A Forest So Deadly (Pioneer Falls Book 2)

by Heather Davis

  “So that’s why I saw—”

  “Lily, you better go wait in the truck,” Dad interrupted.

  The sheriff gave me a stern look. “He’s right. It’s a crime scene now. We don’t want to contaminate it.”

  “Got it,” I said, watching them walk toward the kennels. I didn’t go back to the truck, though. I stepped onto Cooper’s porch and peered in the window.

  He sat at the kitchen table, two steaming mugs of tea in front of him and Deputy Williams. His eyes were red, raw. I could only imagine what story he was spinning about the death of Bowman and Mr. Gray. It was his word against Mrs. Gillingham. It wasn’t like either Dad or I could be eyewitnesses. Those other hunters, the ones dressed as zombies, had run off when the shot had been fired. As far as they knew, Mrs. Gillingham had shot a wolf. I wasn’t sure who they were. Maybe I’d know if I smelled them.

  Cooper noticed me on the porch. He made a move to get up, but the deputy put a hand on his arm. Cooper’s expression held a lot of things—remorse, gratitude, regret. I put a hand over my heart and then waved to him, as if to say, we’re good. He sat back in his chair and lifted his mug of tea to his lips. Then he paused, setting down his mug. I saw him reach for the special honey jar—the one from his dad’s hives.

  As I walked toward the truck, a blue car barreled down the driveway toward me—Nathaniel’s Honda. I girded myself for the fight to come. It skidded to a stop a few yards from me, kicking up a spray of gravel. Instead of Nathaniel, though, I saw Morgan behind the wheel. Morgan.

  My heart stuttered in my chest.

  He got out of the car, motioning for Alex to stay put. I ran toward him. A mixture of anger and confusion and relief flooded my veins. I didn’t understand what he was doing there.

  Morgan folded me into his arms and kissed the top of my head. Even with everything terrible that’d happened, even though I was confused by his presence, just to be held by him overwhelmed every other feeling. Nestling my lips in the space between his neck and collarbone, I drank in his scent—forest and night and musk and the faintest hint of cologne. It comforted me, having him there and his strong hands encircling my waist, hearing his heartbeat so close.

  I raised my head, scratching my cheek in a welcome way against the stubble on his chin. “What happened?” I managed to say.

  “I told you I’d be back.” His forehead creased with a deep frown. “The note?”

  “What note?”

  “I shouldn’t have trusted you’d find it first. Someone looking for me probably took it so you wouldn’t find it. Maybe Nathaniel…” He held his hands out. “In order to let the girls keep the lupine pendants, I had to promise to leave Pioneer Falls. Cut off all communication. I’m sorry, love. I thought you’d understand I had to do it.”

  I stepped closer now, seeing the sincerity of his apology. “Scarlet and Ramsey made you?” I said, their names tasting sour in my mouth.

  “Afraid so. I did leave, to keep the bargain, but they didn’t say anything about coming back.” He leaned forward and kissed my cheek.

  “And you had a pendant,” I said, noticing the stone around his neck.

  “I nicked it from my father. How else could I track Nathaniel last night and rescue Alex?”

  “Oh, Alex…” I glanced toward the car. He was still in there, sitting in the passenger seat, looking like any moment he was going to jump out and make a run for it. I could only imagine that Morgan had reasoned with him after saving him from Nathaniel’s place. His hands were on the dash, clearly not bound.

  “What’s wrong?” Morgan put his hands on my shoulders, steadying me so I could focus.

  “Something terrible happened. You can’t let him out of the car.”

  Just then, Dad and Sheriff Polson came around the corner of the house. Dad noticed Alex in the car and jogged toward us.

  “Mr. Bowman’s dead,” I whispered to Morgan. I felt the news register in his body, his posture stiffening and his head swivel toward Alex. Morgan’s grave look was enough to make Alex spring out of the car. He ran toward my dad, looking less like a skater boy and more like a rage-filled beast himself.

  Dad slowed his pace. “Alex, we need to tell you what happened here.”

  But it was almost like Alex knew. He’d probably figured the stakes were high if the wolves would take the chance to kidnap him, use him as a bargaining chip. He knew it was life or death. He must have felt the news coming his way.

