Beware of Wolf

by Geonn Cannon

  Dale sat, leaned back and pulled Ari with her, sighing as Ari's weight settled on top of her. Ari pecked Dale's lips and then slid down, kissing both breasts and her stomach. She slid her hands over Dale's legs before lifting them onto her shoulders to settle between them. Dale reached up for the pillows and pulled one down, wrapping both arms around it as Ari kissed her thighs and then moved higher.

  Dale pressed her shoulders into the mattress, eyes rolling back as she lifted her lower body to meet Ari's mouth. She flattened her hands on the bed and pushed herself up, falling forward as she tightened her thighs around Ari's head. Ari dug her fingers into Dale's ass and Dale closed her eyes as her body closed around Ari like a fist. She rocked her hips upward, gasping when Ari's tongue slid over a particularly sensitive spot.

  "Don't tease me, puppy," Dale whispered, eyes closed and face burning as Ari's tongue moved from inside of her to circle her clit. Dale exhaled sharply and stroked Ari's hair. "My beautiful puppy..."

  She came with a sigh, trembling as she pulled Ari's head up and whispered, "Puppy," just before their lips met. It had started as a joke, an off-hand mention that most lovers called each other 'baby' so puppy would be the canidae equivalent. Dale had initially only said it when she was teasing, but when Ari admitted that she found it hot the name stuck. Dale's cheeks were warm as she fell back. Ari slid further onto the bed to settle between Dale's legs. She shifted position until she was astride Dale's thigh.

  Dale met Ari's gaze and began to rock. Dale put her hands on Ari's hips to guide her, running her eyes down Ari's body and then back up to meet her eyes. Ari smiled, and Dale mouthed, "I love you." Ari stroked Dale's cheek and touched her lip with her thumb. Dale took it into her mouth and Ari rolled her head back. She said Dale's name, tensed, and clenched her legs around Dale's. She gasped and hunched her shoulders, rolling her head forward before she opened her eyes and looked down at Dale.

  "I love you," Ari said.

  Dale pulled Ari to her, rearranging herself until she was laying the right way. Ari stretched out next to her, face pressed against the curve of Dale's neck and fingers splayed on her stomach. Her nostrils flared at the scent of her lover and Ari's gentle kiss on Dale's pulse point turned into sucking, and then licking. She lapped up the sweat, and Dale's breathing became ragged again. She tensed and pressed her face into Ari's hair, whimpering when she came a silent second time.

  "Whoa."

  Ari chuckled. "Sorry it didn't last longer..."

  "Any longer and it would have qualified as torture." She dragged her fingernails lightly over Ari's upper arm. "I really have missed you."

  "The downside of sleeping with a private investigator." She gave her job title a British lilt, matching Milo's voice. She lifted her head and kissed Dale's chin. "No more week-long stakeouts in the future. Promise."

  Dale smiled. "You don't have to promise that. Just screw me senseless before you leave for the night."

  Ari laughed. "I think I can handle that."

  She stroked Dale's stomach and kissed her properly. Dale moaned into the kiss and rolled onto her side. They pressed closer, thighs slipping against each other. Ari pulled back and Dale tightened her lips around Ari's tongue, holding it for a moment before she released it. Ari curled her tongue up, then swept it across Dale's bottom lip.

  "How tired are you?"

  "Depends on what you have in mind." Ari slid one hand down Dale's side to her ass and squeezed. Her thigh pressed higher and made contact with Dale's sex again. Dale hunched her shoulders, eyes wide, and her lips curled into a sleepy smile. "Oh-h. In that case I think I could be persuaded to stay up a little while longer."

  Ari smiled. "I'll try to keep your attention..."

  #

  Eventually they slept, using the last of their energy to dress for bed before slumping against each other under the blankets. Ari put on a pair of short pajamas and a baggy tank top while Dale settled for just an oversized T. In the middle of the night Ari woke suddenly, spooning Dale from behind. Some sound had woken her and she lay still as she waited for it to repeat. Dale adjusted position in her sleep, murmuring against the pillow, and Ari soothed her by whispering into her ear and stroking her hair until she settled again.

