“So, tell me something, is that wolf’s head in there based on anything other than your imagination?” Sofie analyzes his reaction, and she’s pleased to see that he blinks twice in surprise.
He doesn’t give much away. “There have been wolves in this part of the country for centuries. I don’t need to imagine what they look like.” His eyes don’t have the softness that they did only a few minutes ago. The blinds are back down, and there’s a coldness in his voice that reminds her of what he said to her the night before, that he would have left her out in the woods if he’d known she worked for Shale.
“That can’t be right,” she says, shaking her head. “We don’t survey sites that are known habitats for protected species. It would just be a big waste of time and money.”
“I didn’t say that this was a known habitat,” Ashton says in a low voice, but Sofie hears what he’s saying as clear as a bell.
She looks at him, clearly confused. “So what, you’re the only person who knows about the wolves here? What are you? The Wolf Whisperer?” Sofie laughs lightly and then wishes that she hadn’t when she sees the seriousness on Ashton’s face.
“You’re a scientist. I guess that means you must have more than an average set of smarts. I figured you would know not to talk about things you don’t understand,” he says in a harsh voice. The look of disappointment in his eyes is worse than the anger from the night before.
“If there’s something you want to tell me, then just say it. I don’t like riddles.” Sofie leans back, observing Ashton, waiting for him to explain himself; but, he doesn’t. He just stares back at her.
Eventually, he reaches behind the cash register and pulls out some of her sample packages, holding them out to her. “You left some of your rocks in my truck.”
Sofie takes the samples from him, even more confused than she had been before. “Why are you helping me?” She looks between the package and the man, wondering what it is that she’s missing.
“Not helping, just returning something to the rightful owner. Don’t they do that in DC?” His smile returns, but it’s not the one that makes Sofie go weak at the knees. It’s a mocking smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“No, no they don’t.” Sofie feels like there’s more that she wants to say, that whatever he’s hiding that he can tell her. But why would he trust me? As far as he’s concerned, I’m the enemy, the last thing that I want to be to him. I’ve made a mistake, and I know that. I’ve gotten my feelings involved in what should just be a job, a site survey like any other. But it’s more than that…something has piqued my scientific curiosity. I can tell I’m finding clues…hints as to what’s really going on in the canyon.
A plan starts to form in her mind, and she doesn’t waste any time getting to work. “Thanks for the shirt.” She turns abruptly and marches away, not waiting for a response. She can feel Ashton’s eyes on her all the way to the door, but she doesn’t turn around. If he wants to play hardball, she can play it just as well as he can.
When she gets back to the motel she throws open the door to her room, knowing that Finn is still going to be engrossed in his video game.
He barely looks up from the television. “Feeling better?” he asks—although his voice suggests that he’s a little disappointed she’s back so soon.
“Not sure yet.” Sofie stands in front of the television again, blocking Finn’s view so that he’s forced to give her his undivided attention.
His expression changes from irritation to amusement. “Nice shirt. Belong to anyone we know. A certain angry hero from last night?” He smiles so wide it looks like his face might split in two.
“It rained; I got wet; and he let me borrow a shirt—end of story.” Sofie skips all the other relevant details, and Finn looks like he’s about to question her further; but, she cuts him off. “Finn, focus. I need your help.”
Her serious words combined with the excitement on her face makes Finn’s ears prick up in interest. “What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Sofie admits, ignoring his eye roll. “I need you to get online and dig up anything that you can about wolves in this area. Anything at all that you can find—sightings, scientific reports, historical references, whatever is out there I need you to find it.”
“Wolves? Come on, Sofe, don’t let whatever Mr. I’m-Gorgeous-Yet-Moody-And-Sensitive has said get you in a spin. We both know that we don’t—”
“I know. I know. We don’t survey sites that are natural habitats of protected species. I know how it’s supposed to work, but what if that isn’t what’s happened this time?” Finn’s expression of disapproval slowly gives way to his overwhelming need for information. “I know what I heard out in those woods, and it wasn’t the wind, and it wasn’t a freakin’ owl.”
Finn blinks, a sign that he’s weighing options in his head and thinking over the various possibilities of what he’s about to agree to. “Well, it’s not like I had anything else to do today.” He sighs, but his last words come out in a mumble as Sofie hugs him in gratitude. “Alright Sofe, I get all freaked out when you go girly on me,” he grumbles until Sofie releases him. “Darwin can’t find out about this.” Finn is already picking up his laptop and disconnecting the cables from the television.
“I agree, we don’t want this going any further up the chain. Besides, he has other things to worry about,” Sofie says, nodding in agreement and feeling more excited than she has in a long time.
Finn is half-talking to himself, already mentally out the door. “It’s going to take a little while.”
“Thanks, Finn.” Sofie heads over to her desk where she’s set up a make-shift laboratory and lays out the samples Ashton had handed over. It’s only when she takes them out of the containers that she realizes what she’s looking at. “Son of a bitch,” she mutters under her breath.
