Thunder (Alpha Love - a Paranormal Werewolf Shifter Romance Book 3) (6 page)

“Just a bad morning,” Sofie says and smiles wearily up at him.

“Anything that a good latte won’t cure?” Finn looks impossibly excited at the prospect of this, and it’s only in part for Sofie’s welfare.

“Nice try, Finnbarr. I know you hate the coffee here, but we’re not getting a fancy schmancy machine. Luke would never sign off on it. For a billionaire, he can be pretty cheap.” Sofie shakes her head in despair—although she has to admit it’s nice to have this kind of banal argument after the last 24 hours that she’s had.

“Alright mean boss-lady. Fine! But don’t come crying to me when you need a real caffeine fix!” Finn looks at her expectantly, as if he thinks she might change her mind. When it becomes apparent that she will not be moved, he sighs theatrically. “Well, I guess I’ll get back to doing whatever it is that you want me to be doing today.” He waves vaguely towards the outside of the office, about to head out of the door before he turns around, a comically perplexed expression on his face. “What is it that you want me to do?”

“Have you finished working on our tech problem?” She looks at him in surprise as he nods his head proudly. Even for Finn, that was quick work. “Okay, well I guess that means you have a little time on your hands?”

“More than a little. The stuff the engineers have me doing is child’s play. I barely need to be awake to do it. I don’t get why they’re wasting my talents here, in the land of no Starbucks when I could be of much more use back at HQ.” Finn pouts like a small child, but he draws the line at stamping his feet.

“They’re wasting your talents here because I asked them to. I told Luke that I needed you on the team because you’re the best.” Sofie immediately regrets the words once they’re out of her mouth. “Not that you need to be reminded of that.”

“Well, it doesn’t hurt.” Finn’s expression tells her that he’s coming round from his sulk.

“Anyway, if you’re free then there is something…personal I could use you looking into.” Sofie scribbles down some numbers on a scrap of paper.

“Personal? For you, Braun, anything. It’s not anything to do with your lady bits, is it?” He looks terrified at the thought.

“No, Finn, not that kind of personal.” He breathes an audible sigh of relief, as Sofie hands him over the paper. “Those are my bank account details. I had a little…problem, getting some cash out this morning. An error message I’ve never seen before, and then it ate my card. It was weird, and we’ve had a lot of weird tech stuff go on recently. I figured you might be able to take a look?” Sofie keeps the information down to the basics, there’s only so much that Finn needs to know.

“You’re asking me to hack into a bank?” Finn looks at her in shock. This was a big deal, she knew that, and she suddenly realizes that she should never have asked him to do this.

“You’re right. Forget it. Pretend I didn’t say anything.” Sofie goes to take the scrap out of his fingers, but Finn holds it close to his chest.

“I didn’t say that I wasn’t going to do it.” Finn pauses for a moment, looking at her like he’s weighing her up. “I’m guessing it’s something to do with the reason you were so jumpy when you got here this morning?”

Sofie nods once, not trusting herself to speak without letting the whole story come tumbling out.

“You going to tell me what’s freaked you out?” The way he looks at her tells her that he already has his suspicions. After a few moments of silence, he gives in—hacking a bank is too tempting—even for Finn. “But if I do this, then you owe me.”

“I owe you about a million anyway, so I guess add it to the list,” Sofie admits truthfully, as Finn sets up his laptop at his desk.

She goes back to the rock that she had been about to study before Darwin had lost it. The knowledge that Finn was looking into her little technical malfunction was comforting, even though she still didn’t have a plan of what to do with the problem that was probably already on its way to Beaumont.

She had wanted to use the rock as a distraction, something to stop her from focusing on what was headed towards her. It works better than she could ever have imagined. Work was the one thing that had always taken her out of herself, made her forget everything else around, the good the bad and the ugly.
When I’m with Ashton I feels that way, too,
she thinks.

