The Wolf Who Cried Girl

by Geonn Cannon

  “Hi, um... this is...” She gestured at the glass door behind her. “This is Bitches Investigations, right? And you’re Ariadne Willow?”

  “That’s right. I’m sorry, but we’re not really accepting new clients right now.” She hadn’t discussed it with Dale, but taking a break felt like the right thing to do until things were a little more settled. “I can recommend some other agencies that could help you...”

  The girl’s face fell. “Oh. Okay. Um...” She looked past Ari into the office and then scanned the small waiting room as if someone had snuck in when she wasn’t looking. When she spoke again, she kept her voice at a whisper. “Are they also canidae...?”

  Goosebumps rose on Ari’s skin. “Are you?”

  The girl nodded.

  Ari stepped back and gestured into her office. “Come on in. What’s your name?”

  “Eva Cardoso. But I don’t... i-i-if you’re not taking clients, I don’t want to be a bother...”

  “If you’re a canidae, I want to help. Come on. You can call me Ari.”

  Eva hesitated another few seconds before she came forward. Ari followed her into the office and closed the door behind them. Eva looked at the big clock on the wall, the couch, the currently-bare bulletin board, and then went to sit in one of the chairs in front of Ari’s desk. Ari went around to her own chair and sat down.

  “Why do you need a canidae private investigator, Eva?”

  “It’s my sister. Marin. She was out for a run last night and didn’t come back this morning. I know it’s only been a couple of hours. But if you know Marin, that’s enough to be panicking. And I think it’s a myth that you have to wait three days before you report a missing person to the cops, but it’s not like I can tell them that she was last seen naked and running through the Arboretum on all fours.”

  Ari smiled a little at that. “Yeah, they tend not to take those reports seriously. Do you have a picture of Marin?”

  Eva fumbled in her coat pocket and handed a pair of photos across the desk. One showed a young woman, older than Eva but clearly related to her, smiling next to a river. The other photo was of a tall, broad-shouldered wolf in a wooded area.

  “I also brought you a shirt of hers so you can get her scent.”

  Ari chuckled. “It’s really convenient having a canidae client. You said the last place you saw her was the Arboretum?”

  Eva hesitated. “I actually didn’t see here there. That’s where she usually runs, so it’s a safe bet. I went around this morning to see if I could pick up her scent, and I’m pretty sure she was there.”

  “You couldn’t track her yourself?”

  “I’ve never been much of a tracker. I tend to get distracted when I’m the wolf.”

  “I’ve been there,” Ari admitted. She looked at the photos again. It sounded like an easy case, but she knew better than to curse herself by saying so out loud. Still, she had more leads in this case than her mother’s. It would be nice to bring home somebody’s missing loved one. “Let me get a little more information and then we can get started.” She pulled the keyboard closer and squinted at her screen. “Sorry, my assistant usually does this part...”

  “Um, before we actually start, I wanted to talk about how much you charge. I can pay, I’m sure I can get the money, but if there’s some kind of payment plan...”

  Ari shook her head. “This one will be on the house.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “It’s a missing person, a family member,” Ari said. “You caught me on a really, really good day for that.” She winced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to trivialize what you’re going through.”

  Eva offered a weak smile. “It’s okay. I appreciate dark humor. Just... just I really hope I’m wasting your time.”

  “Me too.”

  ***

  Dale parked next to Diana’s car. The lot was almost empty as the ferry had just left, still visible out in the bay. The ride over had been silent, but Dale stopped Diana from getting out.

  “What really happened this morning?”

  “What do you mean? At the hospital? I thought Ari told you.”

  “She’s been known to polish off the rough edges when it comes to danger. I want to hear your version of events.”

  Diana nodded slowly and settled back against the seat. “I’m guilty of that, too. With Lucy. We only do it so you won’t worry about us.”

  “It doesn’t work.”

