Chapter 54 – Lost and Found (Brennan Conrad POV) Pt.4

For someone that was in the dark when it came to shifters and the overall supernatural world, I think there would be many ideas they'd instantly rule out. One in particular was another concurrent or overlapping time line.

Multiple realties.

A reality where another version of our selves is living different lives from our own. A reality where there is a version of myself that is not a shifter. Maybe there is a version where Devin and I were teen parents or not together at all, or possibly where Devin and I never meet, or do when we're much older.

I've always wondered if maybe there is a split of sorts when you make a decision. Sure, if what I thought was true there'd be billions of different worlds, but I could not help but wonder.

What if right now, in another version, Devin and I were together? Instead of listening in to the conversation I had with Samson, in that world, the other one, she didn't and I was still planning on proposing?

It's such a rabbit hole thought. One that I always pondered, and ended it with the same thought.

Would there be a point to alternate realities?

In one world, you make the right choices, and move on with life. In the other, you hurt many, and sometimes you work to build back what is destroyed. It will never be flawless, the cracks will be on display, but work would have been done to put the pieces back together again.

When people hurt one another, and eventually, they find it is possible to have what they've lost, when they get it back, many say that they don't regret what happened.

Lovers separate despite knowing they will never find another they loved the same. They go their own way and years down the road, after they've lived and loved, they are reunited.

The spark that once was, still is.

What then?

Round and round my thoughts go as I slowly dissemble the laptop I brought from the car Devin tracked us down in. It was pure luck that she was able to find us, but the reunion came with this black cloud of uncertainty and darkness.

Granddad didn't understand why I would want to take the thing apart but I knew why and wanted to take little risk.

I had not witnessed the departure of the rest of the Den having left before them. However, everything that remained in Bend was hidden. My car was in the garage. One that I knew grandma Mary would have spelled.

Samson left in his car but apparently he hadn't left with it. However he was traveling it was not with his car that was for sure.

So to me, that meant between when Samson left the car and when Devin got in the car, someone had been able to place the tracker. There is no way Samson would have missed it. After what happened with Silas, he checked his car with his special abilities every single time he would enter.

He even checked when he left the house, and his car was parked in our garage. It was obsessive, but it was the one thing you could count on him doing. After school, if we needed to go out, before he'd sit in the car, he'd give it the once over.

Bottom line, someone placed the tracker in between Samson leaving and Devin and Taylor finding it.

If someone was stealthy enough to plant the tracker now, go into the girls dorm where Talia was staying, and tamper with her drugs, I'd be willing to bet that they could install a physical tracking device in the laptop.

It did not matter if it was the same person or a few messing with the family at this point, so slowly, I removed the bottom case, revealing the internal fixtures of Devin's laptop, and I'm not disappointed.

No larger than a dime, the little green light flashes, a wire from it to a copper square sits right besides the mousepad. Removing it and the power source, I place it aside, and continue to take apart the laptop. There is no telling what even just turning the thing on could do.

"Toss the device," granddad instructs, glancing over his shoulder as my grandmother Bess, informed him of my find. Doing as he says, I concentrate solely on taking apart Devin's laptop, cutting wires, picking apart the soldered pieces with a knife, making it impossible to ever function.

"Why did you leave Samson's car for us?" Devin finally builds up the courage to ask after sitting silent for an hour as I took apart the laptop. I stiffen, hand frozen above the charging circuit on the motherboard.

Never has silence ever sounded so loud to me as it did in that exact moment. And while I would rather have just ignored Devin, pretended that she hadn't spoken at all, I lift my head and turn it towards her.

She came on this bus and told us before anything else what Taylor had done. Honestly I can see why she did it. Should it ever have come out without her being the one to tell us, it would make Devin look as though she had something to hide.

On the other hand... taking apart her computer was the only thing keeping me calm in that moment because, what we searched for. The answers we wanted, who would tamper with our plane? Learning that it was Taylor, were all kinds of painful.

I take that back.

I think the only person that won't be shocked, or will be able to wrap their mind around it quickest, was Thaddeus.

For the longest while, he's had weird feelings about her, not exactly keeping them all to his self. Still because we all were close with one another, he silently put up with her but remained on guard.

To hear what we did... while I could not exactly merge the Taylor I knew with one to murder Silas, I'm sure Thaddeus was having no qualms about that now.

Even looking at Devin, I cannot control the thoughts popping up left and right distracting me. Shaking my head, and releasing a sad sigh, I purse my lips looking at Javier for a second.

Finally. "Devin, we didn't leave the car for you... as far as I knew Samson and Faith had that car." Her confusion is clear as her brows knit together, and the frown on her face grows.

"So you," she starts and though her mouth opens and she tilts her head to the side, the hurt clear as day she doesn't speak the words I know she wants to quickly. "You – everyone – you just left?" Words spoken never sounded so dry and emotionless.

My silence is answer enough. She turns to Javier, "what about you? You could have stayed or warned us... sent me a message. I – I caught up with you, so it's not like you guys left right after school was over. It must have been what? An hour or two? Maybe three before dad called me."

Sitting facing Javier, Devin moves back an inch or two.

"You never even came back to the dorms, so you must have known since around eight or nine that the Conrad's were leaving – what if – what if we – I – had gotten hurt?" she asks him hurt.

"After how you and Taylor have been acting lately, can you blame anyone for being left behind?" Javier might have as well slapped Devin. Recoiling from his words she moves a few inches away, looking down at her hands for the longest while. I don't believe the conversation to be over, but for right now it was put aside.

Returning to the deconstruction of the motherboard, minutes drag by, and I force my mind to think only of this task. I assume Antone will call mom and dad immediately, but when I ask absentmindedly, he shoots that down.

"I'm not sure telling your parents right now is the best thing," he says and like that, another decision is made. Though this one, I think I see why he wouldn't want to tell them. Not when we were all separated. Devin had found us.

Everything from the car to laptop had been bugged.

Plus I wasn't stupid. Right now, we were probably a good nine hundred, possibly more, miles from mom and dad.

It was hard to think of Taylor being the one that caused the hurt in our family, but I could not imagine how it would feel for my parents. For the longest while, mom had thought of Taylor and Devin as one of the family, two more daughters.

"Brennan," Devin whispers some time later. When I glance up at her, resting my gaze on her fully when I put the knife down, she speaks again. "I forgive you," she murmurs while I stare at her blankly. What? 

Javier, he on the other hand does no such thing. Snorting, he chuckles humorlessly. "Devin, Brennan is the last person you need to be forgiving," he barks out sending a sneer my way. 

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