Chapter 53: The Investigator

You know you can't tell him the whole truth?

The words went on repeat inside her head as she watched Special Agent Rob Delgado lay out his findings in the spare office at the sheriff's station. Beacon County had not been able to replace all of its lost deputies after Matt killed most of their staff, so there was plenty of space available. All of the windows were still boarded up after the shooting and contractors were busy with the refurbishment. The county had approved a security upgrade, including a holding cell with an electronic lock since the last one was rendered useless by Isaac's breakout.

She and Sheriff Stilinski stood on either side of the conference table — Rob Delgado never used a desk in his life — with a big map of the county with surrounding areas.

"This is where you found the cell phone?" her dad asked and Joe nodded. Did not volunteer that she still had the phone, because the phone came with an arrow and that would lead them astray from what actually happened to Erica and Boyd after the hunters. Thank God he didn't ask. He marked the spot on the map. "And this is where you knew they were last seen?"

Pencil tapping against the house under construction belonging to the Argents. They had cleared out of there long ago, nothing left but loose wiring and the smell of bleach. She nodded.

You know you can't tell him the whole truth?

"All right," her dad said in his New York-accent. Familiar as it was unfamiliar. "Working theory is that they were headin' in this direction," he marked the spot of the found cell phone, "intercepted by someone and either persuaded or forced over to this house where they eventually left. Time estimate gives us around forty hours before she called me," he leaned over to the neighboring county, a small gas station in the middle of nowhere, "from here. Call lasting twenty seconds."

Rob Delgado, in a rumpled suit from an overnight flight, put his hands in his belt — a classic police stance if Joe ever saw one — and surveyed the map. Heavy bags under his eyes and he had not shaved for a few days. Straight from one assignment to the next. She recognized the frown on his face, saw it often in the mirror — he did not have a good feeling about this.

"Not that I don't appreciate your input, Rob," Sheriff Stilinski began, his arms also in his belt. "But I'm not sure how this falls under the FBI's jurisdiction. Two runaway kids, sixteen-year-olds, a boy and a girl and no indication of foul play..."

You know you can't tell him the whole truth?

Her dad glanced at her before answering. "I dunno, Noah. First the call to Joe and then to me. Girl was obviously trying to get help."

Guess what her dad's voicemail had been about? Joe dug her nails into her own arm as punishment — listening to her dad explain that last night had made her want to scream. If they'd known sooner, if they'd figured things out earlier, she would have done things differently.

Sheriff Stilinski dragged his hand over his face. "We gotta take into account that they could just be messing around. Prank calls."

"That's what your gut tells you?" her dad asked with a raised eyebrow. Sheriff Stilinski sighed and shook his head. "I know you, Noah. Known you for a lot of years. You're telling me that you don't feel it in your bones that something's not right here?"

"Been feeling that for a while now." Sheriff Stilinski looked worn. He sighed and checked his notes. "I went and talked to their families. Vernon was in a foster home and the woman told me he wasn't the first to jump out of the system, especially not at that age. Typically described as withdrawn and somewhat of a loner. No living relatives they knew of, nowhere he would likely go."

"Boyd," her dad repeated as if tasting the name. "Any relations to that girl who was abducted from the ice rink ten years ago? Alice or Alicia or something?"

With a sigh, the Sheriff nodded. "Alicia. His kid sister." The two men shared a look that Joe could not really interpret, but eventually, the Sheriff continued with reading from his notebook. "Erica Reyes, an only child, lived with her parents. Father works for an insurance company, her mother on some kind of disability. Erica's been epileptic her whole life, heavily medicated, in and out of hospitals. Father mentioned she had seemed different lately, staying out all night, not coming home for days. He was just glad she was making friends, seems like, something about new medication finally working."

You know you can't tell him the whole truth?

"Joe?" her dad asked and she looked up from where she had been worrying her lip with her teeth, studying the map. "How'd you know this girl?"

"Uh, she, uh, was in Scott's year," Joe said, clearing her throat when her voice stuck. "I only met her a couple of times, but..."

But what, Joe? She reminded you of yourself at that age? When you would start staying out all night, not coming home for days? Except your dad wasn't happy you made friends, he practically got the entire NYPD out looking for you at those times. Got a lot of your friends arrested, but somehow you always got off the hook. Underage drinking, simple assaults, drug possession — and that all caught up with you when your dad finally had enough and you got shipped to juvie, huh?

