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  “Devious,” Lucy murmured. “Oh, I can’t bear the thought.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Whitney said in all sincerity. “I know all you wanted to do was clear your head. Let’s pick up the pace,” she suggested and the girls took off at a fast clip that would prevent either of them from saying much else.

  When they came to another bend in the trail, this one curving at a slight decline as it wrapped a picturesque canon overgrown with luscious vegetation that at this hour looked a bit scary, Lucy realized her shoelace had come undone and slowed her step.

  She dropped to her knee, unbothered that Whitney hadn’t noticed and kept going, and tied it.

  With her laces secure, she lifted her head and felt her heart punch hard in her chest at the dark shape that had slid onto the trail up ahead.

  A wolf.

  She froze, her eyes having locked with the hunched, salivating beast.

  It was as though her brain couldn’t quite make sense of what her eyes were seeing.

  Human hands with wolf-like claws? A truncated snout that looked almost pig-like, but dark and firm like a wolf’s? It was too dark to make out. She couldn’t make sense of it. And though she was sure it looked almost human, there was no way it wasn’t a wolf.

  It lunged straight for her and she screamed out a shrieking yelp, springing and turning in the opposite direction.

  As she sprinted through the darkening night, twigs and pinecones snapping under her pounding sneakers, she hoped to God she could out-run the thing.

  And she hoped like hell that Whitney would hear her cries.

  She did, and so did Troy Quinn.

  Chapter Ten

  REECE

  At approximately the same time Sheriff Rick Abernathy was answering his cell phone, his daughter’s beautiful, smiling face having appeared on the LCD screen as the device vibrated against his desk at the station, Reece and Troy keyed into her cottage by light of the overhead portico, night having fully settled over the Fist.

  “You have to tell me about Angel,” she insisted after Troy had closed and locked the cottage door. He’d refused to divulge any information until they’d gotten home, claiming that she needed to be sitting down. She still hadn’t. She was pacing and wringing her hands like a nervous wreck. Had Angel been attacked? Murdered like Holly? Had she swallowed a bunch of sleeping pills, no longer willing to live in a world where the wilderness and wildlife could swallow up a sweet soul without warning? Had she accidentally ingested strawberries and gone into fatal anaphylactic shock? Everyone ‘round these parts knew Angel was highly allergic… “What happened?”

  “Have a seat,” he suggested, but when she wouldn’t, he took hold of her quivering shoulders and steered her right on over to the couch.

  Reluctantly, she sat, as did Troy, who kept his large, warm hand on her shoulder, perhaps anticipating that he’d have to physically steady her as she absorbed the details to come.

  “Just tell me she’s alive.”

  “She’s alive,” he said.

  Reece thwacked him hard on the arm, yelling, “You could’ve told me that in the truck!”

  “Calm down!” he barked and she flinched. She’d never heard his voice so loud. She stared at him in disbelief, her green eyes wide as saucers behind her red-frame glasses. He gave her a few soothing strokes, massaging her shoulder, and complimented, “You’re a lot stronger than you look.”

  “Oh, please. We both know I didn’t hurt you.”

  “Hell of a punch you got there,” he teased.

  “I didn’t punch you! Now, stop stalling! Where’s Angel? Is she okay?” she demanded.

  “She’s at the hospital in Jackson Hole,” he began, but she was already bursting with questions.

  “Jackson Hole?” It shouldn’t have shocked her since Devil’s Fist didn’t have a population high enough to warrant the construction of a hospital. The nearest one was in the nearest city, which was Jackson Hole. “What happened to her that she wound up in the hospital in Jackson Hole?”

  “The sheriff had a locksmith go on out to Angel’s house,” he began explaining. “Jack Quagmire came along, as did I, and all my brothers even though Rick had warned against it.”

  “Rick is a turd.”

  “I think he knows that,” he allowed with an air of humor that Reece didn’t find appropriate. Why was he being so light about all of this? “Angel wasn’t anywhere to be found inside her house. Rick was agitated with us. He ushered Jack and my brothers out, threatened to have us arrested, but that’s neither here nor there.”

