Page 21 of Blood and Bone
Two Trees nodded. “I think so. I thought it was unusual when I read about it in the file. There aren’t a lot of Catholics on this reservation.”
“I’d imagine so,” Ari said, nodding absently. “You know, I’m an Army brat. When I was a kid, we lived in a hell of a lot of places.” He glanced at Eoghan who stood on the side of the bed in the cramped room. “Can I get by you? I wanna check something out.”
“Okay.” Eoghan moved out of the way, squeezing past him as Ari tried to make himself small to switch places with him.
“Thanks.” Ari leaned over the headboard, trying to glimpse something between the wall and picture. He smiledwhen he saw it. “When I was a kid, everywhere we lived, I tried to find a way to make a new place my own. It’s something a lot of military brats do. One of the things I did was to keep a journal of my most private thoughts, and after my mom found it, I began to hide it like any teenager would.” He took hold of the sacred heart painting, pulling it off the wall and putting it on the bed. Behind it, cut into the drywall, was a crude cubby. He grinned. “As I thought.” He reached into the space, pushing aside pink insulation and fished around until he found something. Smiling, he dragged it free of the wall, holding it up in dusty gloves.
“I’ll be damned,” Eoghan said. “It’s a journal.” He held out gloved hands and Ari handed it over, brushing off his dusty gloves.
“It’s actually a diary,” Ari said. When Eoghan looked up with a question in his gaze, Ari shrugged, pointing at the book. “It’s pink with unicorns on it.”
“I don’t believe it,” Two Trees said. “How did we miss it?”
“You’re not an Army brat?” Ari asked, smiling at him.
When they didn’t reply, Two Trees chuckled, shaking his head. “Okay…Army brats, that’s huge. We’d better take a look at that.”
“My partner’s right,” Eoghan said, flipping open the book and scanning the first couple of pages. “It seems to be Riversong’s diary, but you’d have had no reason to look for it behind a picture. Take a fugitive hunter to find something like that. It’s really tight in this bedroom. Let’s get a look at it out in the other room.” He deposited the book in the chief’s gloved hands and then followed him and the deputy out into the hallway with Ari following.
They found chairs at the dining room table before the chief opened the journal. He flipped to the last page and then bent over it, reading the words written there. Ari was prettysure he heard the man growl in the back of his throat before he glanced up. His eyes were glowing a vivid violet color which freaked him out more than a little.
“What is it?” Eoghan asked, sounding as alarmed at the chief’s appearance as he did.
Two Trees read the final entry in the journal out loud.
“I’m leaving tomorrow and taking Morgan, Janus, and Kylie with me. Poor little Morgan. I pray she never finds out about her real daddy. She loves Jack so much. I can’t wait for the police chief to figure out what the bastard’s been doing. I know I should tell him, but I don’t know if I can trust him. He works with the man. What if he does the same thing as Colt? How can I explain a fourth kid to Jack? Despite everything, I hope Jack’s family will help me.”
A ferocious growl pierced the air as the chief looked up at them. “Am I reading this right?” he asked.
“She’s gotta be talking about her brother,” Ari said, feeling rage like never before as he realized her own brother had been sexually abusing her…possibly fathering one of her children.
“That motherfucker, Colt Wilkins!” Two Trees shouted, stabbing a finger into the page he’d been reading. “That shifter shit has been outlawed for decades!”
“Stay calm,” Eoghan urged, probably as concerned the man was about to shift as Ari was. Since neither of them knew what they’d be dealing with in shifted form, they needed to get his anger under control. To his credit, Deputy Uwaite was speaking to him in quiet tones, using their language to communicate. When the chief finally nodded and looked up, his eyes, though, still violet, weren’t glowing like before.
“You realize she’s talking about Colt Wilkins fathering her daughter, Morgan, the oldest, right?” Two Trees asked.
“I gathered that,” Ari said. “And from what I understand, it sounds like Jack knew and was protecting her. When Colt found out that he knew, he engineered his downfall and most likely convinced the other council members that he stole money and goods, so he’d be convicted of grand larceny and sent away for some time.”
The police chief nodded. “Damn him!”
Ari opened his mouth to agree wholeheartedly when he heard a rattle at the front door. Before he realized what was happening or he could stop it, Colt Wilkins came crashing through the door.
“What’s going on here? What are you doing in my sister’s house?”
The very last thing Ari expected to see was the transformation of both the police chief and his deputy shifting into the most gigantic, brown grizzly bears he’d ever seen.
Chapter Six
Ari was completely unprepared to witness the change of the two shifters. If he’d thought his life was strange before, standing in the dining room of a modest home in the middle of suburbia watching two men become drooling predators in a matter of seconds, really took the cake. And seeing two huge grizzly bears where the police officers had been only moments before, totally freaked him out. His hand went reflexively to his sidearm, pulling the Glock before he knew what he was doing.
Only Eoghan’s near-painful grip on his wrist, stopped him from killing their fellow law enforcement officers as the men lunged at what appeared to be a large opossum where Colt Wilkins had been standing seconds before. The opossum made a squealing sound as it propelled itself backward, slamming against the wall and wedging itself into the corner, doing its best to make itself invisible.
“Stand down, Ari!” Eoghan shouted as he moved in between him and the grizzlies. He tugged on his wrist until his senses came back to him, and he lowered the weapon. Even as the weight of his gun dropped, Eoghan was turning and shouting at Two Trees and his deputy, telling them something similar to the order he’d given Ari. The buzzing in his ears was making him feel disoriented as they stared at the scene in front of them. Both bears had lowered their heads and were roaring at the opossum which stared at them with wide, glowing, violet eyes. Ari had fleeting thoughts about how it would look if he shit himself right there in Riversong’s living room every time one of the bears roared.
“Two Trees! Uwaite! Stand down,” Eoghan implored, holding out both hands.
Ari didn’t know what good it would do. Neither the chief nor his deputy were paying him any attention but more importantly, neither beast were paying any attention to each other either. He had to admit, besides being frightened as hell of the shifters, Ari was disappointed in both of them, especially Two Trees who’d seemed so levelheaded and in command of his deputy only minutes before.