by Lia Silver
He could smell the sharpness of the guard’s fear. It would be so easy to bend his head and rip out his enemy’s throat…
The fresh scent of open air was ahead of him. Roy released his prey and bounded ahead, racing through the closing door.
Freedom!
He was outside. It was night. People were shouting and running toward him.
An electric fence let out a low crackle and a smell of ozone. Roy tore toward it. He had no idea if he could jump high enough to clear it, but he’d rather die than be locked up forever. And now that he’d revealed what he was, they’d never let him go.
A dart hissed past his ear as he gathered his strength and leaped as high as he could. He cleared the fence and landed hard on the other side.
The shock of impact, in that unfamiliar body, sent him tumbling head over paws. When he finally fetched up in a heap, darts were hitting the ground all around him.
Lucky I rolled, he thought.
He gathered himself and leaped forward again. This time he landed smoothly. A forest was before him, dark and welcoming. He raced through it until all sounds and scents of pursuit were gone, and then he kept on running for the sheer joy of it.
In his wolf’s body, in this natural environment without electric lights or chemical smells or crowds of humans, he finally felt at ease. For the first time since he’d been wounded, his body was working as it should, strong and swift and without pain. Even as simple a movement as his paws striking the earth was a pleasure. It felt so much better to be a wolf than it did to be a human.
That thought gave him pause. What if he liked being a wolf so much that he stopped wanting to be a man?
He reached into himself, remembering the weight of his rucksack on his back, joking with his buddies, firing his SAW…
Roy stumbled, off-balance on two feet, and grabbed at a tree to stop from falling. He took a deep breath, focused on the rough texture of the bark under his fingers, and settled into his man’s body.
To his relief, the doctor’s clothes had come with him. To his greater relief, the moonlight didn’t hurt his eyes. The sounds and smells of the forest were distinct and noticeable, but not overwhelming. If he’d only been allowed into a natural environment earlier, he could have saved himself a whole lot of misery.
Remembering the tumble he’d taken, he checked himself for injuries. His knees and shoulders were bruised, and he’d strained his left wrist: nothing serious. Roy walked on, setting a brisk pace and taking care not to leave a trail.
For the first time, he examined the forest with a man’s mind, recognizing the landscape of huge gray boulders and enormously tall trees with corrugated, cinnamon-colored bark. He’d only been to northern California once, years ago, but he’d never forgotten the redwoods.
He wasn’t concerned about being alone in the wilderness with no supplies or weapons. He’d roughed it before. Weapons could be improvised, and food could be hunted or gathered.
The scents of rich earth and moss rose up with every footstep. Owls hooted, crickets chirped, and small animals rustled in the bushes. The moist dirt underfoot told him that water wouldn’t be a problem. He didn’t even need to make traps—as a wolf, he ought to be able to catch rabbits, maybe a deer.
His biggest concern, apart from pursuit, was the temperature. His breath condensed in puffs of mist, and the boulders were patched with frost. He didn’t feel cold, but that was probably because he’d exerted himself enough to work up a sweat. But as a wolf, he had a thick fur coat. If it got too cold, he’d change. He’d never heard of wolves getting hypothermia.
Wilderness survival was easy. But figuring out what he should do once he was out of the woods was much more complicated. It could have been months since his helicopter had been shot down. What did his team think had happened to him?
Even if they’re all still in-country, they’d never be okay with not hearing from me at all, Roy thought. They probably got told that I’m dead or MIA.
He hated to think how DJ must feel about that. It would just about kill Roy if he thought he’d done everything he’d could to save DJ and then learned that he’d died in the hospital, alone.
But now that Roy had revealed what he was, his captors would be after him for sure. They could have his entire unit’s phones and email tapped, waiting for Roy to contact one of them. He couldn’t risk getting in touch with anyone he knew until he learned more. He needed to find some safe place to lay low.
An odd feeling tugged at his mind, an inexplicable urge: That way.
That way didn’t look any different from any other way. But if he’d learned one thing in his years as a Marine, it was that funny little feelings were worth paying attention to.