  The sheriff caught Alex before he connected with Dad. Alex struggled in her arms, and I heard her say, “He’s gone, son.”

  All the life seemed to drain out of Alex’s body as he slid to the ground, letting out an anguished scream. The sheriff crouched down beside him. Alex wailed louder as she told him some of the details.

  These details, Dad and I knew, weren’t entirely true. Cooper had embellished a few details, once he’d restrained Mrs. Gillingham. I knew some of the actual story from what I’d seen.

  Dad and I had watched from the kennels as Cooper dressed Mr. Gray’s human body in clothes from Ivan’s closet. The men had been roughly the same size and there wasn’t time to find the spot where Mr. Gray had transformed and left his clothes. The bullet had cleanly pierced his chest, so Cooper had made sure to unbutton the shirt.

  The story Cooper devised was that Mr. Gray had followed Mrs. Gillingham up here, not sure of the nature of her rendezvous with Mr. Bowman. Then, the story went, he’d found out they were there to shoot Cooper’s wolves for sport and claim they had been threatened. Mr. Gray had gone ballistic and attacked Mr. Bowman. Then, of course, Mrs. Gillingham had shot Mr. Gray. That part of the story needed no exaggeration.

  The attack though, involved some props. Cooper’d taken a jagged two by four and carefully bloodied the sharp ends with Bowman’s arterial blood, then placed Mr. Gray’s fingers carefully all over the wood. It was important for it to look like human violence. Cooper didn’t want the blame on his hybrids or any other wolf.

  Even if Mrs. Gillingham contradicted Cooper’s version of events, what would she say? That her werewolf lover attacked Bowman so she shot him? She’d stick to the official story or something like it. No one was going to believe she didn’t shoot Mr. Gray, especially after the suspicions with Ivan and the rumors about the death of her late husband, Clyde.

  As the sheriff comforted Alex, my dad lowered his head, probably out of respect mixed with guilt. I felt responsible, too, for how everything had ended. I’d tried to help Cooper see that it couldn’t have been wolves. I’d tried to warn him about the hunters. But there are realizations that people have to come to themselves. Maybe some aren’t ready to know the truth. Or take up the family’s tradition. Or trust someone they’re afraid of.

  I took Morgan’s hand and walked him toward Nathaniel’s car, catching him up on the night’s events. We leaned on the hood, watching the sheriff walk back toward the house with Alex, with Mac and Cooper coming out to the porch, Cooper offering Alex a hand that he refused.

  Dad looped back to us. “This is Nathaniel’s car,” he said, walking over.

  “It is. He’d locked Alex in the back of the Laundromat in Still Creek.”

  “Laundromat?” I asked.

  “The next business venture for Ezra’s pack,” Morgan said.

  Dad let out an irritated grunt. “Of course it is.”

  “Putting down those roots,” I said.

  “As long as they’re near Pioneer Falls, we aren’t safe,” Dad said.

  “And Cooper handed over the secret histories to the hunters,” I said.

  Morgan put a hand around my shoulders. “All the more reason for me to stay.”

  “And your parents?”

  “They’re headed back to London.”

  Dad frowned. “You’re disobeying your pack?”

  “Some might see it that way,” Morgan said, with a sad smile. “Perhaps it’s an American construct and definitely not wolf, but maybe some relations are best loved from a distance.”

  “Love�
��s not a wolf construct,” Dad said, sadness edging his words.

  “Who says?” I countered. “We spend all this time worrying about doing things differently when they are already different. This isn’t the world that you were born into, Dad.”

  Morgan arched a brow at me. “Well said.”

  “That’s my Lily,” Dad said, smiling briefly. “Always braver than I ever was.”

  Morgan gave Dad a deferential nod and walked back to the car. I think he could tell Dad and I needed a moment. I wiped at my dirty cheeks. I could almost feel my skin calling for a shower.

  “He never really left you,” Dad said, smoothing a strand of hair back behind one of my ears. “That must feel good to know.”

