“Easy there, hon, it’s all true. Every word of it. Now don’t you think you’d feel better if you told him exactly what you just told me?”
Yeah. Yeah, she probably would. She’d tried to be firm and reasonable at the doctors’ office. Even with her heart in tatters, she’d tried to walk away—okay, more like limp away—with some dignity. It was obvious now that it wasn’t going to be enough. James refused to stay away. Still, she was far from ready for a confrontation. “Can’t it wait until I’m vertical? I might want to punch him out and I just can’t manage a proper Tae Kwon Do position lying down.”
“You just let me know when you’re ready. I’ll try to hold him off until then, but I confess it hasn’t been easy for me to shoo him away. He’s hurting too.”
“
He’s
hurting? What did I ever do to
him
?” Jillian narrowed her eyes at her friend. “What is it you know that I don’t? Has he been talking to you?”
“Not a single blessed word, hon. Haven’t even seen his handsome face except the night of the accident. However, what I know is that James is a complicated man. There’s a tender heart behind the thorny exterior. Things haven’t been easy for him since his wife died.”
Died?
Jillian was silent for a long moment. “You said he had been married but I just assumed he was divorced. She died—that’s so awful. Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“I guess because it was awful. Maybe I hoped it would come up when you and James were talking, that maybe he would say something and I wouldn’t have to. Foolish of me, I know. But Evelyn was my niece, you see, and well, I guess I prefer to remember the happier things.”
“Oh Birkie, I’m so sorry.”
The older woman leaned over and squeezed Jillian’s hand. “Thanks for that. Actually, I think you would have liked Evelyn. You remind me of her in some ways. It happened several years ago now, and most of us have made peace with it as best we could. Except James, that is. He still blames himself for it.”
“Why? How . . . how did she die?”
“Murdered. Shot by an intruder in her own house. She was pregnant.”
Jillian swallowed hard. There were no words for such an enormous tragedy, the terrible waste of a life, of two lives. And what had the loss done to James?
Birkie continued as if she had heard Jillian’s thoughts. “James feels it’s his fault for not being there. He was out moving cattle and arrived home to find her.”
My God.
“But how could he think it’s his fault? He couldn’t have known, couldn’t have anticipated. Nobody expects something like that to happen, especially not in their own home. Did they . . . did they catch the murderer?”
“No.” The older woman shook her head. “James was shot too, when he entered the house. Didn’t see who it was. Whoever did it walked away. And I think that made it even worse, for all of us.”
Jillian understood that all too well. The men who’d attacked her had never been found either. It had taken a lot of counseling, a lot of hard work, to create some kind of closure when closure could not naturally be found. Eventually she had discovered a measure of peace within herself, but there would always be moments that had to be managed, like that flashback on the trail below Elk Point. She found herself wondering what it was like to be James. Were there moments that still haunted him?
Chapter Twenty-six
D
ouglas didn’t know what to make of his father’s sudden improvement, but he was grateful for it. The morning after the episode with the lady vet, Roderick Harrison had awakened in his right mind—and stayed there. He hadn’t had an episode since. No dementia, no loss of memory, no cognitive lapses. Nothing. The doctors were extremely impressed, although baffled. Some chalked it up to the new medication. The Alzheimer’s seemed to be in some kind of remission, so much so that other doctors questioned the original diagnosis. No one looking at the old man would guess that the mere month before he had mistaken his only son for a hired hand.
Roderick slid easily back into the routine of overseeing the ranch. He spent increasing amounts of time with old Varley Smith, the ranch manager, which wasn’t surprising—they’d been friends for as long as Douglas could remember. His father even went to a cattle auction, winning a good-looking group of replacement heifers. He celebrated by joining Varley and a few of the hands at the Shamrock Bar, a place he hadn’t gone into in years. Not since the Alzheimer’s had begun to take hold. “I’ll look out for him,” Varley had whispered to Douglas before they drove off. And he had, as Douglas knew he would. They’d returned after midnight with Roderick only pleasantly drunk. The next day, he was in a sterling mood, eating a full breakfast with gusto and hurrying out to take delivery of the heifers he’d bought.
Normal. Ordinary. Everything just as it had always been before Roderick’s mind had begun to play tricks on him. The full moon came and went, and the wild episodes that so often accompanied it failed to materialize. Roderick remained himself. Douglas didn’t know how long this would last, but he was grateful for the respite. Especially since the mental frenzy that once so frequently gripped his father seemed to have migrated into his own brain. Even Jack Daniels hadn’t been able to keep it at bay. White wolves chased Douglas in his dreams, stalked him from behind hay bales and outbuildings during the day. He’d nearly screamed aloud yesterday afternoon when he caught a glimpse of something white moving behind the house. Turned out to be just sheets on the clothesline, put there by the housekeeper. Douglas had been so unnerved, he’d spent the rest of the day drinking himself into a stupor in his room. Slept like the dead.
