by Vonna Harper
By now she’d covered about a third of the distance separating them. Between that and wrapping her mind around what she was seeing, doubt became certainty. Yes, this predator’s eyes were black.
Like the one in the cave.
“Why aren’t I terrified of you? Why don’t I think I’ve lost my mind?”
As if contemplating her questions, the wolf cocked his head. Cat didn’t know she was going to laugh until she heard the sound. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I don’t know why you’ve chosen me to show yourself to. Is it just because I found the cave or—Hell, I don’t know what I’m saying.”
She started to shake. Hoping to calm herself, she rubbed the heel of her hand over the cell phone. It would be so easy to connect with Matt but then what? Maybe even at “hello” he’d sense that something was different about her.
Different? Not even close to describing what was happening.
Giving up on trying to settle her nerves, she planted one foot in front of the other. She couldn’t possibly know this, of course, and yet she had no doubt the wolf would remain where he was, for now.
“Are you part of the pack? Alpha male to the max?”
The beautiful head cocked again.
“What is it?” She laughed. “You don’t speak English?”
Some fifty feet now separated them, and as she contemplated the scant space between them, her legs stopped moving. She rubbed her thighs. “This is close enough.” Even if I’m crazy, I’m not that crazy. “Ah, look, if you’re going to rip my throat out, just do it. Don’t make me wait.”
The wolf’s ears swung toward her. His fangs slowly disappeared behind lowering lips, and he now looked more puzzled than anything. Maybe he, too, didn’t believe what was happening.
“It’s a dream.” She wasn’t sure which of them she was trying to convince. “We’re having the same one. I’ll buy that if you will.”
A wind gust blew her hair against her mouth, prompting her to push it away. Maybe doing something ordinary had been the trigger she needed, because suddenly everything became starkly real. She, a woman trying to earn a living on unforgiving land, was standing on lava only a few feet from a wolf larger than any wolf had ever been. This creature had undoubtedly left its prints where Matt could find them, but why wasn’t it at Albert Rim with the pack?
Maybe the pack had made it an outcast.
Maybe it didn’t need the pack.
Maybe it wasn’t real.
“I’m sorry . . . sorry but I can’t . . . can’t process this.” Much as she needed to rub her eyes, she didn’t dare. What if the beast attacked then? “I, ah, I’m going to leave. I want to turn my back on you but... do you want me dead? That way you’re safe. No one will know you exist.”
The white fangs returned.
Oh, shit! “If you understand what I’m saying—if that’s possible—you need to know something. When they find my body, they’ll come after you with guns. There’ll be no stopping them.”
Lifting its muzzle skyward, the wolf howled. The deep, drawn-out sound shook Cat to the core. She started to press a hand over her heart only to be distracted by the camera strap over her shoulder.
Do it!
Lacking the thought process to explain what she was doing, she fumbled with the case. Despite her uncooperative fingers, she finally turned on the digital and pointed it at the predator. She hadn’t thought to activate the flash, but it wasn’t needed out here.
“This isn’t going to hurt.” Stupid thing to say! Just do it!
Not bothering to look in the viewfinder, she pressed the button. The click was barely audible. Still the wolf again pointed its head upward and howled.
Another shot followed by another and then a third, all done as fast as camera and fingers allowed. Still holding the digital up, she started backtracking.
Thank you, thank you. Just let me live. That’s all I ask, to make it back alive.
To show this to Matt.
13
Not quite twenty-four hours after reluctantly meeting with a small group of ranchers, hunters, and hikers, Matt watched as his next neighbor to the south bounced down the drive to his place. Cat had been the last person to come here. No way could he not think about that.
Closing his eyes, Matt welcomed an image of her into his mind’s eye. Cat had been the best thing in his life, a soft and strong body eager to meet his, grope for grope and thrust for thrust.
Right now, as long as he mentally held on to her, he could keep other things at bay.
His eyes still closed, he went back to last fall on the day of the annual calf sale that represented his paycheck for the year. Beef prices had been higher than expected, and instead of each rancher going his or her way once the cattle trucks left, folks started talking about a celebration.
More than a hundred people had shown up at the Stensen Ranch. The women had cooked while tired, dirty ranchers— him included—drank beer and reassured each other that hay supplies would hold out through the winter.
He’d called Cat and left her a message about the barbeque but didn’t know whether she’d show. The sun had set before everyone congregated around the makeshift table in the large Stensen barn. After filling his plate, he’d looked around for a hay bale to sit on only to find Cat standing on one and nodding at him.
She’d nibbled from his plate while telling him she’d had the vet out today to check the stallion she’d brought in to service a couple of her mares. The damn stud had run himself into a fence post and was limping. Turned out he’d only sprained his right front leg and would be fine.
“So,” Cat had wound up, “I’ve gone from cussing one stallion to wondering what another has in mind.”
Five minutes later they’d had sex behind the Stensens’ house. Fun and nearly civilized sex.
“You aren’t going to believe this.” His neighbor John Lawrence leaned out his truck window.
