He waited to hear what Laurel had to say, hoping that she wouldn’t see him as anything like his father had been.
They were still only about halfway to her house when she shouted, “Stop the truck.”
He was afraid she meant to bolt from him. He opened his mouth to object, because he wasn’t letting her out here to make her way home on her own in the wilderness in the middle of the snowstorm.
“I saw the ghost wolf! Stop the truck!”
He couldn’t believe it. He’d been concentrating on the blowing snow and trying to make out the edges of the road in the low visibility. Certain she really hadn’t seen anything, he pulled off onto the shoulder, hoping that no one would hit his truck. She immediately threw open the truck door, slammed it shut, and took off running into the woods.
Hell! CJ put on his truck’s emergency flashers, jumped out of the vehicle, slammed the door, and raced after her. “Wait up!”
“Shh,” she said, casting him an annoyed look.
What? Did she believe the ghost wolf could hear him and would shy away from them? Seriously? He was jogging next to Laurel as she ran through the powder when she did the unexpected—fell face-first in a pile of snow.
“Are you okay?” He hurried to help her up, worried she’d broken a bone or twisted an ankle.
She was breathing hard, turning away from him and looking for any sign of the wolf. “Yes,” she whispered. “My boot caught on a tree root buried in the snow. But I’m all right.”
“What exactly did you see?”
She was peering at the snow, looking for tracks. They could tell something had moved through the snow, but it was too deep and powdery for anything to run along the top of it and leave paw prints. It could have been a member of the pack taking a wild run in the snow.
“Did you see what the wolf looked like?”
“It was white.”
He frowned. “Not an Arctic wolf.”
“Or a black wolf whose color has changed. Most wolves become gray or grayish with advancing age. But sometimes black wolves will turn practically white in just a short while.”
He’d never seen a white wolf in the area. “Or ghost wolf?”
“In the mix of snow, that’s what it looked like.”
“Okay, did it have shorter ears and legs than a gray wolf? Do you think it was a male or a female?”
“How would I know that? I only saw a glimpse of it before it took off running. And the wolf’s legs were buried in the snow like ours are. You took too long to stop the truck, and I couldn’t reach the wolf fast enough. Not as a human, anyway.” She looked up at him, hopeful.
He raised his brows. “You want to try to track it in the blizzard?”
“Is this where the ghost wolf is always seen?”
“Supposedly this area, yes.”
“Then why not?”
“As wolves or humans?”
She smiled a little at him. Then began to strip.
He had to ask. But this time he watched her as she stripped in front of him. He was only human after all and a lot wolf. Her breasts were mouthwatering as her rosy nipples puckered in the cold. Much like his were as he hurried to strip. Long, shapely legs, and lots of curves. And the curly red hair between her legs was the same color as the curls blowing around her shoulders as she called on the shift and in the next instant turned into her wolf.
He followed suit, before she raced off without him.
As they ran as wolves, he followed her lead, watching their surroundings, looking for anything else unusual, besides a ghostly white wolf. True to the nature of a ghost wolf—if it existed and the wind blowing the snow hadn’t played tricks with Laurel’s vision—he smelled no sign of a wolf.
They had been searching for the ghost wolf for about an hour when they came to a dirt road that led to the river where some of their people parked and hauled their canoes, rafts, or other small boats into the water during the summer. What he saw gave him pause. Fresh tire tracks in the snow, although the blowing snowflakes would soon obliterate them.
Their white ghost wolf was driving a truck? They checked the area further but didn’t find anything, ghost or otherwise. Still, someone else might have parked here and run. Then again, the ghost wolf could have just vanished, as ghostly creatures were known to do.
He let out his breath in a frosty mist and glanced at Laurel, who was still sniffing around at the tire tracks. She finally lifted her head and looked at him.
Then she nodded, as if she knew what he was thinking. Time to give up the search.
It took a while to locate their clothes because the fresh snow had already buried them. He shifted and shook out her clothes first, then located his own and was digging them out when she began to dress.
“Brrr, cold.”
He smiled. “Bet this is nothing like living in Florida in the winter.”
“It gets chilly there, and we have to wear coats. But no, nothing like this.”
“So what do you think about the ghost wolf?”
“I think he’s driving a pickup truck.”
Chapter 9
Trudging back to CJ’s truck through the deep snowdrifts, Laurel stumbled again. CJ reached out and grabbed her hand to help her through them. He thought she must be worn out after the long day and the ghost-wolf run.
He was trying to show his thoughtfulness and gallantry and, more, to ensure she knew he was truly interested in a courtship. What if the only reason the sisters were here was to learn about their aunt, and once they solved that mystery, they’d sell the place and leave?
He had every intention of proving to Laurel that she would love it here with him and the pack. When they reached his truck, they climbed in and he drove off, thinking again about the ghost wolf, pondering how Laurel had come to the conclusion that it was white. Probably the snow had made the gray wolf appear that way.
“I’m glad it wasn’t a real ghost wolf.” Laurel pulled off her gloves and warmed her hands in front of the truck’s heater vents. “I’d much prefer that supernatural sightings be explained away.”
Like the letter C on the wall, CJ thought. “Agreed.” He didn’t want to bring up the issue of his father again, if she didn’t want to talk about it further. He was fine with that.
She suddenly said, “Why would your father have wanted the hotel torn down? Maybe because the hotel harbored evidence that linked him to another, well, crime?”
CJ couldn’t believe it! How could she come to that conclusion? “No.” He hadn’t meant to answer so harshly, but he couldn’t believe she’d pull accusations out of thin air without shoring them up with real evidence.
“Lelandi said that your father told Darien he thought the hotel should be torn down because it was an eyesore,” she reminded CJ.
CJ had to agree that, given the circumstances, it could sound that way. But still, it was a stretch.
Not knowing what to say, CJ drove the rest of the way to her house in silence, then parked when they arrived. He cut the engine and turned to her. “What exactly are you thinking?” He was afraid that the news he’d shared about his father was finally sinking in.
She glanced out the window.
“I’m sorry, but I wanted to tell you about my father because everything else was being discussed. I don’t believe he had anything to do with any other murder. That happened to be a special circumstance. It all had to do with the leadership of the pack. Which wouldn’t apply to your aunt’s disappearance.”
Her gaze returned to his, her jaw steeled. “What if something else was going on? And it had been just as important to him as running the pack? Couldn’t this change everything? What if your father was involved in this too? Sometimes a catalyst causes a person to be implicated in a violent crime and it’s a onetime occurrence. But what if the first murder that person committed wasn’t actually his first? And he’d gotten away with it. He could do it again. What if he did such a great job of concealing the crime that no one ever learned the truth? Maybe he continued to kill and still didn’t get caught, but then the new situation presented itself, and he did it again. Only this time he was exposed.”