  “Yeah,” Diana said softly. “Thankfully. We hate making you worry. But at the same time, knowing someone is out there worrying... sometimes it’s what gets us through.” She sighed. “Okay. Ari and I went to the hospital. She talked to Milo, and then Isaac Hayden showed up with two other men in suits. Ari assumed, rightfully so, that they were coming to grab Milo. There was a scuffle, Ari ran off with Milo and took her to Dr. Frost--”

  “The scuffle. You said there was a scuffle, Ari said there was a fight...”

  “There were tasers involved. I got zapped, got my bell rung pretty good, but I don’t think Ari got hit with anything.”

  Dale breathed out slowly. “Okay. Thank you.”

  Diana nodded. “I understand the need. And I’m sure you understand the need for me to say this to you, because I think you’ll actually listen. Be careful. Hayden is still out there. The man assaulted three police officers this morning and didn’t blink an eye. He’s out there somewhere and he’s pretty pissed off. I don’t want you or Ari taking that lightly.”

  “Oh, I’m taking it seriously enough for both of us. That man almost turned me into a hunter. I was actually on a plane ready to go off with him to become some kind of canidae-killing machine. He’s my bogeyman. I don’t see myself getting a good night sleep until he’s good and gone.”

  Diana said, “That’ll make two of us.” She leaned across the console and kissed Dale’s cheek. “Happy birthday, by the way.”

  “Thank you. You gave me a pretty great gift.”

  “It’ll be hard to beat next year, but I’ll find something.” She winked, patted Dale’s hand, and got out of the car. Dale waited as Diana unlocked her own car, got Ari’s clothes out of the backseat, and brought them back over. “Call if you need anything. Anything. Understand?”

  “Understood.”

  Diana nodded and went back to her car.

  Dale let her leave first, then followed her back out into traffic. Hayden arrived at the hospital with men dressed in suits. Ari said the hunters by the stadium were dressed like commandos. She tried to think about what that meant. There was a chance Hayden dressed up so he would look respectable when he showed up to collect Milo. But if they’d found her, and knew where she was, why had the men in black still been out searching? Had Hayden not contacted them to call off the search?

  She decided the who and why wasn’t important. The facts were that one group of hunters was out trying to abduct wolves in broad daylight, while another group had Isaac Hayden leading an assault on police officers. She knew which one of those groups she considered most dangerous but, until they had more information, she was just going to consider them both one big scary thing to be on the lookout for.

  ***

  The Washington Park Arboretum was two hundred and thirty acres of woodlands, gardens, and walking trails between downtown Seattle and Lake Washington. Ari was very familiar with it from runs as the wolf; she had a few stashes buried there and she knew how easy it would be for someone to get lost. Or for someone to hide, as the case might be.

  Eva said her sister had entered the Arboretum from Madison Avenue, and she’d picked up Marin’s scent in the parking lot of the Japanese Gardens. Ari parked there and got out of the car, taking a moment to separate the natural scents before she started walking. She still had the shirt Eva brought her in the car, and she’d picked up enough from it to know what Marin smelled like. It wasn’t just body odor, but a mixture of sweat, perfume, soap, shampoo, and a dozen other things she probably didn’t even realize were part of the equation. Scent
was as unique as a fingerprint, and she could tell Marin Cardoso had definitely been in this parking lot at some point in the past twenty-four hours.

  She walked along the side of the road and looked for visual clues, evidence of a wolf’s passage. There weren’t many cars on the road into the arboretum, so she didn’t have to adjust for exhaust and gas smells. The deeper she got into the woods, the clearer Marin’s scent became. Everything else fell away and she focused hard on her target.

  Ari was so focused, so tunnel vision in her search, that she almost missed the unexpectedly familiar thread underneath everything else. When she noticed it, she stopped and closed her eyes, letting everything else flood back in so she could pick through it and find what had tripped her alarms. Grass and trees and mold, mulch, flowers, dirt, mud. And there, underneath it all... she opened her eyes and looked around.

  “Milo?”

