Scott stayed sitting in the woods after Allison called. His girlfriend helped him see things in a different way and realize that maybe he was taking Stiles for granted and putting everything else above him. So he decided that the next time he saw Stiles, he'd make more of an effort to let Stiles know how much he appreciated and valued him.

With that decided, he now only had one more thing to worry about: Stiles riding around in his jeep with a possible killer.

He didn't know what to do. Stiles looked like he knew what he was doing, he didn't even look scared when Derek Hale got into his jeep. But instead of reassuring him, Stiles' calm demeanour only worried him more! Scott has seen that calm, unworried look on Stiles dozens of times before and it always ended with either or both of them with cuts and bruises and getting grounded for life. The last time he saw Stiles that calm was the night they went looking for the dead body and it ended with Stiles getting attacked by a wild animal and him losing his inhaler.

Knowing all that, he couldn't help but worry that Stiles was getting in way over his head once again. Only this time he could end up with more than just a few scrapes.

He could just let it go and trust that Stiles really knew what he was doing. But what if Stiles was in trouble now? What if he totally misread the situation earlier and Stiles was actually being threatened by Derek Hale? How could he forgive himself if anything happened to Stiles because he decided to waste precious hours he could have used helping his friend?

Choosing to err on the side of caution, Scott dialled Stiles' number and waited for him to answer.

"Come on Stiles pick up."

He waited and waited, feeling his anxiety grow with each ring.

Hey you just missed me. But if you knew how to dial my number, I'm assuming you also know what to do after the beep.

When Scott first heard Stiles' outgoing message, he was partway amused and annoyed. Now, the stupid message just acted like gasoline to the worry burning inside him. His best friend left the woods with a possible killer in the passenger seat and now he wasn't answering his phone.

He tried calling him a few more times but Stiles still never answered, all he heard was his outgoing message playing on a loop.

"Why isn't he answering?"

Thinking of the worst scenarios, Scott went and dialled another number. This time, he got an immediate answer.

"911 what's your emergency?"

OoOoO

The two werewolves fell silent as they listened in on Sheriff Stilinski's phone call across the hall.

"Sheriff we got a tip about the killer."

At that, both Stiles and Derek tensed. No matter what the tip was about, there was no doubt that it would be bad for both of them especially for Derek.

"What is it?"

"A kid called saying to check on Derek Hale. He says he heard Hale talking to someone about the body and the killer."

Stiles and Derek exchanged a look. It seemed like someone heard their confrontation at the woods and neither of them noticed anyone.

"We already cleared Hale, didn't we?"

"We did Sheriff but the kid sounded pretty scared. It could be worth checking out."

Stiles scoffed. He knew that this tip the deputy got could hardly be called a lead and he knew that under normal circumstances, the deputy would have ignored this tip and chosen instead to find solid leads. However, he also knew by the excitement in the deputy's voice that he would follow this lead no matter how vague if only so he could get off the desk and do something to alleviate his boredom.

"Alright, we've got next to no leads about this case so take Haigh and get over there to at least give this kid a lift home. The last thing we need is a kid getting lost in the woods."

"Sheriff there's something else the kid said."

"What is it?"

"He said he saw your son driving off with Hale."

Stiles' breath hitched. Someone saw him with Derek and they're making it sound like he's either an accomplice or a hostage.

This just kept getting worse and worse.

"That's not possible. Stiles is at school, I just talked to him about ten minutes ago."

"Maybe the kid made a mistake."

"Maybe. Hey Colin, who is this kid?"

"Scott McCall sir."

"Alright, thanks."

He looked at Derek and found the same troubled look in his eyes, only Derek seemed to be leaning towards murderous rage in response to all of this while he was still in shock. All he could think about was Scott telling the cops that Derek was the killer. How the hell did he come up with that? Then there was the fact that Scott followed him to Derek's place. How much did he hear? Did he see Derek shift? Was his secret blown?

There was the sound of a drawer closing followed by Stiles' dad muttering to himself.

"Kid you better be in school when I call you."

Panic was really beginning to set at this point. If his dad called his phone and it rang, he didn't even want to know what his dad would do if he found him in his room with the very guy his deputies just called him about. He checked his pockets, his desk, even his shoe but he still couldn't find his phone.

"Hey Derek have you seen my phone?" He asked looking out the window to check if he dropped his phone after his Peter Parker moment.

"Dammit I can't find it." He cursed when he couldn't find his phone in the yard. "My dad's gonna call me in... scratch that he's already dialling my phone and I can't answer it."

He could hear the dial tone from his dad's phone and up until this moment he has never associated the sound to a ticking time bomb. He could feel the panic growing, it was eating him up and in his mind he started coming up with possible excuses to throw at his dad to get both him and Derek off the hook.

And then, he calmed down.