However, she can’t think about him too much now either. There’s too much else filling her brain, and the complications of their relationship or the fact that she misses him more than she thought possible for someone she’d only seen the night before is too much to take right now. So, instead, she focuses on the rock.

Sofie tries to log the specimen as she would any other sample. She starts to follow the process of naming its constituents, identifying if it’s permeable or not. But questions that it should be easy to answer simply aren’t. The rock is neither one thing nor the other; it defies definition. The only thing she can say for sure is the black color of it, and even that now seems to be changing as she looks at it.

She carries out the acid test, one of the basic analyses for samples. She watches as she drips acid onto the surface of it carefully, expecting it to fizz or for the acid to merely slide off the rock. What she doesn’t expect is for the rock to move. That would be impossible.

“What the—?” Sofie breathes the words out as she watches the rock do the impossible. It starts to vibrate, slowly at first and then faster and faster. It’s pulsing so quickly that the edges blur, and the acid starts to sizzle on top of it. Without thinking, Sofie hovers her hand over the stone in the petri dish. She snatches her hand back as she feels the intense heat coming off of the rock. It’s burning up, boiling the acid until it has evaporated and disappears into the air. She blinks to make sure that what she’s seeing is real.

It’s only when the rock is bone dry again that the vibrations slow and then stop completely. She sits in shock, staring at the rock, trying to fill in the blanks in her mind as to what she had just witnessed. The scientist in her is so excited she can barely contain herself. However, she needs to make sure that she hasn’t just imagined this whole scenario. She turns to call Finn over only to find that his chair is empty, and all the lights are on in the office. Night is falling, she’s been so engrossed in the sample that she hasn’t even noticed the hours tick by.

She grabs her cell, pressing the recording button, a habit that she had inherited from Darwin—from a time when he still wanted to teach her things. She starts to document the rock, describing the sample and the test that she’s just performed and then a thought occurs to her.
It is as if it is protecting itself from the acid, eliminating a threat.

Her words give her another idea. She grabs up her miniature chisel and hammer, trying to extract a chip from the rock. But as she hits it with her chisel, she gets an electric shock from the tool, like static but a little stronger, enough for her to release the handle of the blade and send it clattering to the ground. She pushes her chair away from the table, standing up in readiness for whatever is coming next. She knows that she didn’t imagine the shock that she just received. Whatever is going on here, it is real. She isn’t manifesting it. It’s as if the rock is alive, as if it’s made up of a material with consciousness, with feelings and a sense of self-preservation.

“But that’s impossible.” She breathes the words out in wonder before reminding herself that after seeing men turn into wolves and back again, perhaps she needed to readjust her expectations of what was and wasn’t possible.

She needs to get to grips with what this means. It’s unprecedented and totally unique.
But what significance does it have for the werewolves
? she asks herself.
Why wouldn’t Ashton trust me with whatever its secret is?
She takes a step back towards her desk, wanting to run some more tests, but she’s interrupted by a shout from outside, and she recognizes the voice.

“Darwin.” Sofie sprints out of the office to see her mentor running from the woods and falling at the feet of a couple of the guards. She rushes over to him, running as fast as her legs will carry her. “Give him some room, give him room. He has a heart condition.” She gestures for the guards to take a few steps back, as she crouches over him. “Get a medic,” she shouts at the men, who are still standing there staring at her.

“Darwin, can you hear me?” She opens his eyelids, shining the tiny torch she uses for close lab work into his eyes. She feels herself breathing again when she sees his pupils are responsive; but, he’s still white as a sheet.

“Sofie,” the weakness in his voice breaks her heart, and she has to stop herself from hugging the older man close to her. She knows that his dignity wouldn’t appreciate it.

“Oh, thank God!” She waves the medic over, and that’s when she notices that the strange sound she had been hearing was Darwin grinding his teeth. “Darwin, what happened? What’s going on?” She looks him over, wondering if he’s hurt, as if she’s expecting to see a pool of blood around him, but there’s nothing.

