by Marc Daniel
Chapter 94
Upon landing in Bozeman, Montana, the two had picked up Michael’s car from the airport’s long-term parking lot and driven straight to a clothing store. With the average temperature for October in Yellowstone thirty degrees cooler than in Houston, Sheila had nothing in her hastily packed suitcase to protect her from the biting wind and forecasted snow.
Michael had first set foot in what would later become Yellowstone National Park in August 1805, three months after leaving the Lewis and Clark expedition and a full three years before John Colter visited the area. Michael had been skirmishing with a pack of werewolves in a part of the Indian Territory now known as Michigan when he had heard about a group of explorers getting ready to depart for the unclaimed land lying west of the Louisiana Purchase. Partially to protect his Potawatomi friends from being caught between him and the werewolves, and partially to answer the call of the wild, Michael had joined the Lewis and Clark expedition in St Charles, Missouri during the spring of 1804, and had remained with the group all the way to Montana.
Shortly after reaching Eastern Montana, Lewis had shot a grizzly bear dead without provocation, and Michael had decided to leave the expedition before his rage overpowered the control he held over his beast. He had wandered aimlessly in a southward direction for three months before finally reaching the yet non-existent borders of the future National Park.
Two hundred years later, finding food readily available inside the park was almost as tricky as it had been in 1805—especially from November to April when the park was mostly closed to tourists—so Michael and Sheila’s second stop had been for groceries at a wholesale store. With the amount of food Michael engulfed, he tried to shop at wholesale stores as much as possible. Under normal circumstances, when his stocks were getting low—or even when they weren’t—Michael would morph and go on a hunting trip inside the park: a luxury a human could not afford since hunting was strictly forbidden inside National Parks. A successful expedition could provide him with enough calories to go a week without eating, but with Sheila around, this option was out. He didn’t think the journalist was quite ready to witness something like this.
They had finally made it to the cabin a couple hours after nightfall. Michael had graciously offered to sleep on the couch, but Sheila had rejected the offer. The couch looked barely big enough for her and she wasn’t cruel enough to make him spend the night on it.
Michael had spent the next morning catching up with his boss, Bill Thomason, while Sheila had dusted and generally cleaned the cabin, which had been in dire need of the attention. For lunch, she had cooked a sixteen-egg omelet with two pounds of ham and a mountain of potatoes, which Michael had swallowed faster than she could put on lipstick.
Once lunch was over, he offered to take her on a walk in the forest surrounding the cabin and she accepted, glad for an opportunity to get out and discover the park’s hidden beauties.
Sheila had visited Yellowstone with her parents when she was fourteen, but that had been twenty-four years ago, and she didn’t remember a whole lot aside from Old Faithful and the view from the edge of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River.
“Here, strap this on your belt,” said Michael, handing her a canister the size of a large deodorant spray.
“What is it?”
“Bear spray. You have to carry it in case you stumble upon unfriendly grizzlies or, more rarely, an aggressive black bear.”
She looked at him incredulously for an instant. “Are you telling me you need to carry this?”
“I don’t… but it’s part of the disguise. As long as I’m around you won’t need it. There is nothing in this park that would dare come after me, even in my human form. But if you go on a walk alone, you should always carry it with you. There is no point surviving werewolf killers to finish up as a grizzly snack.”
Sheila strongly agreed with the statement and promised herself she would never go explore the woods without Michael around. The journalist had no problem carrying investigations into the roughest part of the city, or talking to highly disreputable individuals, but she was outside her comfort zone in a wild-beast-infested forest.
The walk was particularly pleasant. The temperature had dropped to the low forties overnight, but her newly acquired sweater, gloves and jacket kept her quite comfortable. Michael was not even wearing a sweater on top of his hiking shirt, but this was not unusual for people living in this part of the country.
They hiked a three-hour loop around the cabin, which took them across meadows filled with elk and bison herds, small geysers, hot pools, two wolves on a stroll, and a black bear who took a look at Michael, turned around, and sprinted in the opposite direction.
By the time they made it back to the cabin, Sheila had wrapped her hand around Michael’s. He had not encouraged the initiative, but he hadn’t done anything to discourage it either. From their entwined fingers was rising a comforting warmth Michael hadn’t felt in an eternity.
Chapter 95
When Olivia arrived at the house, the place was deserted with the exception of Isabella Clemens, who was in the living room reading a magazine with the television on. She got up at the maid’s arrival and went to lock herself up in front of the computer in her husband’s office, barely acknowledging Olivia’s presence.
No worries, cunt, I hate you more than you hate me and you don’t even know it, thought Olivia, putting down her cleaning accessories.
She felt a mixture of disappointment and relief when she observed that Peter Clemens did not appear to be home, but cleaning the house would take her a few hours and he was likely to come back before she left. At least she hoped so.
She grabbed a duster and got to work dusting the living room before moving to the dining room. She had dusted and tidied up the entire first floor and was working on cleaning the kitchen counters when Clemens walked in, accompanied by Axel Thompkins, the number four in the pack’s chain of command.