Funny little feelings could mean that you’d noticed tiny clues, without even noticing that you’d noticed them, that meant that there was a bomb in the road, or that the innocent-looking civilian wasn’t innocent and wasn’t a civilian, or that the wild-eyed man trying to charge the roadblock was an innocent civilian who was trying to get help for his sick wife.
He’d travel faster as a wolf. And with no supplies of any kind, he’d probably sleep safer and enjoy eating raw rabbit more as a wolf, too.
Roy found his wolf. And loped off through the redwoods, heading that way.
Chapter Two: Laura
Escape from LA
Laura Kaplan drove out of Los Angeles on a broiling hot day. Traffic was jammed all the way through the hills, which were covered in dry weeds and looked ready to spontaneously combust. The top half of a roadside sign read “Fire Danger Today Is,” with the bottom half turned to read “EXTREME.”
She looked out at the sky, which was brown with smog behind her and a brilliant, cloudless blue ahead of her, and muttered, “Hasn’t anyone told you it’s January?” The weather ignored her.
Laura cranked the air conditioning as high as it would go and turned up the music, singing along softly, trying not to think about why she was leaving. Trying not to think about the bank. Trying not to think about the blood that had soaked into the new white carpet that she and her co-workers had been so careful not to spill their coffee on. Trying not to think about the man she’d killed…
It’s like the elephant in the corner, she thought. I left Los Angeles so I could stop thinking about what happened, but every time I remember that I’m leaving, I remember why I’m leaving…
A sign read, “Last gas for 50 miles.” She took the exit and pulled up at the station. When she got out, the heat hit her like a boiling tidal wave. Sweat beaded up on her forehead, her blouse began to cling to her back, and her pantyhose stuck to her legs.
She fled to the gas station bathroom and stripped off her pantyhose, then checked herself in the fly-specked mirror. Out of habit, she’d dressed as if she was going to work at the bank: black pumps, gray skirt, blue blouse, gray jacket, everything doing its job of minimizing her curves (as much as was possible) and making her look respectable and ordinary (as much as was possible).
“What’s the point?” she said aloud. “I’ll never—”
Another woman came in and gave her an odd look.
“I’ll never get over how hot it is in these hills,” Laura finished smoothly, her practiced instincts kicking in to deflect suspicion.
“That’s for sure,” the woman agreed with a chuckle. Then, to Laura’s dismay, her face creased into a quizzical expression. “You look familiar. I’ve seen you on TV, haven’t I?”
Laura’s heart nearly stopped, but those same instincts continued working, concealing her guilt and dismay.
“Yes, I do commercials. Maybe you’ve seen me in the detergent ads?” Laura put on an extra-cheery, sing-song voice. “‘Gets your clothes clean as a whistle—Super Fresh is super-best!’”
The woman laughed. “That must be it.”
“Have a nice day. And, seriously: Super Fresh really is super-best. Give it a try.” Laura crammed her pantyhose into her purse and fled the bathroom before the woman could wonder why she’d nev
er seen “Super Fresh” detergent.
She knew what she could have said—“It’s only in select stores,” or “It’s new,” or any other one of the hundred plausible excuses that came to mind—but she didn’t want to con the woman any more. She was done with that life. She’d gone straight.
More than that, the last time she’d conned someone…
The image popped into her mind, as vivid as if it was projected on to the windshield: bright red blood soaking into the new white carpet.
Stop thinking of that, she told herself fiercely.
Laura drove on, trying not to think.
Five hours later, she reached the twisty mountain roads that led to the Yosemite wilderness. Redwood trees shadowed the road, tall as telephone poles, and what she could see of the sky had turned an ominous gray. Not smog-gray: storm-gray.
Laura frowned at the sky, calculating how much faster she could drive without risking an accident. The narrow road consisted of nothing but hairpin curves, with no guardrails and cliffs that dropped away for a thousand feet. But she didn’t want to get caught on those blind curves if snow or rain started falling, either. She stepped on the gas.
A lean brown shape leaped into the road.