  I nodded. It felt too soon to celebrate that Morgan planned to stay, that he’d defy his pack. But he hadn’t walked away, like my mother had. He knew what I was and he knew things were bad. And he knew I wasn’t perfect. And yet…

  Dad gave me a little hug. “You said it yourself. Just because something happened in the past, that doesn’t have to be the model for the future. My mistakes aren’t your mistakes.”

  I sniffed and wiped a hand across my mouth and nose. I totally wasn’t crying, just felt a twitch from the morning air. Dad pointed up at the house. Mac’s squad car rolled by, carrying a scowling Mrs. Gillingham.

  “I’ll get permission to search her house. Bowman’s too. Maybe I’ll find the missing histories. Could be a long day.”

  “So I’ll see you later…to run tonight?”

  “Yep.” Dad looked at me with an approving smile. “That’s the wolf way.”

  ***

  Morgan fiddled with the radio while I buckled up. He started the car, giving the engine a good rev, and then we followed the police cruiser down the long, winding drive.

  Silence choked at my throat. It was hard to focus on the happiness of his return when everything felt so unsettled, so tentative.

  “Enough.” Morgan pulled over onto the shoulder of the road before the bridge.

  A logging truck blared its horn as it passed us. Just another load of timber for the mill in town. Another normal day in Pioneer Falls, even though the night before had been anything but.

  “All of this fear in your mind. I can see it, love.”

  “I was so worried,” I said. “I still am.”

  “Of course you are. You needed reassurance and I wasn’t there to give it to you.” He turned off the car and unbuckled his seat belt.

  “I wish I didn’t need that. It feels weak.”

  Morgan took my hand. “It’s scary. For me, too. You’re not in this alone.”

  “But it feels like I was, like I am, sometimes.”

  “Everyone feels the fear. That’s part of being human. But if you want it bad enough, to really connect to someone, you have to push through that. That’s what I’m finding out. You don’t think I worried about you from the second I left town to the moment I pulled up in that driveway?”

  Fireflies buzzed in my veins, in my senses. “You did?”

  Morgan swore under his breath. “The idea of losing you was more painful than anything. Than disobeying my family. Than leaving my pack.”

  “You gave a lot up,” I said, feeling foolish, like I hadn’t understood anything about how his mind worked, how he really felt about me.

  “And I’d do it again.”

  I wanted him to kiss me, must have been thinking of it, and he’d seen the image in my mind. He swooped in, his lips matching mine so perfectly. And my hands slipped to unbuckle my seat belt, needing to be closer to him, to feel him as completely as I could in that car on the side of the road.

  The kiss took on its own life, burning with something deeper than what I’d felt before. I hoped it was certainty—a feeling that we’d chosen each other. And that he’d chosen Pioneer Falls. Honestly, I didn’t know what would happen next with us, or even if I’d always feel the same way about him, or him about me. But in that moment, he was all I could imagine ever wanting. And that was enough.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The following Saturday, mourners spilled out from the section of graves near the reflecting pool in Pioneer Falls Cemetery, people respectfully standing behind the bumper crop of folding chairs, all occupied. Mr. Archibald Gray, former mayor and beloved postmaster, had friends in every corner of town, it seemed. No one could quite settle on how many years they’d known him. It was as if he’d lived there forever. Cooper told me he’d struggled with the paperwork for the headstone order, eventually deciding to change his birth year to something more human. By werewolf standards, Mr. Gray had been late middle-aged, but in human years, it was more around a hundred years old. That wouldn’t make sense to anyone if they’d read it carved in granite.

  I’d helped Cooper set up the chairs he’d borrowed from the Methodist church. Now, he stood near the officiating pastor. Cooper’s dark suit, the same one he’d worn a few weeks earlier for his own father’s funeral, looked bigger on him, like maybe he’d lost a little weight in that short time. There was peace in his expression, though, like he understood his place in the world finally—and that we needed him, as we’d needed his father, and his grandfather before him.

  Sheriff Polson and Dad sat in the front row, in the place that family would have occupied, had Mr. Gray had any. It’d been impossible to find any next of kin. There were rumors he had a son in New Mexico, but no one had been able to locate him. Mrs. Gillingham was locked up in county jail, awaiting trial. Dad had kept it quiet that her gun had been loaded with silver-tipped bullets, though the sheriff had raised an eyebrow when she’d read that in the ballistics report.

