Desert Wolf

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  On the porch, she breathed a sigh of relief to be in the open. She welcomed the night’s hot, dry breeze and the darkness intensified by the lights at her back. But those same things also brought on more feelings of unease. She no longer belonged here, in this place, on this porch. Her life had taken a different turn.

  Grant’s blue truck was parked near the steps. In the distance, outbuildings that had once held ranch equipment looked skeletal in the moonlight. She remembered a lot, but not everything. Dark, vague images of the past crowded the outer edges of her memories like the shadows cast by half-forgotten nightmares.

  Had problems been highlighted in the moonlight back when she was a kid? She never had figured out what those dark shapes might have been, and trying to pinpoint something so far back in memory was useless.

  Another puzzle was the question of how her mother had died and where she was buried. The subject wasn’t broached with the couple she had lived with in the East, and had always been taboo.

  The top question at this moment, though, was what had trampled the hood of her car.

  Her mind was moving too fast for her to catch up, but the ranch did seem darker than she remembered. Probably she was allowing what had happened tonight between her and that damn bear to taint her perceptions. Darkness didn’t have to be full of surprises. And although she had assumed her childhood was good while she was experiencing it, running and riding and playing with plastic horses obviously wasn’t always indicative of what went on between the people living here.

  Grant returned and handed her a glass. “Whiskey,” he said. “It could be argued that everyone deserves a drink now and then,” he added.

  The liquid in the glass sparkled in the light spilling from the windows. Paxton took a sip, relishing the unfamiliar burn as she swallowed.

  “Is it as you remembered?” Grant asked, waving at the area beyond the porch.

  “Almost, though not entirely,” she replied truthfully.

  He was waiting for her to explain her remark. Maybe she owed him that for acting as her protector.

  “On the surface, things are the same,” she elaborated, observing how Grant’s lips touched his glass and the way he showed off more bronze skin when he tilted his head back to take a drink.

  “How much time did you spend at Desperado as a kid?” he asked.

  “Most of my time. When the place was closed to tourists, I imagined it was my town.”

  He nodded. “Were you ever there after dark?”

  “I wasn’t allowed out past the barn after dark. Too dangerous for a kid, I suppose.”

  Grant lifted his glass as if toasting the rightness of that remark.

  “Are there horses here?” Paxton turned to look at the barn she had just mentioned.

  “No. Not anymore.”

  “You don’t ride?”

  “I prefer the speed and comfort of the truck.”

  Paxton was aware of Grant’s attention veering from her. Without his scrutiny, her skin began to cool a few degrees. She was sure she detected a new tenseness in Grant’s stance as he checked out something in the distance that she couldn’t see. It was obvious he didn’t like what he thought he had found.

  Call her nuts, but she imagined there was a change in the air. The breeze had grown thicker, cooler. The night, usually filled with the lulling sound of insects, had gone quiet. Listening, staring into the dark, slivers of old nightmares returned to haunt her. Old shapes and shadows. Unusual smells. Warnings by others in the household to stay inside the house after the sun set.

  “Maybe you should go inside now,” Grant said, as if he had read her mind about those past warnings.

  Whatever Grant perceived out there beyond the lights made his voice rumble. Suddenly he was all business and again taking a stance as her protector.

  “What is it?” she asked. “What do you see? Could it be the bear?”

  Grant stepped in front of her and set his glass on the railing. “I’d really like to keep my promise to you about safety. I can only do that if you’re willing to listen.”

  “What’s out there?” Paxton repeated.

  “An animal, I think.”

  All she could think of was the word bear.

  “Do you have a gun, Grant?”

  “I do.”

  “Is it close by?”

  “Close enough,” he said.

  “If it is the bear, you’ll see I was right.”

  “It can’t be allowed to come closer, whatever it is,” Grant said to her. Without turning around, he called for Shirleen.

  Before Paxton looked over her shoulder, Shirleen was at Grant’s side, appearing as suddenly as if the slender young woman had just materialized out of thin air.