“What? What happened?” Finn walks over to the microscope she’s looking down and takes a peek. “What am I looking at? They look like rocks.” Finn is a genius, but he knows next to nothing about Sofie’s area of expertise, and it’s the one subject where she always feels like the teacher rather than the student.
“Exactly, they’re just rocks.” Sofie nudges Finn out of the way of the scope and peers down it again to check she’s right about what she’s seeing. “They’re random bits of stone. They’re not the samples I took from the woods. He switched them.” As the realization dawns on her, it only gives her more questions.
“Who switched them? The Diet Coke break guy?” Finn frowns in confusion, clearly hating that he’s a step behind Sofie, his ego taking a bit of a bruising.
Sofie nods slowly. “He wants us to think that there isn’t any oil, and that we’re looking in the wrong place, so we don’t start drilling. The rock that I saw in the woods is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. I would go as far as to say that it might not be something that anyone has seen before.” The words that she hadn’t trusted herself to even think the day before come pouring out. “I need to go back out and get another sample.” Sofie pushes her chair out and starts to stand up before Finn stops her with a hand on her shoulder.
“I agree, but whatever weird shit is going on here, you can’t go out in a hurricane to get another set of samples.” Finn speaks slowly, as he would to a child and doesn’t take his hand from her shoulder until Sofie sits back down with a thud. “Why don’t you check in with Jennie, see if she’s gotten anywhere with the samples you overnighted?” He winks at her theatrically.
“How did you know about that?” Sofie wonders what else Finn knows that the rest of them don’t.
“The power of the internet. I have eyes everywhere.” Finn does a fake bad-guy cackle, and Sofie can’t help but laugh.
“Good to know,” she says, dryly. “Sometimes you’re not as stupid as you look, Finnbarr.” He makes a vomiting face that signals how little he likes his full name. It was one of the things that they’d bonded over—how their parents had given them both names that no one ever knew how
to spell correctly. “Now get out of here, slacker! You’ve got work to do.” Sofie nudges him playfully towards the door.
“There’s the bossy, pain-in-the-ass Sofie Braun that I know and love! You had me scared for a little while there, thought you’d gone soft on me.” Finn doesn’t wait for a reply before slamming the door shut so hard she’s pretty sure everyone in the motel would have heard it.
Sofie doesn’t waste any time trying Jennie at the office, but her phone just rings through to voicemail. She tries Jennie’s cell but the same thing happens, causing Sofie to frown. Jennie is someone who’s never more than a few feet away from her phone and obsessive about checking for email and messages. It was more than strange for her not to answer. She types out a quick text on her cell.
Call me when you can. Have a few questions on those samples x
Sofie takes another look down the microscope at the unremarkable stones that Ashton had given her. “What game are you playing?” she asks out loud, wondering why he would go to such lengths to stop them from drilling. What is it that he is trying to hide? she thinks.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sofie spends the remainder of the afternoon obsessively checking her cell, waiting for a reply from Jennie; but, by the time night has fallen, she still hasn’t heard from her. Her internal danger light now glows a pale yellow, still a ways off from serious life or death red, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was up.
“There’s no point in getting paranoid. It’s so Y2K.” Finn sounds bored, as he types in sequence after sequence of code on his laptop, doing what he does best.
“But it’s weird. You don’t know Jennie; she’s super reliable. This isn’t like her.” Sofie lies on Finn’s bed trying to figure out why she can’t make that nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach go away.
“Maybe she’s sick, maybe she’s busy, or maybe getting back to you isn’t top of her list of priorities.” Finn keeps his eyes glued to the screen, his fingers typing at a rate of knots.
Absently Sofie takes a deep breath, inhaling the smell of the shirt that Ashton loaned her. “Did you just sniff that shirt?” Finn looks at her in disgust.
Sofie looks more than embarrassed. “Maybe.” She cringes at herself, knowing how pathetic she must look, a world away from the confident young woman that she had always portrayed.
“That’s it. We’re going out.” Finn closes the laptop hard.
“Huh? But you haven’t finished!” Sofie sits bolt upright. “Besides, we have work tomorrow. There’s too much to do, and my head is in a million different places right now. I can’t go out.”
“Which is precisely why you need to. You’re lying here, coming up with conspiracy theories, sniffing a shirt that some guy you barely know gave you and looking like a lovesick cat. You need to go out.” Finn looks at her seriously, like he’s diagnosing her with a terminal illness. “Besides, it’s Friday. It’s the rules.”
“I think the expression is lovesick puppy.” Sofie latches onto the one part of Finn’s diagnosis that wasn’t correct.
“Cat, puppy, whatever. You need to let off some steam, and I sure as hell need a drink. I’ll get Darwin, he could do with having some fun now that he’s sad and single.” Finn barely pauses for breath.