"We talked," Joe continued, shaking off her own inner monologue. "I guess we became friends, sort of. She, uh, I mean...I was a lot like her when I was that age." She shrank under her father's watchful stare and addressed the Sheriff. "Look, I know how it seems on paper, that they're just two kids running away from less than ideal situations, but you didn't hear her voice. She was scared."

"Okay, you know any of her other friends? People she hung out with, who might know something?"

You know you can't tell him the whole truth?

Clearing her throat, she said: "I do, but they won't talk to you. Not directly." At the two men's skeptical frowns, she shrugged. "They're all accounted for the night she disappeared anyway."

The last thing she needed now was her dad suspecting Derek for any involvement in Erica's disappearance. Well, he was involved, but not directly. Just the catalyst, as he was the one who turned her into a werewolf.

The thought soured the memory of their kiss the night before. He claimed Erica had asked for the bite because it would cure her epilepsy, and what happened when she changed her mind? He did not exactly kick her out, but he sure as hell did not put too much effort into stopping her either. Mistakes, we all make mistakes and Erica's biggest one was getting seduced by the promise of control delivered from the lips of a pretty face. The same lips that had kissed Joe so intensely she wanted to die and be reborn, the same lips who had delivered a single warning:

You know you can't tell him the whole truth?

"All right. I'm heading out for the gas station, see if they remember Erica, if she was alone, or things like that." Her dad frowned at the map and glanced at Sheriff Stilinski. "You're saying she didn't have a driver's license?" The Sheriff shook his head and her dad touched the map, trailed the distance from the house to the gas station. "Too far to be taken on foot. She either had help or took a bus or something, could be a lead worth looking into."

Except Erica and Boyd were werewolves and that distance would be nothing to them. Already this partial-truth thing was derailing the investigation. Throwing them off the real tracks.

"You got plans, kid? Wanna head out with me?"

At first, she didn't realize her dad was talking to her and must have looked as surprised as the Sheriff did at the prospect. She blinked, pressing her hand into her chest with a question mark on her face.

"Rob," Sheriff Stilinski said with a slight frown. He addressed her dad directly, turning his back to her a bit to give some semblance of privacy. "I mean, I know she's your kid and all, but she's not exactly qualified to be part of the investigation."

"Not bringin' her to a shoot-out, Noah. Just some leg work." Her dad buttoned up his blazer, getting ready to leave. "Come on, I haven't seen my daughter in months. You're telling me you never bring your boy with you on patrols?"

The Sheriff admitted, grudgingly, that he did that on occasion, but he still did not consider it the same. No matter, her dad jumped on the excuse. He gestured for her to come along and she nodded awkwardly at the Sheriff.

"We'll stop for breakfast on our way over, how's that sound? Lookin' too skinny there, kid."

It was a bright glorious day and her father put on a pair of dark sunglasses as he led the way to a new-looking station wagon that he either borrowed from the local field office or rented from the airport. Joe sighed and got in — she could use breakfast, but her dad was acting like everything was fine again when it really wasn't.

"Why do you have a tan?" she asked when they were on the road. Her normally white-passing dad looked every bit as Latino as he really was.

Her dad tapped his fingers in rhythm to the song playing on the radio. He smiled when looking at her. "If I tell you, I might have to kill ya." A short laugh at her rolling eyes — he always made that joke, like he was CIA instead of just the FBI. "All right, this isn't public intel, but I was on assignment down south. Like, way down south."

She got where he was going with it. "Like, beyond our borders south? I thought federal agent implied domestic travel only."

"Working this case with the help of our fellow Federales. Crossed borders, crossed jurisdiction. Good people. They're on alert for Kate Argent if she should show up. As much as I asked, threatened, and begged they're not letting me near that case again, saying my judgment's clouded because of what happened to you."

Again... She tried to ignore his questioning gaze, giving her the space to elaborate if she wanted.

When she didn't, he cleared his throat and prompted: "You wanna talk about that?"

"If I want to talk about how no one believed me when I said she wasn't dead?" Joe snapped, harder than intended. "That everyone believed I was just so traumatized from getting shot I was delirious? That everyone conveniently ignored the only reason I was at that station in the first place was to report her?"

Her dad nodded encouragingly. "That's the ticket."

"No, I don't want to talk about it."

"Kid, you gotta-"

"I want her caught, Dad! I want her behind bars, visible, so I can know she's there! I want to know that she's not behind Erica's disappearance, I want to know Erica is alive and-" Frustrated, she pressed her hands into her eyes, wiping the tears away. "What I don't want to do is talk about it."

The road rolled by in quiet for some time. "We'll find them. Both of them. Kate Argent's on our ten most wanted list, distributed internationally. And this Erica's got two sets of Delgados looking for her, that's more than most get."