  “Call Ben,” he said. And the woman was gone again.

  Paxton blinked slowly, needing to understand what was going on. “You’ll go after whatever is out there?”

  “Yes, if you’ll promise to remain here and stay inside.”

  “There’s no way I’m staying here if you all go after that thing,” she protested.

  “This is no time to be stubborn, Paxton. An animal like you described could be dangerous.”

  “Fine. Then you be the one to relent on the issue of me staying put. This is my place, remember? My ranch.”

  “Are you always this stubborn?” His frustration with her was evident.

  “You have no idea,” she said soberly.

  Grant swore under his breath.

  “Ben’s on his way,” Shirleen announced from the doorway, her cell phone resting on her palm.

  “You’ll stay with Paxton?” Grant asked, and Shirleen nodded.

  So, if Grant had his way, she was to be quarantined on her own ranch with a babysitter. Needless to say, that idea didn’t sit so well.

  “Maybe you’re hard of hearing,” she said to Grant.

  “And maybe you have a death wish,” he returned. “But even if that were the case, I wouldn’t want to be responsible.”

  He backed up, pushing her into the doorway where Shirleen laid a hand on her shoulder. Damn it, she wasn’t a kid. If a bear was roaming these parts and scaring the pants off people, she wanted to help find it. She would give that asshole a swift kick for scaring her.

  The night sounds had returned, filling her ears with a whoosh and a whisper. Grant’s attention hadn’t strayed from the barn.

  The whisper came again. Paxton heard a voice. But Grant hadn’t spoken and neither had Shirleen.

  Paxton turned toward the distant hills, struggling to hear past the irregular uptick in her heartbeats. When the voice came again, she heard every word.

  “You have returned,” said someone who wasn’t on the porch with this small group.

  Paxton pressed on her ears, trying to discern if she’d made that voice up and if her mind was up to its old tricks.

  “Who are you?” she said before realizing that Grant and Shirleen had heard her.

  They were both looking at her as if she were one of Desperado’s ghosts.

  Chapter 13

  “Who are you talking to?” Grant asked, confused by Paxton’s question.

  “No one,” she replied soberly. “I sometimes talk to myself.”

  He didn’t press her, but did notice that Paxton had gone a shade or two paler.

  “Okay, then.” Taking the cell phone from Shirleen, he went to the truck, swung his legs in and slammed the door. Ben was on the line, and Grant didn’t want Paxton anywhere near the conversation he anticipated. She was too much of a rebel already.

  “Trouble?” he said into the phone before Ben could get in a first word.

  “That’s a benign way to describe it,” Ben said on the other end of the line.

  “Where are you?”

  “At the gates to the ranch.”

  “And?”

  “That sucker is here somewhere. I’ll swear to it,” Ben said.

  “Yes,” Grant agreed. “The wind has changed.”

  There was, he told himself
, no way Paxton could have perceived that subtle change without her wolf in residence. She hadn’t yet been able to explore the extra senses that came with being a Were. Hell, she didn’t know she was a wolf, so her ashen pallor had nothing to do with sensing the stealthy approach of a rogue.

  Ben was quick to respond. “So, maybe you can tell me how it could be here right now, even if this were to be a Lycan we’re after? Assuming it’s the same creature that hit the motel, miles from here.”

  “We’re only assuming it’s Lycan,” Grant reminded him.

  “And we can also assume it’s driving a car?”

  Grant didn’t like this. If the creature they were chasing was looking for Desperado, why would it have gone to the motel? And why would it have followed them back here to the ranch?

  “Doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense,” Ben said.

  Not unless that beast was after another look at Paxton, Grant thought.

  “Paxton Hall is here. Shirleen is with her,” he said.

  Ben’s voice lowered. “I can read between the lines of your reasoning, Grant. You’re formulating an idea that Paxton has something to do with tonight’s revelries?”

