Chapter 11: The Beta's Study

Torin's POV

My father named the council for Thursday and drove away from the lodge without another word.

I left Ingrid and the children with eight of my own men, the ones I trusted.

I promised I would be back before dark.

She did not ask where I was going.

She looked at me for a long moment and said, "Bring the proof."

I had the lawyer's folder on the passenger seat.

At the bottom of it was the one page I had not shown her yet.

The lake-house gate book is kept by the caretaker, and the caretaker had given it to my lawyer for a favor.

On the morning after the party, between four and seven, the gate had opened for exactly two names.

One was Briony Sterne, in at ten to five, out at twenty past six.

The other was a truck, in at ten past five.

It was the Beta's truck.

The Beta had known where his daughter was at five in the morning, because he had driven there himself.

He had been silent for seven years.

His house sat at the bottom of the pack road, a good stone house with a porch.

I let myself in through the study door without knocking.

The Beta was at his desk, a big man gone grey, with a ledger open under the lamp.

The shelf behind him held cheerleading trophies in a row, with a photograph of a girl in a gold ribbon at the end.

"Alpha," he said.

"You were at the lake house at ten past five," I said.

"The morning after the party. In your truck."

He did not move.

"I don't recall."

"The gate book recalls."

I put the page on his desk.

I have learned that the quieter I speak, the more men listen.

"Your nephew is in my cold store," I said.

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