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Summary: Caught between hunters and werewolves and wendigos, Stiles almost doesn’t have time to wonder much about the hot new redheaded Deputy Sherriff or the bow-wielding sarcastic gym teacher. Almost.
Rating: PG
Characters: Stiles Stilinski, Scott McCall, Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton, Sheriff Stilinski, etc.
Warnings: Secret identities, secrets upon secrets, the usual
Disclaimer: This is fanfic, I own nothing of the characters/worlds/franchises etc. All recognizable characters belong to their creators etc.

Chapter Warning:This chapter very briefly references the long-ago death of a fetus - basically similar to the levels of violence done against characters in Teen Wolf if you read between the lines.

---

The school week passed. Stiles avoided detention, although it was a very close thing in chemistry class. Lydia hadn't let up on Peter, threatening to go directly to Derek, but that left Stiles out of things so who cared.

On Saturday morning, Stiles hung out in the backroom of the local veterinarian's office, watching Scott mop while he fed bits of lettuce to a sick tortoise. "I'm just saying, it's like neither of them exist," Stiles was saying. "No Facebook, Twitter, nothing. I even looked on MySpace."

"Give it a rest," Scott said. "Not everyone needs to spend hours a day on social media. They're like, old. Old people don't use those things."

"Just because your mom isn't on Facebook doesn't mean other people aren't," Stiles pointed out. "I mean, I get Mr. Barton, he's a jock, but what about Deputy Rushman? Her personal file says she's twenty-eight. She'd have been around when they invented the internet."

"Maybe she changed her name," Scott said, exasperated. "Maybe she likes her privacy. Maybe she has a life that doesn't involve her iPhone!"

"Ouch, someone didn't finish his Wheaties this morning," Stiles said. "Maybe it's an alias. What if she's part of some government conspiracy and has infiltrated the Sheriff's department?"

"For what?" Scott asked. "Nothing happens in this town." At Stiles' incredulous expression, he amended, "Nothing that the government would care about."

"Maybe she's DEA," Stiles mused. "There was that big drug bust last month just outside the county limits. Ooh, or ATF? Gangs in the area?"

"Or maybe," Scott said, mopping with more force than necessary, "She's a Hunter. Maybe they're both Hunters. Maybe we're all screwed."

He sloshed water out of the bucket as he crossed the floor, making Stiles wince. "Allison still won't talk to you, will she?" It wasn't really a question.

"Shut up," Scott told the mop bucket.

"Whatever." Maybe it made Stiles a bad friend, but Scott's bad mood was seriously harshing his buzz. "I have to go to the library to get some homework done, you need books or anything?"

"Can I copy your math homework?" Scott asked, pausing to lean on the mop handle. "Calculus is already kicking my ass."

"Why don't you just ask Lydia to tutor you?" Stiles asked, dropping the last of the lettuce into the tank and watching the tortoise clomp down on it with her sharp beak.

"Because Lydia scares me?"

"Might scare you into learning something, you mean," Stiles said, slipping on his backpack. "Text me later."

"Whatever."

Stiles poked his head into Dr. Deaton's office on the way out, giving the veterinarian a wave. The Doc smiled at Stiles. "Are you boys keeping out of trouble at school so far?" he asked.

"Of course!" Stiles lied, giving the Doc a shiny grin. "What could we possibly be getting into?"

"Stiles."

"Yeah, you know." Stiles backed out of the hallway and hit the parking lot at a fast shuffle, not wanting to be drawn into a discussion with Dr. Deaton about wendigos and spirits and creepy stuff. The sun was out and all Stiles wanted to do was hit the library and their anonymous wifi to do some serious research on nocturnal creepy-crawlies and--

He stopped, one foot in the jeep. He had forgotten his laptop at home.

Cursing his slippery memory, and not wanting to have to deal with the ancient library computers, Stiles got into the jeep and pointed it at home.

The trip was quick and Stiles parked in the street, not wanting to deal with the driveway. He wondered a bit at Dad's car in the drive; after all, Dad had said he was going to spend the first part of the day at the shooting range, and that usually took until after two.

The front door opened quietly and Stiles barged inside, making a dash for the stairs. "Hey Dad, just forgot something—" He stopped, mid-sentence and mid-step, when he got a peek into the living room.

Deputy Rushman was on his couch.

Deputy Rushman was on his couch.

Her hair was down in red waves around her face, in civilian clothes which were way more flattering to her suddenly visible curves, and her eyes somehow seemed bigger than they had before.

Stiles sent a fervent prayer of thanks to the makers of Maybelline.

"Uh, why?" Stiles said, shifting his backpack around. "You, here?"

