Chapter 69

Sophia held the 11-inch tablet in her hands and ran her thumb along the smooth sides. How weird it was to hold something from outside this hell in her hands again. Something that only a week ago, she would have taken for granted. Movement on the screen caught her eye. A witness was being sworn in on the stand. Someone she had never seen before. He carried himself like Scott, Neil and Connor did, so she had wondered if he was a soldier, as well. Now that her father had been moved and she was the only one in the cell block, there was a haunting silence and she wondered if it held the secrets of those who had been put to death within its walls. Focus, Sophia, she told herself, was she losing her mind too? She made the screen bigger on the tablet, and gave a little gasp at the sight of the courtroom.

The walls were intricately carved wood that was stained a deep burgundy brown. There were round pillars that separated the Plaintiff and the Defendant side. The sign of the Lucian pack had been adorned up and down the pillars and along the crown molding that bordered the ceiling the whole way around. A deep burgundy chair rail ran along the back, directly behind where the rows of seats for the spectators ran in a semi-circle around the room. At the front of the room, the judge sat in his black robed gowns on the platform, front, and center. Above his head was a circular window with beams burned into the wood beaming out of it, to represent the moon. On the right were the arresting officers, the people from the military who had been present when they were arrested. A weasel of a man who stood about 5 foot 8 with a mustache that curved at its ends, stood in preparation to examine the witness. On the left, was Neil’s public defender who looked bored and like he’d rather be playing soccer with toothpicks rammed under his toenails, then defending Neil. Sophia chewed on her bottom lip, worried. She knew that Neil would need a public defender that would fight for him, and press the fact, that if Neil was to be punished for following orders, then all of the military should be, as well as every pack member who had tortured and harmed Sophia over the years due to her father’s orders. Next to the bored attorney, sat Neil. He looked so dejected that Sophia cried out.

The man on the stand was answering questions about the orders they had to follow while they served under Thorin. For the first time, Neil’s attorney looked interested, and Sophia’s heart filled with hope. Goddess, she prayed. Please help me. The weasel attorney picked up his pencil and started jotting notes on the yellow legal pad that sat in front of him. He sat straighter and was engaging in the trial. Thankful, Sophia closed her eyes for a second. When she opened them, Neil still hadn’t moved.

Feeling that things were moving forward in the courtroom, and unable to ascertain what the judge was thinking; he sat regally and as expressionless as Neil, Sophia gave up. She searched the audience for Leo or Scott. Neither of them was there. Her heart sank. She was concerned for Scott, and Connor too, but she was petrified for Leo. Her father’s words repeated in her mind. She never should have left him, she thought. She damned herself, because she knew, she knew her father was losing the tiny thread of sanity that he was able to fake from time to time. There were signs, and all she did was have him checked on. She should have been there, to protect him, and the girl that mattered to him. If she were there, it not only would have saved them but everyone else. Where the hell is he? She wracked her brain trying to think.

Sophia remembered Scott had a cell phone on him unless they had taken it away from him. She also knew Scott would let them confiscate a dummy. A phone that he never used, in which he, Neil, Connor and Vicky had carefully coded conversations that were really about nothing more than the weather or what they were eating. That would be the phone Scott would let them confiscate. She found the app with the little green phone on it. She chewed on her lip while she punched in numbers, praying that she remembered the number. She pressed send and when a voice she didn’t know answered she hung up. Shit, she thought. That’s the wrong number. She tried to go back into her memory to the one time she called it, when she had scored well on a test and wanted to share it with him right away. She punched the numbers in, inverting the last two numbers. She pressed send. The call was ignored.

Come on, she thought. After a minute, she pulled up the texting app and quickly typed a text.

“Hey Scott, it’s me. I just remembered that I never told you that I aced that test you helped me with. The one on pressure points and anatomy. Appreciate your help. Call if you wanna catch up.”

She sent the message.

In seconds the tablet lit up, blinking the number across the screen.

“Thank the goddess,” she whispered.

She accepted the call and adjusted the volume to the lowest level that she’d be able to hear.

“Sophia?”

Sophia blinked back tears at the sound of his voice.

“Scott, are you okay?” She kept her voice low so that she would hear someone enter the cell block before they heard her.

“I’m fine. What the hell are you calling from?”

“I got my hands on a tablet.”

“In jail?” he asked.