  Ari gently freed herself from Dale, tucking the pillow against her back so she wouldn't miss her presence. She prowled to the window on the balls of her feet. She pushed aside the curtain and peered out.

  She was about to give up and go back to bed when she heard the sound again. A wolf's howl, echoing through the streets. It wasn't on their street, but it also didn't sound like it was terribly far away. She listened as the echoes faded, wondering if it was Milo or some other canidae.

  When the night was silent again, Ari let the curtain fall back into place. She walked back to the bed and crawled under the covers.

  Dale lifted her head off the pillow. "Ari?"

  "Sh." She stroked Dale's hip under the blanket and kissed the back of her neck. Dale was asleep again before she was actually awake, falling effortlessly back into whatever dream she'd been having. Ari looked toward the window and then buried her face in Dale's hair, breathing deeply and letting Dale's scent surround her as she drifted off as well.

  #

  The wolf was sleek, with white fur and black markings. It ran without purpose or direction, stopping only to wait for cars to pass on the occasional streets it came across. After a few hours of running the wolf turned back and headed toward home.

  Milo transformed while still in motion, her feet stretching and her legs snapping back into the correct position as she skidded down a muddy slope. Her fur receded and her suddenly exposed skin pebbled at the touch of cold night air. She was panting, allowing instinct to change her course so she didn't slalom into trees. Her pent-up energy was boiling over even after the run. She loved this neighborhood. It was so thick with trees that in several places it was impossible to see the sky. It was a canidae's paradise.

  A small pond stretched between two trees and she finally stopped when she reached its banks. She knelt and washed off her arms, cupping her hands to splash her face. She ran wet fingers through her tangled hair and looked around to regain her bearings. This part of the woods was starting to be familiar to her, and the wolf recognized most of the rest of the park by scent if not by sight. She stood up and went to the clothes she'd hung from a nearby tree branch, thinking about Ariadne Willow's stash method.

  Stashes, buried under rocks and drainage ditches, tucked just out of sight... it was a great idea. She couldn't count the number of times she'd transformed far from home and wished for something as simple as a pair of shoes. She put on the slip, the lightweight material resting against her skin as softly as dew. She had dirt under her finger- and toenails, but that would wait until she was safe at home.

  She walked the remaining fifty yards to her property. A wooden gate hung on the fence and she unlatched it, let herself in, and climbed the steep rise to her back porch. The kitchen light was on, which meant that she had a visitor. Milo sighed and braced herself for a confrontation as she slid open the door and stepped inside. The smell of nature and wildlife was cut off, replaced by the plastic and processed stench of modern life.

  He was in the dining room, seated at the table facing the front of the house. Milo stared at the back of his head, the tight curls of white hair shorter than they'd been last time she saw him. He didn't turn at the sound of the door opening and closing, so she walked past him into the kitchen. She was starving after her run, so she opened the fridge and used the door to block her sight of her guest. Finally she couldn't bear the silence any longer. She took a pint of milk out of the fridge and finally faced him.

  Benjamin Moss, as sanctimonious as always, managed to look completely composed despite the late hour. His beard was trimmed, his skin light enough to be described as a slight tan. He wore a high-collared shirt with no tie, his gaze directed at the newspaper laid out flat in front of him. She felt slightly embarrassed standing in front of him
in her slip, but she wasn't going to show her discomfort by covering up.

  "I thought you were going to check my progress over the phone."

  "That was the plan, yes." He finally looked up at her. "It's been a month, Millie. We thought you would have made more progress by now."

  Milo grimaced and took a swig of her milk. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. "I didn't want to tip my hand. It had to look natural. Willow's a damned private detective, Ben. If I gave her a reason to be suspicious, how long d'ya think it would take her to figure out what's happening?"

  "How long do you intend to delay?"

  "I'm not delaying. I'm being subtle. I made big strides today. I've befriended them, took 'em out to dinner. And tomorrow I'm going to spend the afternoon with Dale Frye. You gave me this assignment because you knew you could trust me. So either trust me or get someone else to do the job. Don't break into my house--"

  "Your house?"

