Broken Chains

Part 7

Chapter 7

Over the next four days we stayed in four different hotels despite the fact that I didn't see any hint of Derek Carl seemed to be acting as if we were under a constant attack. The hotels and Guesthouses were generally very nice and our cash supplies could take it right now, eventually we would have to get more but that shouldn't be a problem, Darius was obviously pissed with me right now. After all most of the time he was pissed at me. But he wouldn't cut my money off as he knew as well as I did that me and Carl being out of Pack territory was dangerous, especially for me. As long as I had a little money that would enable me and Carl to have a degree of safety. He could have tried to cut me off and almost starve us back home but Darius knew me well enough to know how stubborn I could be and so through sheer pig-headedness I might still refuse to go home even if 50p was all I had in the world. Carl had stitched up the open bleeding wounds on my shoulder, back and neck that Derek had inflicted on me that night. He booked us into a twin room whether he knew or just he was trying to be frugal I don't know, but I do know that night I didn't like being alone, Derek abrupt arrival and departure like that hurt, and I just felt so alone. Carl didn't ask what had happened with Derek I think he probably could have guessed but I was glad he didn't ask. After a few hours of fruitlessly trying to sleep. Carl growled from across the room and then silently laid himself down on my bed pressing himself into my back slinging an arm around me gently, although I noticed he was lying on top of the covers, I was his brothers mate after all.

"Go to sleep." Carl whispered into my hair, "Your constant tossing and turning is annoying its interrupting my counting."

"You counting sheep?"

"No why would I count sheep? I was counting supermodels in bikini's that were jumping over a fence." I giggled, loving the instantly lightening of the tension around us.

The daytimes in between playing Musical hotel rooms were basically full of nothing. Carl had taken the opportunity on his money acquiring trip to buy himself a new laptop. So we spent the day times in various locations where free Wi-Fi was available, Carl frantically searching police records for the correct type of crimes that would indicate the rogues were around. While I half-heartedly flipped through the local papers (and once or twice flirted with a local reporter) in a similar effort for information. Aside from this we spent several hours simply roaming around in the hopes of picking up any hint of a vague trail. The first course of action produced some leads while the second course produced no leads, but it made me feel better than I did sitting on my hands in the hotel. We investigated (translation: suck our noses into) the crimes that seemed to be rogue related, mainly petty crimes: thefts, break ins, and several bar brawl related assaults. We found the scents of Mainly Daniel and Christian in many of the crime scenes, but by the time we arrived the scents were to jumbled and polluted to be used to track them, and the scenes were too scattered too be able to make out any kind of pattern, or even narrow them down to any part of the city. They just seemed to be running around on a whim causing little pockets of havoc in their wake, with me and Carl a step or two behind.

It was our fifth morning in this city when I was awoken by Carl pushing himself out of the bed where he had been laid curled up next to me. I stretched slowly reluctantly savouring the warm semi awake sleep I was in as the head of the bed was located in a late morning sunny patch. And this was late morning we were out late into the night and so we didn't do early mornings. I sighed and listened to Carl pad across the room, I liked these noises they were comforting like home. I heard Carl clearing his throat noisily as he disappeared into the Bathroom. I pushed myself up to sitting as Carl reappeared brushing my hair back from my face. Carl padded across the room and I heard a sharp intake of breath.

"Carl?" I asked vaguely turning to look at him, he sighed rubbing a hand across his forehead. "What is it" he sighed again before removing his hand and striding over to me dropping a single sheet of white paper on top of my Duvet. I picked up the paper and unfolded it inside there was a short note scrawled in a hand I instantly recognized.