Chapter Six

The police department was the busiest Keiran had seen it in months. People were running from office to office with papers in their hands; all of them had these angry looks on their faces.

“Marrok!” He jumped at the sound of the chief screaming for him, but when he thought about it, he should be used to it by now.

Dodging out of the way of so many people still running around, he gripped the door knob to the chief’s office and moved in quickly so he wouldn’t get run over, shutting the door behind him.

“Shut the door, Marrok, and sit down.”

He raised an eyebrow and looked over at the chief. Of course, his face was buried in papers on his desk, so he had no idea that he had already shut the door. Moving over to the seat in front of the chief’s desk, he sat down and folded his hands in his lap. “What’s going on? Why’s everyone seemed so panicked?”

Finally, the chief looked up with annoyance across his face. “Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten the body you found last night?”

“Not likely.”

"Good, then you’ll want to know that the body belonged to one of ours. That, Marrok, is why everyone seems panicked. Someone kills a cop…you know we try to get that s**t solved as quickly as possible.”

Keiran let out a breath; hoping the chief took it as a breath of anger, when really it was a breath of relief, no matter how bad that sounded. If the man that had been tortured was truly one of the policemen, then he wouldn’t know anything more than his name…therefore he had no other information to give Robert.

“I would ask who is working the case, but by the looks of it, I think it’s most likely everyone,” he muttered as he looked out the window of the office.

“Not everyone,” the chief corrected him. “I don’t want you working this one, Marrok.”

He furrowed his brows and whipped his head around to look at his boss. “Why not?”

“I’m sure it was traumatic enough to find the body of a co-worker like that. No, you did enough just by find him.” The chief nodded his head, and Keiran knew that the decision had been made and was final.

“Is that all, Chief?”

“Not yet, here, this is the case I do want you to work on.”

Keiran took the file the chief was holding out and glanced through it. “Missing person?”

“Yup, you’re the best at them.” He raised his eyebrow again and the chief snorted. “Don’t let that go to your head, though I can tell by the look on your face that it already has.”

“I’ll try my best not to get too excited about your multitude of compliments, Chief.”

“Good, now get.”

Taking the case file with him, Keiran moved through the mass of people to his office. He sat down at his desk and looked through the file until he felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. Taking it out, he flipped it open and saw that it was Blaez.

“I was just about to call you,” he answered.

“I knew you were obsessed with me.” He could see the smirk that was most likely on Blaez’s face.

“In your dreams… Now, have you found out anything?”

“Nope…nada. None of the other packs know of anything that a human could know about us. We’re apparently keeping our secret pretty well, except from Robert, of course.”

“I figured. When I got to the station today, the chief told me that the corpse belonged to one of us…the Boston PD.”

“So there’s no way that Robert could have gotten anything out of him,” Blaez exhaled, obviously feeling the relief that Keiran was as well.

“Exactly, which means we should also be good to go for the full moon run tomorrow night.”

“Thank f**k,” Blaez groaned. “I’ll let the rest of the pack know. Anything else, boss?”

“Not at the moment, I’ll talk to you later.”

“’Kay, bye.”

Keiran shook his head at the phone as he pulled it away from his ear and ended the phone call, pushing the phone back into his pocket. He ran a hand through his hair and looked back at the file.

According to the papers, a young woman by the age of twenty-one had been missing for a week now. She had been out in the park with a group of her friends on the night when she went missing, but the group was accidentally split up and they couldn’t find her later on that evening. The only thing they did find was her torn, pink sweater that had been covered in blood.

He flipped the page to look at the pictures of the evidence; the picture of the sweater was the first one he saw.

His body froze in place, his hand shaking as he held the picture.

The only thing his mind could comprehend was that…she used to have a sweater just like that. He couldn’t breathe; the memory came to his mind before he could do anything to hold it back.

He watched his female as she stepped out of the shower and got herself dressed. She pulled the pink sweater over her head and he noticed how it fit her curves perfectly. He growled low in his chest; his wolf stirring inside him at the sight before him.

“Damn, Saf,” he groaned as he walked over to her just after she pulled her jeans on. He gripped her hips and pulled her back against his chest. “You’re so beautiful…”

She leaned back against him and drew her hand down his cheek, turning her head to look up at him. “You’re just saying that.”

“You know I’m not.”He buried his face in her hair, taking in her scent.

"Keiran…” She turned in his arms and wrapped her own around his neck, standing on her tiptoes to kiss the end of his chin. “I love you, my wolf.”

The memory quickly changed from one to another and he was helpless against it. He groaned and placed his head in his hands, leaning his elbows on the desk as he allowed it to take his mind over.

The blood covered his hands and the front of her shirt. Tears stung his eyes as he wrapped his arms around her back and pulled her closer. The blood had trailed down from her mouth, a coughing fit making her struggle for air. “Keiran,” she whispered.

“Saf… What can I do, baby?”He struggled for his own air, but for a very different reason. “Please tell me what I can do to help you.”

“There’s nothing…” She weakly grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him closer. “You have to live.” She exhaled her last breath and her eyes rolled back as her head fell back on her shoulders.

“Saf? Saf, please…wake up, damn it!” 

When the memory was over, he gasped for air and clutched at his throat. He hadn’t remembered that night in a long time. He squeezed his shaking hands together and rubbed his forehead, trying to fight back the headache that was coming on.

He hoped like hell that solving this case wasn’t going to bring back all these memories. Here he thought he was doing so well…

You have to live, she’d said. Was he really living like she’d wanted him to?