Silence of the Wolf

by Terry Spear

  The coyote was a bigger male. He watched her, scenting the air to learn anything he could about her and what she felt. In this case, apprehension. Her heart rate had already kicked up a notch.

  She didn’t see any others, so he might be a loner.

  What if he was a shifter? Maybe he was worried about what she was. He might be wary of her because she smelled like a wolf, too. That usually kept any coyote shifters away from her.

  A shot rang out, the bang sending a shriek of panic through her. She dove for the ground and watched to see where the rifle had fired from. The coyote ran off.

  She waited for a long time, not moving, hoping that whoever had fired the round had given up trying to shoot the coyotes. If he came for her, thinking she had been shot, she wasn’t sure what she would do. Shift before he could see her, so he’d find an uninjured, naked woman? Then what? She just hoped he’d go off looking to shoot something else, like a rattlesnake—though at this time of year, they’d be curled up in a den.

  She thought of shifting and running as a human to her home, but the ground could be hazardous to her bare feet with its cactus, thorny senna, and rocky terrain, and it was only thirty-six degrees out today. Purple and pink stripes streaked across the sky as the sun began to set, but snow clouds quickly amassed.

  She took a chance and raced through the juniper and scrub oak. Half an hour later, she plowed through her wolf door out back and entered the safety of the house. She panted, staring at the terra-cotta tile floor, barely feeling relief when someone knocked on the front door. Her heart skipped a beat. Now what?

  She raced into the bedroom, shifted, and threw on some clothes. Peering out through the peephole of her front door, she saw no one. Wrong house?

  A black sedan sat farther down the dead-end street. All of the houses backed up on ten-acre lots, with a half acre between homes, so they had a lot of privacy. She couldn’t see if anyone sat in the vehicle, and she didn’t recognize the car.

  To be on the safe side, she went into the kitchen and locked her wolf door so no one could get in when she least expected it. The coyote she’d seen would know where she lived once he tracked her scent.

  Chapter 15

  Expecting a snowstorm to hit by nightfall, Elizabeth needed some groceries to tide her over. The clouds had rolled in, white, voluminous, and filled with snow. She’d seen the weather reports, felt the change in the air pressure, and could smell the coming snow in the wind currents. If what she predicted would happen, they’d be in a whiteout by nightfall.

  On the way to the grocery store, she spied a big sale sign in the window at a small butcher shop that she’d never visited before: Rib-eye steaks 20 percent off!

  When she walked into the butcher shop, the strange scent of cat threw her. The odor bothered her because her first thought was that the butcher had supplemented his meat products with cat. Then she realized the smell was that of a couple of live cats. Feral. She would have sworn they were big cats, as in the predator-in-the-mountains type. The butcher couldn’t have had house cats or any other variety in the store, though, not when he sold food.

  After buying the meat, she was still puzzling over the cat-scent mystery and didn’t fully notice the people entering the shop behind her. She’d heard their footsteps, but their arrival hadn’t registered as anything sinister. Until they quickly moved in close to her. Three men. Getting in her space. The distinctive smells of testosterone, cologne, and aggression surrounded her all at once.

  Before she could object to their close proximity, one of the men quickly wrapped his arm around her shoulder and poked a gun against her ribs. “Don’t make a sound,” he whispered in her ear, as if pretending to be her lover, to her chagrin.

  The butcher smiled. She had to have looked highly annoyed. Even wolfishly dangerous, if anyone had known what she was.

  “You got the sale steaks, I see, honey,” the man holding the gun against her side said, more to the butcher than to her. “I was afraid you hadn’t gotten my message.”

  She opened her mouth to reply, but he quickly tightened his grip around her shoulder, warning her not to say a word. He nodded to the butcher and added, “Thanks.”

  Now what was she to do?

  The article she’d written came to mind in a flash, but she couldn’t imagine anyone kidnapping or killing her over it. Then she wondered if Uncle Quinton had found her that fast. Why go after her at a butcher shop? Why not when she was in her home? Alone?

