Chapter Four Sam
I admit it. I’m glad when Susie’s out of town. The moon is nowhere near full, but my wolf is acting up, restless inside of me whenever she looks at me for too long, scenting a hint of interest and arousal that I’ve got to be imagining.
I can’t help it. I like her wit, her outspokenness, and the way she wants to do more than just type and answer calls. I need a partner again, someone to watch my back, especially now, but I know she can’t be it. It’d put her in too much danger.
If she weren’t on that bus to Yonkers, I wouldn’t be zooming towards White Pines, heading for the darkest part of the woods behind the lake.
If I were a wolf given to evil, using the energy in Pine Ridge to help me grow stronger and stronger, this would be my hiding spot.
The woods hold miles of dark pines, close together, creating a thick black-green net in the fading light.
Even though it’s barely dusk, the overlapping pines make it seem like midnight in the woods.
My skin prickles as I walk, thinking about the clues I already have.
Three airmen, all discharged and living in New York, dead.
All found with suspicious lacerations. One was in a glassy tangle of metal and windscreens on a road outside of Binghamton, where fire and shards of glass might disguise clawmarks and bites, but not to me. The other two, up here, a mile north, were on a supposed hunting trip. Supposed bear attack.
The time was wrong for hunting, and for bear attacks. And with the first one, the police never had a definite explanation for what sent Lt. Robert Harris off the road.
I think I know. There were big tracks in the mud, and pawprints on one silver fender. An animal running into the road, they said.
I’d agree with a large animal. Werewolves are huge compared to other wolves—and we’re the only ones who could run in front of a car, force it off the road, and then go drag the inhabitant from the driver’s seat and rip him to pieces.
Three airmen out of thousands? Not that significant, you might say.
Washington doesn’t think it’s a coincidence, even if the local police do.
We know that all three men were involved in the Air Force’s air-to-air refueling prototype program, not only as test pilots but also as engineering advisors for what the pilots call the “link up.” Some of the top brass argue that no foreign governments would care about this program, a program that’s still not quite perfected.
My division thinks they’re wrong. Sure, the refueling system developed in the early 1920s is still usable—but new planes are being made that fly rings around those old models.
That won’t matter much unless we also have refueling equipment that can withstand the speeds these planes will travel while delivering a higher payload of fuel without any substantial waste.
Certain governments in Europe don’t want us or our allies to have that capability—especially if what my contacts in Europe are saying is right.
That’s where things split between Washington and me. Multiple airmen have reported being approached by operatives that they can’t find afterward—operatives who wormed their way in and then sprang the offer of cash for defection or copies of the plans.
Harris, Brunley, and Averman, the three men killed in this region, never reported being approached.
To me, that doesn’t make them clear in my mind.
It means maybe they hadn’t said yes—yet.
Maybe they were holding out for more dough.
Or maybe, and this is my hope, at the last minute, these three men decided not to welch on good old Lady Liberty, and told the operatives to take a hike and forget about getting their mitts on the plans.
For some operatives, that would be the time to disappear. In every other case that we know of, they did.
But in the cases closest to Pine Ridge, the men died. And operatives were never traced to this area. No case, Silverman, that’s what they said.
But a wolf knows a wolf—and a wolf killed these men. A werewolf who could then turn back into a man at daybreak and cover up the crime enough to make it look like something else.
If Susie lifted my desk blotter, she’d see the map that I’ve been working off of. Triangulate the movements of the three airmen, their deaths, and the places they were living?
Pine Ridge sits like a big, supernatural bull’s eye right in the center of all the activity.
By day, Washington can tell me to keep working in the New York area, where some other airmen have been approached, and one spy has already been apprehended.
I have leads to follow in the city, requests from some corporations in the area about company espionage, and one wife out on the highway who thinks her traveling salesman husband is slipping it to some bit of skirt who works out at the textile factory.
At night and in my free time, I’m hunting this wolf, this wolf who dares to come into a community where history shows kindly paranormal people and humans have lived side by side in peace for nearly two hundred years. This isn’t just some dumb kid who got bitten.
