by Terry Spear
Praying he could revive the unconscious baby in time, he yanked out his knife. The icy water made his hands so stiff and numb, he feared he would drop it as he cut away the straps to the car seat, careful not to injure Stacy. He yanked at the straps until they gave way. Pulling the baby free, he cradled her against his chest and backed out of the vehicle. He held the lifeless infant close as he waded through the icy water toward the snow-covered shore.
Debbie was still struggling to guide the mom out of the water. Franny was stumbling, shivering—though they all were—and instead of moving briskly out of the water like Debbie and he were doing, Franny kept stopping and turning. Debbie kept reassuring her she was taking her to her baby, holding the woman close to share body heat, and trying to rush her out of the water as fast as she could.
If he could have, he would have given Debbie the unresponsive baby and carried Franny from the water. But he had to resuscitate the baby pronto. Every second counted.
“I’ll get the blankets,” Debbie said as she left Franny on the shore and ran up the incline to the vehicle while Allan administered CPR on baby Stacy.
The infant suddenly coughed up water and let out a weak cry. Allan swore his stopped heart came back to life. She wasn’t out of danger yet. She was lethargic and her skin was bright red and cold.
Franny was trying to pull off her wet clothes in the frigid weather. He was afraid she was planning to turn into her wolf.
“Franny, hold on. We’ll get you and Stacy to the clinic as soon as we can. The ambulance will be here any minute. Dr. Holt will take care of you both.” With one arm, he held the baby against his wet chest, holding Franny close to him with the other, trying to keep her from stripping out of her clothes. They needed to, but not as a prelude to shifting. He moved them up toward the hatchback to get them out of the stiff, cold wind, but Franny was struggling to get free.
Slipping a bit, Debbie hurried as fast as she could back down the hill with blankets and some dry clothes.
“Let’s get them up to the vehicle. You can remove the baby’s clothes inside the car, and I’ll take care of Franny,” Allan said.
“Okay,” Debbie replied, and Allan gave her the baby, then lifted Franny’s trembling body into his arms and trudged up the hill.
“Need…to…turn,” Franny bit out.
Yes, their double coat would help warm her, and even just the shift would warm her, but her baby would turn too. He could just see Debbie dropping the baby-turned-wolf-pup and scream out in fright.
“When you’re in the ambulance, Franny. Just wait.” He spoke firmly, as a pack sub-leader would, encouraging her but at the same time commanding her to do his bidding.
At the car, Debbie climbed into the backseat and pulled off the baby’s sopping wet pink fleece jumpsuit and wrapped her in a dry blanket, while Allan struggled to remove Franny’s wet clothes. She was shaking badly from the cold, which was better than if she wasn’t shivering at all, but her skin was ice white, her breathing abnormally slow.
Sirens in the distance told them the cavalry was coming. Thank God. He just hoped it was their ambulance and not the regular one.
“What happened?” Allan asked Franny. He had to keep her talking and alert, keep her from shifting unexpectedly.
“Red car—no accident.”
Allan paused as he was trying to get a wool ski hat on her head, but she kept removing the blanket. She was either thoroughly confused or she really wanted to shift. Maybe a little of both.
Franny looked on the verge of collapse as he pulled the wool knit cap over her head and removed the rest of her wet clothes. Then he wrapped her tightly in the blanket, lifted her into his arms, and set her inside the hatchback. At least inside the vehicle, she was protected from the bitter wind. Debbie was holding the baby close. Both he and Debbie were suffering from hypothermia also. He felt his speech slurring, and he was having a time concentrating on what he needed to do next. But he had enough presence of mind to know not to shift.
“Your daughter’s breathing and her heartbeat’s steady,” Allan reassured Franny, though he couldn’t know for sure about her overall condition until the EMTs took her to the clinic and had her checked out.