"He's calling and there's no ring. No ring means no chance of him finding out I'm in my room instead of at school. This is good."

The dial tone was replaced with his outgoing message and before he could breathe easier, Derek finally moved and snapped into attention.

"No." He said, "You need to answer your phone."

Stiles frowned, "What? Okay, first of all I can't find my phone, remember? And since I don't have it in this room that means he won't hear the ring and we won't get caught."

"Oh yeah? And what do you think he's gonna do next if he doesn't get a hold of you after the tip his deputy just called in?"

"He'll call the school." And then he stopped, "He'll call the school and they'll tell him I skipped. That plus the tip plus my unattended phone equals a really big pile of shit for us. Dammit!"

He was on the door before he could even think about it.

"Hey dad!"

He didn't know who was more surprised when he opened the door, him, his dad, or the angry werewolf behind him.

"Stiles?" Noah frowned, "What the hell are you doing here? You're supposed to be in school."

"Uhh I just wasn't feeling too well dad." He coughed a little bit trying to sound as convincing as possible. "Felt kind of feverish so I came home."

Noah frowned and placed the palm of his hand on Stiles' forehead, "You do feel a bit warmer. How do you feel?"

Stiles was shocked by this but he did his best to hide it, his father has just given him the perfect excuse and he wasn't about to do anything to make him even more suspicious.

"I'm much better now. I took some Advil, I'll just sleep this off."

Noah nodded, satisfied that his son wasn't either slacking off at school or suffering from a serious medical condition.

"How long have you been here?"

"I just got here dad but what about you?" Stiles asked desperately changing the topic, "What are you doing home in the middle of the day?"

"I just came to grab some files I took home a couple of nights ago." He paused before asking about the tip he got.

"Stiles did you go here directly from school?"

"Yeah, where else would I go?"

"Someone called in a tip a few minutes ago, apparently someone saw you driving with Derek Hale. Is that true?"

Stiles gulped. He had no answer for this, at least none that would make sense while keeping him and Derek out of trouble.

"Tell him you hit me with your jeep. You wanted to make sure I was okay so you gave me a lift."

"Right, umm I hit him with the jeep on my way here." Stiles said relaying Derek's whispered response, "It wasn't serious, I mean he could still walk. I just grazed him a little bit, barely even hit him actually but I wanted to make sure he was okay. So, I gave him a ride to the hospital but he got off before we got there. Said he had somewhere to be and that he was fine."

When he saw the look on his dad's face he was sure he would lose Roscoe. After all, he just 'admitted' to hitting someone, his dad would be well justified into taking away his keys.

"Stiles, are you sure he's okay?"

Part of him wanted to tell his dad that Derek could be hit by Roscoe at high speed and his jeep would still end up worse, but he cast that aside and nodded instead.

"Next time, when you feel feverish, take the bus."

He nodded even more enthusiastically.

"Now hand me your keys."

Stiles' jaw dropped and for a full second all that came out of his mouth were garbled syllables.

"What? Dad I was sick!"

"And you should have known better. You could have called me and I would have picked you up. So as punishment I'll keep the keys for the weekend or longer if your fever doesn't go away."

He protested a bit more while plotting ways to kill the werewolf responsible for him losing Roscoe, but he eventually relented and gave his dad the keys.

When his dad left to follow up on the tip, Stiles turned his attention to the culprit in his room.

OoOoO

Colin Matthers of the Beacon Hills Sheriff's Department was bored. Three weeks into the job and the most interesting thing to happen to him was that body search in the woods a few days ago but even that wasn't exciting enough. Then there was Sheriff Dooley's death and though he tried to help solve it, there was literally nothing to move forward with.

He joined the police force because he wanted to feel like Will Smith in Bad Boys, to be a hero. He wanted the action, the ladies, the recognition for being a hero. Instead, he was nothing more than a paper pusher who sometimes goes on house calls to break up teenage parties. So, when he got that tip about Hale, he didn't care that it was most definitely nothing or that the Sheriff could get angry at him. All he cared about was getting out of his damned desk before he blew his brains out just so he would have something to do.

"Haigh!" He called, "Come on. Grab your gear we gotta go back to the Hale house, some kid called in a tip and the Sheriff wants us to check it out."

When he and Haigh got to the Hale house, a teenage boy was right there waiting for them.

"Hey kid, are you Scott McCall?" Colin asked.

"Yes Sir."

"What exactly did you see?" He asked while Haigh started looking around the property. Colin didn't know what Haigh was looking for, he was pretty sure that the kid just spooked himself and they'll just end up giving the kid a lift home. Still, it's better than paperwork.

"Well I'm not really sure." The kid said and Colin sighed, he asks for action and he ends up a babysitter. "I heard him and – someone talking about the dead body and the killer. I thought it was strange so I called you guys."

