Nothing on the sides of the pit could help him climb if he shifted. There were a few exposed, gnarled roots, but they wouldn’t be strong enough to hold his weight. Remembering that Darien was coming and also sending men, CJ lifted his chin and howled. Maybe someone would hear him. His howl sounded strange and unreal to his ears. Maybe because he was surrounded by earth and sitting so deep in the pit. He hoped whoever had built this pit wasn’t still around to finish him off.
Off in the distance, howls rent the woods and he was cheered to hear his brothers and cousins calling. He howled again in greeting and in relief.
Everyone was everywhere, combing the woods for him, he realized. But they would be in their wolf forms. No one could get him out of here without shifting and using ropes. And for that they needed a phone. He was destined to stay down here for who knew how long.
Worse, he worried about Laurel being alone and hoped Trevor was keeping an eye on things. CJ wished he had her in his arms, snuggling with her on the couch again, breathing in her sweet she-wolf scent, listening to her steady heartbeat, feeling the heat and softness of her body.
Everyone had stopped howling. He knew they wanted to hear from him again, to pinpoint his direction. He suspected they wondered why he sounded like he was buried alive. He howled long and low, letting them know just where he was again. His head splintering in two, he collapsed on his side and waited for his rescuers to come for him.
Then a wolf woofed down at him. He wanted to warn the wolf to watch out for the deadfall covering the hole. That it could still be dangerous. When he looked up, he stared at a white face, ears as long as a gray wolf’s, and legs just as long. The white wolf. The ghost wolf. He or she was very real.
CJ didn’t remember anything after that, didn’t hear anything for a long time. When he opened his eyes later, he realized he must have passed out. He expected to see the white wolf peering down at him, but it was gone.
Then barks and woofs grew close, and again he managed to sit up and howl.
Darien howled back. He was nearly there. His brothers howled in unison. They were close by. He loved the sound of the wolves’ calls to gather the pack, to warn, to share camaraderie. A wolf howled again, right above CJ’s location, and peered down at him. Then several more. Darien, his brothers, others. CJ wanted to tell them to watch that they didn’t fall into the pit, but he knew they would be careful. He felt like an idiot for falling into it himself.
Darien shifted, crouched to stay warmer, and quickly said, “As soon as you howled and sounded like you were buried, Peter and others went back to get ropes and gear to get you out of there. Is anything broken? Are you injured?”
CJ shook his head, his skull splintering into a thousand fragments before he heard Darien calling his name from what sounded like a million miles away. “Hell, CJ. You are too injured.”
As wolves, the pack gathered, his brothers lying down next to the pit. Darien shifted into his wolf form and remained sitting upright, waiting, watching, his ears twitching back and forth, his nose sniffing the air.
Then his brothers sat up. CJ heard the other men coming before they got there. Men were so much noisier moving through the woods than wolves.
“Which way do you want to do this?” Doc Mitchell asked. “Bring him up as a wolf or a human?”
Hell, they had called the vet? CJ wasn’t injured!
Lanterns were sitting all over the place, and someone threw a couple of glow sticks into the pit. They landed near CJ and he glanced over to see what kind of animal had fallen and broken the stakes that had saved his hide. The bones of a wild boar and an elk. But what chilled him to the marrow of his bones was a human skeleton lying among the rest of the bones scattered in the pit.
“Human skeleton,” Doc Mitchell said. “Hell, CJ, we thought you were searching for a ghost wolf, not a human skeleton. Good job.”
Yeah, as if CJ had jumped down here, risking life and limb, to get a look at a skeleton! But then he worried that it could be Clarinda O’Brien. That made him feel ill. He really didn’t want to have to be the one to tell Laurel that her aunt had died this way.
Staring at the remains—a stake between the ribs of the human skeleton—he just couldn’t believe it. Brett and Eric disappeared and reappeared a few minutes later, wearing their clothes. Each of them carried a backpack, then hooked themselves into climbing gear, getting ready to rappel down into the pit.
When they were standing on the ground beside CJ, they made sure they didn’t step on any of the bones. Others in the pack would need to gather the evidence to determine who had died here and how. Instantly, CJ wondered if they’d had any other cases of missing wolves over the years. The problem was that sometimes wolves left the pack, no reason given, and there were always drifters and loners, so just about anyone could have made the mistake—like he did—of stepping on the deadfall and plummeting into the pit.
“Do you want us to take you up as a wolf or as a human?” Eric asked, crouching next to him and running his gloved hand over CJ’s head.
CJ hated to shift because it was so cold and it might take him a while to get dressed. He decided to run as a wolf. He woofed.
Eric smiled. “A wolf it is.” Before he put CJ in a harness to lift him out of the pit, Eric removed his gloves and checked him over, looking for broken bones or other injuries.
As a forest ranger, Eric was trained in first aid—which even meant caring for wounded animals. All the brothers and several members of the pack were trained in search and rescue and first aid. It was best that way so they didn’t have to call in humans to help find and take care of their kind.
Eric’s hand touched a tender ligament in CJ’s foreleg, and he yelped. Eric’s already furrowed brow deepened. He checked his foreleg again.
“Broken? Chipped? Torn muscle?” Doc Mitchell called down.
“Maybe just bruised,” Eric said, sounding relieved.
Then Eric and Brett carefully cinched CJ into a harness and gave the go-ahead to lift him. His body scraped against the exposed tree roots, and he gritted his wolf’s teeth until they hauled him up to the edge of the pit. Several hands grabbed for him, lifting him and placing him on a litter. He had every intention of running with them as a wolf, but he could see Darien and Doc Mitchell had other plans.
Three men strapped CJ down, while others went back into the pit with more lights to photograph and document the evidence and then to retrieve the human remains.
CJ growled. Wolves didn’t like confinement and he really wanted to run, to prove he was just achy and nothing was really wrong.
Brett soon joined him as the men carried him on the litter. “Trevor is watching the Wernicke brothers. While you’re getting checked out at the vet’s, I’ll let Laurel know we’ve found you and you’re all right. You might need to stay at the clinic overnight, depending on what Doc Mitchell says. We’ve got men locating your clothes and cell phone. They’ll give them to me so I can bring them to the clinic, and they’ll also drive your vehicle back to your home.”
“Doc Mitchell says CJ’s staying at the clinic tonight. Unless someone watches over him.” Doc Mitchell stalked up beside him, wearing his usual vet attire—leather vest, denims, well-worn cowboy boots, and a weather-beaten Stetson—and smelling of horses. He smiled.
Why couldn’t they have sent Doc Weber? Though he was even older than Doc Mitchell. Maybe Darien had been afraid that making the trek would be too much for the elderly doctor. But at least he worked on humans. Not that CJ was human at the moment.
CJ growled again at being strapped down. Brett and Doc Mitchell chuckled.
* * *
As soon as Lelandi called Laurel with word that they’d found CJ and he was getting checked out at the vet’s office, Laurel collapsed on the sofa, her body feeling numb, the blood draining from her face. “Thank you. I’ll tell my sisters, and I’m headed over there.”
“Brett asked if you’d wait and let him pick you up.”