Debbie frowned a little at him, and he realized he’d made another mistake. The problem was his wolf hearing was enhanced enough that he could hear, smell, and see things that humans couldn’t. She probably figured he was just soothing the mother over with a story. The truth was he could hear the baby’s heartbeat, and it was steady, which gave him a modicum of relief.
The ambulance pulled up and the medics took over from there. Allan should have asked Franny more particulars about the accident, but he wasn’t thinking as clearly as he normally did in an emergency. Not that Franny could have responded with any real mental clarity, but it was something he should have done in a case like this.
He and Debbie were shaking as hard from the cold, but the EMTs had already given them blankets too.
“My…purse,” Franny said, her teeth chattering.
“Anything else you need from the car?” Allan wished he could put on his wolf coat or his wet suit. He was afraid she had something damning in her purse with regard to being lupus garous, though he couldn’t imagine what. He didn’t want to jeopardize their situation if anyone else were to get it for her later. So he made the decision to get it for her, despite how chilled he was.
“Just…purse,” she managed to get out. “Front…seat.”
“I’ll get it for you,” he reassured her.
Debbie took hold of his arm. “You’re already suffering from hypothermia. Let someone else do it.”
“I’ll be fine. I’m already wet. We’ll get warm and dry real soon.” Their wolf pack didn’t have wolves working for the sheriff’s department, except for Paul and Allan as contracted divers. So they had to take care of their own. Not that he could let on to Debbie why that was so.
At the edge of the culvert, he dropped the blanket on top of the snow.
Despite already being soaking wet and chilled to the marrow of his bones, he felt even colder when he entered the water. But his faster wolf healing abilities would help him overcome this more quickly, than if any human responders had to deal with it.
He waded out, then dove into the submerged SUV, glad Debbie had returned to the hatchback to protect herself from the chilling wind. He pulled his flashlight out, just in case he needed it and to ensure no one would question how he could find the purse in the dark if anyone happened to be watching. He was certain Debbie would be, to ensure he would return safely.
He located the black leather bag resting on the roof of the upside-down SUV and pulled it out. Clutching the purse against his chest, fearful he wouldn’t be able to hold on to it in the fast-moving water, he waded through it until he reached the shore. On the shore, he grabbed up the blanket and wrapped it around himself, then trudged slowly up the slope to the waiting ambulance. He felt as if he were wearing wet cement shoes.
“Thank you,” Franny said, taking her sopping wet bag and holding it tightly to her body, as if it was her baby too.
With the ambulance doors now shut, but before the ambulance took off for the clinic, a bark came from inside. Then with its lights flashing and siren blaring, the ambulance headed for the clinic as some of the sheriff’s men arrived at the scene.
Debbie was staring at the ambulance as it drove away. “Did you hear a dog bark inside the ambulance?”
“No.” A wolf, yes. Dog? No.
“You should have let someone else get her bag, Allan. You’re not invincible,” she said, shaking hard as they sat inside the vehicle with the heat blasting, a cold north wind sweeping across the area as they waited to speak to the police officers who had arrived.
“Well,” said Rowdy Sanderson, a homicide detective, his blue eyes considering the two of them, “why don’t you get into something warm and dry before both of you need hospitalization too. I’ll handle this until you can file a report.”
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�What the hell are you doing here? No dead bodies,” Allan said. He knew Rowdy was here because Debbie was.
“Could have been,” Rowdy said, glancing at Debbie.
“Thanks, we’re out of here,” Allan said. They had to get into dry clothes pronto.
Allan and Debbie were always on call if something came up. They had been finishing up some paperwork on a murder case—a car buried in water in one of the area lakes. The driver had contusions that were probably not due to the car accident. More likely, the victim had been beaten and the car accident had been staged. He and Debbie were just on their way to get some lunch when they had seen the SUV upside down in the culvert.
“I want to drop by the clinic as soon as we can change and get warmed up.” Debbie leaned down to pull off a boot, and then the other. She slid off a wet sock, dropping it on the floor, then struggled to get the other off.
