Mishaps and Wolves (OLD VERSION)

Chapter 34 - When The Pieces Finally Fit

Chapter 34 - When The Pieces Finally Fit

Roman was coming out of the kitchen with lunch for him and Marissa when Julian found him.

He'd been making lunch in the Pack House's kitchen whilst she stayed behind in his office to contact her clinic back in the city. She said she was also going to be leaving messages with her father to let him know she was safe and check up on Randy's family so that they wouldn't panic about him.

When Julian came and found him, Roman was stuck for a moment about where he could ask him what had happened without anyone overhearing. The rooms upstairs were all soundproofed so nobody would have heard anything, but there wasn't anywhere right now. He looked around and saw the back door to the kitchen.

Gesturing to it, Julian followed Roman outside and around the corner to a place that could provide them some privacy.

"You wanted to see me Alpha?" asked the young boy. He was barely out of his late teens but he didn't look it. He looked like a man with the blonde stubble on his cheeks and his hair thick and tied back. The cameo trousers and black shirt probably didn't help make him look any closer to his true age wither, but that had never bothered Roman. The boy worked hard and understood what the Pack that he'd formed was actually for. Julian was tied to it just as much as Roman and Nicholas were and that made a soul taste hit the back of his tongue when he thought of the possibility that Julian was the traitor.

"Julian, I need to know everything that you saw on the night of the fire at Laura's house for the report." He just came out with it, hoping against all odds that this boy was not the traitor.

"Well, I was out from the pack house to the clearing to get in some air time alone. When I passed by Laura's house I saw the open door and the smoke pouring out. I called out to everyone that there was a fire and made sure that someone responded back before I ran into the house. When I got to the staircase, it was pretty singed and Stanley was already dragging Laura out of the house. I helped him get her out quicker. When we got outside, I asked about Vera and Stanley said that she was still inside with Cinna. I held onto Laura whilst Stanley tried to go back in but he couldn't."

Roman paid absolute attention to every last word. So far, everything fit perfectly with what Stanley had said. But now he had the same twinge in his stomach because all the accounts fit and there was now no chance that they could narrow it down to just one traitor.

He looked back to Julian, "Thank you, I'll make sure to add it all in. You can get back to whatever you were doing." Julian nodded and walked away whilst Roman turned and headed straight for his office, mulling over Julian's statement.

When he opened the door, he found Marissa on the sofa with Rand on a beanbag chair beside her and a laptop on her lap. Hew was pointing to something on the screen and she had her brows scrunched together in that you-had-better-not-be-ordering-me-around exasperated look. He just shook his head at how easily Randy riled her up and how she continued to remain his friend.

She looked up at him when she heard the door close, the creases in her face easing as she saw him and a small smile lifting her lips. He snapped out of his staring and came forward to sit by her feet, "What are you doing?"

She reached her hand out for her sandwich and a napkin. "I'm sending a message to his sisters but he keeps trying to correct me and tell me to leave things out. We've made a cover story that the bus had engine trouble and they're still fixing it. Hopefully it will give us a while before they start getting suspicious, but Randy doesn't think they'll believe it if we don't add something catastrophic."

"This is me we're talking about. I only do catastrophic situations. How on earth do you think we ended up here? I didn't see you running out into the middle of the night after a weird woman," he pouted.

Marissa took a bite of her sandwich and managed to speak around it, "No, I chased you out in the middle of the night. But I guess I see your point-"

"Exactly," beamed Randy.

"-but I can't come up with anything so I'll just tell them that I'm waiting for it." She pressed a few keys on the keyboard before shutting the screen and returning back to her sandwich.

Roman just looked at Randy, "You realise you just lost against her, right?" Randy looked confused so Roman clarified, "You wanted her to write about a catastrophe. She didn't."

Randy was speechless before his face just froze. He stood up and left the room in complete silence. Marissa watched in silence as he left out the door before she began laughing.

"Is he going to be ok?" Roman asked her, worried about how silent Randy had gone. The guy usually seemed to have ADHD and the fact that he'd been very controlled in his movements and expression seemed like a bad thing.

Marissa nodded, "Sure. He gets like that when he's trying to realise how I won then he'll get a little frustrated, then he'll be out happily plotting how he's going to get me back. It's an ever-repeating cycle that you tend to get used to after a while.

Roman looked back to the door, sad for Randy but also determined that he was going to beat Marissa in a game of wits as often as he could. She was a difficult opponent but he loved a challenge.

He turned back to her and started eating his sandwich, "I spoke to Julian."

"Oh?" she finished off her sandwich and wiped at her mouth with the napkin.

"Yeah," he said, avoiding looking at her before his concentration got sapped and it became really obvious that he was just watching her lips, "Julian said that he smelt the smoke, raised the alarm and ran in to help Stephen. Pretty straight forward."

Marissa looked confused for a moment. "Do you have pictures of the kitchen?"

Roman was confused by her line of thinking, but he went along with it. "Top drawer on the left. The pictures are still on the camera's memory card."

Marissa got up and looked through the drawer till she found the camera. She switched it on and came to sit back beside him on the sofa. She clicked through the photos till she got to the kitchen. The shots were of the general kitchen scene and a few close-ups of the socket that had been tampered with. She turned the camera over so that he could see the screen. "Do you see a pot out of place in this kitchen."

"Yeah, just the one in the sink..." He looked up at Marissa and she had a grim look on her face.

"I know who the traitor is."