“Scott, listen to me, please. I don’t know how much time I have. I need you to find Leo. He may have heard things. He may know things because my father is here as well. Neil needs a fair trial. If he doesn’t get one...” Her voice trailed off.

“I’ll find him. But I must be careful. I have a tail on me that I can’t shake. I can’t leave the territory, and I have to stay in their accommodations, they call it, but it’s just a level up from where you are. Give me time, but I’ll find him.”

“Scott, please find him. When my father was spewing his verbal diarrhea at me, he said things, horrible things about things he had put Leo through. I need him to be safe, but we also may need his help too. Please.”

“I will, Sophia. I promise, and you know I don’t break promises. Now tell me how you got this tablet?” Suspicion is clear in his voice.

“It’s all rather confusing, but when my father’s psychotic tirade had finally broken me, I started screaming and yelling at him, then this woman came, and she ordered him to be moved to another cell block. She introduced herself to me and reassured me about my father then went away. When she came back, she handed me this tablet, with a live feed from the trial up on the screen. I made a mistake and called the wrong number first.”

“Who is this woman, Sophia? What’s her name, did you get her name?”

“Yes, she said she was Benson Baciu. Scott, do you know anything about Neil’s trial? They charged him with awful things. Things he’d be sentenced to death many times over for.”

“I’ll look into it, Sophia, but trust Neil to take care of himself. He can, but more importantly, he has to right now.” Scott paused for a second to gather his thoughts, but before he could continue, Sophia moved on.

“Scott, I’m confused. That Benson lady, she said she’s the alpha for the Moon Walker pack. She shouldn’t be here, and she shouldn’t be giving orders to the Lucian pack. And more importantly, they shouldn’t be listening to her commands. Do you know anything about that? Can I trust her?”

Scott hesitates.

“Soph, check the trial really quick, see if you can see what’s going on. I’ll be right back.” She heard Scott put the phone down and she toggled to the live feed. It looked like it was the same as it was before. The same witness was on the stand, and Neil still hadn’t moved. She scanned the audience for anything that may have changed when she first viewed it. Scott came back and she toggled back to the phone app.

“Anything?”

Sophia shook her head, then realized Scott wouldn’t see that. “No, nothing’s changed at all. Is everything okay?”

Scott sighed and she could hear the agitation in the sound.

“I shouldn’t tell you this, I shouldn’t discuss this with anyone that wasn’t there. But when Neil and I were serving, we received orders for a top-secret mission. We were assigned to hunt down a rare species of werewolf. A particular kind. When we were hunting them, under deep cover, we ran into Benson Baciu. She had taken a liking to Neil and I and hung out with us in the bar one night. She revealed who she was. Then she told us she was hunting an elusive, powerful breed of werewolf. It turned out she was hunting the same werewolves that we were.”

“But I don’t understand. Why is she here giving orders to the Lucian pack? Why does it seem like she is in charge? Are those werewolves in the territory? Are they dangerous?” Sophia flooded Scott with questions.

She could almost hear him shake his head before he spoke. “I don’t know, Soph. But listen carefully. We’re gonna get off the phone, then you need to go into the call log and text log of the table and only wipe out the calls and texts that you’ve done. Then you need to go into the settings, find the system controls and open the history, make sure anything that you did is deleted. Then you need to clear the deleted files, and the cache. And do it the second we hang up, okay?′

“Yes.”

“Okay, I’m going to go now. I have some things to take care of, one of which is shaking this tail off my ass and finding Leo. Be strong in there, Soph. And trust Neil. Believe in him as much as he believes in you.”

“Be safe, Scott. Please be safe.” Sophia disconnected the call then went through the process of doing everything Scott had instructed. When she was done, she leaned against the wall with her knees bent and the tabled sitting against her thighs and knees.

Believe in him as much as he believes in you, Scott had said to her. Sophia tried with all her might to send a message to Neil with her mind. She wanted, no she needed him to know that she believed in him. She did. She did believe in him.

She let her gaze lower to the tablet and she used her fingers to make the screen larger so she could take in his appearance. His hair, his eyes. The way he held himself straight and tall while facing the potential of him being ordered to death. After allowing her eyes to feast on him for a few minutes, she settled in to watch the trial. She was determined to take mental note of anything and everything that could be important in case the public defender screwed things up.