With a gasp, Laura slammed on the brakes. A half-eaten bag of cheddar-flavored potato chips, a bottle of water, four CDs, and her purse flew off the passenger seat. The potato chips scattered everywhere.
The wolf stood less than five feet away, completely unconcerned over its near-squish experience. It tilted its ears toward the car and stared at Laura with enormous yellow eyes.
She’d never seen a wolf so close before, or ever seen one outside of a zoo. This one was bigger than the zoo wolves. And it seemed so fearless. Maybe it was rabid. She was unnervingly conscious of the thinness of the windshield, which was all that was between her and it.
“Shoo!” Laura called.
The wolf took a step toward the car. Toward her. She could see the glistening white of fangs.
She slammed her hand down on the horn. Its blare was so loud that Laura herself jumped, but the wolf didn’t flinch. It took another step toward her.
Laura didn’t know much about wolves, but that could not be natural behavior for a wild animal. It must be rabid. Or escaped from a zoo, and so semi-tame. Either way, she didn’t want to hurt it… or piss it off.
The wolf took another step. Its jaws gaped wider, its red tongue lolling. It seemed to be laughing at her.
No. Not laughing at her. It was stalking her, like she was a deer.
She pictured the wolf leaping through the windshield, glass shattering around it, sharp fangs sinking into her throat.
Laura held down the horn with one hand and let the car slowly roll forward. She didn’t want to hurt the wolf, but she wasn’t going to sit there and let it attack her, either. It would get out of the way before she hit it.
The wolf leaped, snarling.
Instinctively, Laura jerked the wheel around and stomped on the gas. A brown shape flew past her window, barely missing the car.
She whipped around a curve. The car fishtailed. Laura spun the wheel, frantically trying to steady it and steer around the next curve. A sheer stone wall rose up before her.
Her father’s voice came to her mind, so distinctly that it was almost as if he’d spoken from the passenger seat. “Easy on the steering, sweet-pea. Easy on the steering, easy on the gas, easy on the brake. If someone’s chasing you, relax and keep a light touch. Let them get tense and crash.”
Laura relaxed and kept a light touch. Her car sped around the curve, and the next, and the next. But she was in control of it. Once she was sure the wolf was far behind, she slowed down and looked in the rear view mirror. The road was empty.
The after-effects of her adrenaline rush sent tingles up and down her body. She felt light-headed, almost giddy. She couldn’t believe that she’d driven to the wilderness to de-stress, and she’d almost been eaten by a wolf before she even arrived.
Think of it this way. It can only go uphill from here.
A snowflake fell from the sky and hit her windshield. It was perfect and unique and exactly what she didn’t want to see.
“Okay!” Laura said aloud. “Things can always get worse.”
Snow had covered the ground in a thin white carpet by the time she made it to the end of the bumpy dirt road that led to Dad’s cabin. Craggy expanses of gray stone and green tree-tops rose up in the distance, capped with snow.
When Dad had told her that he’d bought a cabin in the woods, she’d pictured trees like the well-trimmed jacarandas that grew in neat rows along the sidewalks in Los Angeles. Towering redwoods, fifty feet tall, rose up around the cabin, making it look like a toy. The rest of the forest consisted of bushy oaks and thickets of low shrubs with fantastically twisting branches as smooth and bright as copper. It looked like a scene out of a fairy tale.
To complete the picture of rural peace, a red barn perched atop a low hill. Laura recalled Dad mentioning with a laugh that a barn and a tractor had come with the property. She wondered what Dad was doing with the barn, since a city slicker like him sure wasn’t going to buy any cows. Storage, maybe.
Dad’s car wasn’t in the driveway, so he was probably out grocery shopping. She grabbed her suitcase, fumbled the key from her pocket, and unlocked the door. Her breath clouded in the frigid air.
Shivering, she locked the door behind her and turned on the lights and, after a brief search, the heat.