The Deputy closed the folder on the coffee table, obscuring what Stiles belatedly realized were crime scene photos. "The Sheriff and I were going over old case files," the woman said, leaning back and folding her hands in her lap.

Stiles looked around the living room. No Dad. "Isn't that what the office is for?" he asked.

"Not if we actually wanted to get some work done," Dad's voice came out of nowhere, making Stiles jump. Dad came into the living room from the kitchen, carrying two coffee cups. "I thought you were going to the library."

"I am," Stiles said, edging into the room to attempt a sneak peek at the folder. From the looks of the writing and the fading around the edges, it was an old file. The folder itself was puke green, unlike anything Stiles had seen in his poking around in the Beacon Hills Sheriff Department's file room. "But you know, I always forget something."

"What was it this time?" Dad asked, handing Deputy Rushman one of the mugs before sitting in his favorite chair.

"Laptop," Stiles said. He twisted his neck as if to scratch his chin, so he could get a better look at the writing on the folder. All he could make out was the name and a partial date, VASQUEZ, CLARA: DOD 1994-09-...

"Stiles," Dad said, and Stiles jerked his head around and bolted for the stairs.

What the hell could Dad and the Deputy (now there was a horrible band name) be doing? he wondered as he raced up the stairs. Stiles knew the name of every single person who'd died in Beacon Hills since 1978, thanks to a horrible summer two years before of re-filing at the BHSD after the last major earthquake shook everything down. No one named Vasquez had died in town, of natural causes or otherwise.

Maybe Derek knew something, Stiles decided, stumbling into his bedroom. He grabbed his laptop with one hand and pulled out his phone with the other. Then he reconsidered. It would be easier (and less likely to show up in document discovery in court; never let it be said Stiles didn't learn anything from watching CSI) if he just asked Derek in person.

Stiles tumbled down the stairs again in one piece, stopping once again in the living room doorway. Neither Dad nor the Deputy had moved. "Okay, so, later," Stiles said. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

Dad sighed. "When are you going to be in tonight?"

Stiles hesitated. He knew Derek wanted to take the pack into the woods after the wendigo, and even though Stiles himself would be completely useless up against something like a wendigo, he wouldn't be able to let the wolves go off without him. Call him superstitions or insane, it wasn't happening.

"I was going to stay over at Scott's tonight," Stiles said, trying to appear innocent. "His mom's letting up the academic probation so Scott can actually have some fun on the weekends."

Dad fixed Stiles with a glare. "And Melissa knows about this?"

Stiles shrugged. "Scott said he was going to tell her, who knows, right?"

He held his Dad's gaze for one more moment, then flashed a smile at the Deputy and bolted. He didn't really want to think about his father spending time with a woman who wasn't his mother in their house, even though they were probably only going to look at pictures of dead people.

And anyway. Stiles was like a researching god now. Maybe he'd find out a little bit about Clara Vasquez on his own.

---

At eleven o'clock on a Saturday morning, the only empty chair in Beacon Hills' tiny library was between Lydia Martin and Danny Mahealani. Taking that as a sign, Stiles dropped into the chair and started setting up his laptop on the sliver of clear desk space.

Lydia had three textbooks open in front of her, her four highlighters and three pens lined up in a neat row beside her binder. On Stiles' other side, Danny had his laptop open, three sports magazines in various states of disarray, and half a dozen books piled up haphazardly. Stiles glanced at one of the magazine, open to a spread on the Olympic male swim team, and made an appreciative noise. Danny ignored him, but Lydia hissed, "Shh!"

"Can we just take a moment to admire the ingenuity of modern swimsuit design?" Stiles asked, picking up the magazine and shoving it at Lydia. "They brought sexy back to lowering the friction coefficient in the water."

Danny grabbed the magazine from Stiles. "Stop touching my stuff," he said before putting his headphones back on.

Lydia stuck her tongue out at Stiles and went back to her chemistry.

Fine. Stiles unzipped his hoodie to get comfortable before flipping open his laptop and connecting to the library's wifi through his usual IP blocking sites. He checked his email and hit refresh on a few blogs, before googling "Clara Vasquez".

The number of search results made Stiles eyes bleed, so he tried "Clara Vasquez dead" and "Clara Vasquez obituary" which didn't help much either.

He rubbed his eyes. He needed to narrow this down, because the name was all he was going to get without breaking into the Sheriff's department and looking at the paper copy of the file, and lord knew that wasn't happening.

The folder had been green, with a logo on the front of it. Stiles wasn't familiar with the design, but if it was a police folder, maybe he could find something that way.

Another quick google search, and he was left a collection of sheriff and police logos listed by state and country. "All hail the internet," Stiles muttered, starting to scroll through New York State's results. Nothing looked familiar, so Stiles hemmed and hawed and decided what the hell, start local and go out from there.