Joe snorted, the notion of her own investigation being parallelled with her dad's was ridiculous. If anything, it counted for more that Erica had Derek Hale and Jimmy Carter also looking for her. Joe's talents did not include finding people.

As if her dad could hear her thoughts, he cleared his throat. "So, uh, Derek Hale, huh?"

She sank down in her seat. After she had not picked up when he called last night, he'd called Aunt Mel who had asked Scott who had in turn called Jimmy who finally gave away that she was out with Derek. Traitors, the whole bunch of them.

"Good lookin' guy," her dad commented and Joe tried to become one with the upholstery of the car's interior, blend into the background. "A bit of backstory, but nothin' too bad. You'd think he'd want to have dinner with us one night?"

"Dad, I don't even want to have dinner with you," Joe muttered and put an effective stop to her dad's ministrations.

Derek Hale and her dad together were just too much to bear. Derek would flip on his other persona and they'd talk cars and sports and her dad would just love him and give her this knowing look every once in a while and she could not stand the thought of it. She hated how well he got along with Alex before, how he just went to great lengths to disprove everything Joe had said about him by acting like such a great guy. His true colors came out after a while though, but Joe would rather not repeat that ordeal with Derek. Could end in a literal blood bath.

As he promised, they did stop for breakfast at a roadside diner. Ate in silence, her dad stabbing his fork into the plate so hard she worried it would crack, while she shuffled the scrambled eggs around on her own. It had been a mean comment from her side. What worried her more was how he hadn't responded as she expected. No yelling, no clap-back. Not that the cold shoulder improved anything, but at least it meant she got to keep her voice for a while longer instead of screaming herself hoarse at him.

Finally, when the waitress brought them two cups of coffee, he leaned back in the booth and flung his napkin on the table. "This 'bout me not coming here when you were in the hospital?"

Her eyebrows rose. "No?"

"'Cause, you should know, that nearly killed me. Literally. My partner had to knock me about to get my head back in the game, saying I was no good to you dead either."

Her voice dripped with venom. "I'm so sorry my near-death inconvenienced you."

"That's not what I-" Her dad put his coffee down too hard on the saucer and rubbed his face. "I wanted to be there, Jos- Joe. You should know that, you know I'd walk through hell to get to you." He kept quiet for a while, staring out the window to the empty highway. "You know how many strings I had to pull to get those helicopters in the air last time you called? How many favors I had to call in? To just leave in the middle of a job to go save you?"

"I wanted you to catch Kate, not save me," Joe spat, as that had been the truth. "No matter what, you'd get her confession on tape. You're the only guy with a badge I knew they couldn't have paid off already." She slammed her back against the booth, suddenly nauseated. "Would've been better if you didn't come flying in. She'd be dead for real then."

"Mija..."

"It's fine, I don't care," Joe said simply.

That only made his frown deepen. And like before, he fell into another broody silence and if he kept this up, she was starting to worry her interest in Derek only stemmed from unresolved daddy issues with how they acted so alike.

Derek. Who kissed her last night. Who literally swept her off her feet and held her so close they were considered a single entity, at least for a while. Derek, who handed her his phone when recognizing the number and picking up her shoes, retrieving her phone from the fountain and followed her as she walked barefoot back to the car, not noticing, too focused on her dad's voice saying he was on his way to Beacon Hills. Derek, who let her sit in his car in deep thought, not saying a word, all the way to the apartment. Derek, who grabbed her hand before she got out, rubbed his thumb gently over the back, and said:

You know you can't tell him the whole truth?

Back in her dad's car, she rubbed her own hands together, trying to replicate the comfort Derek's touch brought. Failing. His voice had been the usual, hard and flat, but a worry in his eyes. For her? For himself? For his entire subspecies, as Jimmy referred to them? All of the above? Joe rested her head against the car door. Last night had been so good. For a while, forgetting about everything else, just the two of them. But the world did not consist of just the two of them, except maybe when they were kissing. He had past mistakes to amend and she...she felt responsible too because maybe she should have been harder on Derek? Stopped him before he turned all these teenagers? She'd yelled, berated him, challenged him, but she never tried to stop him, not like she tried to stop the kanima or Kate.

They reached the gas station, sitting alone on the side of the highway with a sign that declared that this was the last chance to fill until a given number of miles. A row of payphones on the outer wall, but the surveillance camera was angled towards the pumps. Joe scanned the surroundings, trying to gauge where they had come out of the forest. They might have headed for the light of the gas station, trying to find civilization again. Erica might have been desperate to find a phone after her old one broke. What about Boyd, didn't he have a phone? Had they been split up, either voluntarily or involuntarily?