  The three men escorted her outside to a black vehicle with dark-tinted windows—the same car she’d seen near her home. The man acting as her lover attempted to force her into the backseat.

  “You’ve mistaken me for someone else,” she said to the man wielding the gun. She grabbed the car frame, not about to let him shove her inside. That could be the end of her.

  And that’s when she got her first look at the men.

  None had shielded their faces from her view, so she could identify every one of them. Somehow they all looked familiar… Where had she seen them before?

  Oh… my… God!

  “You’re the men who made a scene back at the Silver Town Tavern!” Elizabeth exclaimed, staring at the blond, bearded man in the group. She recognized his cold eyes glowering at her. He was the man from the chairlift.

  “You bastard.” She lunged forward to knee him in the crotch, but the dark-haired gunman jerked her back. She’d almost forgotten he still held her arm tight, but she recognized him as the spokesman of the group at the tavern. Since he was wielding the gun, she had a feeling he had also pushed her down the slope.

  Instinctively, she tried to identify their scents. Nothing—as far as a wolf scent. They had to have applied hunter’s spray and then cologne over that to make sure she couldn’t detect them as wolves. Then everything clicked into place. She thought she hadn’t been able to identify the blond man’s scent on the chairlift because the wind blew it away from her. But she and Tom hadn’t picked up any scents after her room had been broken into, either. The men had to have been using hunter’s spray then, too. There was no other explanation.

  She was certain they were wolves. They wouldn’t have any other need to use hunter’s spray in a nonhunting environment. Her heart thundered in her ears.

  If these were the guys who’d stolen her stuff back at Silver Town, they had to know exactly who she was. She was the one they wanted for whatever sinister purpose. She was certain it all had to do with her uncle.

  The gunman tried to force her into the vehicle again. He jerked her from the car frame and shoved her inside the car. She fell forward, landing on her stomach on the backseat. Before she could turn and defend herself, he jabbed her in the buttock with a long needle, pissing her off. She lashed out with a kick of her boot to his right shin. He yelped in pain, shoved her legs aside, climbed in, and slammed the door shut.

  “Drive,” he growled to the blond man.

  Her vision blurred. The driver and the other man, a redhead, looked back at him with smug smiles. “He warned us she’d be a wolf,” the driver said, amusement coating his words.

  Her heartbeat was slowing from the drug, but it did a little kick at his mention of “wolf.”

  “Uncle Quinton,” she slurred.

  “You sure you have enough hours under your belt to serve as copilot?” the redhead said to the driver.

  Copilot?

  “Hell, yeah,” the driver said. “How do you think we managed to fly into Mexico so frequently? This will be a piece of cake.”

  Mexico?

  “Hell,” the redhead said, “you should have asked her where the deed was before you drugged her.”

  Elizabeth felt a stab of panic through the haze of the drug. Did they know she had been planning to trade the deed to her parents’ property to North for the evidence he had against her uncle?

  She had meant to return the deed to the safe in h
er home, but she hadn’t gotten around to taking it out of the breast pocket of her ski jacket… that she was still wearing. She knew she shouldn’t have procrastinated about it, but she had wanted to send her editor the stories first thing after getting home, and then the threat of the snowstorm and the necessity of buying groceries had distracted her.

  The gunman pulled Elizabeth around onto her back and searched her unceremoniously. She tried to muster a look of extreme disgust and indignation as he unzipped her jacket and patted her down a little too friskily. “We’ll search her place if…” The gunman slapped the deed in his hand. “Not necessary. Got it right here.”

  ***

  The small plane soared high above snow-covered mountains, the flakes swirling around the windows and wings in such profusion that the sky and ground were no longer visible in the whiteout. God only knew where Elizabeth was as she shook off the effect of the drug her captor had given her. How could the pilot see where he was going? Or the copilot figure out where to take them?

  “Damn it, Canton,” the pilot growled. “You said there was a gap between the storm cells. You said we’d clear them before they hit us.”

