Page 1 of Her Big Bad Wolf
Vanessa
Chapter 1
“Have you heard?” Mary asked the second I answered the phone.
“Heard what?”
“The Baylor boys are missing.”
“All of them? I warned them this was going to happen. Kyle should have made the Fosters keep them there and together. I told him there would be issues if he tried to separate them.”
I was so frustrated with the situation. Three orphaned brothers were going to be a handful. Anyone with half a brain should know that.
“All three. They helped each other escape and seem to have run away. Lane called in some trackers. Kyle has a team out looking for them too.”
“But there are so many scents throughout the territory and those boys run around everywhere. Even the chances of a tracker finding them are slim.”
How could they let this happen?
Sure, those boys were rotten to their core. They terrorized the Pack regularly, always getting into something. They’d been busted for stealing, lying, destruction of property, and the list goes on. Everyone looked the other way and let them off with warning after warning simply because they were the poor boys who lost their parents.
Facing the consequences of their actions would have done wonders for their attitudes.
I’d been working with children for years. At their core, all children were good. No one would convince me otherwise.
“It does seem to be posing a problem from what I’d heard so far, but they are trying.”
“Finding the pups will be next to impossible. If they don’t want to be found, they won’t be. You and I both know it.”
“I just hate to think of them out there and alone like that.”
“I know. Me too.”
“Kyle is sending an alert out to the Pack, and I’ve already notified my prayer group,” Mary told me.
“I’ll drive around and see if I can find any signs of the boys.”
“Thank you, Vanessa. I knew you would want to be notified right away, especially with little Cameron in your class.”
We said goodbye so she could make other calls to get more attention on the boys while I grabbed my coat and keys. I was in my pajamas, but that didn’t matter. I was just going to drive around to see if I happened to get lucky.
Cam was only four years old. He’d been in my daycare and then preschool program since his birth, as had his brothers before him. I hated the thought of him being out there somewhere without adult supervision. Cam could be quite the handful. It only gave minimum comfort to know he was with his brothers.
Noah was the oldest at ten years old, but he’d been forced to grow up so quickly with the death of their parents. He was young and angry, no doubt still grieving, but he was proud too and insisted on taking care of his younger brothers even when it wasn’t necessary. It had caused contention in every home they’d attempted to place them in until it was clear it was just too much.
I had not been happy over the decision to separate them, but even I could understand why. Still, I hated it. And I knew this was going to be the outcome.
Mary’s phone call hadn’t been a surprise in the least, which pissed me off more than anything.
I knew Noah meant well. He had always been head-strong and determined. I knew that his parents had harped on him about the responsibility of being the oldest and how he needed to look after his brothers.
But I also knew there was a resistant part of him when it came to them too. He hadn’t wanted that responsibility, and who could blame him? He was only six when Cam was born and already looking after Mason, the middle child.
Mason was an easy-going child and one of the sweetest boys I’d ever had the privilege of caring for. But he also idolized his big brother and would do absolutely anything Noah asked of him. Apparently, that included running away in the middle of the night.
I was still fuming over the situation as I got into my car and started it up.
A growl of frustration resonated through me as I put it into drive and set off on my search.