  Milo pressed her lips together. "Don't barge into the house you gave to me in the middle of the night making demands. You want people to behave the way you want, you have to finesse them. Let me do my job, Ben."

  He carefully folded his paper and rested his hands on top of it. "There is a ticking clock on this, Millie, so I feel I must remind you that time is of the essence. There's time, but it is swiftly running out. We would prefer if she came to us of her own free will, but it's not required."

  "Thanks for reminding me." Milo finished her milk and put the carton in the trash. She took a box of leftovers from the fridge and saluted him with it as she walked out of the kitchen. "Lock the door of my house when you go. And if you want me to do my job, stop harassing me and just let me do it. I'll recruit Dale Frye in due time, and I'll make it her decision so she's more likely to go through with what we need."

  "See that she does, Millie."

  She growled as she started up the stairs. "My name is Milo, you son of a bitch." She didn't look back to see if he left; she didn't care if he stayed downstairs all night as long as he stayed out of her hair.

  Chapter Seven

  In the morning, the radio was full of news about Missing Melody. The police discovered a green overcoat on the Elliot Bay Trail matching the one Melody Scott was wearing the last time anyone saw her. Now the debate was whether her abductors had dropped it there, if it was placed there to misdirect the police, or if it had been taken by a homeless person who didn't realize its significance and discarded when it proved too small.

  Ari silenced the meaningless speculation and went to shower. By the time she was finished and dressed, Dale was awake and had started breakfast. Ari kissed her hello and went to finish cooking while Dale took her turn in the bathroom. The morning talk shows were all talking endlessly about Melody Scott, and Ari had to mute them after a while. Melody had been missing four days now and Jenna was only twenty-four hours gone, but Ari couldn't help but be infuriated by the imbalance. Part of her hoped it would have been different if Madeline had gone straight to the police, but the practical part of her wouldn't let the hope thrive.

  Dale came out of the shower with her hair still wet and face bare of makeup. Ari smiled and pushed a cup of tea across the counter to her.

  "Thank you, puppy," Dale said, her voice still soft with sleep.

  Ari smiled. "You ready for your big day out with Milo?"

  "Mm." Dale shrugged. "I'd rather be helping you with the case, but I know there's really not a lot for me to do. Too many cooks." She sipped her tea. "Oh. The blocked number that the kidnapper called from. On Madeline's phone? I tried to trace it, but I hit a dead end. I'm going to dig a little harder while I'm waiting for Milo."

  "Did I ask you to do that?"

  "You were gonna."

  Ari shook her head. "Man, I am a good detective."

  Dale snickered and accepted her plate. Ari sat across the counter from her and picked up the remote control. Nonstop coverage of Melody on all the major networks, so she switched the cable and settled on a syndicated rerun of a sitcom about an airport.

  "Are you okay?"

  She looked at Dale. "Okay? Yeah. I'm... fine. Why?"

  Dale shrugged and poked at her eggs. "I was just thinking about this case. You were a missing girl, too."

  "I was a little older than Jenna when I ran away."

  "Yeah, but you were still a pretty young white teenage girl. The local news would have been scouring the city for you if..."

  Ari smiled. "If my mother had bothered to report me missing?" She shook her head. "By that time she was grateful to see the backside of me. I wanted to disappear, so I'm glad she didn't search. This?" She gestured at the TV. "Jenna didn't choose to vanish. She deserves to have an entire city looking for her. But so does Melody. And so do the dozens of other kids I'm sure have gone missing in the past week. I saw a lot of them when I was on the street, and no one looks for them. Even among the people where I was staying, if a kid disappeared we just assumed it was someone else's problem. Kids shouldn't disappear so easily. It shouldn't be so goddamn easy to just take a kid and get away with it."

  She looked down at her plate and realized she felt better. She hadn't noticed she was holding back anything until she started speaking, and now it felt like she could breathe.

  Dale smiled. "Feel better?"