  Grant tightened his hold on the cell phone and glanced up to make sure Paxton was out of hearing range. She stood on the porch as if anxiously waiting for something. And when it does appear, you’ll get a hell of a surprise, was what he didn’t tell her.

  “I can’t come up with any other excuse for the sightings,” he said into the phone, to Ben. “And I can’t let this thing come here. I’m on my way.” He tossed the phone onto the seat and started the engine.

  Paxton watched him leave. His eyes remained glued to the rearview mirror until the house was out of sight.

  Cursing every single rut in the road from the ranch house to the distant gates, Grant half expected the nebulous creature to jump out at him. He actually hoped it would.

  Things were in a tangle. Paxton might not be central to this latest round of hide-and-seek with the beast they were after. Cattle had been disappearing for months before she arrived.

  It was possible that she had met that creature on the road tonight by accident. Possibly the breakin at the motel had nothing to do with her or anything else monsterish by nature, and was merely coincidence.

  When he reached the gate, he saw that Ben stood in the center of the road in a wide stance, a flashlight in his hand. Two other members of the desert pack were with him. All these guys were big, serious and intimidating. No one would have wanted to meet these Weres on a dark road, whether in their human forms or not.

  Grant got out of the truck.

  “Nothing,” Ben said, reporting what the others had told him. “A further search has turned up a big fat nothing.”

  “Which is, in itself, suspicious,” Grant acknowledged, looking from Ben to the other two Weres. “It’s here somewhere. I felt the bastard’s presence from the front porch.”

  “Slippery as an eel, is how the saying goes,” Ben agreed. “I’m not sure how any Were, if this turns out to be one, could make itself known and then immediately disappear without a trace.”

  “Not without a trace,” Grant corrected, raising his face to sniff the breeze. “He’s here, nearby. I can feel it.”

  “That’s just it. We all can,” Ben agreed, to nods from the others. “So, do we have a plan to lure that thing into the open?”

  Grant didn’t like what Ben might have been thinking. That, unknowingly, Paxton could indeed be a key figure in this wicked game of show-and-tell. The image of Paxton, white-faced, in the rearview mirror had stayed with him.

  “Not going to involve her,” Grant said, putting an end to the unvoiced idea. “She doesn’t know what she is and is about to find out the hard way. Piling another shock on top of that could throw her over the edge.”

  Ben nodded. Every werewolf remembered with horror their first transition to man-wolf.

  “Let’s call the others and circle the main fence,” Grant said. “Leave two or three of the pack at Desperado.”

  Ben nodded again. Grant was alpha and to be obeyed. As Grant’s lieutenant, Ben was already on his phone.

  “We circle, then gather to protect the town tonight if the ranch fence is breached,” Grant continued. “The ranch house is our priority while Andrew Hall’s daughter is in residence.”

  The other Weres scattered, save for Ben, who closed his phone and had more to say. “You’ll stay with her? The Hall girl?”

  “Just in case,” Grant confirmed.

  Ben melted into the night. Alone again, Grant searched the darkness. “I know you’re here,” he silently sent to the elusive beast. “We have a good idea about what you are.”

  Surprisingly, he got a reply in the form of a thought carried in the now almost nonexistent breeze. Fleeting, distant, but there.

  “No,” the deep, resonant voice returned. “You know nothing.”

  Grant leaned back against the truck, blown away by the suddenness of the communication, but not much more enlightened than he had been before the bastard decided to speak up. Due to that voice in his mind, however, Grant did know one thing for sure.

  That sucker was one of them.

  They were chasing a werewolf.

  *

  Paxton was rooted to the porch, sensing how much Grant had been worrying about her. She didn’t know why, exactly. Grant had told her he had a gun, which would take down a bear if the bear posed a threat to other people in the area. Did he keep the weapon in the truck? He hadn’t gone into the house to get it.

  “Do you want to go inside?” Shirleen asked.

  “No,” Paxton replied. “Do you?”

  “No,” Shirleen admitted.