Reluctantly pushing Cat into the back of his mind, Matt watched John get out. Like most longtime ranchers, John’s narrow face was rich with wrinkles. Going by the creases, Matt guessed John was in his midsixties, although his steady walk hinted at younger. Not saying more, John led the way to his truck bed.
John leaned a bony arm on the bed’s side and faced Matt. “I heard fighting last night. Out a ways, not near my barn or the corral. It sounded like dogs mostly. Big ones.”
Mostly?
A bloodstained canvas tarp covered something. Studying it, Matt’s belly clenched, but then he’d been so on edge lately he’d had to fight himself to stay seated during yesterday’s volatile and unproductive meeting.
“So it was the wild dogs we’ve been trying to trap?” Matt asked. For a good three months now, a pack of four or five mutts, each weighting a hundred pounds, had been hunting closer than either he or John liked. The men had concluded that one or more persons had dropped off dogs they couldn’t handle or feed. The mutts might have once been domesticated, but salvaging for a living had awakened the wild in them. John and he had given up trying to trap them to see if they could be redeemed.
A few weeks ago, the pack had ambushed and killed one of John’s cattle dogs and Addie had lost several chickens to them. The men had reluctantly agreed they had no choice but to destroy them.
“The wolves got to those mutts before we could,” John said, and pulled away the tarp.
Two dead scruffy dogs lay on the truck bed. Both had had their throats ripped apart. There were few other wounds.
“You’re sure the rest of the pack didn’t get to them?” Matt asked, putting off the inevitable.
“Look at what was done to them. Rogue dogs don’t know how to attack. They rip and tear and make a mess of things.”
Something dark curled through Matt. John, his truck, and the two carcasses ceased to exist, and he found himself in a pasture a good distance from John’s weathered house. It was night, the air going toward cold. A dark brown dog slunk toward a doe and her twins. Just as the beast gathered itself to attack one of
the fawns, something slammed into it and knocked it off its feet. Deadly fangs locked around the dog’s throat.
“What do you think?” John pressed. “You agree with me that this was done by wolves?”
“Yeah,” Matt made himself say. “What are you going to do?”
“That’s the thing of it.” After dropping the tarp back into place, John rubbed his whiskered chin. “I didn’t go to yesterday’s meeting because I don’t agree with those who think we’ve got to get rid of the wolves. I don’t want to lose any livestock to them, but damn it, Matt, wolves were here long before us. They have a right to be what God made them.”
“You need to let people know how you feel.”
John, who had been looking everywhere but at Matt, settled his gaze on him. “What about you? Where do you stand on this?”
Neck-deep in trouble, starting with not being sure who I am anymore. “It’s going to tear the area apart with people on different sides arguing they’re right and saying those who don’t agree are fools. I don’t want that.”
“You haven’t said—where are you?”
Decades ago, John had started out to be a college professor only to discover he hated the politics and bureaucracy that went with the job, and his parents had been right. He belonged on the land. Yet, much as he loved what he was doing, he missed having much opportunity to stretch his mind. Because he sometimes felt the same way, Matt was grateful for their occasional deep conversations.
“I agree that wolves have a right to return to land that humans denied them for too long,” he said, “but the land’s changed. It’s no longer just antelope and deer living here.”
“Our cattle are part of the change all right,” John added.
“The government . . . You heard about those women hikers yesterday, didn’t you? A friend of mine called last night saying she was trying to correct the rumors going around. She saw the women. There wasn’t a scratch on them.”
Matt had been out checking on the youngest calves when the phones started ringing. By the time he got back home, Addie had sorted through everything and relayed what she believed was the straight story. Like John had done, Addie had talked to Daria—Cat’s closest friend.
“What bothers me,” he said, “is that those women are part of that hiking group. Their president and some other man were at yesterday’s meeting.” He shook his head. “All that talk about respecting the environment they dumped on us when they were asking permission to go on our land and now they’re saying the opposite.”
“In what way?”
“The president read a press release he’d already sent to the media. Everything was about freedom of movement, Godgiven rights, the importance of modern people being able to get in touch with nature. And being safe doing it.”
“How?” John asked. “By putting bells around wolves’ and coyotes’ necks so they can hear them coming? Maybe they want all predators rounded up and put behind fences. Or dead.”
Matt, who had been leaning against John’s truck, pushed away from it. “That bunch won’t come out and say so. They know better. But after the meeting, the two pulled me aside and tried to talk me into coming on board. Beale could have been killed, they said. A human life is more important than—Hell, you know their thinking.”
“And now this thing with the pack intimidating those women is going to give them even more ammunition.” John ran a deeply tanned hand under his hat. “Damn it, I just want to ranch. That’s enough for any man to deal with.”
Matt wished it were that easy for him. That, facing the two men, he hadn’t wanted to rip their throats out.
Much more of this and she’d have to buy new carpet for her office, probably a new chair, too, Cat admitted. She’d been in and out of the room at least a dozen times since getting up this morning. Mostly she’d stared at her monitor instead of launching the software for her digital. Yesterday, just minutes after uploading the shots she’d taken earlier in the day, she’d walked out of the room and slammed the door behind her. It had taken her until morning to work up the courage or whatever it was to assimilate the magnitude of what she’d uncovered.
