Peter wanted to do the right thing and give back Stiles his bag first thing in the morning but over breakfast, his phone rang with an out of town number. Peter excused himself from the loud table, not that anybody noticed, they were too busy discussing baby names on one end of the table while the other end, consisting of the teenagers, was more busy with quizzing each other for a chemistry test today.
"What is it?" Peter answered the phone without a greeting. He had retreated to the library where he should be safe from curious ears.
"Not sure," the man at the other end said. "Might be nothing but you better have a look at this."
Half an hour later, when the house was empty except for Walter and Pamela who both were about to leave as well for whatever they had planned for the day, Peter got in the car and drove two towns over to meet one of his contacts, Bob the owner of a small gun shop.
He did, however, take the time to use Stiles' phone to shoot the sheriff a message that he had Stiles' bag and every intention to give it back but that he was kind of busy at the moment. If there was a good time to drop it off at the cabin?
Peter could drop it off there anytime, Stiles didn't need to be there for that, but Peter would have liked to give it to him in person. He wasn't exactly sure what he was hoping to achieve with that but he wanted to see Stiles again. Just to make sure that he was okay, his retreat yesterday had been a bit too hasty to just shrug it off.
The sheriff answered a few minutes later. He said that without Stiles having his phone, he wasn't able to reach him and he couldn't give a good time for a drop-off except that they would have dinner together tomorrow.
Come by at the station around noon, the sheriff wrote. I would like to talk to you anyway
Peter read the message with a smile.
"Aren't we a nosy one," he said and wrote back that he would be there. He still didn't know how much Stiles had told the sheriff but after their encounter near the lake where the sheriff had confirmed that Stiles had mentioned Peter to him, it didn't come as a surprise that the sheriff wanted to have a closer look at him.
Peter put Stiles' phone back in the bag which he put in the trunk of his car. He doubted that anybody would go into his room while he wasn't there but with his luck, somebody needed a book or something while he wasn't home and stumbled over the bag. No need to risk that. Stiles' research would be hard to explain and Peter didn't want Talia or the rest of the pack to get worried about somebody snooping around. And maybe he would take a little detour on the way back just to check if Stiles was in his cabin.
The ride to the gun shop was not that long but it did give Peter time to think. Where was Stiles when he wasn't in his cabin or in town? He was at the cabin quite often but his scent had not been so prominent in there that Peter thought that he lived there. The cabin didn't look like somebody lived there permanently. If he had to guess, he would say that it was Stiles' retreat.
The only other place he could think of was the sheriff's house but Denise and now the sheriff himself had confirmed that Stiles didn't live there.
"Does he keep you at the bottom of the lake?" Peter wondered out loud. Was Stiles stuck under water most of the time? That was not a pleasant thought. Peter remembered way too clearly the feeling of drowning. And according to Stiles, he had drowned in that lake. Was he forced to stay where he'd died? A constant reminder of his death? Peter shuddered at that thought.
Peter parked the car in front of the gun shop but he needed a moment to bring his mind back to the task at hand.
"What do you have?" Peter greeted the man behind the counter. At the moment, the shop was empty so they could speak freely.
"Two guys." Bob didn't waste time with platitudes either. "Came in yesterday. Worn jeans, flannel, could use a shower, you know the type. Said they were hunting buck. Mentioned that they were heading to Beacon Hills."
Peter did know the type. Most were just that, simple men with simple pleasures, but some were not out for buck.
"What makes you think that they're not just on a hunting trip?"
"Aside from them heading to Beacon Hills?" Bob adjusted his trucker cap. He was exactly the type he'd just described, not that Peter would point that out to him, and for sure he was not just a harmless hunter out for buck on the weekend. But at least he wasn't a hunter who had it out for werewolves either.
"Ain't as stupid as I look." Bob gave him a toothy smile from behind his salt and pepper beard. "Folks switched to French when talking among themselves but I've been dealing with that witch from New Orleans long enough to know some stuff. Mountain ash came up and silver."
"You got footage of them?"
Peter left the gun shop not much later with video footage of the two men. It didn't have audio but the quality was way better than from the usual surveillance camera, he could work with that.
On his way back into town, he made that little detour out to the lake.
Stiles' jeep was parked a little out of sight, easy to miss from the road, which meant that Stiles was most likely home. If this counted as home. Peter let out a bitter huff.
There was no heart-beat indicating that somebody was in the cabin but Peter tried the door nevertheless. It was locked and the door didn't budge. Not that he was trying to rip it off again.
"Stiles?" Peter called out but he didn't get an answer. There was a light breeze leaving the surface of the lake in ripples but aside from the usual critters, Peter didn't sense anybody around. Even the feeling of not being welcomed here was just a little nagging on the back of his mind.
"Stiles?" Peter tried again, louder this time. Still no answer.
He could just leave Stiles' bag at the door, Peter doubted that anybody would stumble over it and steal it, but that didn't seem right.
In the end, Peter ripped out an empty page of Stiles' notebook and wrote him a message:
Since I missed you here, I'm going to drop off your bag at the station
For a moment he was pondering to add more but then he just signed it and slipped it under the door. With one last look around, Peter shouldered the bag and walked back to his car.