  It could be a remnant from that morning. It could have been her mind playing tricks on her. But it was definitely Milo. Identifying someone’s odor wasn’t like smelling the same brand of perfume. It was distinct to each person. Ari crouched down, leaning forward with her eyes closed, breathing in deeply and holding it. Marin had been here. Recently. She was certain of that.

  And Milo had been with her.

  But how long ago? Certainly not more than a day. Marin and Milo were entwined, which could only have happened if their paths crossed or they passed through this way together. But what was Milo doing out, and this far out? The arboretum was six miles north of where Milo had been picked up by the police. Had she started here, or even further away, and gotten to CenturyLink Stadium before she was spotted? It seemed unlikely that she could have walked that far barefoot. If she’d been in wolf form, and it was before sunrise, maybe...

  Ari sat back on her heels and let her brain work. Milo was in the arboretum with Marin Cardoso before she was found by the police, and taken to the hospital. But Milo was found alone.

  The first piece of the puzzle clicked into place. The hunters in black hadn’t been looking for Milo, they were looking for Marin.

  But Marin had only been missing for one night. She couldn’t have been another prisoner. Had it been some kind of rescue attempt? But if that was the case, there had to be more to Marin than Eva told her. She needed more information.

  When she left the woods, she planned to call Eva and interrogate her about who Marin was. By the time she got to her car, however, she realized there might be an easier way to get answers.

  She drove to Dr. Frost’s house, knocked, and let herself in without waiting for him to answer. Frost caught up with her just before she reached his office.

  “Milo should rest, Miss Willow.”

  “I know, but this can’t wait.”

  Ari went into the darkened room and took Marin’s shirt out of the plastic bag she’d been carrying it in. She held it out, close enough to Milo’s head that she couldn’t help but smell it.

  Milo breathed in once, then again, and then her eyes snapped open. She shot out her arm and shouted, “No! Run! Get out of here!” Her legs kicked at the blankets and she shoved herself back against the pillows. “Go! Run!”

  Ari dropped the shirt to grab Milo’s shoulders. “Hey! It’s me. You’re safe. It’s me.”

  Milo’s eyes focused on her, and her brow furrowed with confusion. “Ariadne? What’s... what did you do to me?”

  “I let you smell this shirt. Do you know Marin Cardoso?”

  Milo thought, then shook her head. “It doesn’t sound familiar.”

  Ari took the photos of Marin out of her pocket and held them up. “This is her.”

  Milo looked at both with the intensity of someone trying to memorize every detail. Finally she shook her head. “No. I don’t know her.”

  “But when you caught her scent, you freaked out and yelled for her to run. I think you saw her this morning at the arboretum.”

  Milo’s look of confusion deepened. “Okay. So I was at the arboretum with this Marin person, and then I was at the waterfront by myself a little while later?”

  “That’s what it looks like right now.”

  Frost cleared his throat. “Miss Willow, I don’t want to remind you that trying to force her memory to return could do more damage--”

  “No, I want to try,” Milo said. “Gwen is still out there. If this helps...” She made a grabbing motion. “Give me whatever I smelled a second ago.”

  Ari picked up the shirt and handed it over. Milo pressed the fabric against her face.

  “It makes me scared,” Milo said after a second. “But I’m scared for someone, not of them. I think I was trying to protect this person.”

  “That makes sense if your first instinct was telling her to run.”

  Milo brought the shirt up again. “I don’t know. I don’t know how I know her, I just know she’s in danger.”

  Ari said, “But who were you protecting her from? The hunters?”

  “No,” Milo said slowly. “I think I was trying to protect her from me.”

  Chapter Four

  Valerie Byrne had literally no idea how long she’d been a prisoner. It didn’t seem helpful to keep a running tally, but at this point it had to have been months. The nights she couldn’t sleep, she wondered if she still had an apartment. If the prison was holding her job. Definitely not, to both of those questions. She knew that even if she got out of this mess, she would be homeless and unemployed. She had some savings, but nowhere near enough to start over. It didn’t make her hopeful for escape.

