Wolves of Haven: Lone by Danae Ayusso Read Free Book Online

was listed as the official cause of death by
the medical examiner.”
    “By you,” she clarified.
    “I moonlight as many things, Sis,
you know that,” he amusingly reminded her. “The wounds were
consistent with a large animal, bear according to the official
report.”
    She snorted.
    “Yes, I know,” he dramatically
sighed for show, and she rolled her eyes over his antics, “I used
to be much more creative. But don’t worry, with the second body the
cause of death was listed as death by a Wendigo!”
    Akia gave him a look. “Second body…
Wendigo?! You’re an idiot,” she groaned, and he roared with
laughter. “I honestly don’t know why they’ve permitted you to keep
an adult job. You are a child in the body of sixty-five year
old-”
    “That doesn’t look a day over
thirty,” Connell amusingly interjected.
    “Yet another discussion that I will
not contribute to,” she said. “Two bodies-”
    “A few,” he corrected. “All washed
up on shore…presumably washed up. In my non-professional opinion,
they were staged, but what does the medical examiner
know?”
    “Not much if you’ve never been
trained to process crime scenes or collect evidence…that’s why I’m
here, isn’t it?” she asked. “To help Father figure out what is
going on in order to keep attention off of the family?”
    Connell hissed out a breath. “Yeah,
not exactly. Father is in custody on suspicion of murder,” he
mumbled the latter quickly under his breath.
    Akia slammed on the breaks and
turned to look at him; her nostrils flared, eyes narrowed and
darkened, and a menacing growl rolled from the base of her
throat.
    “Calm down, Sis,” he lovingly
scolded. “Control your temper otherwise Eve will have her fun. Is
that what you want?”
    He was right, and she knew it, and
if Eve did make an unwanted appearance, it would be bad for
everyone.
    Akia took a couple of deep breaths
to calm herself.
    “Better?” he asked.
    “Marginally,” she hissed. “Why is
Father being detained for this?”
    Again, he hissed out a breath; he
didn’t want to be the one to tell her, but he drew the short straw.
“Father is the one that found each body, as if they were left
purposely for him to find.”
    Again, Akia growled and her hands
tightened on the steering wheel.
    “Calm down, Sis. One of us needs to
keep a level head, and since the locals don’t know you, don’t know
that you’re part of the family, I think Varg was hoping that you’d
be able to sway the local authorities into releasing Father on
house arrest or something until we can figure out what or who is
doing this and why.”
    “Any suspects not noted in the
police files?” she asked, pulling back onto the road, and went into
police mode.
    “None. Can’t pick anything up, at
least I couldn’t,” he admitted. “The first was reported right away,
for obvious reasons, so the others didn’t get a chance to see the
body. The second, third and fourth bodies were absent of anything
useful. There was something there, but most likely the tide washed
away anything that might have been traceable or I was imagining
things.”
    Akia nodded, processing what
he said. “Water submersion is a means to remove trace evidence, so
I can’t fault you for finding it odd that multiple victims, all apparently
attacked by a wild animal, would randomly wash up on shore. But
there are no bears in the area, or Wendigos, Smart
Ass.”
    He smiled wide.
    “On the flipside of that forensic
countermeasure,” she continued, “the water shouldn’t have been able
to scrub the body, in a sense, of traces that would only be
detectable to the family. Seff has a suspect list
drafted?”
    Again, a hissed breath came from
between Connell’s teeth. “None. We didn’t pick up anything on any
of the bodies or the dumpsites, or even the woods around the manor,
at least not anything that was familiar. Once you smell it you
never forget it, you know that, but none of us recognized what
wasn’t