  Ari slid her hand across the counter and covered Dale's. "Yeah. Thank you."

  "Sure." They went back to their breakfast and watched the twenty-year old sitcom in silence. When it was time to leave, Ari stepped around the counter and kissed Dale. "Want a ride to work? I'm going to leave in about twenty minutes."

  "No, I want to walk. I'll probably leave straight from there to Madeline's so I might not see you."

  "Okay. Ari..." She caught Ari's hand before she could step away. "I would have looked for you. I never would have stopped."

  Ari brought Dale's hand to her lips and kissed the knuckles. No one had ever gone looking for her. Everywhere she called home, she eventually left of her own free will and no one ever tried to bring her back. She couldn't express what Dale's promise meant to her, so she just said, "Thank you, Dale. I love you."

  "Love you, too. Be careful."

  Ari kissed two fingers and held them out to Dale as she left the apartment. The walk to the office from Dale's building was almost a mile, but Ari planned to use it to organize her thoughts. She turned up the collar of her coat and headed west as she thought about what she knew as facts.

  Jenna Morris was a seven-year-old second grader. She walked to the school bus stop every morning. On the day she went missing, she was running late because she helped her mother with laundry. The bus driver saw her but didn't wait. Jenna didn't seem overly concerned and, rather than going home, continued south. Ari paused on the corner and put herself in the little girl's position. Would walking a mile and a half be feasible to a seven year old?

  Of course, Jenna wouldn't have thought about it in those terms. She was seven, and she'd most likely only traveled the distance in a car or on the bus. In her mind the school was only a few minutes away so it was just a simple little walk.

  She only got half a block, however, before someone approached her. He spoke to her briefly and then they walked back to his car together. The picture from the security camera was horrible, too far away and blurry. Their description might as well have been of a ghost.

  Then the kidnappers waited until afternoon to make the ransom call. Why? If the teacher hadn't called to reveal Jenna's absence, Madeline wouldn't have known there was a problem until then. The kidnappers could have just been giving her time to panic so that when the demands finally come in she was more willing to cooperate. Whoever had called wasn't the mastermind of the operation, so they were dealing with two or more people.

  When she got to the office she gathered her things, including the printout of the person that led Jenna away. It had been cropped so that Jenna wasn't in the picture, which she hoped would be less traumatic for Madeline. She drove back to the Morris house where
a car she didn't recognized was blocking the driveway. She parked across the street and walked up to the porch. A woman appeared in the doorway before Ari could knock. She was taller than Ari, with blonde hair parted in the middle and a stern expression that brooked no argument.

  "Can I help you? She's not taking any visitors."

  "I'm Ariadne Willow. I assume you're Erica. We spoke on the phone briefly yesterday."

  The woman's expression softened. "Oh. Yes, Erica Webber." She opened the door. "She said you might be coming by. She's trying to rest right now. She didn't get a lot of sleep last night."

  "How bad was it?"

  "As bad as you can imagine," she said softly. "Do you have anything?"

  Ari shook her head. "Not a lot, to be honest. I do have a photo I want her to look at if you think she's up for it."

  Erica nodded and motioned for Ari to follow her. The master bedroom was at the back of the house, and the door was open slightly. The morning light filtered through the curtains to make the room look blue, and Erica gently pushed the door open. "Maddie? The private investigator is here. Are you up for seeing her?"

  "Yes. Yes, please."

  Erica stepped out of the way to let Ari into the room. Madeline looked like she'd aged a year since Ari last saw her, wan and weary. She was lying on top of the blankets still wearing the clothes from the day before, and her hair was a mess from repeated finger-raking.

  "Do you have anything?"

  "Not as much as I would like. My assistant did find security footage of someone who seemed to be leading Jenna away. Can you look at the picture and see if you know who it is? It's a terrible picture but maybe something about his posture or what he's wearing will ring a bell." She took the photo out of her bag and held it out. Madeline pinched it between two fingers and frowned at the image.

  "This is a... person?"

  "The security camera wasn't exactly top of the line, and it was pretty far away. I wish I had more to report, but--"