“So what the hell does killing Laurel accomplish?”
“A way to get you back to the hotel.” Erik shrugged. “With her gone, it provided an opportunity for you to go back to the original department. Maybe one of the werewolves had the idea if they can get you back to working at the hotel, they can keep an eye on you.”
“That’s really reaching,” said Simon sourly.
“Not necessarily,” reasoned Erik as he slid his glasses back up his nose. “Option two, it could be an intimidation factor. Maybe the chick was in the woods and one of the wolves recognized her scent. Wrong place at the right time, the wolf killed her knowing it that it would spook you to find out she had been killed.”
Simon thought this theory through. He nodded as if this were possible, but none of it was making sense to me. I rubbed my forehead wearily. “What’s option number three?”
Erik took a slow bite, chewing even slower. He spared me a sad glance before he spoke. “One of the werewolves did it to impress you.”
“What are you talking about?”
Erik in no way looked like a professional in anything. Anytime I had seen the kid, he always wore baggy cargo pants and army camouflage shirts. But Simon kept reassuring me that Erik knew a lot about monsters from reading comic books as well as his years of watching the Syfy channel. Here and now, I could believe that he knew what he was taking about. Erik was very sure in the way he spoke, confident in his knowledge. He took another large bite and talked in between chewing. “Maybe we were wrong in our original theory that Matt was trying to mate with your sister. Maybe, he or another wolf are really after you.”
No one said anything else for the longest time. That theory seemed too bizarre to possibly be true. “Say that’s true,” allowed Simon finally. “Who is it that would know that you didn’t like Laurel?”
My stomach clenched uncomfortably as I processed what they were saying. “You think the wolf killed Laurel because it thinks I didn’t like her?”
“Well, you didn’t.”
“I didn’t dislike her!” But Simon’s pointed look was reason to see he didn’t believe me. “Fine, but that doesn’t mean I wanted her to die!”
“The wolf doesn’t know that,” said Erik reasonably. “If the theory that killing her would get you back to the hotel isn’t true, it means that it killed her because it knew you didn’t like her. Either way, it killed her because of you.” Erik spoke as if this wasn’t something utterly traumatizing to hear.
“There has to be another theory!” I was getting too emotional regarding the thought of Laurel dying because of me. Technically, it wouldn’t be exactly my fault, but if the wolf killed her because of me like Erik was saying, then in a way, it was my doing that caused her death.
“Who knew that you didn’t like her?” asked Simon quietly. It was getting close to dusk, and we still hadn’t booby trapped the house. I took a deep breath, trying hard to ignore the painful idea that it was my fault Laurel was dead.
“Besides you and Miranda?” I thought hard. Even though I had gotten along best with Darren, I had never said anything to him regarding disliking Laurel. But there were definitely people who could see that Laurel really didn’t like me. I didn’t show that the feeling was reciprocated, but that was beside the point. The many times Laurel and Jonna had come to the conference center to deliver packages after my transfer, their dirty looks were evident that they weren’t my biggest fans.
Twice it had happened in front of members of the pack. Once it had happened in front of Bobby and Nico, another time it had happened in front of…
“Cale and Matt,” I said in wonder. About two weeks ago, we had been in the room working. Cale had been hooking up HDMI cables to a large projector. I had been finishing putting chairs down while Matt was looking over a banquet event order for another room. As usual, we all ignored each other as best as we could. Cale and Matt would occasionally converse, but they didn’t like to speak in front of me. Laurel and Jonna had a package to deliver for Perry. Laurel had poked her head into the room to ask where Perry’s office was. When she spotted me, a very nasty look crossed her face. I remembered the moment specifically because Cale had turned to see what she was looking at before he muttered the word “bitch” under his breath. I had thought he had been talking about Matt because he had just insulted Cale’s hair color just a moment earlier. I hadn’t taken his mumbled word seriously because Cale was a jerk who insulted everyone. But maybe he hadn’t been referencing Matt with that jibe.
After explaining this all to Erik and Simon, the latter looked to me in surprise.
“So the same werewolf that killed Mr. Thompson is the one that knew you and Laurel didn’t like each other,” said Simon with furrowed brows. I knew how he felt; this was getting more confusing by the day.
“So what does this mean?”
“It means,” started Erik before biting into his sandwich yet again, “that this Cale guy killed Laurel to most likely get you to come back to work at the hotel. Or,” he mumbled as he swallowed his mouthful, “he did it to please you.”
CHAPTER 17
Even a few days later, I didn’t like the working theory that Cale solely killed Laurel to please me. That seemed more disturbing than the hypothesis that he killed her in a bizarre attempt to lure me back to the hotel. The days passed by quickly. Booby trapping the house and the yard involved putting wire along the perimeter of the house. It was an electrified wire, one that would shock the hell out of something if it dared cross it. At least, that was what Simon and I learned when Erik purposely touched the wire to test it after losing a rock-paper-scissors toss with my brother.
The boys’ plan was to tie the wire to trees. Maybe, if a werewolf ran into the wire at night, it would either be spooked enough to leave or it would shock the hell out of it enough for the wolf to give a warning sound. That way, we could predict if it was near. Personally, I felt shocking the creature was most likely going to anger it more than anything else.
But another dead animal—this one a badger—appeared under my window. It was the left same as the deer, split open, revealing guts and blood, but completely uneaten. This meant the wolf wasn’t stopping; it was still watching our house. If we didn’t do something to stop it, no one else was going to.
Simon and I also got new locks for the house, as well as weapons. We bought hunting knives, baseball bats, a small flame thrower. We wanted to be prepared in case something were to happen. It was hurting the small ration of funds I had saved up while working, but we knew we needed to be prepared.
Something that Simon and I also did was go to the humane society to look at adopting a large dog. Our theory was that a dog would be able to smell or sense if the werewolf was near.
But tragedy struck when we went to the small shelter that only had a handful of dogs available. Five were incredibly too small to be taken seriously as a guard dog, and the other three were far too aggressive. The full-grown Rottweiler, German Shepherd, and husky all growled, howled, or barked at Simon and me, getting us to see it probably wouldn’t be smart to take home a large dog that didn’t like us. We already had a pack of werewolves to worry about.