  Turning her head, Paxton took her first good look at the woman standing beside her. Shirleen was exotic. Black hair, long and loose, reached to her waist. She was slender, yet solid, and medium tall. Light brown skin, big brown eyes and the sharp features of some Native Americans made Shirleen a beauty.

  Paxton fought off another pesky pang of jealousy. Shirleen was comfortable here, both in and around this ranch, which meant she had known Grant for some time.

  “Ben and I live a little farther to the east,” Shirleen said. “Ben inherited his father’s place.”

  Paxton nodded, believing she might get a straighter answer from Shirleen than from anyone else.

  “Do they think it’s a bear out there, Shirleen?”

  “Unlikely,” Shirleen replied. “Though not entirely out of the realm of reality, I suppose.”

  “If not a bear, what could it be?”

  Shirleen shrugged. “Another kind of animal. Or a man in a bear suit.”

  Shirleen wasn’t smiling when Paxton looked to her again. Paxton considered whether Native American traditions and superstitions might actually make a man dress up in a bear suit. However, she didn’t think it prudent to ask questions about Native American religious practices with so much going on.

  “He’s coming back.” After making that announcement, Shirleen focused on a spot in the dark distance.

  Paxton moved down one granite step. “How do you know?”

  “If you listen carefully, you can hear the truck coming up the road.”

  Paxton closed her eyes and listened, hoping she wouldn’t hear another imaginary voice. Hoping Shirleen was right about the truck.

  “Out here, sound carries. There’s not much to get in the way,” Shirleen explained.

  Paxton moved down another step, gazing out with her heart in her throat and realizing that she was anticipating Grant’s return far too much. Her anxiousness to see him wasn’t merely about information and learning what he might have found out there in the desert. Her need to see him was more than that.

  Though she had jokingly called him her bodyguard, the truth, if she dared to acknowledge it, was that he truly did make her feel safe. She couldn’t see anyone besting Grant Wade in a physical fight.

  As she waited for him to arrive, she began to sens
e Shirleen’s tension and had to wonder why everyone was on guard.

  She had a feeling this ranch and all the people involved with it were embroiled in a mystery that she, as an outsider, wasn’t privy to. Years in the ER had sharpened her awareness for puzzling out potential problems, yet she was out of her element here. Did this mystery have to do with her father’s will, or Desperado itself? It seemed to her that she wasn’t to be trusted with what might be going on.

  Grant’s truck rumbled into sight at a slower pace than when he had left. Only Paxton’s heart sped as Grant parked and got out.

  Sober-faced, he spoke first to Shirleen. “Thanks for staying awhile. Ben’s expecting you, so I told him I’d send you along.”

  Only then did Paxton realize how tight her grip on the railing was, and that she had descended all of the steps without noticing.

  “No bear?” she heard herself ask.

  When Grant’s gaze lit on her, the same sense of connection to him she’d experienced before snapped into place. His looks didn’t help her ignore the return of the flutter deep inside. Neither did noticing that he moved with the grace of a panther or how corded his tanned forearms were. His shaggy hair was in need of a trim, but somehow suited him. Fact was, she couldn’t picture him looking any other way than exactly as he did in that moment.

  His expression was one of anger and regret. Though he hadn’t been gone long, he hadn’t found the animal he’d gone in search of.

  Her heart skipped several beats when his worried state registered. He was avoiding her eyes. Was that because his concern had something to do with her?

  She was so tuned in to Grant, and so glad to have him back, she could have sworn she heard him say to the woman beside her, “Go ahead. You’re needed elsewhere,” though his lips hadn’t moved. But that was just her imagination working overtime. She wasn’t psychic; she had no special talent for reading things outside of patient symptoms in the hospital where she worked.

  When Grant finally turned his attention to her, she almost took a telling step toward him. Shirleen’s departure was silent and Paxton barely noticed it. The night had again gone quiet, as if for the second time in a small span of time, someone had punched the mute button.