Starting Over

Chapter 20

I managed to avoid his intense gaze all through dinner. Instead, I focused on blabber of the children arguing over something. It seemed as though Matthew and Willow were always fighting about something. Michael just watched the two argue with a satisfied smile on his face. I’d bet he was just happy to watch the brother and sister fight without being in the middle of it all.

Once I finished dinner, I stuck to Casey and Amanda. I helped them clean up the dinner mess. Anything would’ve been better than to let Mason catch me away from them. He’d try to order me around again and I didn’t appreciate that.

At 11 Casey and Amanda decided it was time for bed, so I quickly went to my room and locked the door. Hopefully he wouldn’t come barging in and start yelling at me.

I plugged my phone into my laptop and downloaded all the pictures I took of the files. It would have been smart if I had done that while Mason confined me to my room, but I was too hot headed to think that through.

After I was done converting the photos to files, I sat there and studied them. I didn’t realize how much time had passed until my eyes started burning. It was almost five in the morning.

I password protected the files so no one nosey could see what I had been doing, then drifted off to sleep.

I was getting nowhere fast. It had been a week since I had stolen the files and I couldn’t figure anything out.  There was no motive (that I knew of). It all just seemed to be random attacks on whoever this killer could get their hands on. They were all opportunistic killings. That meant that there had to be someone feeding the killer information. The killer couldn’t watch everyone every day to find openings when they just happened to be alone. If I could find the mole, I could find the killer. Hopefully the mole wasn’t very loyal to the killer.

The only way that made sense to me was that he was luring people away from their groups to make the opportunity to kill them. Usually that meant money. But was it the same for werewolves? They were still people.

I knew Grayson and Mason knew something, but they were keeping it close to the chest. Mason hadn’t even confirmed if the rumor James started was true.

I needed to take a step back and rethink this.

Maybe a date would do just that. I could come back from my date with a clear head and fresh eyes on what had happened.

I got my phone out and hesitated. I’d never called a guy to schedule a date. I’d never been that confident. I exhaled an uneasy breath and called the number.

On the fifth ring I felt a little relieved; he wasn’t going to answer the phone.

My heart stopped beating for a fraction of a second. He actually answered. “Hello?”

I felt stupid. “Um, hi? This is Lexi, from the café last week.”

When I didn’t get an immediate response, I cringed. This was incredibly embarrassing. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.