Aware of her dad watching her, Joe still went to the phones and saw that one of them was out of order, in case someone missed how the whole handset was yanked off its cord. She leaned closer — scratches in the plastic could indicate a clawed hand grabbing it from Erica's ear and tearing the whole thing loose.

"You spot the camera?" her dad asked when she came back to him. She nodded. "Phones are in a blind zone. Could be your girl came inside or in front for any reason, still worth checking out. Let's go."

Her dad seemed to straighten up when entering the dusty gas station, assuming more swagger in his walk. I'm in control, it said. I know what I'm doing. He brought his badge out to the overweight lady working the register, they talked for a while until the lady fetched another woman, older. It had to be the owner or something because she indicated her dad should follow her out back to look at the tapes.

"Come on," her dad said with a nod of his head. Her eyebrows rose. This was exactly what Sheriff Stilinski had questioned. Was he trying to win her over by letting her play real detective for once? Still, her curiosity got the best of her and she followed both her dad and the gas station-woman to a cluttered backroom where the smallest possible TV in the world showed the surveillance of the gas pumps.

"Night of the tenth," her dad said after checking his notes. "Young, long blonde hair, five-seven, wearing mostly black."

The woman rewound the tape and already Joe's stomach dropped. Not even digital.

"We only keep the tapes for a few weeks," the woman said, her voice evident of heavy smoking through the years. "You got lucky with this one."

"How many frames per second?" Joe asked, looking at the jerky footage going backwards over time. The woman shrugged, saying something about not being computer literate.

"Looks to be five," her dad said, giving her a glance of approval. "Low, but it's what we got."

The least possible frame rate for capturing smooth movements was thirty, regular videos were sixty frames per second. At five, it looked like a student project with still-lifes moving on the screen. Eventually, the woman found the correct date — it said a completely different one on the screen, but she said she never bothered to reset it after a power outage and by her math, it was the right one. Probably true, considering how Erica Reyes appeared on the screen.

"That's your girl?" the woman asked and Joe nodded silently. In choppy movements from the crappy surveillance camera, it showed Erica run inside the gas station. The inside camera, equally poor quality, was aimed to show the faces of the people being expedited. Except in Erica's case, her face was distorted by large flares from her eyes.

"It's her," Joe said, licking her lips. The werewolf eyes must mess with the camera or something. But it was her. Even if she was missing half her extensions on one side, it was her. Even if her clothes were torn and dirty, it was her. She was talking to the clerk, looking over her shoulder, agitated based on the body language.

"Whoa there," her father said when the tape showed how at one point, Erica leaned over the counter to grab the donation bucket and ripped off the seal with no apparent effort. Grabbing a handful of coins, she ran back outside. The outside camera did not fare any better with her face, unable to make a positive ID from the light obscuring her features.

"She needed coins for the payphones," Joe said, her voice dry and hollow. "Who was working here that night? She's obviously talking to someone."

With an annoyed sigh, the woman got up. "I gotta check the books for that one. Got a lot of kids working part-time at night."

"Yeah, because that's safe," Joe muttered, but only her father heard it and gave her a stern look.

"Well, I was wrong. Looks like it was Janet up front. Janet? Get in back here, would ya?"

Janet, the overweight woman they'd seen first, came in and gave Joe a wary look. Her dad put on the charm though.

"Miss Janet, looks like you're our star witness here," he said with a smile Joe guessed could be considered handsome. He tapped the screen, still showing Erica's distorted face. "Night of the tenth, late shift, looks like. A young girl came by, stealing from the donation bucket. Remember her?"

"Oh, that's the one you were looking for?" asked Janet, obviously relieved. "She didn't look like your picture at all. She was wearing a lot of makeup, first of all, guessed that made her look older than sixteen," Joe had to agree there, "and she looked really strung out, you know. She kept begging to use a phone and I thought she was just another junkie, we get them in here once a while, hitch-hikers that's kicked out when the trailers get tired of 'em shivering all over the place. Anyway, I told her there were payphones out back and she said she didn't have any coins and I said I could exchange a bill for coins and she got really upset, saying she didn't have any money at all and saying something about 'someone was coming' or whatever."

The rest they knew. Erica stole some chunk of change, went out to the payphones, called Joe's dad.

"Did you see anyone else with her?" Joe asked, tilting her head to gauge the sincerity of the woman. "A tall black man, young as well. Probably wearing a leather jacket."

