by Chant, Zoe
“I just realized,” she said, almost hiccupping as she tried to get control of herself. “I was out there in this... God, this bright red poncho, this hooded bright red poncho, out in the middle of the woods, off the path... It was just so Little Red Riding Hood!”
And that, she thought wryly, was something that would be a lot funnier if you’d known she’d run into the actual Big Bad Wolf.
But Colby reacted like it at least meant something to him. He put his hands on his knees and tensed forwards, his dark blue eyes so magnetic that Aria felt like they were pulling her towards them.
“Is it ironic that you’d feel like Little Red Riding Hood?”
It wasn’t ironic so much as completely, uncannily, hilariously appropriate, as it had turned out, but it wasn’t like she could explain that.
It was a weird question, but at least it gave her an opportunity.
“It’s not ironic,” she said carefully, “but it’s kind of a big coincidence. Can I tell you something I didn’t tell Detective Wynette?”
Colby had that jackpot! look on his face again, for some reason. “Sure. You can tell me whatever you want.”
Right. Here goes nothing. Say goodbye to Deputy US Marshal Hottie being your number one fan.
“Detective Wynette told me Eli Hebbert was wanted for murder. Do you know if the way he killed someone, um, involved a dog? An attack dog?”
Every muscle in Colby’s body seemed to freeze. When he spoke, it sounded like he was being just as careful as she was.
“It doesn’t look like it, but I haven’t gone through his whole file yet. Is there a reason why you think that could be a possibility?”
Aria took a deep breath. “He had a... big dog with him. In the woods.”
And of course, the second the words left her mouth, she realized that she could have just said, completely plausibly, that Eli Hebbert had bragged about owning an attack dog. She could have even told that to the police without raising any eyebrows.
Colby said, “How big of a dog are we talking about?”
“Big.”
Great, that’s helpful.
Thanks to her job, she was actually more familiar with wolves than she was with dogs, but she tried to remember what breeds would be in the same ballpark.
“Like a German Shepherd or a Siberian husky, maybe? Or a Great Dane?”
None of those breeds looked even remotely alike.
She rushed to add, “I don’t know dogs that well, actually. I’ve got a better sense for wolves, but, you know, obviously it wasn’t a wolf. Because that would just be crazy.”
She tried to inject a note of conviction in her voice: Wolves, right? How wacky! No one would ever be walking around the woods with one of those! Let alone turning into one! How weird would it be if I actually believed that?
“So you would describe the dog—the dog that Eli Hebbert had—as, ah, wolfish?”
Aria nodded. Very wolfish. Well, mostly wolf, not so much -ish.
“It was huge,” she said.
“That explains it,” Colby said, almost under his breath.
“Explains what?”
“Why I—never mind.” He fixed his gaze on her. “It scared you?”
She didn’t have to lie about that. “Very much.”
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” Colby said. His voice crackled with pure intensity. “I’m going to catch him, and anyone who might help him, and I’m going to make sure that you and your family are safe. I promise, Aria.”
It was funny. Aria lived in a world of publishing deadlines, Easy-Bake Ovens, and family dinners. It was a good life, but it was an ordinary one. But something about Colby Acton made her feel like her whole life had just swerved decisively and permanently out of its good-but-mundane routine. He made her feel extraordinary.
But with those dark blue eyes of his, he probably made every woman he spoke to come away feeling like that.
Aria made herself focus on the hard, practical issues—like, for example, getting rid of a werewolf on her tail.
“How are you going to find him? Not to backseat Marshal you.”
He smiled. “You can backseat Marshal all you want. First, I’ll probably go by the nature preserve to check out where you ran into him. If you could just tell me where that was—”
No way. She couldn’t let him walk into her territory unprepared and alone. She knew the woods! The odds were minuscule that he had even half of her familiarity with them.
“Do you have backup?”
Colby shook his head. “My office is tied up right now, so I’ll be on my own. But I can take care of myself.”
“I’m sure you can,” Aria said, even though she wasn’t sure that anyone, ever, should be going up against a werewolf alone. “But I was way off the beaten path when I ran into him. I could find the spot again, but I don’t know that I could give you directions there. I’ll just have to retrace my steps.”
“If you don’t know exactly where it was, we can just turn the whole place upside-down. Police Academy cadets should be combing the place this evening anyway, and they’ll flush everyone out. I can just get them out early. We’ll shake the woods and see what falls out of their pockets.”
Great. Now she could be responsible for some unprepared college-aged kid becoming a werewolf’s dinner.
Eli Hebbert could thank her for delivering a bunch of cadets to him like pizzas.
“I’ll just show you,” she said firmly. “That makes the most sense. I know the woods like the back of my hand, and I’m licensed to carry, so I can bring a weapon. I’ll be able to lead you straight there and keep you from getting lost.”
Colby looked a little offended. “I don’t get lost.”
“The woods can be confusing.”
“Not to me. If I get turned around, I can just sniff my way out again.” He paused. “Metaphorically.”