“He’s not single; he’s getting a divorce. His marriage has broken down.” Sofie explains the difference to Finn, fully aware that the subtleties of human relationships are of very little importance to him.
“Sounds like as good a reason as any to get drunk. I’m getting the boss. You go and change.” Finn looks pointedly at the shirt that she’s been hugging to herself. She doesn’t bother to argue—when Finn’s on a roll there’s no stopping him.
“Meet you in the lobby in 15.” Sofie throws over her shoulder before heading back to her room. Maybe Finn was right, maybe a night out would be just what she needs. The three of them haven’t had any downtime in almost a month, and they’re probably all a little too tightly wound. By the time she’s changed and made her way to the motel entrance, she’s talked herself into having a good time.
“Nice Sofe, very nice! I see you went for the Lara Croft look, it works for you.” Finn nods approvingly, looking like a proud dad.
Sofie looks down at her shorts, white tank top, and desert boots, wondering if that was really the look she was going for. “Well I didn’t really bring anything party-appropriate,” she says acidly to Finn, who just grins at her.
“I think you look very nice, Sofie.” Darwin smiles at her kindly and runs his fingers through his thinning hair, clearly with something on his mind.
“Thanks boss.” Sofie lays a comforting hand on the old man’s shoulder.
Finn clears his throat for dramatic effect. “Isn’t anyone going to say how good I look?”
Finn is in his standard uniform of skinny jeans, ironic t-shirt, and hipster glasses. “You look good too, buddy. You fit right in.” Sofie rolls her eyes at him, as he strikes a pose.
“The idea is to blend in, Finn. Not to provide the entertainment for the evening,” says Darwin in his best school teacher voice. It has the desired effect; Finn looks like he’s just been given detention.
“I’ll be good.” The computer genius pouts like a little kid.
“Great, now let’s get a drink.” Sofie encourages both men towards the only bar they’ve seen nearby.
The rain has finally let up, and the air has that pleasant smell of freshness found only out of the city. It’s a short walk to ‘Shots’ on the outskirts of town, near the woods where Sofie got lost. Before they’ve even walked into the bar, it’s clear that Friday night in Beaumont is in full swing.
“Here we go, stick together, gang.” Finn takes a deep breath, as if they were all heading into certain danger.
“It’s a bar, not a war zone.” Sofie laughs, opening the door and encouraging the men inside.
The place is packed, and there are what look like young college students making a whole heap of noise, clearly already well into their tab. Sofie heads to the bar while the men trail after her. She recognizes the petite woman serving drinks from the furniture store. She was the one that was watching her like a hawk, and her gaze hasn’t got any friendlier.
“Hi!” Sofie says brightly, flashing a smile.
“What can I get you?” The woman barely bats an eyelid.
Sofie orders the drinks, and then Finn and Darwin take their beers. Sofie signals they should grab a table and she’ll settle up the bill. “Don’t be long, these small towners give me the creeps. You never know if they’re going to go all ‘Wicker Man’ on you.” Finn doesn’t lower his voice enough for the bartender not to hear him, and she raises an eyebrow.
“Finn just go sit down and try not to say anything stupid, or anything at all,” Sofie suggests through gritted teeth, looking apologetically at the bartender. “Sorry, my friend has a strange sense of humor.”
“I saw you today…at Ash’s place.” The way the woman says his name suggests that there’s a history between them, and Sofie wonders why the idea of that makes her heart feel like it’s being squeezed in her chest.
“That’s right. I’m Sofie.” She holds her hand out for the other woman to shake.
“Lindsey,” the other women replies, shaking hands briskly without taking her eyes off of her. “So what are you city folk doing all the way out here?” she asks, as if she were making small talk while she pours drinks at lightning speed.
“From the way you ask that question, it sounds like you already know the answer.” Sofie chooses her words carefully, but she pulls herself up to her full height. She refuses to be intimidated.
Lindsey smiles like she’s been caught. “Ash was right. You are smart.”
There it is again, the way she says Ashton’s name. “So, I’m guessing he told you what the guys and I are doing here—in the canyon.” She looks around to make sure that no one is close enough to overhear them.
Lindsey nods wordlessly, looking like she’s about as happy
with them working for Shale as Ashton was when he found out.
Sofie takes a deep breath. “I’m not the enemy, but if no one tells me what the deal is with the wolves, then there isn’t much I can do.” She takes a sip of the vodka tonic that Lindsey has just placed in front of her, needing some Dutch courage.
Lindsey looks at Sofie like she’s seeing her for the first time. Her expression changes from one of suspicion to one of interest. But before she can say anything, the raised voices from the college students’ table get even louder and more menacing. Two of the jocks start squaring up to each other. One shoves the other backwards and, all of a sudden, a full-blown fight is in play. The girls at the table squeal, but it’s clear that they’re a little excited by the display.
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