"No, she came alone. In and out in less than a minute I would guess. Never figured out where she came from, no cars had stopped for the last hour or so. Must have been walking for a while, trekked mud all over the floor."

Her father asked her a few more obvious questions, but Joe was not listening. Erica had been terrified, that she could see even from the tapes. Alone, no Boyd. In silence, she followed her dad out to the payphones again as her dad did the same as she did, studied the broken handle. He noted down the numbers, comparing with his phone record, but did not share his findings. It was too obvious.

"No car when she got here," her dad said in deep thought, pushing his jacket back to put his hands on his hips. "No car when she left." Turning, he took stock of the perimeter like Joe had done. "Mud on her shoes. Mud on her shoes..."

Joe could only stare at the broken phone. Someone with unnatural strength and claws yanked it off. Erica herself or someone else? Because let's face it, who was strong enough to kidnap a werewolf besides another werewolf? The Argents — except maybe Kate — would not have been on foot, they would have cars and probably made sure to destroy the evidence Erica was even here. Kate had been bitten by a Demi Alpha and turned into something. Could she have followed Erica for some reason?

Rob Delgado looked to be contemplative as he drove back to Beacon Hills. So was Joe. Derek had mentioned a pack of Alphas. Did they have more motive than Kate? What would they want with Erica, who was by all accounts, not an Alpha?

Leverage. The word kept coming back to Joe. How Peter used her, how Gerard used her — leverage. How she guessed Scott used her too, now that she thought of it, getting Derek to agree with his first plan of capturing Jackson instead of killing him. Only the thought of Scott made Joe's stomach twist into knots. Little stupid sweet Scott who she thought she knew so well.

"I know this isn't what you want to hear," her dad said when they were getting closer to the town. "Because it's not pretty. Girls at Erica's age make up for the largest percentage of random abductions in the country. Statistics point to human trafficking, either local or interregional."

"She's not," Joe swore, "human trafficked!"

She's not even human.

"The only positive side is that she's most likely still alive," her dad continued, not bothered by her outburst. "I'll talk to the local field office, see what they got in similar cases. Establish a pattern."

"And Boyd?" Joe asked, a harsh lump in her throat. "What statistics is he part of?"

Her dad's silence followed until he had pulled up at the laundromat. "We have to consider the real possibility that this Boyd was an accomplice-"

"Oh my God!" Joe swore and tore off her seatbelt. "No! I know these kids, Dad! Boyd was a sweetheart, he would never-" She could not even bring herself to say the words. Her hands shook, but she forced herself to stay calm. "We have to focus on hard evidence here, Dad. Not victimology, it's not that simple. We have to find the physical pieces of the puzzle that will tell us where she is. If her shoes were muddy, where did she come from? It hadn't rained for ages, the forest would have been dried up even if she did trek through the Preserve. I know it seems like a stretch, but people do crazy things when they're scared."

"We got a young, blonde girl presumably kidnapped from a high-risk location and you want to ignore victimology? Come on, kid, what are you not tellin' me here?"

They're werewolves, Dad! And other werewolves might have taken them!

"Forget it," she muttered instead, hand already on the door handle.

Her dad sighed. "I'll send the tapes to the crime lab, see if they can pick anything else up. I'm stayin' at Mel's place if you need me."

"I won't."

Joe left her dad in the car and did not turn back around until she heard him drive off. She hated this. Hated it so intently her chest burned at the thought. Her dad was a good cop, a good agent, and he was doing all the right things, and getting nowhere because the truth was so much more complex than what he thought. He knew Joe was hiding something, he just didn't know how bad it was.

She unlocked the combination of locks in the right order and pushed her way inside the apartment. Jimmy, as expected, was on his computer. It surprised her to see him staring at a blank document.

"How's that block going?" she asked as a way of greeting and headed for one of the armchairs, slumping down across it so her legs hung on the outside of the arms.

"It seems to be relentless." Jimmy spun around on his chair. "Any luck?"

Joe summarized what she had learned. At least Jimmy also flinched at the mention of five frames per second. They bounced theories off each other. Was Erica missing her extensions already at the altercation with the Argents? Could be a question worth asking the girl who probably knew the most, but the remaining Argents had fled the country. Or had Erica and Boyd fought someone else in the Preserve, only Erica getting away long enough to reach the gas station and call for help? No cash, no phone, just a paper note in her pocket with a phone number.

Much good that did her.

"Did you tell Derek yet?" Jimmy asked as he knew Derek and Isaac were also searching for Erica and Boyd with less conventional methods.