  He paused long enough to deliver a deeper massage to Reece’s shoulder, but if anything, his affection was only working up a stronger nerve in her bones.

  “Jack got a weird feeling,” he went on, “once we all got outside. He started through the acreage behind Angel’s house. Long story short, we found her in the woods just past the back of her property line. She was still in her nightgown, covered in mud, on the ground, disoriented.”

  Reece gasped, bringing her hand to her mouth.

  “She doesn’t remember a thing.”

  “Oh my God!” she said, astonished and confused.

  “The doctors over in Jackson Hole think she has some form of amnesia. Jack’s with her.”

  “How in the hell did she get outside like that and not remember a thing?” Reece asked in a hollow voice.

  “No one can say for sure,” he told her. “She was in her nightgown, like I said, which implies she’d nearly put herself in bed when it happened or had just woken up the following morning. Course it could’ve happened in the middle of the night, in her sleep. Rick and Rachel found no signs that her house had been broken into. She might have gone into some kind of fugue state and wandered off. But who knows. Her feet were all scratched up like she’d been running through the woods like a wild animal. She had cuts and bruises all over her legs and arms. A nasty gash on her cheek.”

  “And she doesn’t remember a thing?”

  “Not a single thing,” he confirmed. “According to what Jack told me, the last thing Angel remembers was taking a shower as soon as she got home from Angel’s Food. She couldn’t even remember getting into her nightgown or drying her hair.”

  “What did the doctors say?”

  “Jack will keep me posted and let me know,” he told her, indicating he wasn’t privy to that information. “For now, she’s alive and well, just really shaken up. I told Jack to let her know that she’ll have the full protection and resources of Quinn Security as soon as she gets back to the Fist.”

  Reece fell silent, absorbing the information, which was virtually impossible to make sense of. She couldn’t imagine going through such a trauma if that had happened to her.

  “It sounds like she was drugged,” she said, considering the dark possibility. But the look on Troy’s face told her that he would be highly skeptical of that. “At the library today, I overheard some speculation about Jack Quagmire, you know.”

  “Did you?” he questioned.

  “Oh, you can’t tell me you’re surprised. Come on. You’ve lived in the Fist long enough to know that Jack has been carrying a torch for Angel for practically ever.”

  “Are people talking like he could’ve done something?”

  Reece shrugged grimly.

  “That’s ludicrous.”

  “Is it, though? He hangs around the diner every chance he gets. Stares at her. Dotes on her the second she walks into the bar. People are wondering if he made a pass at her at her house or something. Who knows? What if she was feeling companionable, let him inside, poured a few glasses of wine to return the favor, and he drugged her?”

  “Then taking a shower wouldn’t have been the last thing she remembers,” he reminded her. “And she certainly wouldn’t let Jack hold her hand the way he’s been doing at the hospital.”

  “Perhaps,” she allowed, though she really wasn’t convinced.

  Troy shifted his weight beside her on the couch, squaring his shoulders at her so that he c
ould look her in the eyes. It seemed like he was about to say something, tell her something important, but first he shifted his weight again, pulling the purple amethyst crystal from the back pocket of his jeans.

  “I want you to do something for me,” he said in a low, almost seductive tone. He studied her face for a long moment, then slowly, carefully pulled her glasses off of her face and set them down on the coffee table. “Give me your hand.”

  Cautiously, she looked down at his hands and then offered him her left, palm turned up.

  He placed the amethyst crystal in the palm of her hand, then covered it with his own, and said, “Close your eyes.”

  She did.

  Their warm palms were pressing together, the cool smooth crystal in-between.

  “What are we doing?” she breathed.

  Gently, he said, “Tell me if you see anything.”

  “How can I see anything? My eyes are closed.”

  “Shh,” he whispered as he laced their fingers together. “There’s more to Devil’s Fist than meets the eye, Reece, and I need to know if you can see it.”