There was sunlight streaming in his window when he finally woke, and the clock on the nightstand said 8:39. His father would have something to say about that, no doubt. Roderick would have been up, dressed, had his coffee and checked the livestock by six. Still, Douglas didn’t particularly care. His brain felt somewhat fuzzy but he wasn’t on edge. Was relaxed for the first time in days. He drank a tumbler of Jack Daniels before he got out of bed to make sure he stayed in that mellow frame of mind. By the time he had a shower and dressed, he felt so bombproof that if a dozen wolves suddenly parachuted into the front yard, he doubted he’d be able to raise an eyebrow. He negotiated the route to the kitchen, just as Varley burst in the back door.
“Rod’s gone.”
“What?” No, no, he was feeling too good for this. Much too good. “Gone where?”
“I don’t know. He took my pickup.”
“Well, maybe he just felt like going for a ride. He was okay this morning, right?” He willed Varley to say yes.
“Well, yeah.” Varley seemed to relax a little. “Yeah, he was just fine when I saw him earlier. Sorry to panic, Dougie. I guess I’m not used to him driving, not since we had to take the keys away from him last year. He’s probably just headed into town.”
It made sense. His father used to like to drive into Spirit River a couple times a week just to get the mail if nothing else. “Maybe you could take my vehicle and check. If I go, he’ll just think I’m nursemaiding him and get all pissy. I really hate to spoil it if he’s enjoying himself.” Douglas was pleased with that last little brainwave. In reality, he didn’t feel up to facing the bright sunlight out there, never mind his father.
“Good point, good point. I’ll see if I can catch up to him, maybe talk him into going to the Diamond for coffee and pie. We used to go there a lot, give the waitresses a hard time.” Varley winked. “Don’t worry, Dougie, I’ll find him and ride herd on him without him knowing it. Let you know how it goes.”
Douglas was relieved when the ranch manager left, more relieved when he squinted through the window and saw his own pickup heading down the lane to the highway. He wondered if he should have another drink or just go back to bed. Maybe both. With his father in Spirit River, and Varley looking after him, Douglas could count on having the rest of the day to relax. He felt his mood lift at the prospect, and suddenly he felt like making some eggs, no, an omelet. A Spanish omelet, by God, with a steak on the side. He whistled as he searched the fridge for ingredients.
Roderick Harrison had often used his pickup truck as a blind. If a hunter was patient enough, waited long enough, his quarry would come to regard the vehicle as part of the landscape and ignore it. He’d shot many a coyote, sometimes a deer, from the open window while parked downwind near the edge of the timber that covered the northern section of his ranch. The method would earn him a hefty fine anywhere else, but it was perfectly legal on his own land.
The blind principle worked equally well when he wasn’t hunting, just wanting to observe. It was a good way to watch testy mother cows with new calves, or get a count of the elk herd that sometimes wandered into the south quarter to steal hay.
He wasn’t observing cattle or elk this time. Roderick had angled Varley’s truck to give himself a clear view of his target, just a few hundred yards away. In addition, he’d parked the pickup between two rusted-out trucks in the shade of an abandoned building, a near-perfect location for reconnaissance. He had a sleeping bag with him and enough food for two days, but he wasn’t going to need it. Within the first couple of hours, Roderick was able to confirm what he had suspected since Dr. Descharme’s visit to his ranch.
There was a werewolf at the North Star Animal Hospital.
“The auras give them away every damn time,” he murmured as he watched a tall dark-haired man leave the building again. There were other people in the parking lot, but their auras were thin and pale, almost watery by comparison. Light yellow mostly, misty white or green. One old farmer would probably have been horrified to learn his aura was pastel pink. But the tall man’s aura was that vivid blue found at the heart of a lightning bolt. It radiated from him, pulsed with energy like a live thing. Dr. Connor Macleod was definitely a werewolf. But to Roderick’s amazement, the veterinarian wasn’t the only one. By the end of the day, five more werewolves had come and gone, two females and three males.
The old man had seen enough. He was just reaching for the ignition key when another arrival caught his eye. A big man, tall like the vet, but more powerfully built. And blond. Roderick stared, focusing and refocusing the lenses of his binoculars, his bowels turning to ice water. “It can’t be. Jesus God, it just can’t be.”
James Macleod had come back from the dead.
The lab tests said
wolf
.
Jillian stared at the papers in her hand and let the rest of the mail slide to the floor. The DNA results on the white hair samples revealed pure, unadulterated wolf. Jillian’s theories of a wolf-dog hybrid vanished like a soap bubble, and she was left with the uncomfortable knowledge that a genuine
Canis Lupus
had somehow found its way into her apartment.
Maybe she shouldn’t have been so insistent about leaving Birkie’s house.
