"Or guilty," Caleb murmured back.
Looking back at his beta, he asked almost hopefully, "Have you had a chance to hear her speak?"
Caleb shook his head. "Danielle hasn't uttered a word all afternoon. I would say that is odd, unless she's afraid I'll recognize her voice from that day behind the barn."
"Exactly," Stone muttered. "Keep her under surveillance, but make sure to stay hidden. The minute you hear her speak, I want to know if she was one of the two voices you heard. Otherwise, this whole sham today was a waste of time."
"Have faith, my friend. We'll get whoever it is that did this."
With that, Caleb moved to mingle back in the crowd as Danielle and Mrs. Jones left the building. His beta couldn't follow them just yet. He needed to be here, on the off chance that their would-be killer was still in the room. Although, the more Stone watched the spot that Mrs. Jones and her great-granddaughter had just left, the more he became certain that the conspirators against his mate had just left the room.
~~~
Several hours later, Stone sat in his chair, staring into nothing, with his lights on, giving the pack the pretense he was at home, mourning again. Really what he was doing was waiting. Waiting on his beta to call him with news.
Caleb was currently staking out Danielle's house.
The two men had stayed until they sweet talked the last guest to leave the memorial so the poor alpha could go home. The reason that they had stayed after Mrs. Jones and Danielle had left had been a bust. Out of everyone who had come, which had been the entire Battletown Pack, none of them had matched one of the voices that Caleb had heard that day behind the barn. Danielle Jones had been the only pack-member who Caleb had not heard speak. It seemed as though, slowly, the evidence was starting to pile up against her, which made Stone wonder: Had the day Dia had almost been hit by Mrs. Jones SUV been an accident after all?
He could have sworn it had been the old woman driving that day, but perhaps it had been Danielle instead. If things had gone differently, he could have very well lost Dia before he had ever had her. The thought turned his blood ice cold and made his stomach drop.
Sitting here, waiting, was driving him insane, but there was nothing else he could do right now. The plan was in motion, his beta was in place, and now all they needed was for Danielle Jones to open her mouth and say something.
An hour later, Stone got the phone call he had been impatiently waiting for.
Picking it up, he asked Caleb the only question that mattered. "Is it her?"
"Yes."
Triumph and rage both surged through him at the single word. He finally had one of the two people who had conspired to kill his mate. Now they just had to grab Danielle and find out who else was involved.
"I'll be there in just a minute. Wait for me. If she tries to leave the house, grab her."
Finally, after months of trying to find out who had attacked his mate, he was going to have justice.
Stone hung up the phone, jumped out of his chair, and raced out of his house and to his truck. Throwing himself into it, he started the engine and slammed his foot on the gas pedal. Tires screeched, the motor roared, and he catapulted forward down his driveway. Danielle and her great-grandmother only lived minutes from him, but he couldn't get there fast enough.
He made the five-minute drive in two and a half minutes, slamming on his brakes and sliding to a stop on the side of the road where he saw Caleb waiting for him. Throwing the car in park, he then jumped out of his truck, not even bothering to close the door, and rounded the hood, heading straight for old lady Jones's house.
He didn't bother knocking on the door. As alpha, he took his pack-given right to kick that bitch in. In fact, he kicked the door so hard, he ripped the top half off its hinges.
Caleb was right on his heels as Stone stormed into the house with an enraged roar.
Danielle came into view, running in to see what had happened to her front door. She took one look at Stone, his angry countenance, and how fast he was approaching her, then tried to flee. She had a right to be scared. It didn't matter if she was a female, Stone didn't plan to spare her any more than she had planned to spare his mate.
What caught the alpha totally off guard, though, was Danielle screaming for her great-grandmother.
"They're here! Run, Grandma Jones! They're here for us!"
Stone and Caleb were hot on Danielle's heels, chasing her through the house, within grabbing reach of her, when little old woman Jones stepped out from behind the kitchen door and threw something in his face.
Between one second and the next, Stone's legs wouldn't work. He tried to catch himself as he started to fall, but his hands and arms wouldn't work, either. That was why he went crashing to the ground, completely immobile within seconds.
From the floor, Stone watched as Caleb roared while batting the old woman's hands down. Grabbing her from behind, he secured Mrs. Jones's hands behind her back as her granddaughter escaped out the back door.
The old woman began to mutter strange rhymes before Caleb wrapped his hand around her mouth to stop her.
Magic.
The old bitty had found herself some magic.
It was too much. His wolf didn't leave things to chance. Someone using magic when they weren't born to … Well, that meant things could easily get out of control.
Which seemed to be the case here.
Caleb let out a yelp as old lady Jones bit his hand.
Stone was beginning to get movement back just in the nick of time to shove a dishtowel from the kitchen into the woman's mouth.
After glaring at Mrs. Jones, Caleb cocked an eyebrow at him.
"At the risk of getting my ass beat, I have to say it. I can't believe you let a ninety-year-old lady take you out, boss."
Irritated that his beta was right, Stone countered, "She didn't take me out; she just caught me by surprise. Now stop trying to piss me off and make sure she's securely tied up."
Caleb glared at Mrs. Jones as he took his leather belt off while holding the old woman still with his other hand. "I think she's got a few more surprises for us. Like who the hell she's getting magic from." Done talking, Caleb tied Mrs. Jones's feet to the chair that Stone had put in front of him, then looked back. "Think we can track Danielle down?"
Stone shook his head. "I might have been unable to move, but my hearing worked just fine. She got in a car and took off. We'll never catch up to her tonight. Call our enforcers and tell them to be on the lookout for her. While you do that, I'm going to call Miriam. It's time Mrs. Jones faced the pack's female alpha."
Silence fell around them.
Stone didn't understand why Caleb wasn't on his phone yet, so he looked at the man for answers. What he found was a strange, perplexed look on his beta's face.
"What?"
Caleb looked down at the ground, his Adam's apple bobbing as he took a nervous swallow.
Not having the patience for this sort of shit, Stone snapped, "Just spit it out."
His beta winced, then picked up his head and told Stone, "Boss, don't call your mom by her first name. It's just weird."
Caleb didn't even flinch when his alpha lost control and roared in his face.
Chapter Eleven
"Now, sugar, I don't know who the baby's daddy is, but I bet your baby comes out with your gorgeous hair."
The lunch nurse who was always so nice to her was back visiting Dia later that evening. The sky was a dark blue, on its way to a nighttime black.
Dia was grateful for the woman's visit since she wasn't tired yet. The older African-American woman, whose name she learned was Angela, sat in a chair next to her bed and smiled her sunny smile that Dia found infectious.
"Why do you think that?" Dia asked the nurse softly.
The woman's smile somehow got even brighter as she said, "No one with hair as pretty as yours could not pass that on to their baby. Just you watch, honey. That little blessing in your belly is going to come out with your strawberry blonde locks. And if it's a girl … Whoo-wee! You better get a shotgun ready, because the boys will come from all over."
She couldn't help laughing at Angela's enthusiasm. It felt good to laugh. She hadn't had much reason to do that since she had woken up.
Angela patted her hand to get her attention. "Tomorrow, you're going to be discharged, and I'm going to take you to the Fresh Start Women's Center. You ready to get your life going again, sugar?"
Dia shrugged, uncertain. Using her free hand to rub over her belly, she thought about being out in the world again. She might miss Angela's visits, and the friendly staff here, but she wouldn't miss being made to rest in the hospital.