Shaking her head, she got up from the chair to check on her phone that sat on the kitchen counter, buried in dried rice. Before leaving last night, Derek fished up her phone from the fountain with an apology and promise to buy her a new one. Jimmy had suggested they try the rice-trick first. It turned on at least, even though the screen flickered a bit. When the service kicked in, several text messages did too.

Aunt Mel, Kelly, her dad — all asking where she was and why she wasn't answering. Kelly sounded less panicked though, more interested in where she had been wearing that outfit. And finally, a text from Derek.

Lobito: 355 Channel St. Top floor.

With a raised eyebrow, she texted back.

Joe Delgado: Is this a trap?

Lobito: [is typing]

Lobito: No. It's my address.

Guess Erica really nailed his texting persona, Joe thought wryly, thinking about that cryptic text that first lead her to the railroad depot. She had Jimmy look up the location online. Also downtown, but closer to the old industrial district. It looked to be some sort of apartment building and based on the listing, it was twenty-eight floors to the top. Her eyebrows rose even further. Seemed like a risky place to squat illegally compared to the railroad depot.

"Do you need me to come with you?" Jimmy asked and Joe pursed her lips. She did not even want to go there herself. Thinking of what she just learned and contrasting that with last night made her near dizzy in confusion. Still, Derek deserved to know, she guessed, since he at least was trying to find Erica now. If that was for Erica's sake or Derek's own was yet to be determined.

"Why would an Alpha pack be after Erica and Boyd?" Joe asked instead of answering. She had told Jimmy about the Alpha pack after Derek told her, but this seemed like a new world to him too. He had mentioned reaching out to some people, hoping for more info. "Make them into Alphas? I don't get it."

"Simple cruelty is not limited to humans." Jimmy typed in a few words in the document but deleted them right away. "Does seem like a lot of trouble for just random malice, I will admit." He tapped his finger on the keyboard but did not type anything. "I loathe to be the snake in paradise, but have you considered that Derek might know more than he's telling you?"

"By now I'm kind of counting on it," Joe said, darker than intended, and now felt foolish for thinking about the kiss all the time. The world stopping for a few seconds at a time did not excuse months of mistakes and lies. She wondered if he hated her for Kate. For keeping her alive. For being kidnapped by her. For hearing her version of the story before his. For not allowing him to just bury the memories once and for all.

"Again, do you want me to accompany you?"

"No," she said and got up to leave again. No, she wanted Derek alone.

355 Channel Street was an incredibly tall building, the kind where you got vertigo by looking up at it and seemed to utilize the same material as the rest of the industrial district for construction such as steel, brick, and concrete.

No one in the entrance hall, which puzzled Joe a bit, you would think that a building like this would house hundreds of people. Everything looked clean and recently refurbished, even though they had kept the original style — it might have been some sort of factory built into an apartment complex. The empty hall made her glad the shotgun was on her shoulder, along with a handy stolen police badge if anyone questioned it.

No Kate Argent popping out of the shadows and Joe eventually located the elevators. No way was she walking all twenty-eight sets of stairs. By the time the elevator reached the top floor, Joe had the shotgun loaded and ready, nerves getting the best of her. It was too quiet and she did have a history of walking into these kinds of things.

The doors plinged open and Joe nearly shot Isaac Lahey.

"Oh my God!" she yelled as he backed off with a panicked: "Ohmygod!"

For a few seconds, they stared at each other and Joe slowly took the shotgun down so it wasn't glaring him in the face.

"Hello, Isaac!" she said, still in shock at how close she came to committing homicide. Lycanthricide? Maybe. Language wasn't her best subject.

"Hi," he said with a small wave, somehow managing to own shirts with sleeves that were too long for his arms. "I, uh, I'm going down."

They shuffled around so he was in the elevator and he gave her a tight smile as he leaned in to push the button.

Doors closed and she was alone in what was some sort of loft apartment. Top floor, no doubt about that, the ceilings were high above her. The elevator opened straight into a hall that led into a spacious room through a heavy sliding door, now propped open.

Inhaling, taking note of the scent, and calling: "Derek?"

"In here."

She followed the sound of his voice, putting the shotgun away gently so he would not hear it. The loft had concrete floors and a large back wall with windows overlooking Beacon Hills. It made Jimmy's window with the view of small-town America seem a bit overrated. Not that big of an architecture buff she could not name half the features in here, but it had a very heavy tone of industrialism. Steel structures and a spiral staircase leading to somewhere. Minimalistic decorating, but that might be since they seemed to be in the middle of moving in.

