Besides, she had a life waiting for her back in Chicago. She had her grandmother’s house and her animals and her job.
Only she wouldn’t have her wolfman.
Not that she would necessarily have him if she stayed a while longer, Laurel realized. He had something to say about that…and he hadn’t said a word.
Want was a powerful thing, but it didn’t equate to love.
Laurel believed Donovan wanted her. He’d proven it over and over in the space of several hours. Wanting had taken her through the night. But in the cold light of day, want just wasn’t enough for her.
Wondering if he would even miss her when she was gone, Laurel was pulled from her morose thoughts when he said, “This isn’t good.”
“What?”
“We’ve got the signal, but it’s stationary.” He was gazing out the window. “Something’s wrong.”
Frantically, she tried to spot the young wolf. Nothing. “Maybe Hopeful’s just napping.”
“I doubt it. He should be hunting for food like the rest of the pack. See that canopy of cedars on the left? That’s the deeryard.”
“The one near Andrew Deterline’s south pasture?”
“The same,” Donovan said grimly. “We’d better get down there and check it out.”
A lump stuck in her throat as Laurel remembered Deterline’s threat to bring down the next wolf he laid eyes on. Not that he would normally see a wolf. But Hopeful had been drugged. Easy pickings.
A sense of doom filling her, she guessed it had as much to do with her time with Donovan running out as it did with the young wolf’s fate.
SHE AND DONOVAN went directly from the airstrip to the signal area, or as close as the road would bring them. They set out on foot, minus snowshoes, but for the most part, the going wasn’t too difficult. They quickly found a snowmobile path, then another narrower one beaten down by hungry bucks and does on their way to the deeryard.
Armed with the mobile receiver strapped to his waist in an oversize fanny pack, portable antenna in hand, Donovan quickly pinpointed the direction.
“This way.”
They were skimming the perimeter of the cedar grove when Laurel started, a flash of movement surprising her. Catching sight of a tan hide, she realized a young deer was darting for cover.
From a wolf?
Instincts alert, she stopped a moment, heart still thumping from the scare. She was getting that weird feeling again, as if something—or someone—were watching. She scanned the area, but no shaggy body popped out of hiding. And Donovan was too focused on his equipment to be aware of anything else.
She rushed to join him, but no sooner did she catch up than he stopped.
“We passed it,” he muttered, adjusting the antenna. “Back the way we came.”
They hadn’t gone far when he stopped again and made a sweep of the area with the antenna, adjusting until he was certain of the correct direction.
“Over there.”
But over there was a large clearing except for a single fallen tree. Donovan walked right past it. A few steps more and he stopped, cursing.
“What is it?”
Slowly, he turned and followed the antenna straight to the tree stump. He reached into a hollow and, a few seconds later, pulled out the destroyed collar.
“I’ve read about wolves chewing them off each others’ necks,” she said, “but hiding them?”
“No wolf did this. Someone’s playing games with us.”
When he threw the collar to her, she could see it had been sliced open.
“Omigod.”
Donovan was inspecting the ground. “No wolf tracks. The collar was taken from Hopeful elsewhere and brought here.”
“It had to be Magda, right?”
Who else of their suspects could get so close to a wolf? Not Deterline. Certainly not Ham Gault.
At least…not if Hopeful was still alive.
“Mad Magda could do it,” Donovan agreed. “Nothing scares her. At least nothing on four feet And if Hopeful was still drugged when she got hold of him, he’d be an easy mark.”
“Surely she wouldn’t hurt him.”
Donovan didn’t answer her directly. “She could have taken him off somewhere. As soon as we get back to the cabin, I’ll radio the sheriff’s office and get someone over to her place quick.”
He didn’t seem in any hurry, however. He kept scanning the ground, every so often stopping for a moment to inspect something.
Saddened, Laurel kept on toward the truck, thinking that maybe her leaving would be a good thing. At least she wouldn’t have to stick around and have her heart broken if the young wolf’s body were ever found.
Not that she wouldn’t be brokenhearted anyway…
A relationship could never work between her and Donovan, Laurel rationalized. Imperfect creature that she was, she was bound to disappoint him sometime. And Donovan had no tolerance for disappointment He had a history of walking away from it rather than working things out.
Better to separate now rather than after she’d built her life around him, Laurel told herself. She’d lost too many parts of her life as it was.
Laurel had no idea of how long she’d been lost in her brooding when she realized she’d gotten onto the wrong trail. Rather than paralleling the cedar grove, she suddenly found herself inside it.
The aromatic pines rose fifty feet above her. Thick, clumped branches canopied the forest floor, keeping the snow to a minimum, one of the reasons deer sought its winter sanctuary. Proof of their occupancy, however, lay only in the scattered hoofprints and occasional scat.
The world around Laurel was hushed. Vacant No visible signs of life.
And yet…the fine hairs at the back of her neck rose.
Instinct like radar, she was absolutely certain she was not alone.
“Donovan?” she called out, the sound of her voice muted by the forest.
No answer.
Hopes that the presence was a friendly one dashed, she slowly turned in a circle, her gaze shooting through the trees and into the distant shadows.