  She waited. Breathed. Tried not to let her eyeballs vibrate behind closed lids. She knew he wasn’t referring to her physical eyesight but rather her mind’s eye. And just as she was about to tell him about the flashing vision she’d gotten the last time she’d touched the amethyst when they’d been seated in the diner, her inner vision sparked with a blindingly bright light, stunning her mind.

  “Are your eyes closed, too?” she asked.

  “Shh,” he whispered again, but she knew—or sensed—that Troy’s eyes were also shut.

  She sensed that the flash of light that was now subsiding in her mind had also burst behind Troy’s eyes. She sensed that whatever she saw would also fill his head.

  But what she saw there, what began to unfold with harrowing realism, was too insane to believe.

  ***

  The sheriff had completely forgotten about the take-out order he’d called in to Angel’s Food by the time he found his Whitney, sweaty and a bit tattered and wearing—just what in the hell was that?—some skimpy thing to cover her chest that he hoped to high heavens wasn’t a bra, consoling one very shaken-up-looking Lucy Cooper. Lucy looked even worse, if such a thing was imaginable. She had leaves in her hair, for Christ’s sake.

  They were inside the Trail Office on the southeast side of Yellowstone, which was fairly far away from the corral stables where his daughter worked. Lucy was hunched, seated in a chair, and Whitney was standing over her with an arm around her friend.

  Rick hoped they weren’t lesbians.

  As soon as Rick had stepped into the Trail Office, his daughter offered Lucy a few comforting words then met him on the other side of the room.

  “You scared the bejesus out of me, girl,” he cursed. “Where’s the rest of your outfit?”

  “Daddy!” she hissed, demanding he focus on something other than her jogging clothes, or lack thereof. “Lucy saw the wolf. She saw the one that killed Holly!”

  Rick leaned to the side, taking a direct gander at the blonde, waif of a girl shivering in the corner with the mile-long stare.

  “How does she know it was the same one that attacked Holly?” he questioned.

  Whitney, ever the spitfire who did not appreciate being challenged, planted her balled fists on her curvy hips, held her head high, and raised her eyebrows at him. It might have been intimidating if she wasn’t a petite 5’3” and if he couldn’t see the adorable five-year-old girl inside of her that she’d once been.

  “Are you going to question me or are you going to take what I’m telling you seriously?” she challenged right back. “Because if you’re not going to take me seriously then there’s no point in you even talking to Lucy.”

  She was speaking female again, and the fact of the matter was that he’d never properly learned the language. So, he said what he always said to nonsensical women and told himself he’d just decipher it later.

  “I’m listening.”

  She huffed a little sigh of relief, but continued to stare up at him like she was making sure he really was listening and not planning on interrupting. Rick pressed his mouth into a patient line and took his hat off his head.

  “Now,” she began, slowly and cautiously working up the nerve to tell him why Lucy, and she—evidently—were convinced it had to be the same wolf. She lowered her tone to practically a whisper so that Rick had to stoop. “The reason I’m the one telling you this is because Lucy is very fragile right now and if you don’t believe me, then she doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  “Chrissake, Whitney!”

  “Alright!” she blurted before resuming her hush-hush speaking volume. “It filled her head.”

  “What?”

  Whitney stomped like a child pissed she’d been interrupted. When she regained control, Rick having buttoned his lip again, she elaborated.

  “Lucy fell behind me when we were out jogging on Eagle’s Pass.”

  Rick wanted nothing more than to scold his Whitney for having dared to jog Eagle’s Pass after dark, but he held off.

  “She had to tie her sneaker.”

  Lord, here came the details… useless details as though the color of Lucy’s laces and which way the wind was blowing actually mattered.

  “When she looked up, I was long gone, but a wolf had jumped in her path on the trail up ahead of her,” she went on, giving her father the blow-by-blow. “Daddy, it wasn’t a wolf. Not according to how Lucy described it. She said…” Whitney leaned in, took Rick by the arm, lifted onto her tiptoes, and whispered directly into his ear. “It was half human.”