It was hard to remember her misgivings with this guy when seeing him in a tank top lifting heavy furniture. Sweaty half-naked Derek could be forgiven for any sin in the world.

Now, see, that's the instincts talking. Snap out of it, Joe.

"Everything okay?" he asked gruffly, but probably because the table with a steel frame weighed more than himself. It clanked heavily on the floor when he put it into place in front of the large windows. As she did not answer, he paused his lifting and leaned on the table instead, folding two sweaty and very muscular arms over an equally muscular chest that with the sweaty tank top allowed her to see the outline of every-

"Oh my God," Joe said and turned away from the sight. Less embarrassed than aggravated with herself. She did not need to look at him to know he had his eyebrows raised. "No, things aren't okay. Someone or something took Erica and Boyd."

She relayed the same to him as she did to Jimmy, focusing on the facts and leaving out less convenient details about her dad's offer to have dinner, all three of them. In turn, Derek asked for specifics, declaring he would check out the gas station later, but there might not be any scent trace left since it was over a week ago.

Eventually, the anger about Erica overtook her other bodily functions and she was able to look at Derek without just jumping him and break in the table, so to speak.

"I saw claw marks on the phone," she said, watching him closely for those minuscule tells he had despite his usually stoic expression. Where his gaze flickered, how his jaw flexed. "Is this Kate or that other pack you talked about?"

"I don't know."

"Well, could it be the other pack?"

Derek was not looking at her, rather studying a pile of boxes in the corner by the staircase. "I don't know."

"You don't know or you're not sure?" Joe pushed on, having learned the difference when it came to him. When he didn't answer, she huffed and crossed her own arms, mimicking him. "I swear to God, Derek, if you insist on keeping things from me... I can handle anything else, but that's a dealbreaker and this bond's got nothing on my stubbornness."

"Obviously," Derek said under his breath, but she caught it. Looking at her, he sighed and relented a bit. "I'm not sure."

"Which is not the same as you don't know," Joe pointed out and walked over to the large windows, curious to see how far down it really was. Okay, so the balcony kind of obscured the view, but it was a really tall building. "If it's the Alpha pack, like if you're more sure than not, I'm calling my dad off the search right now. One, it's wasting his time looking for human traffickers if some jacked-up werewolves caught her, and two, he cou-"

She stopped herself.

"He could get hurt," Derek finished and she rolled her eyes, seeing it in the reflection from the window. "It's okay to admit you care about him even if he lied to you." Joe gave him a very specific look over her shoulder and he nodded in reluctant agreement. "I was referring to Scott, but I get your point."

He drew a short breath, as if he was about to say something, but didn't. Probably because the elevator dinged again and Isaac appeared with a stack of boxes. He put them with the others, toppling one of them over, but hurriedly shoving it straight.

"That's the last one," he told Derek. Out of breath, he leaned onto the wall. "Now can we please order food?"

"Order," Derek said simply and rose from the table, signaling the end of both conversations. Isaac made a small victory-noise and dashed up the spiral staircase, while Derek pulled a stack of steel chairs from each other to put at the table.

"You're really going for this whole industrialism-theme, huh?" she asked with raised eyebrows. A different form of minimalism from Jimmy, who preferred white clean surfaces and bright neutrals. "Are ya gonna have any color in here except the bricks?"

Derek held up a still wrapped bedspread in a dark gray-blue color. All right, she thought and rolled her eyes a bit. Pushing the shotgun back on her shoulder, she made her way to the elevator again.

"You don't want food?" Derek asked to her back as if her exit surprised him.

Turning, working hard to keep her expression neutral, she shrugged. "No, I gotta get back. Got a review tomorrow with Walker and...I dunno, Dad might want to do more father-daughter bonding over this missing person's case, like that's a normal thing at all."

"Right," said Derek, a slight twist to his eyebrows. It had obviously not been what he expected.

"Right," said Joe, because this hadn't been what she expected either. Hot and cold she could handle. This lukewarm killed her.

Derek looked confused, as much as his expressionless face allowed. Voice hesitant, but he asked anyway. "You want to talk...about your dad?"

"If that's what your senses are telling you, you're losing your grip, buddy." Joe shook her head at the thought and turned to walk again. "I want to find Erica and Boyd. End of story."

Somehow moving without making a sound, he caught up with her before she reached the elevator and touched her arm gently to make her pause. He kept his voice soft, but that was probably because of Isaac's proximity. "I can only tell that you're angry, not why." The touch burned through her jacket. "Did I do something?"

