Claimed (The Lair of the Wolven 1)

She looked into the tree line. Flashlights were flaring as a group came back toward the road through the forest.

The trooper stepped in and blocked the view. “Ma’am, you’re going to leave now, either in my car or your own. What’s it going to be?”

“Who got hurt on the mountain?” She glanced at the man. “I work at the Wolf Study Project up the road from here, and this is our land, part of our preserve.”

“What’s your name, ma’am?”

Before she could answer, the members of law enforcement broke free of the trees—with a black body bag that was strung like a hammock between the grips of two officers. Something about the way it sagged in the middle made her sick to her stomach.

“I’ll handle this,” someone said.

As the state policeman nodded and stepped back, she was not surprised to see it was Eastwind.

“What’s going on,” she demanded to him.

The sheriff took her elbow and started to walk toward her car. But Lydia threw out her anchor and pointed at the remains as they were brought over to the back of the box van instead of the ambulance.

“Who is in there.”

In the blue flares, Eastwind’s face was a mask of composure. Not that he ever gave much away. “This is an active investigation, Ms. Susi—”

“Don’t you Ms. Susi me. I have a right to know—”

“When we are prepared to make a statement—”

“This is our land.” She nodded at the No Trespassing sign that had been nailed to a thick trunk. “I want to know what happened on it.”

Eastwind looked over as the body bag was loaded into the coroner’s vehicle. “It was a hiker. We don’t have an ID yet.”

She made the sign of the cross over her chest. “Accident or health-related? And how long have they been up on the mountain?”

There was a pause. And that answered the first question, didn’t it.

“Tell me,” she demanded.

“He was attacked by an animal. That’s all I’m going to say.” Eastwind leaned in and looked her right in the eye. “And I expect you to keep this to yourself.”

“Where was he found?”

“That’s all I’m—”

As the double doors of the van were slammed shut, she snapped, “Where.”

“North Granite Ridge. Another hiker found him and called it in. Remains are two days old, and now, if you’ll excuse me.”

The sheriff walked off to the other officers, and Lydia looked back at where the remains had been marched out of the forest.

After a moment, she went to her car and got in. As her dinner grew cold and she forgot about her hunger, she headed back to the office. When she arrived on-site, she didn’t bother going over to the parking area. She pulled directly up to the WSP’s front entrance.

Getting out, she had the key ready as she approached the door—but when she went to put it in the lock, she glared up at the roof line. Night had solidly arrived since she’d left and the motion-activated light was supposed to come on.

The fact that it didn’t was just one more thing to add to the broken list. At least they had a new groundskeeper, right?

As she got her phone and triggered its flashlight, she hoped it was just a blown bulb, instead of an electrical problem.

Stepping inside, she canned the security system and went directly down to her desk. Turning on the lamp beside her computer, she signed in and accessed the mountain’s camera feed program. There were nearly a hundred units mounted in trees in the preserve—which sounded like a lot until you considered how many acres there were.

But there was one on North Granite Ridge.

Closing her eyes, she rubbed her St. Christopher medal between her thumb and forefinger as she waited for that specific feed to load. The recordings were kept live for one week before they were put into permanent storage on the cloud—so it wasn’t going to matter how many days or nights ago the attack happened. Although Eastwind had said forty-eight hours.

When the image was set three days prior, Lydia tilted her monitor and sat closer to the desk. The view of camera #046 was of a clearing that ran laterally north to south, nothing but scrubby brush marking the rock ledge. The lens unit was mounted about fifteen feet from the ground, and there were four stations for the wide-angle to lock into. Back on Monday, the position had been on the second one … and it provided about a thirty-foot field of vision ahead of its station.

The default program moved the camera through its stations every seventy-two hours on a coordinated schedule with the other feeds—unless it was manually overridden. So there was a good chance the attack wasn’t caught. Especially if it occurred behind the tree or in and among the other pines that crowded up tight to the clearing.