“I know what I’m doing,” Aria said. “I’ll make a good stand-in partner.”
“I’m sure you do, and I’m sure you would. But bringing a civilian to a crime scene—”
“Happens all the time,” Aria said brazenly.
She had no idea if that was actually true. It happened all the time on TV, at least.
“I’m like a special consultant,” she continued. “I’m your wilderness consultant. Besides, Hebbert could be after me. Am I really going to be safer somewhere else than I will be with you?”
There was a flash of emotion in his eyes that made Aria feel like she could fall even though she was already sitting down.
“Fine,” Colby said, his voice tight. “You’ll be my wilderness consultant, which I don’t actually need—"
“Because you can smell your way out of the woods whenever you want.”
He gave a very adorable, put-upon harrumph that made it suddenly easy to visualize him, Deputy US Marshal Cool, sitting in an armchair with kids scrambling up his lap. It was an endearing image—and one she should stay away from if she knew what was good for her.
“I said it was a metaphor.” He raised his chin. “Don’t make me unconsult you.”
“I would never,” Aria promised.
*
“Are you out of your mind?” Doreen said. “Did I raise you to lose your head like this?”
“I’m not out of my mind.”
She tried to sound calm and sane, as though her entire view of the world hadn’t been completely upended in the last few hours, forcing her to be heroic when she really just wanted to go home and take a nap.
“You know how well I know the woods, Mom. If I don’t go with him, he’ll just waste a bunch of time trying to find the right place.”
“So let him waste the time,” Doreen said. “It’s his to waste. He’s a man with a gun, and you’re my little girl.”
“I know. But it just makes sense, right?”
She was hoping that if she said that often enough, she’d somehow fool her mom into believing it by sheer repetition.
“The sooner Colby
catches this Hebbert guy, the better, so I want to do anything I can to help him do it fast. Otherwise, I don’t even know if I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”
Doreen gave her a hard-eyed once-over, and then, to Aria’s surprise, a little bit of humor crept into her expression.
“And I’m sure,” she said sweetly, “that this wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that that man is just about delectable.”
“Oh my God, Mom.”
“You can’t pretend you haven’t noticed, sweetheart. Men like that don’t walk into a woman’s life every day of the week. And I saw the way he looked at you.”
Aria snorted. “Please.”
“I mean it.”
Maybe she did. But her mom was predisposed to think the best of her.
Her mom had been the one to indulge Aria’s fleeting attempts, back in high school, at capturing a kind of popular-girl beauty—she’d helped her chemically relax her hair, even though she’d kept up a murmuring lecture the whole time about how Aria’s hair was perfect in its own natural curls. She was always willing to drop everything and help Aria out with company and advice on the rare occasions Aria had a date or a publisher meeting that required some kind of marginally fancy get-up. She’d enthused over some imaginary glow Aria had when she came back from the occasional decadent, way-too-expensive spa day or massage.
Her mom thought she was beautiful. But she was a mom. That was her job.
It didn’t mean that anyone else—particularly someone who looked like Colby Acton—felt the same way. Especially not on a day like today, when she was coming off a long hike with no shower, she’d gotten rained on, and she’d tracked mud all the way up to her knees.
“You listen to me,” Doreen said firmly. “That man was looking at you like you hung the moon. Don’t be afraid to enjoy that.”
Aria’s mom was a big believer in a woman’s power to wrap a man around her little finger. Aria herself had never felt that kind of easy, instinctive connection to other people, let alone to men in particular. Flirting had always made her feel awkward. She was the original girl with two left feet.
But she knew from long, hard experience that if she tried to say any of that now, it would just result in her mom trying to give her a more extended pep talk. And they didn’t have time for that.
So she just nodded. And she said what she could say honestly: “I’m surprised you even still like him after he agreed to take me to a crime scene.”
Then her mom was the one to snort—the kind of indelicate noise that always sounded strange coming from someone as regal and composed as Doreen. But Aria had gotten this particular little explosion of mirth from her mother, not her father.
“Please,” Doreen said. “I know my own daughter well enough to know what all you can talk somebody into when you really put your mind to it. I can’t blame the poor man for caving into your stubbornness. I’ve done it myself. You’re like running up against a brick wall.”
“He’s also loaning me a gun,” Aria said cheerfully.
Her mother said several unladylike words.
5
As Colby pulled into the nature preserve parking lot, Aria could feel her heart thumping hard in her chest.
She knew she had made the right decision in going with Colby and having her parents take Mattie for the night. But when she saw the trees loom up ahead of her, she still felt cold sweat prickle on her palms.
The woods had never made her nervous before. They’d always felt like a second home.
I’ll be damned if I let Eli Hebbert take that away from me. I just have to get right back on the horse.
A park ranger knocked on the driver’s side window, gesturing for Colby to roll it down.
He had a long, hound-dog face, but his voice was cheerful enough. “You the fella I talked to on the phone? Yeah? Thought you were. I’m Pete Bishop. We ought to have the place pretty well cleaned out by now—we blasted announcements as loud as we could and sent runners along all the trails. Probably scared the crap out of the birds. There might still be a couple stragglers out there, but not many. The parking lot’s cleared out except for our cars. You gonna run that sumbitch to ground?”