“Agreed. I can drop you off at your place, let you get a hot shower, dry your hair, and dress. I’ll pick you up, and we’ll head on over there.”
The clinic took only lupus garous in for long-term care. In an emergency, they would provide care for humans, stabilizing the patient so they could be sent off to the hospital in Bigfork. That meant human visitors rarely came to the clinic. They would have to be on alert when Debbie dropped by to see Franny and her baby.
“Thanks, sounds like a good plan,” she said.
Debbie pulled off her sopping-wet sweater and dumped it on the floor. This was the first time in the four and a half months they’d worked together that they’d had a situation like this, where they needed to get warm and dry pronto, and were too far from anywhere to do it quickly. He hadn’t expected Debbie to start stripping though. It was a good idea, but he just hadn’t predicted it.
Next, came her black turtleneck. He was trying to concentrate on the ice and snow-covered road, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw that her bra was purple and white polka-dotted silk. He smiled a little, never figuring her for wearing bright and fanciful underwear.
She unfastened her bra and dropped it on the floor. He nearly missed his turn to the main road that would take him to Whitefish. He really was trying to be a gentleman, but, hell, he’d worked with her for months, and lots of times he’d envisioned what she would look like naked when she was wearing a skintight diving suit. Now she was stripping next to him?
Not that this wasn’t essential to their, well, her good health, but it was wreaking havoc with his libido, despite how cold and wet he was. He was a wolf, after all. But he was going to have a damn accident if he wasn’t careful.
She used one of the towels they kept in the car when they went diving to cover her waist and another to dry herself off.
Thankfully, she was concentrating on pulling on a dry turtleneck and then a sweater, too cold to notice him glance at her. They always kept a couple pairs of clothes in backpacks in the car for diving and emergencies. She struggled to get her jeans off next, and then wiggled out of her panties, which matched her bra.
As soon as she’d pulled on the rest of her dry clothes, zipped her parka up to her throat, and tugged her ski hat on, she said, “Pull over. You’ve got to get out of your wet things too.”
“I bet you say that to all the guys you dive with.” He pulled onto the shoulder and they switched places, the cold outdoors feeling even icier.
She laughed. “If I were diving with Lou Messer, probably not. His brand-new wife told the sheriff if he paired Lou up with me, he’d be leaving the police dive force.”
Allan smiled. “I heard she checks up on him all the time, wanting to know where he’s at, what he’s doing, is he safe. I’m glad I don’t have to deal with her. If I did, I’d probably say something and get myself into trouble.”
“Yeah, but everyone needs your expertise, so they’re stuck with you.”
He laughed. “Stuck with me, eh?”
“It can be a good thing. I still can’t believe you went back for Franny’s purse. They could have gotten it when they pulled her SUV out of the culvert.”
“You know how women are. She was probably afraid of losing her credit cards, cash, driver’s license, no telling what. Maybe a special keepsake she was afraid might be lost.”
Then it was Allan’s turn to remove his wet clothes. He moved the passenger seat as far back as he could to give himself more leg room, and began the tedious project, his fingers numb with cold, and the shivering impeding his progress.
“Well, it was sweet of you, but too risky.”
After he got a dry flannel shirt and wool sweater on and had yanked a wool ski hat over his head, he finally felt relief. Then he tugged at his boots, socks, and jeans. When he got down to his black boxers, Debbie said, “I figured you for white briefs.”
“I figured you’d wear white lacy bikini panties and bra.”
“You looked!” But she was smiling when she said it.
He chuckled and pulled on a pair of blue briefs, jeans, socks, and a pair of dry boots.
All dry now, he was feeling a hell of a lot better. His hair was cut short, but Debbie’s was long. He was certain her wet hair was making her cold still, but the hat she wore would keep the heat from escaping in the meantime.