The medic gently nudges her out of the way, taking over the ministrations to Darwin. A small crowd has formed around the old man, some like Sofie and Finn looking down at him in fear, fear of losing him, and some who seem to just be enjoying the excitement.

“He wants to tell you something.” The medic catches Sofie’s attention. “You’ll have to get in close, he’s very weak.”

She bends down, her ear to Darwin’s mouth. “Sofie…”

“I’m here, boss. It’s me.” She bites back the tears that come to her eyes at hearing the feebleness of his voice and his labored breathing.

“In the woods…saw something…big, black and angry…so angry.” Darwin’s words come in short gasps, and Sofie tries to tell him to save his strength, but he ignores her. “It was a wolf.” The final word he says with certainty, and it’s the only one that the people around them hear. A murmur goes around, and Sofie hears the phrase,
Kill the wolf
. “It…saw me…looked at me…Its eyes…they were…golden.”

Sofie gasps as she gets to grips with what Darwin is telling her. He saw a were—although they weren’t supposed to be in the canyon now. Not only that, but it wasn’t just any were; it was Gus. She would know that description anywhere, he was the darkest of the wolves; she knew that much from the time she’d been spending with Ashton.
What the hell was he doing there?

“It’s alright, boss. You’re okay now.” Sofie tries to soothe him with her words, but he grabs hold of her wrist in a vice-like grip.

“Listen. Listen,” Darwin urges her until she closes her mouth. “It’s dangerous…ran towards me…I ran…but it was fast…too fast.” Darwin looks at Sofie, like he’s trying to communicate something to her before he lies back, his energy spent.

“Darwin! Darwin!” She grabs hold of his shoulders, shaking him.

The medic checks his pulse. “He’s alright, he’s in shock. We need to get him to a hospital. He’s going to be fine.” The young doctor looks at her kindly, like he sees how much Darwin means to her—something that she hadn’t quite grasped until she thought he was being taken away from her. She steps back to let him take Darwin away for treatment.

Two of the guards are checking their pistols and murmuring to each other away from the group. They look desperate to head into the woods and test out their aim.

“What are you two doing?” Sofie walks over to them, putting on her best—
I’m the boss here
—voice.

“We’re going to look for the wolf that scared your friend over there half to death. You got a problem with that?” The taller guard looks at her, unimpressed.

“Yeah, I do. Wolves don’t attack unless they’re provoked. You’re not going to do anything to that animal.” Her voice is strong and more certain than she feels.

“Didn’t you hear what the guy said? The wolf attacked him. Who are you, anyway? The animal preservation crew?” The short guard chuckles to his friend.

“No, I’m the person that just got you both kicked off of this site.” Sofie folds her arms and plants her feet, looking particularly badass.

“She means it, too.” Finn stands next to her, giving the guards some friendly advice. “This is not a lady whom you want to cross. This is her being nice!”

“Well, lady, whoever you are. If you’re kicking us out, then I guess we’ll just be on our way.” The tall guard turns his back to them, heading towards the wood again, the shorter one trailing him, clearly unsure over what’s going on.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Sofie calls over to them, wishing she didn’t sound so shrill.

“Well, ma’am, we’re just two concerned citizens looking for a wild animal. What’re you going to do? Fire us? Oh, you did that already.” His voice is dripping sarcasm, a tone Sofie didn’t think this Elmer Fudd look-a-like would be familiar with.

“Just what we need, a couple of wannabe heroes. Dumb and Dumber are going to get themselves, or worse, one of us, killed. I bet they don’t even know which end to point away from them.” Finn gestures towards their pistols but, in true Finn style, he doesn’t bother to lower his voice.

The two men don’t seem to take too kindly at hearing his barbed comment, and they stop in their tracks, turn around, and start advancing towards Finn and Sofie.

“What did you say four-eyes? Something you wanna share with the group?” The tall man puffs his chest out like Sofie has seen gorillas do in the wild before they launch themselves at each other.