“We are,” Colby said.
“Sorry for the language, ma’am,” the ranger added sheepishly. “I just get carried away. We never had a flasher before that I know of, and I don’t want to get one ever again. People running around with their bait and tackle hanging in the wind. It’s indecent.”
Aria fought hard against a laugh and narrowly won.
“It is,” she agreed.
“Well, you folks let us know if there’s anything more we can do for you. In the meantime, you just duck right under that crime scene tape. Place is all yours.”
They managed to keep themselves under control until Pete Bishop waved them into a parking space and strode out of earshot.
Then Colby said, “Bait and tackle,” and both of them dissolved into tension-ridding laughter.
“I feel like he’s straight out of the Andy Griffith Show,” Aria said.
“I love this town,” Colby said. “Colorful characters top to bottom.”
The laughter really had helped. She was able to follow him into the quiet, dusky shadows of the woods without feeling even a tremor of fear as the sight of the parking lot slowly vanished behind them.
Colby’s legs were much longer than hers, but it wasn’t a struggle to keep up with him. She realized that he was adjusting his stride to match hers, and he was doing it so naturally that she hadn’t even noticed at first.
It wasn’t something she was used to. She’d always accepted that being short meant constantly struggling to catch up to people.
But not with him.
He didn’t feel real. He certainly didn’t feel like any of the guys she had met on her awkward blind dates.
“Are you from around here?”
Colby shook his head. “Beverly Hills.”
Maybe that explained it. Aria had never thought about any actual, real person being from Beverly Hills.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.” There was a spark of humor in his eyes when he looked at her. “You know, whenever a baby’s born in Beverly Hills, they’re issued a Chihuahua in a pink jacket, and a random movie star gets assigned as their godparent.”
“I’d heard that,” Aria said solemnly. “I can’t picture you with a Chihuahua, though. You seem like more of a big dog kind of guy.”
“I’m an all-dogs kind of guy.”
“Cats?”
“I like them, they don’t like me.”
She decided to risk a little flirtation after all. It would keep her distracted from getting scared again, at least.
“What’s not to like?”
“Believe me, they find a reason.”
“Maybe they can sense you’re a dog person.”
“That’s probably exactly it,” Colby said, the corner of his mouth quirking up. “In a nutshell. Anyway, joking aside, yeah, I’m really from there, but it’s not like I’m secretly on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. My dad used to have a chauffeur business there, that’s all. It’s not all glitz and glamour when you’re helping clean out trashed limos. But he did get me some autographs.”
“Do you still have them?”
“I do.” He looked over at her, and having the full force of his attention made her cheeks grow hot. “I have to get yours, actually, and put it with them.”
Her face was still burning, and she felt like she couldn’t look him in the eye. It was embarrassing to be this inexperienced and awkward at regular adult flirting; she had to be the least smooth woman on the planet.
But maybe she got points for trying, no matter how rusty she was.
“I still can’t believe you knew who I was.” She pointed to a pine tree up on their left. “That’s where I went off the trail.”
They veered into the woods.
“I can’t believe I never knew you were local,” Colby said. “What are the odds?�
��
“Maybe fate wanted to bring me together with my number one fan.”
She’d said it teasingly, but there wasn’t anything the least bit jokey in Colby’s voice when he said, “Maybe it did.”
All right. Aria might have been only on the sidelines of the dating game for the last eight years—she only barely knew what Tinder was—but she wasn’t naïve enough to think that most men went around honestly believing fate had meant for them to meet plus-size single moms whose high school nicknames had been things like Granola Breath and Photo Express. No one did that. Not with someone they just wanted for a one-night stand.
If Colby was really breaking out the idea that they might be destined to meet, then he might like her just as much as she liked him.
As if he could hear what was she was thinking, Colby said, “So this is a weird time to ask this, you know, on one of the worst days of your life and right in the middle of hunting a fugitive, but—would you like to have dinner with me sometime?”
Fourth of July sparklers seemed to light up inside her, letting off fizzy bursts of warm golden light.
“I’d like that a lot,” Aria said.
It was a shame that no one really made sweeping, dramatic declarations anymore, because she would have loved to say anything from the very sweet, “I don’t know why, but I think I’d like to have dinner with you every night for the rest of my life” to the very explicit, “Yes, but first I’d like you to pin me against one of these trees and have your way with me.”
That would be great. Unfortunately, she just had to settle for using her tone to convey both of those ideas.
It made her sound a little like she had a frog in her throat.
How could he possibly be charmed by her?
And yet he was, undeniably, because he was now standing still. He had an absolutely beautiful smile on his face.
Colby touched her cheek, caressing it just a little. His hand felt cool against her flushed skin, and the slightly rough, masculine calluses on his fingers brought her immediately to imagining what those fingers would feel like elsewhere.