"No," she said, avoiding his eyes. "Not really."

"Something I didn't do," he accurately guessed, seeing straight through her not-quite-a-lie. His hand dropped from her arm and he folded his arms over his chest, defensive and resigned. "Didn't stop Erica and Boyd." She wondered if he could read everyone's minds or just hers. "I'm aware they're my responsibility, Joe. I'm working on it. We'll find them."

"Did you know she came to see me at the hospital," Joe asked without addressing the rest, "to tell me they were leaving?" By his flickering eyes, the answer was 'no'. "That's when I gave her my dad's number and he tried calling me the day after I moved in with Jimmy's remember? He was trying to tell me something had happened and-" She bit herself off. "Can you get why I'm feeling this responsibility too?"

"This wasn't your fault, Joe."

Voice tight, glancing over at the staircase to see if Isaac was coming back down, she hissed under her breath: "I saved Kate's life. I'm the reason she's still out there. If she took them or hurt them, if she's got them strung them up somewhere while we were out-" Joe made a face, even though he hadn't said anything. "I don't regret last night, Derek. Last night was amazing and you're amazing, I'm just-" She cut herself off again, not knowing what she was right now.

He regarded her, eyebrows tilted up in a soft expression, but before he could say anything, Isaac's voice drifted from inside the loft:

"Is Joe staying for pizza? Because then should I get two or three?"

Derek closed his eyes in obvious frustration. He called over his shoulder: "Just get three anyway." Turning back to her, he gave her an apologetic shrug. "Joe, for what it's worth, I don't think this is Kate, I-"

"What kind of pizza does she like? Is she cool with chili peppers?"

It was hard not to smile at the obvious frustration in Derek's tightened jaw. She leaned sideways around Derek. "I'm not staying, Isaac, thank you!" Straightening up, she smirked at Derek. "It's not easy having kids, you know."

"Funny," Derek said with a tight smile completely devoid of humor. "Can we-"

"Delivery or pick-up, Derek?"

Grinning widely now, Joe patted Derek on his arm — totally not an excuse to touch him — and said: "He's your responsibility too, remember? We'll talk later."

"Okay," Derek said with a resigned smile. He caught her hand before it was out of reach, but just trailed his fingers over hers as she walked away. The sparks from his touch flew up into her chest, kickstarting her heart to go a little faster as he squeezed the tips of her fingers before letting go. "Good luck with your review."

Not trusting herself to speak, she nodded and then reached the elevator without further interference, catching Isaac's shouting another question at Derek before the doors closed. She leaned against the wall with a huff.

One date, one kiss — how much did it really change? A lot, it felt like. It was hard to pinpoint why she was disappointed. He could smell she was angry, he would probably not think it was a good time to kiss her again, but didn't he get that he could change her mood too, not just sense it? He was definitely hiding something again and she realized he had never volunteered any information about his day. No doubt overhearing her conversation with her dad yesterday, he had known since then that Erica was in some kind of trouble and she could not bring herself to believe he hadn't done anything about it. He just hadn't told her what he had done.

Equals. Right.

How much did a kiss really change? One date, one kiss — were they in a relationship? Didn't feel like it. This felt like uncharted territory and she had no idea how to act around him. Which was ridiculous because in many ways she knew Derek better than she knew almost anyone. But in other ways, she didn't.

God, this was confusing.

Papa Delgado is back in town and the plot thickens! Also, go easy on my boy Isaac. He's clueless, but he means well, okay?

Sorry for the slight delay, sometimes real life gets in the way for me too :)

Floored, blown away, amazed, and so grateful for the response to the last chapter! If you want to relive it from Derek's POV, I've posted another oneshot of "The Realist" (chapter 3), so please check it out :)

Also, this story has more than 500 reviews and that is slightly overwhelming, so thank you guys so much! Obviously not jumping right into season 3 just yet, but I hope you still enjoyed this chapter and that it's an acceptable way to start off the new year of "The Skeptic". Please let me know what you think of this chapter - I'm back to work tomorrow, so could use the extra motivation to keep the momentum going . Plus the view-counter is still broken, so I won't even know that you read it unless you leave a review :)

And as a final side note, neither Joe nor Derek are really good at this communication-thing and Joe overthinking things is her default state. They'll figure it out, but this isn't a romantic comedy where the main couple kiss, and everything is magically resolved. Not to say the kiss isn't a big deal, but it's not automatically fixing everything. Does that make sense? Hopefully. Again, happy ending, but we're not at the end just yet.