Streamfield Shifters: Red Rover

Chapter Five

"Aly."

Groggily, I cracked one eye open. "Hrr?" I rumbled incoherently, looking around. Darkness coated my room. What the hell time was it?

"Aly, you need to get up."

Blearily, I fixed on my mother's indistinct form. She hovered over me, one hand on the headboard. Yawning, I stretched, wriggling my toes. "What?"

"Detective Merrickson called in his favor. Something happened up in Murrayfield."

I dragged a hand out from beneath the blankets and scrubbed my eyes. Murrayfield was up in the hilltowns, the unofficial designation given to several small communities north of Streamfield. "What?" I repeated, not believing my ears.

Mom shook her head slightly. "Honey, I really need you to get up. Grandpa's waiting in the truck with your brother."

Slowly, I sat up and ran a hand through my tangled hair; the fog of sleep gradually lifted from my thoughts as I moved. "Grandpa and Richard? But Rachael and I made the deal. Why are they going?"

"Because your cousin is sixteen. No matter what you two did in Atlantis, we're not dragging her out in the dark."

But it's okay for your twenty-three-year-old daughter to go gallivanting into the night. Flicking the covers aside, I slid to the floor and snorted. Sixteen or not, Rachael would definitely be pissed when she found out.

Blinding white light filled my room as Mom turned on the corner lamp.

"Goddamn," I hissed, throwing up an arm to guard my eyes.

"Here," Mom said, throwing a bra at me. "There's no time to change."

Apparently not convinced that I wouldn't roll right back into bed, Mom stood with her back to me while I slipped on the bra and put my T-shirt back on. Combing my hair into some semblance of a ponytail, I followed Mom downstairs, tugging at the track shorts I wore to bed as I went.

She practically shoved me into the back of Grandpa's truck, thrust a mug of tea into my hands and shut the door. I barely had time to buckle my seatbelt before Grandpa backed the truck up.

"Grandpa!" I exclaimed, grabbing onto Richard's seat for stability. "What's going on?"

Richard twisted around instead. "A woman was found murdered in Murrayfield a few hours ago," he explained somberly.

A gasp left my lips and I thumped back against the seat. "Murdered? It's not a family member, is it?"

"No," Grandpa said, carefully negotiating the pre-dawn streets of Streamfield. A quick glance at his dashboard clock told me that it was 4:15AM. No wonder I was dead-tired; I'd only gone to bed a few hours ago. Fourth of July parties were long ones with the Michaels. "But John said that it looks like she was killed by a wolf-shifter."

I rubbed at my eyes with both hands and took a tentative sip of tea. "Do they think that one of us killed her?"

"I don't know," Grandpa replied uncertainly. "All John told me was to come up to Murrayfield as quickly as possible."

Great. What a way to keep your special contractors informed, detective.

Nearly thirty minutes later, a riot of flashing police lights lit up the highway. Grandpa stopped the truck at the barricade and rolled down the window. A state trooper pointed his flashlight in Grandpa's face, sweeping the interior of the truck.

"I'm sorry, folks; the road's closed. You're going to have to turn around."

"I'm Alan Michaels," Grandpa said, handing over his driver's license unprompted. "Detective John Merrickson requested Clan Michaels' presence."