Buried

CHAPTER 21 | slippery slope

📎A/N. Thank you very much for the wonderful comments you left on the previous chapter.  It made my day :)

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Thanks for your continued support, I hope you enjoy this chapter... I must warn you however, this chapter is a little dark...ish...

M.

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"How can you be so sure?" Andrew asked as he leaned closer to the monitor.

Tara tapped the screen and dragged a second image next to the first. "The police think that the two wolves are the same. I admit they are similar, but they are two separate animals," she explained.

Andrew felt the excitement rise from the pit of his stomach. He trusted his girlfriend implicitly. Tara was a Zoologist, specialising in animal behaviour at Southwick's Zoo. And, if she said they were not the same animal, and they were not ordinary wolves, then he believed her.

"Their markings are similar," she explained, pointing at different parts of the two images, "but the Wolf from the freeway is a fraction larger, and has an additional marking that the one from the party didn't."

"Have you spoken to your colleague about the size yet?"

Tara pursed her lips and nodded. "Yves is convinced someone has doctored the videos. He's adamant there's no way wolves of that size exist. Not even the Dire Wolves were that large. You're positive these two," she said, indicating the screen, "are the originals and have not been touched?"

"I took copies directly from the witnesses' phones. There is no way they were tampered with," he confirmed.

Tara sighed in frustration. "The problem is, it's like a Bigfoot sighting. You may have proof caught on camera. But without the actual body, no one is going to believe it."

"It doesn't help that it's getting harder to find the videos," mumbled Drew, distracted by the disparate pieces that he was positive were connected. Yet, didn't seem to fit together.

He did not know what it was about this story, but things were not quite adding up. He was bumping into roadblocks at every turn. It was not helping that the videos which had gone viral, were suddenly disappearing. Each time another copy was uploaded, within a few hours - it was gone again.

What was more frustrating was that the copies that he had uploaded to the Boston Globe's server had become corrupt. Rumours were also running riot that other networks were having the same issue. No one was admitting it, but someone was systematically removing all traces of the two wolf attack videos. His natural reaction to most things was to cite a conspiracy. Normally, however, he did not actually believe that forces were at play to bring people closer to 'world domination'. This time, he was not so sure.

To compound matters, he had interviewed the majority of the witnesses from the night of the party. Something they all had said triggered an uneasy feeling. Each and every person he had spoken to thought it was odd that the wolf bypassed a number of partygoers and went directly to Taylor and Louise. It was only after the wolf was finished with the first two victims that it turned its focus to the others.