This is someone who is highly trained. Someone who knows they have a wolf, and who can time it to attack, who can control the bloodlust to attack only certain targets, and most damning of all, at least in my eyes, can make themselves remain near their kills until dawn, can keep wolf and man in balance until daylight when the human can take over and configure the evidence to make these deaths look accidental.
Training like that would only work on a handful of the most highly trained, the most elite—or the ones who already know something about magic, the ones who’ve learned about the ancient potions that help a human keep the wolf somewhat controlled.
My blood runs cold as I consider what we have. A traitor, an operative from the U.S. military or government. A spy, an operative from a foreign power, which is what the evidence surrounding other incidents would indicate.
I stay still in the pines, listening to howling that makes my skin prickle.
It’s not a wolf. But it’s something that could turn into one, or some other sort of beast. Something hungry.
I’m not a wolf now, and the urge in my chest still makes me freeze and suck in air, holding in the howl that wants to escape from my human throat. Loud, echoing, a cry that resonates with hunger—squashed inside so that blood pounds in my temples.
Another howl. Closer.
I think it could be a human—well, a werewolf in a human form at the moment. There is a difference.
What we have—is someone like me. That’s all the world will see. If anyone ever found out my secret, there’s no way I wouldn’t be blamed for these deaths.
“I know you’re here. And the best thing you can do is leave before I catch you. I won’t bother with a court-martial, or even a jury. You can leave—or you can die. You can come at me now, you know. I could take you, in whatever form you’re in!” I challenge, my voice a hard snarl.
Rustling.
To the west.
I turn, and I run towards the sound, eyes adjusting faster than a “normal” human’s ever could.
It runs. I chase, hand moving towards my shoulder holster, trying to figure out where our point of intersection will be, where I cut across to intercept him.
The blow is a surprise, a flying football tackle that leaves me winded with a boot in the chest as a heavy male figure plows over me, running while I groan and scramble up.
A second blow strikes me in the eye, and I stagger, dropping down to protect my head, mind still reeling that someone got the drop on me.
He’s good. Am I soft? Rusty?
Or is there something about this wolf in human form that I can never match, because I’m always a man—even when I wear my monstrous suit?
There’s a smell of blood—animal blood—and ash in the air, stronger now as he continues to run, his scent blowing downwind, into my face.
“I know what you are. What you did!” I shout, clawing my way upright, using trees for support, clutching blindly. One of my eyes is swollen shut, my ribs hurt, and my head is ringing.
For the first time in days of hunting, I finally have a lead—and I can’t chase it down.
But I will.
“Merciful heavens! Mr. Silverman! Sam!”
Monday morning comes with Susie dropping her handbag on the floor, scattering books and lipstick out of it. Why?
Me. My face, to be exact.
“It’s part of the job, honey, don’t worry about it,” I say, but it’s too late. Susie’s spotted the massive shiner around my eye, a mass of blue and purple skin and burst blood vessels on the eye itself. If I didn’t have something supernatural in me, it’d be worse.
She’s up against my chest now, taking my coffee cup from my hand and forcing me into the wooden chair in the reception area that serves as her office, her soft, warm hands petting down my hair and gently feeling over my head and face.
She smells even better up close, an exotic hint of perfume and powder.
“Who did this to you?” she demands, rage in her shaking voice.
Maybe it’s being close to her that does it, that calms my unease and makes my wolf purr instead of growl.
“There’s a bad man I’m after, sweetheart,” I say, resting under her hands, eyes closed at her touch.
“I caught up to him, but he got the drop on me. I’ve been after him all weekend, but no dice.
I’m hoping I ran him off. He might be done with his work in this area. ”
“You need some iodine on that. You’ve got little cuts around this. What’d you do, run into a tree?”
“Yes,” I say with a laugh, even though my head still hurts and my eye feels gummy and puffy. “He’s smart, I’ll give him that. He knew how to work his surroundings.”
“What work? Can you call the police? Do you know who he is? Oh, Sam. You could have been killed. Blows to the head are nothing to sneeze at. My great-uncle Mark got hit on the head when they were felling a tree on my grandparents’ farm.
They shouted right, he went left, and boom.
Hit him right on the head and fractured his skull. He died a week later.”