They All Chose Her, Then Found Out I Owned the Company Their Pack Needed novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Brakes

Linnet's POV

I called the council to Denver, and I sat them down in my boardroom with the whole city behind my chair.

Ward came with his jaw set.

The thin elder came, and the heavy one, and two others, and Rafe took the chair by the wall and kept his hands flat on his knees.

Rodrick stood behind me with a glass of water he had no intention of drinking.

"I'm not here to argue about stones," I said. "I'm here about the Ridge road, eighteen years ago."

"We've done this," Ward said.

"We have not. You said it, and I stood there."

I put my mother's photograph on the table, the one from room one, with her hand on Rafe's father's shoulder.

"She was the last Warden. She was blessing Ridgeline land, and then one winter night she drove off a mountain with two children asleep at home."

Nobody said anything.

"Elder Standish told the county it was ice," I said. "I'm asking every person at this table if they believe that."

The thin elder stared at the photograph.

Ward folded his hands.

"This is grief talking," he said. "It's natural. I sympathize."

The heavy elder moved.

He was a big man with a weathered face, and he had not said a word since he sat down.

"It wasn't ice," he said.

Ward's head turned slowly.

"Don't," the thin elder began, and stopped, because the heavy man had put his hand flat on the table.

"I drove past her car at the bottom of the grade," he said, to me, not to Ward. "I got out. I put my hand on the front wheel. The line was cut, Ms. Averill. Cut clean. I told him that night."

"He told me to call it ice," he said. "I called it ice. I have sat on that council for eighteen years with my mouth shut, and I am done."

"You old fool," Ward said.

It was the first time I had ever heard his voice come out naked.

"Say it again," I said to the heavy man.

He said it again.

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