Colin was torn. On the one hand, he wanted to laugh at the kid, he basically just called 911 because he was scared of Derek Hale. He knew the man was intimidating and kinda creepy but the kid actually called 911 and the jock inside him wanted to laugh so badly. But on the other hand, he didn't want to end this 'investigation' so soon. He had a stack of paper work waiting for him in his desk and he would do anything to delay working on it. Even if it meant humouring a stupid teenager.

"Listen ki – Scott." He said, "It's not unusual for people to be talking about this case. Beacon is a pretty small town and this is the first awful thing to happen here in a long time. So I need you to tell me exactly what happened and what you heard and maybe I can find something you missed."

"Okay, I saw Derek standing in front of his house talking to – talking to someone. It looked like they were arguing but I'm not sure. I heard them say –"

"Fuck!"

Colin and the kid turned to find Haigh brushing dirt off his pants.

"Haigh, you okay?"

"Yeah just tripped over this flower." Haigh grumbled. He bent down to pick up the purple flower that caused him to trip and frowned. It wasn't planted firmly on the ground like he thought and there was some rope tied to it.

"Hey Matthers! Come look at this."

Now more curious about the flower, Haigh pulled on the rope and was more astonished to find it was longer than he thought. He barely noticed Matthers and the kid walk over to him, he was too preoccupied with the puzzling thing in his hands. The rope seemed to have been buried in a spiral, to a focal point that he couldn't see. Now, some part of his brain was telling him to stop pulling, for all he knew this rope was connected to a bomb or dog or some other booby trap but his curiosity got the better of him and he kept pulling.

Finally, the spiral was complete and the rope was still tied to something buried underground. The three exchanged looks as they wondered what could be down there. It could be something as innocent as a branch or something far more dangerous like a bomb.

"What do I do?" Haigh asked.

"There are a couple of shovels in the trunk." Colin said.

Haigh didn't even think twice before dropping the rope and running to the car.

"What do you think is down there?" Scott asked.

"We're about to find out." Colin replied accepting the shovel from Haigh.

Colin and Haigh started digging, both wondering what could be buried under here and the significance of the rope. In the back of his mind, Colin remembered one of the more chilling versions of the Bloody Mary story that his older sister told him. According to her, Mary was buried with a rope tied around her wrist which connected to a bell on the surface as a safety precaution in case she was still alive. Mary woke up in the coffin and pulled on the rope as hard as she could to ring the bell but no one was in the house so no one heard her. The next day, her parents found the small bell tower on the floor so they dug her up. There, they found Mary dead with bloody hands clawing at the coffin and a perpetual look of fear on her face.

He remembered not being to sleep for several nights since then and desperately hoping that Bloody Mary wouldn't haunt him.

Now, as he continued digging with Haigh, he tried his damndest not to think about that urban legend. He'll just focus on digging until they found whatever it was buried in here, probably a chest or a box or something. He wouldn't find a dead body.

He just kept telling himself that, trying to convince himself until the stench started to get to him.

"Oh God what is that?!" Haigh said covering his nose.

"Just keep digging." Colin grimaced. He did his best to block out the smell, using the handkerchief in his pocket as a makeshift mask so he could continue digging.

"No way! I'm getting as far away from that stench. You go on digging if you want." Colin watched his partner practically run to the car. He could have followed him and just left the mystery of the horrible stench alone before taking the kid home.

But he couldn't because he knew that smell. He's only been to the morgue once but the smell of decomposing bodies made a real impression and he swore he would remember it for the rest of his life. And if there was even the slightest chance that the kid was right about Derek Hale then that meant the missing half of the body they were looking for could be down here. It could be a dog or a raccoon, but if not, he had to be sure.

So he continued digging.

It didn't take long until he found something bound in a red blanket.

"What is that?" Scott asked but Colin didn't reply. He took out his Swiss army knife and started cutting the ropes tied around the blanket.

At this point, he was pretty sure he had a pretty good idea of what he would find. So when he finally unwrapped the object, he just turned away, closed his eyes and got out of the grave. He ignored Haigh and Scott throwing up, he couldn't blame them, he could feel the bile rising in his throat but he pushed it back down and turned on his radio.

"Dispatch this is Unit 3." He said "We found the missing body. It's at the Hale House."

He confirmed that a backup was on the way before turning back to the dead body in the shallow grave. The girl's eyes were still open and it was like she was staring at him. Telling him what happened to her and condemning him for letting her die.

When he woke up that morning, he wanted so badly to be a hero so he could feel special and maybe even get medals and money. But now, looking at those judging eyes, he was beginning to rethink that. Sure, he didn't know who the girl was but he can't help feeling like he let her down somehow.

The look in the girl's eyes made him feel like a total failure and he had no idea what to do next.