“I know someone is there. Show yourself.”
A footfall…but from what direction?
Laurel backed up and tried not to panic when she couldn’t immediately identify the passage she’d taken into the cedar grove.
Another sound…closer…one she couldn’t identify…made her heart palpitate…
A projectile whistled by her head, followed by a muffled thw-wun-nkk from behind!
Whirling around, she saw it. An arrow vibrating from a nearby tree—approximately five feet up the trunk—had missed her by a narrow margin.
“You jerk!” she yelled, praying this was a horrible mistake. “You almost hit a person, not a deer!”
The archer’s silence put wings to Laurel’s feet.
Blind with pulse-pounding fear, she ran, only hoping her homing instincts would take her straight to Donovan. She couldn’t stop to reason out direction.
A second arrow, again narrowly missing her and landing harmlessly in the ground, convinced Laurel that she, rather than some deer, was, indeed, the intended game.
Though her feet thudded almost silently along the needle-strewn forest floor, she imagined she could hear the hunter following. Hear the anticipation with which he took each step. Searching wildly for some escape, she spotted what looked like an old logging road beyond the grove.
Should she risk putting herself in the open?
Or chance outrunning her pursuer until she could find a safe place to hide in the grove?
A no-brainer.
Laurel veered toward the logging road, hopping over stripped cedar branches strewn along the ground. A fallen tree lay directly ahead. Certain she could clear it, she gathered herself up for the jump, only at the last moment glimpsing something weird. And as she launched herself, a third arrow thwacked against the trunk.
Attention diverted, Laurel miscalculated and ended up sprawled on her side, her face settling mere inches from da
rk, unfocused eyes.
Terrified, Laurel cried out and rolled away. Only after she was clear of it did she stop to take a better look at the corpse.
A deer…its throat intact…emaciated…probably dead of starvation…chomped on by predators after the fact. A broken leg…jagged bone sticking through the flesh…a red jellylike substance oozing from the center of the femur.
“Omigod!” she gasped.
A ghastly sight.
Gorge rising, Laurel tried to catch her breath. She scrambled on all fours away from the proof of nature’s cruelty. Her first attempt to get to her feet aborted when her legs refused to hold her. Clinging to a branch for support, she tried again. Limbs shaky, she rose and staggered in the general direction of the road.
In the end, her stomach revolted and she had no choice but to stop. Bending forward, she heaved until she was dry. Before she could pull herself together, an arm snaked around her waist from behind.
Yelling, “Let go of me!” she reacted on reflex and struck out with an elbow.
“Uugh.” After grunting on contact, her captor said, “Hey, take it easy!”
Freed, she sobbed, “It’s you!” and turned to throw herself against Donovan.
His arms whipped around her trembling body even as he demanded, “What the hell happened? I looked around and you were gone. When you didn’t answer my call, I figured you headed for the Tracker.”
“I did, but managed to get off track.” Wishing he would never let go of her, she was mumbling against his chest. “And then someone came after me.”
“They probably heard your scream in the next county. I know it brought me running.”
Grabbing Laurel by the upper arms, Donovan put her far enough away from him to search her face. She would swear his eyes were glowing dangerously. For a moment, he appeared to be something of a madman, only keeping himself in check by the barest thread of civility.
“You are all right?”
Heart thumping, she nodded.
As if something inside him burst, he let out a harsh rasp. “Did you see who was after you?”
“No.” Feeling more like herself now, Laurel quickly recapped the terrifying episode for him, ending with, “So, let’s get out of here.”
“Not without one of those arrows.” His narrowed gaze pierced the surrounding forest bit by bit. “Hopefully, your hunter left some fingerprints behind.”
“Are you crazy? We could both be killed. Then what good would prints do?”
“Whoever came after you is gone now.”
“How would you know?”
“Trust me.”
Stubborn man that he was, Donovan persisted.
And in the end, Laurel gave way.
She averted her eyes as they skirted the dead deer. He continued steadying her with a strong grip on her arm, only letting go after bridging the trunk of the fallen tree.
Staring at the spot where the arrow had descended, she frowned. “Where is it?”
Gone…
Donovan hunkered down anyway and examined the abutting ground.
“Yep,” he muttered.
“What?”
Laurel crouched next to him to see a boot print, two of its diamonds sliced in half.
ON THE WAY to the hospital, they stopped at the sheriff’s office, where they spoke to Deputy Baedecker at length. Rather, Laurel let Donovan do most of the talking, filling in only when the officer questioned her directly.
Donovan started from the beginning with the imposter, the trespasser lurking on preserve property and the killings wrongly attributed to the wolves.
Next came his father’s near-death experiences—all three of them—and Ham Gault’s convenient chest pains.
He spoke of the missing trap and its eventual and unsettling reappearance, to which he added the destroyed collar and the presumably missing wolf, then added Andrew Deterline’s threat.
He mentioned Karen Tobin trying to bribe him and their theory that mother and son might have hatched the plot together.
Finally, he related Laurel’s scary encounters, first with Mad Magda, and now with the hunter.
All of it.
“Glad you folks have been keepin’ me informed.”