Only he didn't have much out to go because on the first page of results from California, Stiles' eyes landed on the insignia for the Los Angels Police Department and he nearly yelped in triumph.

"Oh my god," Lydia exclaimed under her breath, slapping her textbook closed. "What are you doing and why are you messing up my concentration?"

"The case file, it's from the LAPD," Stiles stage-whispered. Lydia gave him a blank stare. "The case file that my Dad and the new Deputy were looking at when I caught them this morning in my living room."

Lydia's glare grew incredulous. "Are you aware that the rest of us aren't following along with your insanity?" she asked, pulling Stiles' laptop towards her and flipping through his open tabs. "Who's Clara Vasquez?"

"The DB."

"The—" Lydia pushed the computer away from her. "You're a freak."

"Says the girl going around town trying to dig up Peter Hale." Stiles modified his search for "Clara Vasquez dead Los Angeles" but even so, the results were useless. "Damnit!"

From Stiles' other side, Danny made an inquisitive noise. "How long ago was it?"

Stiles and Lydia shifted around to look at Danny. "What?" Stiles stammered.

Danny sighed, pulling off his headphones. "Not everything's online, especially in LA. What are you looking for?"

"Um." Stiles tried to figure out if this was a good idea, bringing Danny into his latest obsession, but considering that it wasn't pack business, Stiles couldn't see the harm. Or at least the harm didn't jump out to slap Stiles in the face on first glance. Close enough. "LAPD case file, Clara Vasquez, date of death sometime in 1994 was all I could see."

Danny pulled over Stiles' laptop and opened a new browser tab, going to the Stanford library website and entering a string of numbers and a password. At Stiles' side, Lydia made a small squeal. "You have a Stanford library card?"

Danny shrugged. "My dad went there. He has an alumni card."

"So jealous," Lydia moaned, and Stiles shook his head. Lydia Martin was the only girl he knew who could be wooed with a library card. Which was actually sort of hot.

"So," Danny murmured. "There's a project to digitize California's newspapers from eons ago. They probably have 1994 in there." He typed in a few words, and up popped a short list of results. Danny clicked to the top one. "Wait, is that it?"

Stiles and Lydia crowded in for a look at the screen. A scan of the newspaper article was displayed, a short blurb with the headline, Pregnant Woman Killed in Ravine; Wild Animal Suspected.

"Oh," Lydia said in a small voice.

"The body of a young pregnant woman was found in the Guartez ravine outside of Los Angeles on Thursday morning," Stiles read, feeling a little sick. "Clara Vasquez, age twenty-one, had been attacked and killed overnight by what local officials are describing as a large cat or mountain lion. The coroner is investigating the case. Local residents are advised to keep their children and pets inside until the animal is identified and located."

"Didn't they say that it was a mountain lion that was killing all those people in Beacon Hills early last year?" Danny asked.

"That's what they said," Stiles told him. While Lydia knew about werewolves, because Jackson, obviously, Danny still hadn't officially been told about Beacon Hills' unusual populations.

"Why would the new Deputy be showing your dad a copy of this case?" Lydia wondered.

"I have no idea," Stiles said. It didn't make any sense. Eighteen years ago, the Hales had been alive and wolfing out in the woods. Derek would have been just a little kid. "Maybe because of the cases last year?"

"Let's see if they ever caught the animal," Danny said, skipping to the next article. Unlike the initial article, this one splashed across the page, Tony Stark's Pregnant Fiancée Killed in Animal Attack.

Stiles nearly swallowed his tongue. "Wait, the dead woman was engaged to Tony Stark? Iron Man Tony Stark?"

A passing librarian shushed them, but Stiles didn't pay attention, his eyes scouring the article. This reporter had done his homework, finding out that Clara Vasquez, eight months pregnant, had been the fiancée of millionaire Tony Stark, who at twenty years old was the CEO of Stark Industries, which made everything from computers to weapons.

All of this was extremely relevant to Stiles; he'd been twelve when Iron Man first showed up, a real-life superhero, and Stiles may have developed a little interest.

Okay, screw that: Stiles Stilinski was a total Iron Man fanboy, obsessed with all things Tony Stark, and if there'd been a wet dream or two involving Iron Man, Stiles wasn't telling.

But sitting back in the Beacon Hills library, Stiles stared at the article, which had looked into Tony Stark's whereabouts at the time of the killing, unable to find a hole in the alibi of presenting to a corporate board in New York City at the exact time Clara was killed.

The article also went into more graphic detail of Clara's death, including that her fetus had been ripped out of her body by the animal and, in the words of the article, 'showed evidence of teeth marks'.