  “If the damn cells hadn’t moved as fast as they did, we would have,” the dark-haired man said.

  Where were they? Flying over Palo Duro Canyon? She didn’t know how long she’d been out of it, but she couldn’t see anything in the blanket of white.

  She shifted in her seat and realized she sat in the tail of the plane, seat belted and handcuffed.

  She had gotten into plenty of scrapes over the years as a wolf-coyote mix without a pack, and she’d always managed to get herself out of them. But this time…

  Maybe she should have made more of a fuss in the butcher shop. Maybe she wouldn’t be here now, but she had been afraid the men would kill the butcher—and her—and she hadn’t wanted that.

  The blond man, the one with the cold eyes, was half dozing in a seat across from her. When he realized she was watching him, he narrowed his gaze at her. What? Did he think she’d let the inner wolf loose again? That was when she noticed something… an unfamiliar scent. The scent of male red wolves. Their hunter’s spray must have worn off by now.

  She settled back against the seat of the small aircraft, glowering at the gunman wearing a blue-gray parka and a crooked smile—the one named Canton. She tried to appear more at ease than she felt.

  His greasy dark hair swept his shoulders as he shook his head at her, that stupid smile firmly plastered on his face. His sharp eyes remained fixed on her gaze while he slid his gun into his holster like he’d probably done a thousand times before—smoothly, like a gunman in an old Western. Same jeans, only the cowboy boots were grimy sneakers, and the dirty parka replaced the vest and old-time Western shirt.

  She glanced out the window. She didn’t like to fly, and given the choice, she’d never set foot in a plane, ever. Certainly not in the middle of a snowstorm. She briefly wondered what they had done with her deed.

  Canton chuckled, drawing her attention back to him and the fix she was in.

  “Who ordered you to pick me up?” she asked, not that she expected him to tell her the truth.

  Canton shrugged, then hollered to the red-haired pilot, “Hey, Huckster, when will we get there?”

  Never. If Elizabeth had her way.

  “Another half hour, but in this blizzard, it may take longer.” The pilot sounded like he was trying to hide the anxiety in his voice.

  That had her even more worried. If the pilot didn’t think they would make it, what chance did they have?

  She twisted her wrists again, wishing she had a hairpin or, better yet, her lockpicks to unlock the fool thing. She always carried lockpicks because her father said they had saved his butt a time or two, but the men had already patted her down and found the picks. That was part of the reason she had begun to wake up. Their hands on her, probing and searching, had brought her to a groggy state of consciousness.

  Canton again turned to smile at her. “You’re real pretty. Too bad. They didn’t like that you got mixed up with the wrong people.”

  In the turbulent downdrafts, the airplane dropped again, her heart with it. She grabbed the seat back in front of her. Her stomach grew queasy. Neither wolves nor coyotes were meant to fly. At least not this one.

  “Who?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “We don’t ask those kinds of questions. Besides, you think they’d give us their real names?”

  Either he was lying or these three weren’t with her father’s pack. Rogue wolves for hire?

  “Why did you knock me down the ski slope?”

  “Nothing personal. Just getting paid for a job. The guy who wants you—and the deed—now that’s personal.”

  Her uncle. And he must know North had evidence to prove he killed her parents.

  The plane dove again, and she held her stomach.

  “Getting seasick?” Canton chuckled. “Guess I should say airsick. We’re just taking you to a nice little hideaway in the mountains so you don’t think of slipping away from us until we can turn you over to the men who are paying for you.”

  Men. Plural. Her half brother had to be in on it.

  If only she could shape-shift… She squirmed against the handcuffs again. If she could slip her hands through them… She wriggled and twisted. The skin around her wrists burned with the effort as the metal scraped the skin. No success. She growled under her breath. Then she nixed the idea of turning anyway. They could shift, too, into larger male wolves. And even if she miraculously got the upper hand in a fight, what could she do? Kill them? She didn’t want to contemplate that, but even if she did, what then? She couldn’t fly a plane.