  So she used the lessons she’d learned from lifers she’d met in prison. She followed the rules. She kept quiet. She woke up when she was told and tried not to draw attention to herself. Her main task had been taking care of Milo and Gwen. She cooked their food, made sure they recovered from whatever medieval tortures the hunters had arranged for them, and saw to all their needs. The hunters didn’t seem to think of them as actual people, so it was up to Val to keep them alive.

  She knew the names of her captors, but she preferred Gwen Willow’s nicknames for them. They were too apt not to use, and she was more than willing to reduce them to cartoons.

  Val’s cell was on the ground floor, not far from where Gwen was being held. Milo’s cell had been on the other side of the building. They were all decorated the same: sink, shelf, bed, toilet. They all had windows, all of them barred and impossible to actually see through, but they let in weak milky light that was better than nothing.

  At the moment Val was lying on her bed, staring at a water spot on the ceiling, trying hard not to think about Milo. She’d snuck into Milo’s cell to take a look around but hadn’t seen any signs of an escape. No broken window, no tunnel hidden behind a poster of Raquel Welch, nothing that would indicate a person had gotten out. But Milo was undeniably gone, and their jailors were horribly pissed. At the moment it seemed as if only Walrus and the Geek were present. She’d never seen so few hunters at the building.

  Gwen could probably overpower them, even in her current state, she thought. The odds would be even better if she had help.

  Val sat up and put her feet on the floor. Walrus looked tough, and was probably armed. The Geek wouldn’t put up much of a fight. She gripped her blanket with both hands and considered what she was about to do. She had no idea what Silver Skull planned to do with Gwen, but she knew it was bad. And she knew that with both Milo and Gwen gone, their plans would be crippled. She got up off the bed and left her cell. They never locked her in because they knew there was no point. She had free rein to move about the building so she could see to their prisoner’s needs.

  Well, now the only remaining prisoner had a need she could take care of very easily.

  The main room was huge, had probably started life as a shopping center’s display room or a bank lobby. Any identifiers had been torn out long ago, leaving behind a spacious empty box that the hunters had turned into their own personal campground. Tents, a card table, metal folding tables, and a cooler were clustered togeth
er in the center of the space. Val had noted several times that she, Milo, and Gwen had nicer accommodations than the men holding them hostage.

  She was halfway across the space when she heard a car door close outside. She cursed under her breath and stopped to watch the door. If it was just the Goons, she might still go through with the plan. She might have to fight, and they might take her down, but she had a feeling she could hold them off long enough for Gwen to get away. But Silver Skull wouldn’t go down easy.

  The door swung open and Goon One entered. Val took a step toward him, the fight already half-over in her mind by the time Goon Two appeared.

  He was carrying a wolf.

  Val froze to the spot where she was standing and stared as Goon Two carried the hopefully unconscious canidae across the room, his face twisted in a mask of anger and annoyance. It wasn’t Milo. She was positive of that, but she had no idea if that was a good thing or a terrible development. Goon Two carried the new prisoner past her without a second glance. When Val regained her senses, she turned and saw Goon One staring at her. His expression matched his partner’s.

  “Who the hell is that?” Val asked, her voice trembling.

  “That’s your new patient. Wanna go introduce yourself?” He turned and started walking away.

  Val pursued him. “Where’s Milo?”

  “Forget Milo,” he said without turning around. “As far as you’re concerned, Milo is dead and buried, Milo never existed. We have a new doggie now. Go say hi. Her name is Marin.”

  ***

  Milo decided that she didn’t need any more rest, despite Frost’s protests. He went to his room and came back with clothes for her to borrow, since she was still in the hospital gown.

  “You know, I’m married. I have a wife, and she has clothes, too.”

  “Men’s clothes offer more options,” Milo said. “They’re a little more wear-and-tear, if you get my meaning.”

  “And they have pockets,” Ari pointed out.

  “That too,” Milo agreed, taking the clothes back into the office to change.