Lone Wolf - J.R. Rain Page 0,1

anything more.

I was the new girl. And not just a girl, either. I was the chief of police. The boss. And the Neanderthals here didn’t know what to make of me. Six machismo officers, all under my command. The small town of Hope had been looking for a new police chief, and I’d been looking for a way out of Anchorage. It was a match made in heaven. At least on paper. In reality, the guys didn’t like me, and some might have even hated me. After all, who was I, an outsider, to come in and tell them how to run their department, their town, their lives? Hell, I was a city slicker, an outsider, and I was a woman, too. All of which added up to animosity.

All of which I ignored.

I was convinced that most of them thought I’d be gone by now. Most had it wrong. It was going to take a lot more than butt-hurt cops to scare me away.

“Have you ever seen anything like this, Miguel?” I asked.

He moved closer to the blade, and was now inspecting it from just inches away. There was no blood, but I wasn’t surprised. Undoubtedly, any blood had washed away with the snow melt. At present, the temperature was a little above freezing. Warm enough to melt snow but not warm enough, apparently, to cause decomposition. The dead man before me could have died hours ago, minutes ago. Hell, he looked like he could be alive even now.

“Yes, Chief,” he said. “I have.”

I waited.

Miguel had been the first to call me chief. A few of the others had followed suit, but the name hadn’t stuck. I hadn’t earned it yet, I suspected. At least in their eyes. My years in homicide had done nothing to impress them. Then again, I wasn’t here to impress anyone. I was here to uphold the law. At least, that’s what I’d said during my interview with the mayor. What I hadn’t said was that I was here to start over, to find myself, to heal myself. Mostly, I was here to forget.

Miguel continued, “It was when I was a boy. I found a man on a boulder, facing the sky. A spear in his chest.”

“A spear?”

He nodded. “With a silver tip.”

“Do you remember anything else?”

“The elders burned the body.”

“Who was he?”

Miguel, who was about thirty, the same age as me, and who sported uncannily round eyes for an Inuit, glanced at me. “My brother.”

“Jesus,” I said.

Miguel looked back at the man propped up against the tree. “We must burn him, too.”

“No,” I said. “First, we find out who he is, and then we find out who killed him.”

Chapter Two

The beads of rain splashed my face, the sudden coldness shocking at first but then, strangely comforting. People always thought it was odd that I preferred a rainy day over a sunny one. Who knew? Maybe I was odd. I’d been accused of worse…

I could feel the burn in my legs as I continued jogging and before long, I found myself headed for the woods—woods that were dark, hidden.

My heartbeat started to increase as unease overcame me, though I wasn’t sure why I was feeling anxious. I ignored the feeling and continued forward. That was when I saw him—the largest animal I’d ever seen in the wild. A wolf.

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