“Do you think it was a hunter?”
“No, a hunter probably would have collected my carcass as I lay bleeding on the ground.”
“Good point. An accident, maybe?” I suggested, knowing I was grasping at straws at this point.
“You mean, oops, I took my high-powered rifle, looked through the scope, and happened to fire at the bear-sized wolf in my crosshairs?” he suggested. “’And then I fired again, because I missed the first time?’ “
“I didn’t say it was a good theory,” I snarled at him. “Forgive me for trying to grasp at any possibility besides members of my pack being picked off by an unseen but well-armed menace.”
“Look, Midget, I will admit, there is a pattern of shit that’s happened in the last few months. Your truck brakes. Your office. Strange wolves sniffing around the borders. Hunters getting all trigger-happy . . . though who could blame them for wanting such a fine trophy as yours truly. But there’s no reason to circle the wagons and get all paranoid.”
“If you call me a hysterical female, I am not above pulling the plug,” I deadpanned, reminding myself that it was a good thing Samson didn’t know about the bag incident.
He yawned. “We’ll just do what we always do. We’ll keep an eye out. We’ll keep the youngsters close to home. No one goes out alone, using my little incident as a painful example. But until some rogue werewolf trots down Main Street and declares war, I say we relax.”
“That’s your solution to everything.”
He shrugged. “And so far, it’s worked out great for me. Up until getting shot.”
There was a light knock at the door. Alicia stuck her head in and gave me a sheepish little smile. I glanced from her to Samson, who was staring at her with a completely smitten, stupid expression, and back again.
My lips twitched, but I maintained my neutral face.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” she said.
“Uh, no,” I said, hopping up from the bed. “Did you hear from Clay?”
“Yeah, he’ll be home as soon as he can,” she said, her gaze never leaving Samson. “Your mom came over to watch the boys and Billie. She knew I wanted to stop by and bring this, uh, Jell-O.” She put a very full Tupperware container on the little roll-away table.
I eased toward the door. “Yeah, she knows how much Samson loves Jell-O.”
Truth be told, Samson hated Jell-O. He said food should only twitch if it’s recently deceased. And maybe covered in barbecue sauce. But he really liked Alicia, that much was clear.
I wandered out of the clinic, pondering this new development. Alicia was a good match for Samson. I mean, she was used to wrangling dangerous preschoolers. Although Alicia’s previous mating meant that Samson would never have children of his own, he was good with Paul and Ronnie, who seemed to view him as sort of a man-sized jungle gym. And he would get all of the benefits of having sons without the cranky pregnant wife, two A.M. feedings, and diapers.
I jogged to my office, sat at my desk, and fired up my computer. When he installed the cameras around the valley, Nick had hooked a wireless transmitter into my modem to record anything the cameras picked up to my hard drive. I’d expected the activity to escalate after the incident on the cliff. But so far, we’d mostly gotten footage of elk prancing around the tree line as if they owned the place. But when I opened up the video cache folder on my desktop for that night’s feed, I found . . . nothing.
There was a clip of a young bear cub wandering on the southern ridge the day before, which I’d found on my daily check of the folder. That was it.
“Damn it.” I sighed.
I don’t know what I’d expected. A clip of some Elmer Fudd lookalike waving at the camera and showing ID?
I sat back in my office chair, chewing up my lip. My mom was probably wondering where I was. And Nick had already texted me five times, demanding a less cryptic phone call. I couldn’t seem to bring myself to face either of them.
I sprang up from the chair. What if the cameras weren’t working? Some of the units on the south side of the valley hadn’t deposited a video in the cache folder. It couldn’t hurt to go check, right? It was something to do, and I was itching for something to do that didn’t involve talking or emotions.
I dashed out of my office and jogged up the slope behind the clinic, shrugging out of my jacket and boots. My feet slipped through the patches of tough dead grass, the edges of each blade pricking my ankles. I closed my eyes and breathed deep, searching for a trace of Samson’s blood on the breeze. My face naturally inclined north, to one of Samson’s favorite napping spots in the valley. A patch of dirt he’d dug out on the north lip of the crescent. Nothing. I faced south and caught the faintest scent of rust. I followed it on human feet, silent and swift, my braid bouncing against my back as the scent grew stronger. There was a trail there, worn through the trees by generations of paws.
I skidded to a stop when I recognized the shiny black patch of blood on the ground. Samson’s paw-prints hadn’t gone any farther, as if he’d come running along and stopped suddenly before he was hit. Had he heard a noise? I couldn’t smell any sign of a human or a wolf nearby. I looked up at the bare, imposing limbs overhead. There was nowhere to hide. And there was no camera in sight. Was that blind luck on the shooter’s part? Or did he know where the cameras were?
Samson would have seen a human standing close. The shot must have come from a distance, which could have meant a skewed shot from the game preserve. But there were so many trees. What was the probability of a hunter shooting wild and then the bullet making it all the way through the forest without hitting anything but Samson? I’d say it ranged from no freaking way to none. This was the work of our fabric-softener-loving friend.
I sat on the ground and considered the possibilities. And then I realized that I was just a few yards from the spot where I’d claimed Nick with that ill-conceived bite. He’d been sitting a short distance from where Samson had been shot.
There was a crushing tightness in my chest, leaving me unable to draw in air. I could see Nick in my head, sitting alone on that ridge, scribbling in his little notebook. The wind was playing with his gold hair, and he was pausing every few minutes to shove his glasses back up on his nose. Suddenly, there was the loud crack of a rifle shot, and Nick slumped to the ground, a patch of red blooming on the chest pocket of his shirt. The notebook fluttered out of his hand as blood trickled over his lips. He was unable to move, unable to call for help, unable to do anything but stay there and die. Because of me, because he was too close to me.
Unlike Samson, my mate would not be capable of transforming into a giant wolf and defending himself. I would spend the rest of my life worrying about Nick. I mean, the man had wandered into the path of rogue werewolves and been involved in a serious motor-vehicle incident just since meeting me. I would worry about him getting sick, getting shot, getting caught in the crossfire of whatever weird pattern of phenomena was circling around the valley. Mo had barely survived her ordeal, and that was with just one crazed werewolf after her. What if a whole pack came after us?