  Drugs. The girls had to have taken some drugs. It was the only explanation.

  Whitney lowered onto her heels and stared up at him with her big brown eyes, trying to read his reaction.

  As calmly as he could, he asked in his most respectful tone of voice, “Did you say that this half-wolf ‘filled Lucy’s head’?”

  “Yes,” she stated with conviction. “It did.”

  “Whitney, my dear, I hope I’ve proved to you that I will use the utmost respect when I talk to Lucy,” he said, implying he’d like permission to speak directly to the girl who had taken his daughter out for a “jog” while she was all jacked up on who knows what drugs.

  His daughter glanced over her shoulder at Lucy, debating, then agreed.

  As Rick used solemn steps to near the blonde girl, Whitney padded briskly behind him, keeping at his heels.

  “Evenin’ Lucy,” he said sweetly. “May I sit?”

  The girl seemed in a daze, but she nodded and murmured something that sounded like agreement.

  There was a wooden chair adjacent to the one she was sitting in, a wooden table in-between, so Rick had himself a seat and put his sheriff’s hat on the table.

  “Sweetheart,” he began, leaning in and trying to establish eye contact that Lucy seemed reluctant to give. “Whitney filled me in on the broad strokes about what happened, so I’m not going to make you go through the story from the start. I understand you girls were out for a jog and when you fell behind, you saw a… let’s say, an odd-looking wolf in your path.”

  Lucy began shaking her head slowly and she finally met Rick’s gaze. There was something about the glint behind those sparkling eyes of hers that held a wealth of conviction. She disagreed with the description odd-looking, and it sent a chill down Rick’s spine so icy he felt like his vertebrae might shatter.

  “It wasn’t a wolf,” she breathed. “It was a werewolf.”

  “A werewolf,” he repeated without a shred of mockery in his tone, even though this was turning into one hell of a tall tale.

  “A werewolf,” she insisted, her voice quivering, but her conviction was only gaining strength. “He’s stuck.”

  “Stuck?”

  “Between forms, between bodies,” she said, her eyes glazing over like she was some kind of Greek oracle. “Never fully human and never fully wolf. When I saw him, I froze. I th
ought I was staring at a wolf, but he was too human for that. When I started running, that’s when he filled my head.”

  “He’s tele—” Rick’s voice had cracked, his skepticism was so thick, so he cleared his throat and asked, “He’s telepathic?”

  “Sort of,” she said in a far-away voice. “He didn’t talk into my mind. He gave me these feelings. Like thought-feelings, but it was crystal clear. Maybe thought-balls of information that unraveled as soon as they hit my mind and I suddenly knew.”

  Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat.

  “He killed Holly,” she went on. “He was going to kill me, but he spared me, because he wanted me to tell you all what I’m telling you now about him. He wants all of Devil’s Fist to know he’s out there. He wants us terrified.”

  Just as Rick was about to write this one off as a bonafide nutjob and forbid his Whitney to ever associate with her again, Lucy grabbed his hand, locked eyes with him in a way that paralyzed him from so much as blinking, and sneered with conviction so strong it nearly stopped his heart:

  “Sally-Mae knew.”

  Rick felt his throat tighten at the mention of his late wife.

  “She knew about the werewolves. She knew you’d never be able to take them on or drive them out, so she kept it to herself.”

  Rick felt a stab of fury hit his heart that this little drug addict would so casually drag his precious Sally-Mae into all of this, God rest her sweet soul, and he almost lost his temper, but Lucy told him, “The bright summer night of Whitney’s sixteenth birthday. That bright moon. Moon as bright as the sun. Just you and Sally-Mae at home, on the porch. She was wearing a yellow dress and the pearl ring you’d bought for her over in Jackson Hole a few weeks prior.”

  How in the hell did Lucy know about all this?

  “You sat in your rockers, sipping hard ice teas, gazing up at the moon that was still working its way up the sky. Sally-Mae remembered her peonies. How they’d finally come into full bloom. She started off the porch to her garden round the back of the house.”