The cabin was small but cozy, with polished hardwood floors. A short hallway led to a living room with a small TV, a big fireplace, and the sofa/fold-out bed that Laura would sleep on. A picture window looked out on a beautiful view of mountains and slowly drifting snow. A few antique oil paintings, which Laura bet were valuable, depicted scenes of Yosemite. Dad was really getting into the “country retreat” thing.
She peeked into the one bedroom, with two full bookcases and a queen-sized bed covered in a patchwork quilt, the tiny bathroom, and the freezing cold but well-stocked pantry, before returning to the living room.
Only then did she notice the note that Dad had left for her on the living room table.
Dear Laura,
I ran into a minor problem that I need to take care of. Sorry, sweet-pea, but I won’t be back for a month or so. Stay as long as you like.
Laura put down the note with a sigh. She knew how to interpret “minor problem” (“Someone I conned set the police/a hit man/the FBI on me”) and “take care of” (“I’m on the run with my ninetieth new identity.”) Her entire childhood had been spent bouncing from town to town, while Dad took care of one minor problem after another.
She wondered if the cabin even belonged to him, then decided that it had to. He would never invite her to stay anywhere that might be descended upon by an angry real owner or the police. The money he’d used to buy it, on the other hand, had undoubtedly not been acquired legally.
Sometimes Laura wished she’d had a normal childhood with a father who wasn’t a crook. But she couldn’t imagine Dad as anything but a con artist, and she wouldn’t have traded him for the world.
Unlike everyone else who’d seen her on the news, he hadn’t gone on and on about how terrible it must have been or tried to get her to recount the gory details or demanded that she get counseling until she had to invent a therapist. He’d just called and invited her to come stay on his new property, then mailed her the key and a map. She couldn’t help wishing that he was here with her.
She picked up the note again.
If the power goes out (it happens sometimes if there’s a storm) you can heat the cabin with the wood stove. It’s also set up to heat water for your shower. DON’T try to drive into town if there’s more than a scattering of snow on the ground. The road will be icy and dangerous. There’s plenty of food and firewood in the pantry. If you keep the pantry door shut, it’ll stay cold and the food won’t spoil even if the power’s out.
Last but not least, there’s a man livi
ng in the barn.
Sorry to spring this on you. It’s a recent development. It rained the other day, and I discovered that the roof leaked. I was trying to patch it before you got here. This guy was passing by when he saw me struggling with it, and he ended up fixing it for me.
He’s a homeless veteran who’d been living in the woods. The weather report was predicting snow, and I asked him if he was going to stay in the homeless shelter. He said he couldn’t. When I asked why, he said it was because of a medical condition. I assume he meant PTSD – he nearly fell off the roof when we heard some gunshots from the woods.
If you hadn’t been coming, I’d have offered him the sofa. Since you were, I set him up in the barn with food and blankets and a space heater.
Knock on the barn door if you need help with the wood stove or anything else. Unlike me, he’s handy. I told him you were on vacation. Don’t worry about having him around. He’s a good guy, just down on his luck. His name is Roy.
Enjoy the cabin! And RELAX. You deserve it.
Love, Dad
PS. If Roy mentions a “George Adler,” that’s me.
PPS. The gunshots turned out to be Jim Sullivan poaching a deer. He’s my closest “neighbor” (only 3 miles away). He was generous with the venison. I have ten pounds of it in the freezer—help yourself.
Laura couldn’t help smiling. It was just like Dad to invite a homeless veteran to live in his barn. He had a soft spot for the unlucky and the hard-up. Dad only conned the rich, and he really did give to the poor… after he’d given to himself.
He was an excellent judge of character, too. He knew who had a dishonest streak and would jump at a chance to “legally cheat a casino,” who would get violent if he found out he’d been cheated, and who was a straight arrow who could be relied on to create a diversion by calling the FBI to report “suspicious activity.” If Dad thought this veteran was trustworthy, then Laura wouldn’t worry about having him around.
She wondered how long the poor guy had been homeless. Dad had dodged the Vietnam war, but maybe Roy had fought in it. One year of combat, and fifty years of hell re-living it. She shivered at the thought. Would she, too, still be re-living the day of the bank robbery half a century later?
