Red (4 page)

“
Not too far, I hope,” he
said.

“
Only five and a half
miles, sir.”

Now it was Dr. McGrath’s turn to blink.

“
Holy crap. You really just
hiked nearly six miles to work?” This came from a pudgy, red-headed
girl that I judged to be a grad student.

“
The terrain is pretty
moderate on this side of the park,” I replied,
shrugging.

“
We’ll see that you get a
ride home this afternoon,” said Dr. McGrath. “Come meet the team.”
He escorted me toward the table. Gesturing to the red-head, he
said, “This is Abby Renfroe, one of my grad students. That’s David
Bryson, my post-doc.” With his long, sun-streaked hair and hazy
blue eyes, David looked like he belonged on a surf board instead of
in a lab. “And this is Patrick Everett, my right hand man and
co-investigator.” The glasses guy nodded in my
direction.

I nodded back to each of them in turn,
relaxing a bit now that I knew I wasn’t fired.

“
We were just looking over
a map of the park to start dividing things up into quadrants,” said
Dr. McGrath. “Part of what we’ll be doing is tracking game patterns
to establish prey density for the area. That was part of the
problem when they did this the last time.”

Taking a seat I slipped into a role I was
comfortable with: attentive student. Some of what he told us I
already knew from my research on the first attempt at
reintroduction; some was new. I soaked it up like a sponge. School
was something I was good at. When you have no friends and few
activities to take up your time, there’s nothing to distract you
from your education. And when you’ve got a curse hanging over your
head, you’re pretty motivated to distract yourself by any means
possible.

As I relaxed further, my brain began to
register the scents around me. The stale, recirculated air. The
rich scent of coffee. A sort of faint odor of mold. The various
personal scents of the people around me. And somewhere layered over
it all, a scent of something wild, with a trace of cedar. My
nostrils flared, trying to capture and parse out the scent. The
thing with the super nose was that I hadn’t had it long enough to
catalog stuff. I was scenting all kinds of things I’d never noticed
before, and not all of them were familiar.

This scent tickled my brain, a teasing,
fleeting recognition, then gone again. I lifted my head slightly,
trying for a better whiff.

And then I knew.

~*~

Sawyer

You are turning into a stalker
, I
thought as I knelt to check the scent trail again. I’d been trying
to convince myself otherwise for the last three miles.

After my questionable rescue of the girl in
the woods yesterday, I’d trailed her home. It’s not like I was
turning into some sparkly, blood-sucker wannabe, who hung out
staring into her room while she slept or something. Give me some
credit. I just wanted to make sure she made it home okay and kept
her word. As far as I knew, she had, and that should have been the
end of it.

But she’d stayed with me. Or rather, what it
felt like to be with her stayed with me. When I’d touched her, I
felt calm for the first time in months. The bloodlust I’d been
carrying around, that rage I’d been living with, finally took a
break. And that really messed me up because that was
not
something that should happen from contact with a human girl. It
freaked me out, and that’s why I bolted from the clearing.

I spent half the night talking myself out of
going back over to her house—on the grounds of that whole not being
a stalker thing. Yet when I caught her scent on my run this
morning, I couldn’t help but follow. It lingered in my nose as I
stared at the research station.

Not only was I a stalker, I was also going
crazy. Because there was no way that this girl was hanging out in
there with my father. Maybe my conscience was using the one
positive thing I’d fixated on to fool me into doing the right thing
by coming to help with Dad’s research. I hadn’t made up my mind on
that front. It might seem too much like I was starting to get on
board with The Plan after my rejection of summer school. Curiosity
propelled me forward anyway. One way or the other, I had to know if
my mind was playing tricks on me.

It was easy to slip in unnoticed, moving
with my silent hunter’s gait, up the steps, through the door.

And there she was. Impossibly sitting right
there between Patrick and Abby, as if she was part of the research
team.

My brain flashed back to the clearing, to
the knife and the taste of fear that I wouldn’t be able to stop
her.

I gave myself a shake, trying to clear my
head to address the more relevant question: What was she
doing
here? As I watched, she shifted in her seat, reaching
over to rub a hand over her bandaged wrist. Then, as if she sensed
I was standing there, she turned her head and met my eyes.

Her lips parted on a soft inhalation of
surprise, and damn if that didn’t make me wonder what she’d taste
like.

Her eyes were a blue-gray with a darker blue
ring around the iris. Witch eyes. The ones I couldn’t stop thinking
about. Yesterday they were filled with grief, today recognition
and…anxiety? I had the urge to go to her, touch her, tell her it
was gonna be okay. And what was that about? Not to mention that
such a move in front of this audience would lead to a helluva lot
of questions I didn’t want to answer.

Everyone else shoved back from the
table.

“
Sawyer.”

I jolted a little and shifted my attention
to my father. “Sorry I’m late,” I said.

“
I wasn’t sure you were
coming,” he said. His tone was pleased. That irritated
me.

Whatever. I’d make the concession if it
meant I finally got to meet this girl. Properly.

My eyes strayed back to Her. She was still
watching me, but any traces of surprise had been replaced by polite
curiosity.

So that’s how you wanna play it. Never met
before. Okay then.

“
What’d I miss?” I moved
over to the conference table, stepping out of the way as Abby and
David headed to the other end of the trailer to start gathering
gear.

“
We’ve just been reviewing
stuff you already know. We were about to head out into the field,”
said Dad.

I basically ignored him and turned to the
girl. “You’re new.”

“
Oh, right. This is Elodie
Rose, our summer intern. Elodie, my son, Sawyer,” he said absently,
before turning to Patrick.

“
Hi,” she said, offering
her hand.

I could smell some other guy on her and had
to suppress a growl as I reached out to take it. “Nice to meet you,
Elodie.”

