He was standing maybe five feet in front of me and was completely black with the most startling gray eyes. I’d never seen eyes this color—that of steel.
I immediately stopped and my heart rode up into my throat. I took a step back but the wolf made no motion to follow me. Instead, it just stood there, watching. Waiting.
I won’t hurt you, Elodie.
It was the creature’s voice in my head. And it was plainly male—the tone deep and gruff.
I didn’t understand how it was that I was hearing the creature’s thoughts in my own mind, but there it was.
I need you, Elodie. We all do.
***
My eyes popped open at the same moment that I bolted upright. I was panting and the sweat was already beading along my hairline. It took me a few seconds to catch my breath and convince myself it was just a dream. A recurring one. But my heart continued to thump against my ribs in rapid succession as if it wasn’t convinced.
I threw off the duvet cover and reached for my fluffy white bunny slippers from underneath my bed. Their proximity was by design, considering I woke up nearly every night the same way. Yet, the dream had changed. Before I’d moved to Hope, Alaska, I woke up every night dreaming about an evening eight years ago when my fiancé, Nick, had been shot and killed, right in front of me. It was the reason I’d become a cop and the reason I’d moved to Alaska from Connecticut. Call it escaping the past or fleeing from reality, call it whatever you wanted.
Yet, ever since I’d moved to Hope, I hadn’t dreamt of Nick once. Instead, I’d had this dream or a variation of it. And it was always the same: a wolf—black and enormous and I could hear his voice in my head, telling me he needed me.
I shook my head as I put on the annoyingly fuzzy slippers and then plodded into the living room, the milky-white moonlight guiding my way. The clock on the stove revealed it was 2:00 a.m.
“One of these days,” I said with a sigh, even though I wasn’t exactly sure what it was that I was trying to tell myself. One of these days, I’d actually sleep through the night? One of these days, I’d stop having this weird dream about a talking wolf with steel gray eyes?
Gus, my overweight and overloud roommate, plunged off the couch from where he’d been napping and assaulted me with what sounded like an overture of bleating sheep. It was the sound he made when he was hungry and he was always hungry.
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered as he weaved his white, portly body in between my ankles, nearly tripping me in the process.
He sat down next to his kitty bowl and then looked up at me with an impatient expression pasted across his flat face. I flipped on the light switch and suddenly felt like my eyes were being burned out of my head as they fought to acclimate themselves to the fluorescence overhead. Once I was able to see through the narrow slits of my squinting eyes, I pulled open the pantry door. Gus’ rows of Fancy Feast cans took prime position up front and center, outnumbering my human food five to one.
“Dr. Ivers is going to be upset with me,” I reprimanded the uninterested Persian cat. “You know we’re supposed to be watching your weight.”
Even if Gus could have understood me, he probably would have responded with something along the lines of, “I’m hungry, so Dr. Ivers can shove it.” As it was, he just licked his chops as I opened the can. I leaned down to spoon out the nasty stuff, but Gus dove for it before I had the chance to empty all of it into his bowl. The guy was serious about his victuals.
I plopped the can into the recycle bin and then stood back as I studied Gus with my arms crossed against my chest. He made a funny sort of humming sound as he vacuumed the food in his bowl. For myself, I couldn’t even remember if I’d eaten dinner the night before.
“Maybe if I shaved you, you’d look thinner and we’d be able to pull one over on the good doctor,” I said, legitimately concerned about the scolding I was sure to get from Dr. Ivers.
Gus finished his chicken pâté in record time and made a beeline again for the living room. He flopped onto the sofa, curled into a big, white ball and promptly went back to sleep.
“Not even a thank you, ungrateful cat,” I grumbled as I turned off the solar flares overhead and made my way back into my living room. “And what does it say about me that the most conversation I’ve had all week is with you?” I sighed and wondered whether this self-imposed loneliness was going to wreak long-term havoc on me.
I stood in front of the sliding glass doors that overlooked the harsh Alaskan winter, debating whether or not to make a new pot of coffee or just heat up the leftovers from yesterday. The moonlight reflected against the blanket of white that covered what was, in the summer, a meadow. Beyond the blanketed meadow was the open wilderness, delineated by the pine tree line. In my small community of Pine Hill, everyone kept their animals indoors. Not just in winter, either. In summer, too. If you didn’t, you’d never see them again. Courtesy of the wolves.
I shivered in spite of myself as I remembered the eyes of the body of the man whom Miguel and I had found preserved in the icy tundra. I’d seen a lot of dead bodies in my time, but there was something about this one that stuck with me. It was the expression in his eyes that was echoed in the curve of his lips. Surprise.
Surprise? I thought to myself as I shook my head and frowned. How obvious could I be? Of course, he was surprised! No one expects to receive a silver dagger straight through the chest! The first thing anyone would feel is the shock of it. Jeez, Elodie.
I exhaled a pent-up breath as I recognized the truth in my thoughts. This case was going to be a big one. As it stood, it was the biggest case I’d come across in my three months here in Hope. That meant I needed to step up my game. Thinking a corpse looked surprised wasn’t going to win me any sleuth awards. If I were going to put this case to bed, first, I had to make sure I put myself to bed. It was true—I wasn’t getting enough sleep. I could read as much in the dark circles underneath my eyes. If my aristocratic mother were to see me now, she’d probably have an aneurysm right on the spot. That reminded me, I still hadn’t called her back.
I glanced at my cell phone on the coffee table in front of the snoring cat and noticed the green light was blinking—I had a voicemail. I was sure it was from my mom. During off-duty hours, she was the only one who called me. I didn’t bother listening to it because her messages were always the same…
Why wasn’t I meeting any eligible men when I was living in a place where men outnumbered women nine to one? Was I over Nick’s death yet? If not, I really should be. I was now thirty and my biological clock was ticking, so why wasn’t I considering my future more seriously? Why had I become a police officer anyway? Didn’t I remember that, once upon a time, I’d been prom queen and, therefore, could have been the enviable wife to any of the guys on the football team? Didn’t I remember that underneath my amorphous uniform, I still had a figure most women would die for? Wasn’t I aware that in looking just like my mother did at my age, I was beautiful?
“No wonder you’re the only one in my life, Gus,” I said as I glanced over at the now-twitching cat. “You don’t talk back.”
Chapter Three
The thing about naked dead guys was that they didn’t carry identification.