Hannah Pole - Song Of The Wolf

Tamriel and Leyth were already out front loading up Leyth’s beat-up old Range Rover and Julian was outside with them barking orders into his phone.

“I don’t give a crap how much it costs, Saph,” he was shouting as Dax came within hearing range, “we’re gonna need a boat, charge it to your pack credit card!”

He paused for a minute, presumably listening to her talking before adding, “Fine, just make sure it’s a subtle boat, nothing ‘spanky’, and make sure it’s fast. But big enough for all of us to get on.”

He spun on his heel and marched around the side of the car, hefting his huge muscular body into the passenger seat, muttering something about Sapphire wanting to buy a ‘damned pink boat’ and slammed the door.

“Dax!” Tam shouted as he approached them. “You ready?”

“Yup,” he grunted, sliding himself into the back seat of the car.

“Cool, let’s get moving,” Leyth growled, starting the engine as he slammed his door.

“We’ve got a meeting with the auctioneer first,” Tam explained, sliding into the back seat next to him. “They have given us permission to do a thorough search of the dockyard but we have to be subtle because it’s open to the public today.”

She bent down to pull something from one of the bags she had at her feet, shoving a plastic container onto his lap.

“Eat.”

“Not hungry,” he grumbled.

“Don’t care. Eat.” She grinned at him. Damn that female could be a pain in the arse, but he did as she asked anyway. It was just easier not to argue. Cracking the lid on the Tupperware container he found four thick beef sandwiches sat there neatly stacked up; protein and lots of it. He bit them down quickly, barely tasting the meat as it hit his tongue. His stomach reluctantly accepted the sustenance.

It took about an hour in total to get them down to Chatham’s Historic Dockyard. The drive was tedious. Dax found himself drifting in and out of sleep; a belly full of beef would do that to a wolf. Maybe Julian was right. He really should get some proper sleep soon.

As Leyth pulled the car up to the main entrance to the dockyard, Tamriel leaned out of her window and explained who she was, showing them her new private investigator’s licence and ID card. The guards let them straight through and directed them to the car park, explaining how to find the main office.

“Dax, you and Leyth go take a look around, see if you can find anything while Tamriel and I go talk to this auctioneer and look at the CCTV footage, cool?”

Everyone nodded in agreement as Leyth pulled the car into a parking bay. He helped his female out of the car, and landed one hell of a kiss on her lips, leaving her a little flushed as she walked away with Julian.

“Come on, man, where do you want to start?” Leyth nodded at Dax.

“Not sure, let’s find an area map.”

It didn’t take long for them to find one of those huge boards with the ‘you are HERE’ arrows on it. The dockyard they were in was huge. There was a museum and a large boat you could walk around. There were also rope-making warehouses and some privately owned warehouses too, as well as a small café and several car parks.

“OK, they hold the auctions in the museum most of the time. It would make sense to hold this one there too as they were selling off boats, the museum is near the water.” Dax glanced that way; it was indeed close to the water, yet not close enough. There was a replica of the ‘midget submarine’ on display, and little else.

“I need to look at their private rentals information, we need to know who else is renting space here.” Dax started walking towards the café.

“They’re not going to let you see those documents, that’s private for a reason!”

“They don’t need to let me.”

Leyth snorted as he waked over to the counter to order some coffee as Dax plonked his arse into one of the spindly plastic chairs. Damn thing felt like it was going to bend and break under his weight.

Tugging his laptop out of his bag, he set it on the table in front of him and turned it on. It scanned his fingerprint on the mouse pad and allowed him access. A message popped up notifying him that the search he’d started at home was still in progress. No surprise there!

Hitting the Wi-Fi on he scanned the area, quickly finding the dockyards network. It was of course password protected but hell, like that mattered. He clicked the little cursor onto his encryption software icon and set it into motion. The software in question was something he’d designed years ago; it was pretty basic, but that’s all it needed to be. It ran through the millions of number and letter password sequences in a matter of seconds, leaving no digital ‘fingerprint’ in its wake. As it briefly touched the network, it deleted all trace of itself as soon as it had made it. As the word ‘accepted’ finally flashed up on the screen, the programme made a note of the password and stored it in the depths of its hard drive for later use if ever needed. Now he was logged on to the network, he opened up another of his own software programmes; he’d called it ‘The Eraser’ because that’s exactly what it was.

As Dax quickly stalked his way through the dockyards database, ‘The Eraser’ deleted any record of his IP address, any evidence that someone had accessed the network or anything in it. Simple.

It took only minutes before he was rifling through the documents stored on the computers in the ‘property’ department. Finally he found a list of tenants, their names, contact details and a company description. Dax of course made a copy of the information, storing it on his computer and pinging it across to his home desktop as well.

There were several different companies. Mainly they had something to do with fishing or boats. There was quite a large events company that had rented two of the larger warehouse spaces and an office, though they checked out after his thorough background search.

“Anything?” Leyth grunted, pulling him out of his little technology bubble.

“Nah, everything checks out.”

“What now then?”

“Well, I guess we should take a look around.”

In minutes the two of them were up and walking away from the little café towards one of the warehouses. The large wooden and brick structure towered over them as they came to it. The two huge wooden doors looked big enough to cater to a giant. The interior of the warehouse was beautiful, heavy wooden floors and large windows. The air was tinted with the distinct scent of metalwork and rubber, which made sense, it was absolutely brimming with the latest in technology.

Dax let out an impressed whistle as he stalked through the doors into the warehouse.

“’Allo? Can I help you?” A beasty-looking bloke sauntered over; he was huge, easily matching Dax and Leyth for size, though he was most definitely human.

“We’re with Chambers private investigators and we’re doing a check on the dockyard, have you noticed anything unusual lately?”

“Unusual how?” A slightly smaller brunette man swaggered over to his huge companion.

“We’re looking into the sale of some boats at the auction a few weeks ago.”

“You mean that submarine that got sold?”

“Yeah, what can you tell us about it?”

“Well, it got sold didn’t it?” The big man looked down at his friend, then yelled over his shoulder, “OI, BOYS, anyone know anything about that submarine that got sold the other week?”

There was a collection of ‘nah’s’ in return.

“Sorry mate, can’t help you. We’re pretty busy preparing for our next job anyway so we’re gonna crack on if it’s all the same to you.”

“No worries.” Leyth nodded at him, turning to leave.

“Wait –” Another man with long wavy blond hair stepped from behind one of the huge shelves dominating the room. “It wasn’t docked here, they sold it but it was shipped out from somewhere else – Will?!”