I curled my fingers gently around hers,
clasping instead of shaking. God her hand was tiny. She frowned
when I turned it over and brushed two fingers lightly over the
bandage on her wrist. Her pupils sprang wide and the pulse beneath
my fingertips jumped and skittered, which was awesome in the
instant before the sudden scent of fear. I felt like a total
jackass.

She seemed to relax a fraction as soon as I
let her go, but I could still see the pulse pounding in her throat.
She wanted to run. The desire to escape was clearly etched in every
inch of her body. But she didn’t move, a fact that I both admired
and appreciated, given that my natural instinct as a predator would
have been to give chase, which wouldn’t have helped things at
all.

“
Sawyer, you and Elodie
will go with Patrick over to Tremont to do some exploring of the
original release area there. Abby, David, and I will check out
Cades Cove.”

“
Yes, sir.” I spoke
quietly, not wanting to spook Elodie any more than I already
had.

Dad shot me a look, as if wondering why I
was suddenly noncombative, but I ignored him and headed for the
equipment closet.

I sat in the back on the drive to Tremont
and let Patrick do what he was best at. His absent-minded professor
look was about as threatening as a flop-eared rabbit, and tended to
instantly put people at ease. Elodie was no exception.

She was shy at first, something I found
rather fascinating given how readily she’d sparred with me in the
clearing yesterday. Then again, I’d clearly underestimated how
badly I’d scared her. Note to self: Behaving like an enraged animal
while on two feet is not going to earn Elodie’s trust. Regardless
of my issues with my dad, I was going to have to put a leash on my
beast and turn back into something resembling civilized if I wanted
a shot with this girl. A shot at what exactly, I chose not to
analyze too closely just now.

“
So where are you from
originally, Elodie?” asked Patrick.

She looked faintly startled at the question,
and I wondered why. It was a normal enough thing to ask.

“
Your accent,” he
clarified. “Doesn’t sound like you’re from around here.”

“
Oh. No. I grew up in
Texas.”

When she said nothing else, Patrick shifted
gears. “What got you interested in the project?”

“
We went on a field trip to
Alligator River Wildlife Refuge in zoology my sophomore year, and I
was one of the lucky ones to actually see a few of the wolves while
we were there. I just . . . They used to range throughout the
entire south eastern U.S. and the fact that now there are
comparatively so few . . . It makes me sad, I guess. I wanted to do
something to help. So when Mr. Jorgensen told me Dr. McGrath was
coming, I put in an application.”

Well that shot down any crazy notion that
she’d somehow discovered my identity and weaseled her way in to get
to know me. Not that I’d seriously considered that as an
explanation for more than half a second when I first saw her at the
conference table.

“
You must be quite the
student,” I remarked, reaching between the seats to snag a handful
of chips from the bag of Doritos Patrick had shoved into the center
console. “Dad doesn’t usually take on anybody below the graduate
level.”

Elodie shrugged. “I’m good at school.”

“
More than good, I’d say.
Grant said with your credentials, you could have your pick of top
schools,” said Patrick.

“
Maybe if money wasn’t an
object. I’m hoping the experience I get on the project will help me
when I start applying for scholarships this year.”

Smart. Thinking of the future. Okay, she
totally didn’t fit the profile of somebody suicidal. Maybe she
really
was
out there for some other reason yesterday. Which
just sparked my curiosity all the more. Not that I expected her to
actually, you know, tell me.

“
So you’re making the
wolves your cause?” I asked.

“
My cause?”

“
Sure. Colleges love to see
extracurricular causes. Habitat for Humanity. Literacy drives.
Blood drives. Race for the Cure. You know, the stuff that says you
have a life beyond school and that you’re interested in the
community or the larger world or whatever.”

“
You make it sound so
bloodthirsty and calculated.” Her offended idealism made me
smile.

“
College applications
are
bloodthirsty and calculated.”

Elodie was quiet for a minute, shaking her
head in what was probably disgust. “I’ve heard them,” she said at
last.

“
Pardon?”

“
The wolves,” she
clarified.

“
At Alligator River?” asked
Patrick.

“
No. I mean, yes, I heard
them there. But I mean I’ve heard them here. In the
park.”

We both looked at her.

“
That’s not possible,” he
said.

“
I know there aren’t
supposed to be any wolves here. On our field trip, the guide talked
all about the repopulation efforts in various parts of the South
during the 80s and 90s and how Alligator River was the only place
it had been semi-successful and that the remaining wolves from the
last attempt here were taken there. And I know you’re thinking it
was probably dogs or coyotes, but I know the difference between
them and a wolf howling.”

Patrick absorbed that for a minute. “When
was this?”

“
Off and on over the last
four years. Mostly at night or at dusk.”

A muscle in Patrick’s jaw started to twitch,
a sure sign that he was excited. But his voice was still bland when
he said, “That would be quite the scientific find, Elodie. Have you
seen any?”

Elodie shook her head. “No. But they’re out
there.”

I sat back in my seat, frowning. Claims of
wolves where there should be none. I didn’t like the sound of that.
Either there were pups from the last attempt that had survived and
reproduced without the original scientists being aware of it—which
didn’t seem likely given their vulnerability to canine diseases—or
there were others of
my
kind in the area. Werewolves are
rare and typically so dominant they can’t live in packs like normal
wolves. I wondered if Dad knew anything about this and if that’s
what had prompted him to sign on with Patrick to redo a study that
had already failed. If he didn’t know and there were others in the
area, we could have problems.

Chapter 3

Elodie

“
Good
job today,
folks. We’ll see you back here bright and early tomorrow morning.
Now who can give Elodie a ride home?” asked Dr. McGrath.

Please, please don’t let it be—

“
I’ll do it,” said
Sawyer.