  An engine sputtered. Her heart thudding, she listened to the sounds of a plane in trouble and smelled the stench of fear that cloaked the man closest to her. The plane abruptly angled hard right. One wing tipped down.

  She fell from her seat into the aisle, smacking her left elbow hard against the unforgiving floor. Canton landed between the seats next to her while the others cursed up front.

  She considered disarming Canton while he was off balance. If she could reach his gun—Then she heard metal ripping, and she lost all sense of direction as she suddenly became weightless in a field of white.

  Screams—hers—issued before she could stop the sound of panic and then silence. Everything—the wind, the cold, the snow blinding her—faded into oblivion.

  Chapter 16

  Out of range to call anyone on his cell phone, Tom quit attempting to get hold of Elizabeth and concentrated on tracking down the wolves stalking the livestock. He’d finally discovered what he thought was a lead: unfamiliar wolf prints in the snow leading into the woods near one of the farms. If he could just locate the wolves before the next snowstorm began… just a little bit farther. He didn’t want to lose the trail this time.

  The biting cold whipped at his face as he trudged through the Rockies, rifle slung over his shoulder. He suspected the rest of his gray-wolf pack mates would return to their homes in Silver Town, seeking hot showers, hot food, and if they were mated or had a human female to snuggle up to, hot sex. Which made him think of Elizabeth. He wished she were here.

  Snowflakes dusted the evergreens with a sprinkling of white powder as fat flakes slanted sideways and were captured on the wind. The snow crystals covered his white parka and melted away.

  Some of his pack mates helping with the search had run as wolves. With the approaching storm, he wondered if he shouldn’t have also. Still, he was glad to have his rifle with him, and if he had to, he’d slip off to the family cabin about a mile away.

  The wind howled through the trees, a ghostly, haunting tune, as he tried to listen for any other sounds—a howl from the wolves plaguing the farmers’ sheep and calves, or even his own people howling to say they had given up the search before it was too late.
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br />   The sun that had sparkled off the creeks and shone through the branches of the trees this morning had given way to mountainous blue-gray clouds that shadowed everything, muting the vivid colors and warning that the weather would worsen.

  Almost as soon as Tom set his sights on the storm clouds above him, snow began to drift down upon his upturned face. The sudden snowfall got heavier with alarming speed, and Tom regretfully decided to give up the chase for the moment.

  Despite the full-blown blizzard whipping about him, Tom loved the chilled air, the snow, the wind, and the sound of it as it shook the mighty firs. Yet he wished he were curled up somewhere warm with Elizabeth, her blue-green eyes challenging him—very much alpha—while she’d pretended to be a beta. He couldn’t quit thinking about the way she had kissed him and then wanted him to go further, as if she’d hungered for more. He damn well wanted more with her. But she had been upset afterward. What had gone wrong? He should have sat down on the bed, gathered her in his arms, and flat out asked what the matter was, instead of allowing her to get away with saying that it was nothing.

  She hadn’t returned one of his calls. He couldn’t figure her out. Maybe that’s why he was so hung up on her.

  After a little while, the cabin he and his brothers kept in the mountains came into view. Though they were a close-knit family, sometimes having a little more privacy in a remote cabin appealed. Especially in a town like theirs, where no secrets stayed secrets for long.

  Tom paused just outside the door, contemplating the meager woodpile, when the distant sound of an aircraft engine in trouble caught his ear. A sputtering, and then the engine completely cut out. Silence for a heartbeat. Then metal and tree branches ripped in discord and a muffled bang followed. He stared in the direction of the mountains hidden in the blinding snow.

  No explosion, no flames shooting into the air or bleak, gray smoke curling up through the forest that he could see. Just silence.

  He swore under his breath and charged into the cabin, slamming the door shut against the blizzard. He couldn’t search for survivors in the middle of a blizzard as a human. But he hated to think what would happen if he found someone still alive and they panicked when they saw him as a wolf. Still, he had no other choice if he was to locate anyone still alive.