She reread the letter that Ian Craddock had enclosed with the results. He complimented her on the quality of samples she had sent for testing. Yet, although the DNA was unquestionably one hundred percent wolf, his lab had been completely unable to determine which sub-species it belonged to. Despite its pure white coloration, which would seem to indicate perhaps an arctic wolf, the genetic material most closely matched the gray wolf.
But not completely.
Craddock said he had given her a hefty discount on the large bill because of this, although she suspected it was actually because she had been a favored student. But whatever her former teacher’s reasoning for the reduction, she was too distracted to enjoy the economic good news.
She’d met a wild wolf. But why would it approach her, why would it be so affectionate—and protective? She supposed it could have been raised by humans, might have learned to look at humans as pack members. But if she saw it again, she’d have to remind herself that it was wild, and wild things always reverted to their true nature. Didn’t they? Animal handlers the world over concurred that to assume a wild animal was tame was not only disrespectful of the animal but also downright dangerous.
But it was
her
wolf, her friend. The one who had saved her. When she thought of the attack now, it wasn’t the pain and terror she remembered most. It was the shining white shape that emerged from the darkness and chased the men away. A massive wolf, its snowy fur stroked by starlight, a creature so beautiful that she was certain she was dreaming. Until it licked her face.
The wolf had lain beside her and kept her warm. She had thought she was going to die and was so grateful not to be alone. She remembered that she had started crying then, and the wolf had lapped away her tears. It had whined in its throat, and there was near-human expression in its vivid blue eyes.
It was sad for me. It cared, I know that it cared about me.
The results from a DNA test, or any other test, wouldn’t change her certainty of that.
I guess that’s my answer. I’ve never been afraid of the wolf before, and I’m not going to start now. Maybe I won’t run outside looking for it, and maybe I’d prefer it didn’t visit me in my apartment, but if I see it again, I’m not going to be afraid.
So far, though, the wolf hadn’t returned. Not inside the clinic, and nowhere else that Jillian was aware of. But the creature knew where she lived. Did it wander around outside at night? Had it watched over her as she came and went on farm calls and errands, when she came home late from visiting with Birkie? Or had it gone on its way—wherever that was? Maybe it had. After all, it hadn’t shown up when she had the accident. Had James scared it off?
The last time she’d seen the wolf, it was lying on her couch, and what it was doing there remained a mystery. It was the same night that James surprised her in her apartment, and she could only conclude that he must have left a door open somewhere. Jillian couldn’t imagine any other way that the great white wolf had gained entry to the building. And how had it gotten out?
“I feel like I’m missing something.” Did James know about the white wolf? Had he seen it? Come to think of it, the wolf had reentered her life at roughly the same time she’d met James. Was that coincidence—or connection? She really should ask James about it, see what he knew, but that could be difficult when she didn’t want to talk to the man, didn’t want to see him ever again.
The phone rang as if on cue.
“Jillian, we need to talk,” James began.
“Whatever happened to ‘hi, how are you?’”
“You keep hanging up, so now I’m cutting to the chase. Look, I have things to say to you.”
If she was honest with herself, she wanted to hear them. She really did. But she didn’t dare. “We already had this conversation, James. I don’t think it’s a good idea to repeat it.”
“I think it’s—”
“Goodnight, James.” She put the receiver down. It was simple self-defense, she reasoned with herself. So why did she feel so guilty? Suddenly she banged her fist on the phone. “Damn it!” She hadn’t asked him about the wolf.
Annoyed, she picked up the mail from the floor. It had taken her three days to get around to looking at it. She had barely opened half the envelopes, but she’d had enough for one day. She piled it back on the table next to a stack of overdue wolf mythology books. She sighed. She hated to ask Birkie or Zoey to take them to the library—her friends already did so much for her—maybe she could ask Caroline instead? The young veterinary assistant often stopped by to ask if there was anything Jillian needed.
“Energy. What I really need is energy. Isn’t there someplace I can order some? Have it delivered like pizza?” Sudden fatigue had Jillian sliding into a chair, feeling like the gravity in the room had increased fourfold. It was frustrating, but she was learning to relax and wait for her energy to return, to have faith that it would return. It might take a few minutes or a few hours, but after a little rest, her energy would come back. If nothing else, having a concussion was a lesson in patience. Whether she wanted more patience or not. Jillian sighed, pulled a book from the stack and began turning pages. An hour later, she was still there, engrossed in werewolf legends from France and Spain.
When she finally looked up, dusk had given way to night. She stood and stretched—very slowly and carefully—then made her way to the fridge where a quick check of the freezer revealed an appalling lack of ice cream. No problem. There was some in the staff lunchroom, and maybe some pudding or custard as well. Her stomach was touchy these days, favoring bland and easy-to-eat items. The ongoing nausea had frightened her at first. But the doctors had been thorough in their follow-up exams, determining that the queasy stomach was linked to the dizziness she could naturally expect as she recovered, not to something scary like a blood clot on the brain.