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"Hey, Stiles, it's Anna!"
"Anna! How are you doing? We were just talking about you the other day!" Stiles replied. "I need some new pictures of my goddaughter!"
"Well, with Kimmy now walking and I'm potty training Phil and I'm supposed to have a new Fall line in the queue, it's been hectic!" Anna laughed. "But I'll get you some new pics soon!"
"Sounds like everything is good!"
"You know, it is!" Anna agreed. "I have some news I know you'll be interested in."
"Really?"
"I think we've finally figured out what was behind losing my Pack," she said. The fact that it had been almost ten years since the massacre made it easier to talk about.
"No! After all this time? Wait. Let me get Peter. He's in his office."
"Sure!"
Anna heard Stiles hurry through the house and open the door to Peter's office. "Hey? You busy? Anna has something for us."
"Anna!" Peter said. "So good of you to call!"
"I couldn't not call!" she said. "Some of this is due to your help, so you should know what we found!"
While they had found the Druid that had slain Anna's Pack and had tried to take over the Nemeton the Pack had been guarding, they never really found a good answer as to why he had done it. Stiles had taken out the Druid and then they found next to nothing.
Anna had married Walter, whom she had met at a summer picnic at the Sheriff's house, and they now had two kids. She had finished up her degree from California but wanted to move back to Virginia to raise her family. Five years ago, she and Walter had moved back to Anna's Pack lands, taking a handful of 'wolves with them. Technically, they were part of the Hale pack, since there wasn't -- yet -- an Alpha, but Anna was the heart of the Pack and they were flourishing.
"So what did you find?" Peter asked.
"Well, it was actually through the lawyers," Anna said. "About a year ago, there was a huge corruption scheme recently uncovered in Richmond, having to do with illegal dumping of toxic waste over twenty-some years, filing misleading reports and a shitload of bribery in several state and local environmental agencies. Both the FBI and the State police were involved in taking down the bad guys."
"Yeah. We heard about that here," Stiles said. It had been all over the news for weeks. A lot of people had gone to jail as a result of the investigation.
"Well, a couple of months ago I got a letter from the FBI to let me know that there was reported dumping on the Pack lands and that I should look into it and contact them if I wanted to be part of the clean-up consortium." Anna took a breath. "So I just turned that over to the lawyers and let them figure out what to do."
"That was the right thing to do," Peter agreed.
"Well, the lawyers got the information from the investigation and then hired a team they knew to further investigate the dumping," Anna said. "If there's chemical waste on our lands, I want to know exactly where it is and if anything can be done about it."
"Makes sense," Stiles put in.
"Well, it turns out that the investigation had irrefutable proof that chemicals had been dumped and knew exactly where it should have been."
"Should have been?" Stiles asked.
"Exactly!" Anna exclaimed. "They went over the spot, and the surrounding area, with a fine tooth comb and could barely find any evidence that dumping had taken place."
"Huh."
"And, of course, you'll never guess where that was," Anna went on.
"Near the Nemeton, of course," Stile sighed.
"Got it in one!" Anna grinned.
"Does that mean we think the Nemeton processed that chemical waste, somehow, and cleaned the land?" Peter asked.
"That's the only thing I can think of," Anna replied.
"Okay, I'm going to have to research the hell out of that," Stiles said. "It's not impossible, but it's certainly worth looking into."
Anna went on. "Remember I said my mom reported someone doing some surveying at some point? Maybe that was part of an attempt to cover-up the dumping. When they couldn't find the dump site, I'll bet the higher ups wanted to know how it was cleaned up and if it could be done for some of the other sites. When Rob wouldn't let them do more than a basic survey, they went brute force. They killed off who they thought were the landowners and would have tried to take over the property, so they could do their own research."
"And we got there ahead of them. I tied down the Nemeton before anyone else could get to it. We got the Pack lawyers involved in taking control of the assets, including the land, and I dealt with the Druid they had hired to take out the Pack," Stiles said.
"I would guess that the dumpers had hoped to take over 'abandoned' land and were put off with all the activity," Peter said.
"Add to that, the wards I put up wouldn't let anyone on the property that didn't belong," Stiles said. "They must have given up and moved on, cutting their losses."
"That's pretty much what the lawyers thought," Anna said.
"Which means the entire thing was driven by greed rather than being supernatural based," Peter summed up. "Your Pack wasn't targeted for being 'wolves but for being where they were located."
"I think that's it!" Anna agreed.
"Well, it's good to have some resolution," Stiles said. "Not that I'll be taking those wards down, there's still bad guys out there."
"No hurry but we'd love to have you come out to visit. If nothing else, you haven't been out for a while. As you know, Kimmy's a 'wolf and we're not sure but we think Phil might be magical and it would be great if you can see if you can confirm that for us. We were out in the woods and he pointed the way to the Nemeton," Anna said.
"Oh, man!" Stiles laughed.
"We'd love to come out and visit," Peter said. "We'll get back to you after I have a chance to check my calendar."
"Thank you!" Anna replied. "Love you both!"
"Love you, too!" Stiles replied. "See you soon!"
"Bye!"
Stiles hung up the phone. "Well, that is an interesting development. Guess I'm going to have to go out and have a chat with our Nemeton."
"Thursday is the full moon, how about then?" Peter asked.
"Sounds perfect! Thanks!" Stiles leaned in for a small kiss.