Before he drove over to the station, he got out Stiles' phone. Aside from the sheriff and the library Stiles had only a garage and a few fast food places in his contacts. It was kind of sad, actually.
Peter added his own number to the short list and shot himself a message to get Stiles' number as well. Satisfied with that, Peter put the car in reverse and brought it back on the road.
Peter had his run-ins with the former sheriff but that had been in his teenage years. Since then he'd been to the sheriff's department only a couple of times, mainly on behalf of various pack members. The last time had been to aid Isaac when they had questioned him about his father's death.
The way Sheriff Stilinski had been looking at Peter, it had been clear that he had known that Isaac was not the one he should be interrogating but aside from that hunch, there had been no reason to question Peter. He was not that sloppy.
I'd beg to differ, he could almost hear Stiles' voice in his mind.
"Shut up," Peter said to the imaginary Stiles while he walked up to the entrance.
Looked like most of the station was on lunch break, aside from the clerk behind the desk and one deputy in the back, there was nobody in sight.
The clerk looked up when he approached her.
"Hi, Nancy," he greeted her with a winning smile. "Is the sheriff in?"
Her last name wasn't Hale but she was family and with that pack. And she was one of his contacts in the station.
"He said that you would come by." She gestured at the closed door with the word Sheriff written on it. "Something I should know about?" She lowered her voice but Peter doubted that the deputy, Parrish if he wasn't mistaken, had even noticed that he'd come in. He was pretty engrossed in his phone.
"No," Peter assured her. "Met his nephew at the library yesterday and he forgot his bag." He lifted said bag to emphasize his words. "Heard he comes here quite often?"
Since Peter didn't want to draw too much attention to Stiles, he hadn't used his contacts at the station. He doubted that they knew more about Stiles than that he was the sheriff's nephew anyway.
"He brings him lunch a few times a week," Nancy confirmed his assumption. "Over the summer he helps out from time to time, filing and things like that. Why?"
"Just curious."
She didn't believe him but when he just smiled at her, she sighed and waved him through.
"Sheriff Stilinski?" Peter knocked at the door and poked his head in.
"Ah, Peter. Come in." The sheriff gestured for him to come closer.
Peter closed the door and took a seat.
"Stiles left in a haste yesterday." Peter put the bag in the second chair. "Hope he's okay?"
At that, the sheriff made a pained face and leaned back in his chair. He had time to prepare himself for this conversation but now it looked as if he was still pondering his options.
"He's okay now, " Sheriff Stilinski finally said.
"I didn't mean to upset him," Peter said honestly.
"It was his idea to tell you, I get that." The sheriff nodded. "But you were pushing."
"Can't deny that, Sheriff."
"Call me John, please." The sheriff gave him a weak smile. "Looks like we're sharing some secrets now."
"How did you get into this, John?" Peter asked. "Why are you pretending to be his uncle?"
"Rookies get the easiest and most boring jobs," he said after a long pause.
"Like patrolling an empty back-road in the middle of the night." Peter had been hiding under some bushes from a young deputy not that long ago.
"It keeps people from the lake." John shrugged. "At least most of the time." He gave Peter a look.
"Rookies also get send out to deal with teenage shoplifters," he continued.
So Stiles had been stealing to get by before John had taken him in.
"And you adopted the delinquent?"
"We kind of adopted each other." John's face darkened, there was more to the story that much was clear but that expression left his face quickly and he straightened up. "Anyway. Stiles told me that you're interested in him."
That was unexpected. Peter blinked at him, not sure what to say to that.
"Stiles doesn't look like it but he's older than the two of us together he can do pretty much whatever he wants with whoever he wants."
"That's not what I expected you to say." Peter dared to relax. "But I can assure you, my interest in him is not of that nature." Not for the main part but he didn't say that.
At that John snorted. "Yeah, same for him."
Whatever that meant.
"However …" John leaned to the side and opened a drawer. He put a single bullet in the middle of his desk. Peter almost laughed at the gesture but then he caught the scent. Wolfsbane.
"Your pack has hurt him deeply. Your alpha drowned him like a rat just to cheat his way out of a debt." John's voice was stone-cold. "He had a flashback last night."
"I …" Peter didn't know what to say. For some reason, it had never occurred to him that the sheriff might know about werewolves as well. After Stiles' revelation yesterday it shouldn't come as such a surprise, though.
"This is not a shovel speech," John clarified. "What you and Stiles are doing is none of my business but if you're playing games with him, if you or Talia or somebody else from your pack is using him for whatever I want you to know that Derek is not the only one you should worry about."
"Understood, sir."
Peter left the station with an uneasy feeling in his stomach, this had not turned out as expected.
He was just about to start his car when his phone beeped with a new message.
There's a Stiles here looking for you, Cora wrote. He says you have his bag?
A/N NaNoWriMo starts next week. I'm going to finish this story and my other one over the month so there will be more frequent updates in December. There will be updates over November but I'm not sure when I'll have the time for those. Please be patient with me.