  Beside Dad, Ms. Hamlin, a lawyer from a firm in Seattle, checked her phone and then slipped it back into the pocket of her designer overcoat. Apparently Mr. Gray had recently contacted her to update his will, but had never signed off on changes that would have benefited his new sweetheart. Instead, his wishes remained intact. His house had been left to the Pioneer Falls Historical Society, a group that hadn’t been active in years. That bequest seemed fitting. Cooper found out that during his time as mayor, Mr. Gray had discovered the secret records and smuggled them out to Cooper’s grandfather, who then had passed them down to Ivan, who’d given them to Cooper. And now, they were in the possession of someone we didn’t know. They hadn’t been recovered from searches at the Bowman or Gillingham houses.

  A light mist rose around the cemetery as community members shared memories of Mr. Gray, most of them from his postmaster days. Dad said a few words highlighting his community service. Then the pastor invited one of Mr. Gray’s neighbors forward to share a hymn. The sound of her accompaniment through the portable speaker was tinny, but pretty. I had the feeling Mr. Gray would have liked it. As the soloist finished her rendition of the hymn, Morgan slipped his hand into mine. It felt good to have him there, sitting next to me and my sisters. He was making an effort to get to know my father, acting as if he intended to be a member of the small Turner pack. Morgan’s interaction with his own family had been tense, but he told me they weren’t going to do anything about their son who’d gone rogue.

  On the other side of me, Fawn and Rose held somber expressions, respectful for someone they hadn’t known well. My black dress looked nice on Fawn, and she’d actually asked me to borrow it for a change. But Rose…I was a little worried about her.

  She kept turning around, as if she expected Alex to attend his father’s attacker’s service. That was sad. I’d gotten used to seeing Alex around town on his skateboard or in the school lunchroom. But his father was gone, the body transported to be buried in a city cemetery somewhere. There’d be nothing to keep Alex here. I suspected he’d gone to live with his mother in Vancouver. Anyway, Alex had probably figured out the truth about Mr. Gray, about why he’d killed his father.

  After thanking the soloist, the pastor led the last prayer graveside. In true Pioneer Falls spirit, he called upon the heavens to nourish Mr. Gray in the celestial forest. Even the loggers i
n our midst didn’t snicker at that. Maybe they hoped the same would be said over them someday.

  Truly, I don’t know how the afterlife works for werewolves. I hope there’s a heaven for us, some kind of peace. But I also know what we are—predators. Mr. Gray killed Bowman, but for a good reason. Maybe over the span of a century, he’d had a need to kill other people, another hunter, someone. Maybe it hadn’t even been on purpose. What kind of redemption is possible for creatures like us who kill for survival, or by instinct?

  As if in answer to my questions, I heard a cough at the back of the gathered crowd. When I turned around, I spotted Nathaniel, Jonah, Ezra, and Gladys on the periphery. They hung their heads, observing the moment of silence following the reverend’s prayer. That was something, at least. A sign of respect for a fellow werewolf who’d fallen in the line of duty. Nathaniel cheated the prayer, too, looking up to find me staring at him. He smiled but I gave him a glare in return.

  The prayer ended. Mourners rose from their chairs, the funeral breaking up. Morgan gave my shoulder a squeeze and headed off toward the cemetery gates with Maggie, telling me he’d be back in a few minutes. I sat there for a moment, taking it all in.

  A flap of wings drew my attention to a poplar tree in the next section of graves. The naked branches swayed with a handful of ravens. I thought of Cooper, of Ivan’s funeral and of the flood of black birds that’d watched the service from the tree. Mr. Gray had been stealthy, private. Dad had suspected him, but the whole point of hiding your identity is to not talk about it. Maybe Mr. Gray hadn’t shared his with anyone, not even the local birds. But it seemed the birds were in attendance, even if there were only a few at the moment.

  “You coming?” Fawn held out a hand to pull me up out of the chair.

  “Yeah, in a second,” I told her. “You guys go on ahead to the funeral dinner.”

  She and Rose started walking toward the parking area, following Dad.