Adrian
Two and a half weeks.
It had been two and a half weeks since the accident and they were a few days away from winter break. Nick slowly became an insomniac because he was afraid for his family and Leila’s safety; while Leila, bless her soul, tried her best to console him but it was futile. Carmen was like a ticking time bomb ready to go off; while his dad and Alpha Joel weren’t telling him anything new.
Then there was Aria.
She was slowly losing her marbles too.
Adrian knew Aria was doing her best to be strong, but he could tell that she couldn’t handle it all. Mira was a pivotal person in her life and Adrian couldn’t imagine what losing her must’ve felt like. He didn’t even want to get started with his mom and the general state of both packs . . .
In short, this year was turning out to be a disaster.
He was even doing a pretty crappy job of keeping himself emotionally checked in.
Some days the guilt overwhelmed him even though he did his best to remind himself that he wasn’t alone, and that he didn’t have to have the answers for everything, but during those days it just wasn’t enough. Adrian couldn’t help but think about how Mira and countless others were missing.
Back then when he saw the numbers, he was shocked. Now there was a plus-one to the statistics, who also just happened to be his friend which made him reevaluate the numbers again and see them in a while new light. Now, he felt nauseated whenever the numbers went up. It also didn’t help that the amount of fear these incidents managed to instill itself into his people were slowly rising as well. It was burdensome to carry this much paranoia in their daily lives.
Then there was Aria.
It had gotten to the point where he seriously considered what life would’ve been like if he didn’t involve Aria. It would be useless though, because even though he might think that his presence may have put her on the map; she and her family were already so deeply intertwined with their world that it wouldn’t have made a difference. Her mom was friends with someone from a pack, her dad was his dad’s soul mate, and she was his.
It was all so messy and convoluted.
***
Winter break finally began and Adrian’s mind was more than ready to start investigating by himself. If his dad wasn’t willing to tell him anything, then he would have to dig for it himself.
At first, he didn’t know where to start and this was probably a fruitless endeavor. He had less resources and man power to work with, plus Adrian didn’t even have the password to get on to the database. Not that he would be getting that password anytime soon, but it would’ve been a major plus.
All he had to work with were the internet and Mira’s accident files.
Adrian did his best to observe all indentations, marks, and any key leads on Mira’s car. He also made sure to write everything down to make sure he didn’t miss a single detail, and even went so far as to print another copy and number them accordingly.
As he started to look at the older photos of her car, he made sure to look in closely to see if all the scratches and indentations were there before the accident. As he went through his notes, he started to use the process of elimination to narrow down his evidence. After which, he immediately called several repair shops to see if there had been any repairs on a red car recently.
After all, that red paint on the yellow jeep wasn’t part of the original design.
Nevertheless, all his hard work came back empty-handed. Maybe it was because of confidentiality agreements, or the lack of details he couldn’t provide. During his search, Adrian couldn’t even tell them the maker, model, or year that car might’ve been, much less the license plate.
He continued to search through the internet and scour through several news outlets where Adrian manged to come across a video of the crash. It was a twenty-second video, but he took it as a sign. As he looked into it, he was grateful that the crash wasn’t at some random street or highway, but was at an intersection where there were several security cameras from nearby businesses.
Adrian wasn’t sure why he had never seen this footage before, but he didn’t complain even if it was in extremely low quality. Adrian wasn’t able to exactly make out the license plate of the car, but it was indeed red and old as hell.
Next, he did what he thought was best and called Carmen over. She was a tech expert, well in comparison to himself, and somehow was able to make the video significantly clearer. They were even able to figure out the license plate and model of the car. This was definitely some sort of breakthrough.
However, they weren’t exactly sure where to go from there. Carmen was prepared to go in like some sort of superhero and charge into the cabin in the woods, complete with sharp teeth and all, but that wasn’t smart. If anything, that would get them into more trouble than what it was worth, especially if their information was no longer accurate.
Plus, Adrian wasn’t sure if Eva Damascus was working alone anymore. The cabin was on the way towards Lake Tahoe which was pretty far considering that all the recent accidents were closer towards the city. It was a lengthy drive to continuously do something this sketchy over the course of time.
So while Carmen went to inform Alpha Joel of the new discovery in the hopes that they would be able to use this information, Adrian followed other traces in his research, such as the owner of the