Tell Matt or not, call a press conference or not, go after her fifteen minutes of fame or not.
Mostly tell Matt or keep all this to herself?
That was the hardest part, trying to figure out how Matt would react. If she’d taken the pictures a year ago, she wouldn’t be uptight right now. Matt would share her awe of what she’d found. Together they’d form a plan of action.
But Matt had changed.
Moaning, she planted her arms on her desk and rested her forehead on them. She supposed she’d gotten a little sleep last night because she couldn’t remember every detail of the endless hours, but it hadn’t been enough to restore her.
Well, what did she expect? She didn’t come face-to-face with a massive wolf every day. She’d never had to decide what to do with that knowledge.
After another moan, she straightened and reached for her mouse. Her hand trembled, and her fingers felt as if they might cramp, but she did what she had to. When the slideshow launched, she leaned back, laced her fingers together, and stared. The pictures she’d taken inside Ghost Cave yesterday were a hundred times clearer than her first attempt. More to the point, the detail took her breath away. Every petroglyph was absolutely clear. She’d already called Helaku and told him she wanted to show him something.
“It sounds important,” he’d said.
“It is,” she’d responded, followed by explaining that she wasn’t sure when she could get to his place.
If anyone could point her in the right direction with regard to what she’d found, it was Helaku, and yet she hadn’t decided whether she’d show him the last series.
Her fingers started to ache. Looking at them, she saw that her knuckles were white, so shook her hands to restore circulation. The petroglyph of the oversized wolf filled the monitor. Knowing what was coming next, her right hand went to her throat, and she started to stroke her flesh, her vulnerable flesh. As the first outside shot came into view, her other hand slid between her legs.
The wolf. As real as real could be. With the surrounding vegetation and lava rocks offering perspective, there was no question about the predator’s size. She couldn’t remember whether she’d been using the zoom feature. Had she been that close to the beast?
The first picture faded to be replaced by another that showed a bit of fang. Coal-black eyes locked onto her. They seemed to be saying something, but what? One thing she had no doubt of, the massive wolf was trying to communicate with her.
Oh, shit! Enough with the indecision. She couldn’t keep this to herself.
Hauling out her cell phone, she sent Matt a text message: I need to see you.
That done, she went back to staring at the slideshow. Her nerves jumped, and goose bumps assaulted her shoulders and the back of her neck. Desperate for the end to this terrible tension, she began rubbing her crotch. Some women were good at tapping into their imaginations to enhance their self-pleasure, her not so much. Sex toys did the job, if the toys themselves worked and she had batteries. Her fingers were more reliable, all except for wishing the fingers were masculine.
Sliding down in the chair, she separated her legs for easier access. Her jeans served as a damnable barrier, but after a few more seconds of rubbing, enough friction built up that heat spread throughout her pussy. Closing her eyes, she fumbled with her blouse buttons. That done, she ran her fingers under a bra cup. Gripping her nipple with thumb and forefinger, she pinched. Her other hand continued attacking her crotch.
Her phone rang.
Confused and disoriented, Cat shot upright and stared at the cell she’d left on her desk. The slideshow had started looping and now showed the stick-figure battle scene in Ghost Cave. With her hand still on her sex and her cheeks on fire, she flipped open the phone and held it to her ear. “Hello,” she said. She hadn’t checked to see who was calling.
“It’s me.”
“What do you want?”
You backing me against a wall and nibbling on my breasts. Maybe running your knuckles along the valley between them and from there to my midsection. Sliding your fingers into my pubic hair. “There’s, ah, something I need to show you.”
“I thought you wanted your space.”
Talking took so much out of her that she had no choice but to stop rubbing her crotch so she could concentrate. “It wasn’t that,” she told him, angry at the spin he’d put on things. “Hell, never mind. Did you go to that meeting? Addie said—”
“Is that why you called?”
He wasn’t going to cut her any slack, was he? “No. I could come to your place but if Addie’s there . . .”
“You want us to be alone?”
Of course I do. I’ve wanted that starting with the night we met. “Don’t read anything into this, Matt.” The shot she’d taken of the wolf pack sharpened. “I didn’t call because I’m horny if that’s what you’re thinking.” Well, there’s that. “Can you come here?”
His responses had been rapid-fire; now his silence caught her off-guard. “Not until tomorrow.”
“Oh?”
“I’m short-handed, Cat, remember?”
How could she forget what had happened to Beale? Stumbling through the words, she let him know that tomorrow morning was fine, and no, of course shortly after dawn wouldn’t be too early for her.
She didn’t start shaking again until after they’d hung up. After several attempts, she stopped the slideshow. Then, although she’d just put a new color cartridge in her printer, she couldn’t put her mind into printing out the pictures she intended to show to Helaku.
No, for now at least, she wouldn’t include the ones she’d taken outside the cave. Those were for Matt. Only for him.