The two men were in the midst of an animated discussion, which came to an abrupt stop when they noticed Olivia scrubbing the stove. Even though today was Thursday, they had clearly not expected the cleaning lady to be around. Olivia was too nervous to take pleasure in the two men’s frustrated faces though.
The thirty-eight special was weighing heavily inside her pants pocket, but thanks to the baggy pants and loose blouse of the Houston Dirt Removers’ uniform, the gun was invisible to anyone who wouldn’t know where to look.
The two men disappeared up the stairs, and Olivia tried calming down her heartbeat by taking deep slow breaths. Although her father had been a cop all his life, she had never shot a gun before. She knew about things like the safety and the recoil from television, which was why she had bought a gun she could handle and not something like a forty-four caliber which would have ripped her arm out of its socket after firing the first round.
Her hands were shaking as she started tiptoeing her way up the stairs, a futile precaution given the wolves’ sense of hearing, but Olivia was unaware of that point. The two men were staring at her from their respective armchairs when she entered the pack’s meeting room. She had brought with her a bucket full of cleaning detergents and rags to justify her presence, and the men, visibly irritated by her arrival, resumed their discussion in low voices as she started slowly dusting her way towards them.
The room was sufficiently vast and furnished with enough seats to accommodate the whole pack, so it took Olivia a few minutes to close the thirty feet that separated her from her target. When she had done so, she stood five feet behind Clemens, dusting yet another coffee table. The two men had dropped the secretive talk and were chatting about football, not paying the least attention to her. She grasped the gun inside her pocket and slowly drew it out before flipping the safety to the off position. She then deliberately walked around the armchair Clemens occupied, while pointing the gun at him. She wanted to look him in the eyes while she pulled the trigger.
Axel Thompkins was the first to notice the weapon in
her hand, but the Alpha immediately picked up on his wolf’s change in attitude. Peter Clemens appeared more annoyed than afraid as she stood six feet from him, her weapon aimed at his chest. Large targets like the chest were harder to miss and Olivia could not afford to miss.
“What do we have here?” asked Clemens in a voice where Olivia thought she heard a hint of amusement. “Did my wife neglect to tip you last week?”
The other man was smiling, obviously enjoying the show. Neither one of them looked frightened or even nervous—unless they were particularly good actors.
“I am Olivia Harrington,” said Olivia in a voice trembling with anger and fear. “You killed my parents and now you are going to pay for it.”
Peter Clemens could not immediately place the name the woman had thrown at him, but as she drove three bullets through his lungs and heart, he remembered.
Chapter 96
Katia Olveda had been assigned the case of the assassination attempt against Michael. It wasn’t the first time Detectives Lewis and Salazar had to work on a case with the Assistant DA, but that did not make the experience any less painful. For one thing, the two women’s dislike for each other was so intense it was almost physically palpable. Samantha Lewis resented the way Katia walked around their office as if she owned the place almost as much as the fact the woman constantly looked like a model prepped for a photo shoot. Lewis had no respect for the type of women who spent this much time in front of a mirror every day. Katia, on her end, was quick to pick up on the other woman’s antipathy and did everything she could to antagonize her in a subtly passive-aggressive fashion.
Ed Salazar was just an innocent bystander in the two women’s cold war reenactment. Like most men, he was not insensible to Katia’s charms, but he also felt loyalty towards Lewis, with whom he had worked day in and day out for the past eight years. As a result, when he and Lewis met with the assistant DA, he mostly kept silent, biding his time while the two women ran the show. Fortunately for him, this meeting was likely to be short.
“So you are telling me that you could not link any member of the failed assassination squad to organized crime?” asked Katia in a skillfully contemptuous voice.
“That’s correct,” answered Salazar before Lewis had a chance to voice a stinging reply. “We know a couple of them were associated with the Russian mob, but nothing we could prove in court.”
“So I guess we don’t have much of a case from that angle,” said Katia. “What about a motive? Do we have any idea why the Russian mob would want Biörn dead?”
She already knew the answer to that question but she needed to find out how much the cops knew about this business.
“We think it has something to do with Harrington’s murder, or the wolves’ attacks in general,” started Lewis. “But we don’t know what exactly, and Biörn is not being very cooperative.”
Katia rolled her eyes at the detective in a “How can one be so useless?” silent statement which sent Lewis’ adrenaline pumping, while Salazar started wishing he were somewhere far away. Katia noticed the throbbing in the other woman’s neck artery and silently savored her petty victory.
“Where can we find Biörn?” asked Katia casually. “Maybe we could interview him again together and try to find out what is really going on?”
Interviewing a suspect prior to indicting him was not the DA’s office business and Salazar jumped in before Lewis could say so to Katia in a colorful fashion. “Michael Biörn has left town. He is back in Montana or Wyoming or wherever it is he lives.”
Katia did not show any emotion at the information, but someone was going to be happy to know this.
“Well, I guess there really is not much for me to do in this matter,” said Katia as she stood up from her chair and started walking towards the door. “Keep it up this way, Detectives, and I’ll soon be out of a job.”
“Now, that would be a pity!” Lewis managed to reply before the Assistant DA walked out of the office.