Danny clicked on the little arrow to take them to the next page, where a black and white photo of Clara Vazquez had been reproduced. It must have been supplied by the family, because it didn't have the stark realism of the DMV. In the photo, Clara Vasquez was smiling, her dark eyes crinkling in happiness, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders.

She'd been killed when she was only four years older than Stiles.

Lydia took control of the computer, elbowing Stiles in the side and typing with a ferocity dangerous to her manicure. If Stiles was a little too obsessed with Iron Man, that was nothing on Lydia's Tony Stark infatuation. As far back as grade school, Lydia had hoarded every scrap of detail on Tony Stark, his public appearances in the gossip magazines, his company's stock performances, every scientific discovery Stark Industries made, every mathematical proof Tony Stark ever worked on.

If Iron Man was Stiles' fanboy crush, Tony Stark was Lydia's spirit animal.

Lydia opened a series of gossip sites and winnowing down on Tony Stark. These days, of course, most of the chatter was about Tony Stark and Iron Man and what happened in New York in May (because aliens and space whales and what the hell?) but as Stiles and Danny watched, Lydia brushed aside the recent noise and zeroed in on Tony Stark's personal life in the early days.

"He doesn't talk about her, ever," Lydia said after a few minutes. "Even in 1994, he never made a public statement on what happened to her or the baby."

Danny shifted in his seat. "When were they going to get married?"

Lydia performed some more internet magic. "The wedding was scheduled for six months after the baby's due date," she said in a minute. "The church was booked and everything."

"Why were they going to wait for so long?" Stiles asked. "I mean, most shotgun weddings happen before the bride starts to show, not long enough for her to lose the baby weight?"

Lydia tapped the screen. "The bride's father was overseas in Malaysia. One of her best friends did a tell-all, saying Clara wanted her dad to walk her down the aisle."

"And instead, she gets ripped to shreds in a ravine," Stiles said. He chewed on his fingernail to keep from vibrating out of his seat. "Why didn't this get dragged out into the news when Tony Stark did the whole Iron Man thing?"

In all his time trolling the Iron Man fansites, Stiles had never come across mention of a fiancée or a baby.

"You'd think the media would love to drag this up," he murmured, staring at the photo of Clara Vasquez. Something about the photo was eerily familiar, and he couldn't figure out what. Maybe it was the eyes.

"You'd be surprised what money can hush up," Danny said. "If Tony Stark wasn't a suspect, then it might have died down sooner."

"It's a good thing Stark was across the country," Stiles said, making a screen grab of Clara Vasquez's photo, then flipping through the other articles. "The number one cause of death in pregnant women is homicide, usually by the father-to-be."

"That's horrible," Lydia said.

Stiles didn't look at her. He was the Sheriff's kid, he knew the names of everyone who had been killed in Beacon Hills since 1978; could have brought up the names of the four pregnant women who'd been killed by their boyfriends or husbands in living memory.

But he didn't.

Stiles finished reading the news articles. "They never figured out what happened, at least that they told the media," he said. "Coroner's results were inconclusive. No mountain lions were ever spotted in the area. Big surprise there."

"So what does that have to do with Beacon Hills?" Lydia asked.

"Maybe someone's trying to figure out how many people in California have been killed by 'mountain lions'," and he made finger quotes around the words. "But Deputy Rushman said she came from New York."

"Maybe she knows something about mountain lion attacks," Lydia mused.

Stiles shook his head. "Can we circle back around the to the Tony Stark of all this?" he demanded. "His babymama and baby get chewed on by invisible mountain lions and the man who builds missiles for a living doesn't do something?"

Lydia sighed. "For an Iron Man geek, you need to read up on your origin stories," she said, starting to pack away her books.

"What?"

"Clara Vasquez was killed in 1994, right?" At Stiles' nod, Lydia went on. "When exactly did Stark Industries move primarily into weapons design from computer electronics?"

Before Stiles could figure out an answer, Lydia picked up her bag and walked away.

Stiles turned a questioning eyebrow to Danny, but the other boy already had Wikipedia open. "It was 1995," Danny said after a moment of scanning. "Just about the time they should have had the wedding."

Stiles buried his head in his hands. None of this made any sense. Why would Deputy Natasha Rushman, a woman who didn't appear to have a background of any kind and who would have only been ten years old when Clara Vasquez was killed, be so interested in the case as to bring it to the Sheriff?

Did it have anything to do with the werewolf killings the previous year, the ones the Sheriff's department had passed off as mountain lion attacks?

Because seriously, what connection could Tony Stark's dead fiancée possibly have to Beacon Hills?

Stiles bit down on his finger so hard that he tasted blood. What if Clara Vasquez had been killed by a werewolf?

And if she had been, it was even more important that Stiles figure out why Deputy Rushman was looking at the case here, eighteen years later, in Beacon Hills.

to be continued