So in reply she said, “I'm not going to lie to you and say I fell. I could have, but I respect you too much.”
Nik's dark green eyes burned into hers.
She waited and then spoke again. “I got into a disagreement with someone. It won't happen again.” She remembered the shock in Fraya's eyes and suspected she was right. “If you respect me as much as I do you, you won't ask me any more about it and you'll leave it be. You just have to trust me on this.”
She could see Nik trying to fight back whatever he wanted to say. He gave her face a once-over, then reluctantly bobbed his head. “Alright.”
It was clear that despite his compliance now, it wasn't over for him, and Lora accepted that. If Fraya tried anything again, she couldn't help her, and honestly, she wouldn't want to.
*
Present day...
Sunday June 5th, 2011, 3:40 p.m.
Nik's office
How much Nikolas Driver regretted not forcing Lora to tell him more.
He recalled the conversation. The marks on her face. He'd wanted to be a gentleman, show he respected her, give her space. The next day she'd gone through her first attack. The shakes and fevers had become so severe by then, and happened daily.
He was glad he'd given her guidance. He only wished he could do that now with Jaz. But their circumstances were different. Their characters too.
He remembered that moment between Lora and him in the library because of something Jaz had said. “That's the problem! You protect me when I don't need it, and you don't protect me when I do!”
The look in Jaz's eyes was the same Lora had given him when he'd asked her what had happened to her face. Someone had done it to her. And it was someone who had been jealous of Lora's relationship with him. Now he suspected it was the same person Jaz had indirectly talked about. He didn't know how he'd connected the dots like that. Maybe it was his link to her. To them both. But he smelled a rat, and it was the same one he'd caught a whiff of over a year ago. He bet his left nut on it.
He called Carr on his office phone to come and see him. Whilst he waited, he stripped off his wet clothes and changed into some clean ones that he kept spare in his cupboard. He gazed out the window thinking of Jaz's face as she ran off, and his brow furrowed. He needed to call Edda again to find out what happened. He hadn't heard from her.
“You called?”
He turned around to see Carr standing there with a light smile on his face, his eyes however, were wary.
Nik feigned ignorance, held out his hand signalling Carr to take a seat whilst he parked himself in his leather, office chair. “Anything happen today at the site?” he asked.
Carr hesitated. “There was an incident,” he began.
Nik raised his dark brows; his olive-green eyes scrutinized Carr.
“A fight,” Carr added.
“Who was involved?”
“Jasmine and Fraya.”
The weight of that knowledge burned Nik's insides. Fraya was a loyal and valued member of the Pack. They had a long history and she was devoted to him. But he knew her temper and now he knew what sparked it more than anything else. He filed this new knowledge in his mental detective notes for later revision. “What happened?”
“Fraya's kind of been a little rough on Jaz. And Jaz must have got fed up of it.”
“In what way has Fraya been rough on her?”
Carr folded down his bottom lip as if to try and make it appear less serious than Nik clearly thought it was. “Name-calling mainly.”
“What else?”
“Shoves, nasty comments.”
“Why didn't you mention this to me before?”
Carr's mouth opened as he raised his brows. “You know what Fraya is like. And it isn't just Fraya who has a hard time accepting a new member.”
Driver moved on, not wanting to dwell on issues that he found so frustrating yet could only do so much about, even in his position. People would think what they wanted to. All he had to do was stop it from seeping into their actions. “So what happened today?”
“From what I saw and heard from others, Jaz accidentally knocked Fraya over, slipped in the mud and landed on top of her. That led to an argument. Fraya got confrontational, Jaz backed down. Well, actually she turned her back on her and walked away.”
Nik gazed at him, only half concealing his smile as he imagined it.
Carr looked even more amused by it than he was. “Naturally, Fraya was pretty pissed at the insult.”
“Jaz doesn't know our fighting etiquettes.”
Carr bobbed his head in understanding. “I'm glad. I ain't never seen Fraya look so angry. She was so red I thought her head was gonna explode.”
They both laughed.