stepped aside. He turned his back on the safe and waited for me to look inside.

“There are a couple of folders in here.” I said.

“How many?”

“Uh …” I flipped through the spines, counting quickly. “Six.”

“Five.” He said firmly. “There should only be five.”

I pulled them out and looked at the labels. Only one didn’t have anything written on it. I opened it and found another stack of pictures. “There’s two manilla envelopes and a leather-bound journal.” I said.

“That should be right, but check the envelopes just in case, please.” He said, sounding defeated.

I grabbed the two envelopes, and both were sealed. “Both the envelopes are sealed, should they be?”

I heard him sigh with relief. “Yeah, one’s a copy of my father’s will, and the other is paperwork from when my sister got mated.”

“Your father’s will?” I asked. “You haven’t opened it.”

“No,” he said. I looked over my shoulder at him. His back was still to me as he spoke. “My mother had the original, so I never bothered. I kept it just in case I needed it for something later.”

“Neither of the envelopes look tampered with.” I said, putting the envelopes on his desk in front of him. “You recognize the writing on them?” I asked.

Rick looked down and nodded. “Those are the original envelopes.” He said, but he didn’t touch them or look at them for too long. I picked them up and stuffed them back in the safe. I closed it back up and held tightly to the folder full of photos.

“I’ll get rid of these.” I said, heading for the door. I heard Rick make a derisive noise behind me, and I turned to see why.

“I see you made some changes around here.” Rick said, running his hand along the top of a small drink fridge. I had the old bar cart removed, along with all the booze, and had filled the fridge with water and soft drinks.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to gauge his reaction. He wasn’t giving anything away, but his initial reaction hadn’t exactly been a happy one.

“Is it about trusting me?” He asked.

“No,” I said firmly. “I trust you completely. So, when you said that it’s been a temptation at times, I had it moved.”

“That isn’t what I said.” Rick said quietly, still not looking at me.

I gently put the folder down on the cabinet by the door, making sure it wouldn’t fall or get knocked over. I moved back toward his desk and sat in one of the chairs in front of it. “It scared me.” I said softly. “I knew deep down you weren’t doing great. I’ve known that for a while, and I haven’t pushed. When I found the note,” my hands started getting sweaty. “When I found you in the bathroom.” I got up and started pacing.

“I’m never going to forget that. I’m never going to forget the way your ribs sounded cracking under the pressure of my hands, or the taste of the whiskey on your mouth, or the smell of your blood on the tiles.” I snapped at him. “Smokey was right. I won’t allow you to die, and if that means making it a little more difficult for you to get a drink when you’re seeing the things you can’t forget, then so be it.” I hadn’t meant to sound angry or raise my voice, but I had.

Rick turned and looked at me. His eyes looked watery, and I regretted the tone I’d taken with him. “Smokey said I had to forgive myself before I could catch the rabbit.” He looked back the floor, his voice low. “I can’t think about that day without freaking out, and I have to make my peace with it.” He scrubbed his hands over his face and moved to his chair behind the desk.

“I appreciate you telling me this, but what does this have to do with the bar cart?” I asked.

“You said to talk to you instead of drinking when I’m panicking.” He said, his voice shaking a little. “I’m panicking about this. The way he said it, Ben.” Rick shook his head. “Whatever or whomever the rabbit is, it’s the key to solving something. Maybe it’s how we find Marcus and Eleanor, or stop your father, or your divine injustice, or …”

“Okay, slow down.” I said calmly, returning to my chair. “Start at the beginning. Tell me everything you remember.”