“It didn’t start coming together until a few days ago,” Donovan said.
A few days…is that all it had been?
Laurel felt as if she’d known Donovan forever.
“Looks like someone doesn’t like you much. Or maybe a rash of someones.”
“If you’re implying that all the incidents are unrelated, you’re not paying attention.”
“I’m attending to you, all right, young fella. Don’t get your britches in a hitch. But I’m not making sense of it all, especially not the part about some young buck purposely pretending to be you and romancing Miss Newkirk here.”
“That’s still a stumbling block for us, too,” Donovan admitted.
“Purposely…” Laurel echoed. “What if it wasn’t?”
“You got me,” said the deputy, expression puzzled.
“What if it wasn’t purposeful? What if the imposter wasn’t supposed to be at the workshop…and to cover, latched on to a familiar name?”
And why hadn’t that occurred to her before this?
Though Baedecker seemed to be considering the possibility, he didn’t seem sold. “And why shouldn’t this fella be there?”
“That’s the question,” she muttered. “Maybe if Rebecca would ever return my call, we could figure it out.”
“Who’s this Rebecca?”
“Rebecca Kinder, one of the WRIN volunteers. She was seen with the imposter. Arguing with him, actually. I’ve left her a couple of messages, but so far no go. I think she may be reluctant to talk about him.”
“Maybe she’ll talk to a man in uniform,” the deputy said, jotting down the woman’s name and number.
“What about Magda Huber?”
“I’ll send a couple of men out to her place. If she’s got your wolf, we’ll find him. And as for Gault…maybe I’ll pay the newspaper man a little visit myself. Never did like him much. Tries to make us look incompetent whenever he can. Time for a little payback. Hmm, I wonder if he’s licensed to hunt with a bow and arrow? Something to look into.”
“And Deterline and Karen Tobin?”
“A threat and an offered bribe?” Baedecker sighed and shook his head. “Can’t see as I can do much without something more concrete.”
“We’ll try to get that for you, at least on the Tobins,” Donovan said, rising. “Right now, we need to get over to the hospital. You’ll contact us if you dig up anything, right?”
“I know how to get hold of you.” He turned his attention to Laurel. “I take it you’ll be staying on with Mr. Wilde a while longer.”
Laurel swallowed hard and avoided looking at Donovan. “Well, actually, I was thinking of taking the morning bus back to Chicago.”
Baedecker nodded. “You do, you let me know where I can reach you.”
“Of course.”
Tension practically crackled from the wolfman, but he didn’t say a word until they were in the truck and back on the road…and then he only had two.
“Tomorrow morning?”
“I was considering it.”
“I’ll drive you to town in plenty of time.”
Laurel felt hollow inside, as if she’d lost part of herself. If she’d thought Donovan would try to stop her, to change her mind, she was sorely disappointed.
He didn’t even care enough to object.
“I CONTACTED my old research assistant at the television station and asked for a favor,” Skelly said. “She promised to get me what she could by onethirty.”
Donovan nodded. He didn’t have to check the wall clock to know it was after one now.
“Don’t worry, she’s reliable.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
The hospital administrator had let them use an office that was vacant due to an employee’s being on vacation.
/> Feeling caged by the four walls, wondering where he’d lost control of the situation with Laurel, Donovan paced back and forth.
At the moment, the infuriating woman was waiting for Aileen, who’d wanted to spend some time with their father. As if that made sense. How was she doing anything for his sister by sitting alone in the waiting room? The real reason was obvious. In his mind, Laurel was simply avoiding him.
Skelly broke into his morose thoughts, asking, “So what’s eating you?”
At first he considered avoiding the question, but his brother seemed interested and their truce was lasting longer than he’d expected. He wasn’t used to having anyone other than his mother to gripe at, and usually he passed on that option. She worried too much as it was.
In the end, he said, “Laurel’s taking the morning bus home.”
“Better for her, I imagine—it’ll get her out of harm’s way—but not better for you, is it?”
In answer, Donovan clenched his jaw and slammed a fist against some file cabinets.
“Ah, so that’s how it is,” Skelly said knowingly. “Congratulations.”
Donovan turned on his brother. “On what?”
Laurel’s leaving him?
“On fulfilling the positive half of our dear Moira’s legacy. ‘You have within your grasp the legacy of which your dreams are made.’ Don’t blow it, bro.”
Knowing Skelly had quoted part of Moira’s deathbed letter to her grandchildren—not that he would admit it, but Donovan had long ago memorized the missive—he said, “Don’t be ridiculous!”
“I’m ridiculous? I’m not the one letting my woman escape.”
“Should I cage her, then, when I wouldn’t even so demean an animal?” Donovan growled. “Or maybe I should just leash her!”
Skelly had the audacity to grin at him. “I doubt such drastic measures are necessary. You could try telling her.” When Donovan simply glared at him, his brother added, “That you love her, of course.”
“Who says I do?”
“Look at you, man—you’re a wreck!”
He felt like a wreck. Unsettled. Betrayed. Lonely. Angrier than he’d ever been. And Laurel hadn’t even left yet. He hated this loss of self. The feeling that he might have someone else to answer to.
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