He got a call on his cell and fumbled to get it out of the console, realizing then he was still feeling some of the effects of the hypothermia. The call was from Paul. He and the rest of the SEAL wolf team members still did contract missions together, but they’d put that part of their life mostly on hold while they raised families. The shared responsibility of raising lupus garou pups was all too important to a pack like theirs.
Now wasn’t the best time to call because Allan was with Debbie, but Paul would know that. Which meant Allan was probably needed for a pack-related emergency, and he worried that it had to do with Franny and her claim that the accident she had been involved in hadn’t been an accident. With Paul’s broken leg still incapacitating him, Allan was taking up the slack.
“Allan, we’ve got a problem.”
“Okay. Just a sec. Debbie and I were just on a case, and we’re suffering from a mild case of hypothermia.” Which Paul would be aware of, as the EMTs who rescued Franny would have told him. But Allan couldn’t let Debbie know that Paul was aware of it. “We’re dropping by her place so she can dry her hair and get warmed up a bit and I’m headed over to my cabin. Can I call you back?” Allan didn’t want to have to watch what he was saying.
“Call me as soon as you can. We have a minor emergency.”
“Will do.” Allan was dying to know what the emergency was all about, if it was related to Franny or something else, but he really didn’t want to ask in front of Debbie and then have to make up some story about it later.
They ended the call and he phoned the clinic. “How are Franny and Stacy doing?” he asked Dr. Christine Holt.
“They’re in stable condition. Your partner didn’t suspect anything?” Christine asked him.
“No.”
“Good. Are you all right? The EMTs said that you went back in the water after her purse.”
“Yeah, in case she had something important in there.”
“Well, she pulled a piece of paper out of her purse, sopping wet, the ink all gone, but she said it wasn’t important anyway. She was so out of it, she just knew she had to have her purse with her. Both Franny and her baby will be fine. Her husband is here with them now.”
“Good to hear. Debbie and I will be dropping by later as soon as we can get dry and warm.”
“Give us a heads-up when you’re on your way. We don’t have any other patients at the moment, but you never know when we might, and we need to make sure that Franny remains human.”
“Will do.”
“Take care.”
Allan told Debbie about the condition of Mom and Baby, but not about the purse. He didn’t want her reminding him how he shouldn’t have gone after it.
He was tasked with ensuring all the new wolf pack members worked well together, but he also helped
with any trouble the pack was having. He should have been interested in one of the lovely single she-wolves, but he couldn’t get his thoughts off a certain sexy, kick-ass human. Some of it was because they worked together, but they also had a lot in common: they both loved to dive as a hobby, loved thrillers, Italian food, and read some of the same fantasy books.
“I’m glad to hear Franny and her baby are doing well. Is there a problem at home?” Debbie asked.
“Not sure. Probably some minor family issue.” This was the part Allan hated. He’d told her about his family, as far as he could say. That his mother and sister had taken Paul in. That he was like a brother to them. But Allan hadn’t been able to say much more than that. Certainly nothing about their wolf pack, and their increased longevity, though that had changed and they were aging nearly the same as humans now, but they hadn’t figured out why. He and his family had lived for many years, though they didn’t look it.
Trying to explain how eons ago he had run through a forest that once was on dry land and now buried underwater in Lake MacDonald, and other such things, wasn’t an option. He had gone diving with her there just for fun, and wished he could have told her about the time Paul and he had a very close call with a bear, when the forest wasn’t underwater. She would never have believed him.
“Hope everything’s all right,” she said, sounding genuinely concerned.
The problem was she had a cop’s way of thinking. She was curious and had good instincts. She could tell something was going on. He knew the longer they worked together, the dicier it would get. Paul had warned him, but what could Allan do? He couldn’t very well ask for another partner when he really loved working with her, and how would he explain why he could no longer work with her?
Anything he said might hurt her career. And he wasn’t about to do that.
He sighed. Somehow he would just have to keep up the facade. That meant not letting on that he could smell things that humans couldn’t. She’d already commented on his remarkable eyesight when it was getting to be dusk and dawn.