Chapter 97
As soon as the third bullet had left the gun’s barrel, Olivia had turned her weapon away from Clemens and towards Axel Thompkins, only to find the man still comfortably sitting and staring at her with an annoyed look on his face. She had expected him to try and stop her, but he hadn’t made a move to prevent her from shooting Clemens.
Olivia didn’t have time to wonder about the man’s reaction very long before something heavy slammed into her, throwing her to the floor. The gun flew out of her hand at the impact and landed on one of the coffee tables, shattering its glass top into a myriad of sharp pieces.
Olivia had hit the floor before realizing that what had just collided into her was an enormous wolf. The beast was now standing on her chest, effectively pinning her to the carpet while driving the air out of her lungs. She closed her eyes, knowing her time had come. The wolf went straight for her neck, a kill blow.
“Stop this, Bella! I need her alive.”
The voice sounded to Olivia like Clemens’, but it was impossible, the man was dead. She had killed him.
She could feel the beast’s teeth sunk deep into her neck, but strangely enough the wolf did not seem in a hurry to finish her. Subconsciously, Olivia knew that with such a jaw the beast could easily crush her spine, but instead the wolf was just biting down on her throat without applying the pressure it doubtless could have.
Suddenly, Olivia started sweating heavily. Her temples were throbbing so intensely she thought her head was about to explode. An intense migraine the like of which she didn’t know existed overtook her, but the pain did not stop at her head. Like a liquid flowing through her veins, the agony spread from her skull to her chest before reaching her stomach and finally her limbs. Not an inch of her body was spared from the excruciating pain.
“Look what you’ve done, Bella. We’re not getting answers from her anytime soon,” said Peter in a frustrated voice, while his wife, still in her wolf form, whimpered at his feet.
“We’ll be lucky if she survives at all,” said Thompkins, staring at Olivia’s convulsing body. The woman had lost consciousness but her body remained continuously agitated by violent spasms.
“How did she find me?” asked Peter without expecting an answer. “What does she know about us?”
“Apparently not much if she thinks a few pop shots in the chest will bring you down,” answered Axel Thompkins.
“Lock her up in the underground cache,” ordered Clemens. “If she survives this, she’ll know more about us than she ever wanted.”
Chapter 98
Of the park’s countless wonders, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone was Sheila’s favorite destination thus far. They had only been in the park three days, but Michael had made a point of showing her a different one of Yellowstone’s beauties each day. After a tour of the cabin’s surroundings on the first afternoon, Sheila had discovered the upper geyser basin, starring Old Faithful, on the second day. She had never realized before that the park harbored over 75% of the planet’s geysers, or that a geyser was only one of four possible thermal features one could find in the park, the others being fumaroles, mud pots, and hot springs.
And now, on an ice-cold but sunny Saturday, stuck between a multicolored mountain wall and a partially iced over river somewhere at the bottom of the canyon, she found herself wondering if she could spend her life in a place like this.
She had been a city girl all her life and had never felt the urge to venture into the wilderness. With Michael as a guide, however, she simply could not ignore the charms of nature’s untainted beauty.
“When you come around a blind corner like this one,” started Michael in the educational voice he adopted every time he told her something about the park, “you need to take it as wide and slowly as possible, just in case something is standing on the other side. Animals sometimes come here to drink and I have encountered mountain lions and grizzly bears more than once here in the canyon.”
“Thank you for the advice, but I’m not planning on coming down here
alone,” replied Sheila with a smirk. Michael simply shrugged and kept walking.
“I like the way you look when you pout like this,” said Sheila teasingly, but he ignored the bait.
“I bet that trick of yours comes in handy around here?” she said.
“What trick of mine?”
“You know… turning into a bear. You are probably the only living being in this park who doesn’t have to worry about stumbling upon something meaner.”
He shot her a sidelong glance but kept walking in silence. It took her a few seconds to realize her choice of words had maybe not been the most tactful.
“I didn’t mean it in a negative way, I was thinking meaner in the sense more powerful… You know… intimidating.”
Her embarrassment made him smile and she knew he wasn’t upset at her. Over the past few days, she had grown increasingly fond of him, but besides holding hands now and then and a few kisses on the cheek, their relationship had not turned physical. The fact the man was essentially a bear had a way of tempering the excitement his muscles and stature would have ignited in her under normal circumstances, but this wasn’t the only obstacle to overcome. Sheila wasn’t getting the impression Michael wanted to take their relationship to the next level. He was pleasant enough around her, but he seemed more guarded than he should have been given the circumstances. Usually, shared adversity had a way of acting as a relationship catalyst and tended to bring people closer together in record time, but it didn’t have this accelerating effect on Michael, and Sheila was starting to wonder why. She was confident he liked her—there were definite signs of this—so why was he holding back? Her sixth sense suggested that the wife he never talked about could be part of the explanation, but Sheila didn’t want to bring her up. She had seen his reactions the few times the word “wife” had been mentioned, even in a subtly disguised manner, and she knew it tormented him deeply. What she didn’t know was the reason for his torment.