Claimed (The Lair of the Wolven #1) by J.R. Ward

“Don’t you Ms. Susi me. I have a right to know—”

“When we are prepared to make a statement—”

“This is our land.” She nodded at the No Trespassing sign that had been nailed to a thick trunk. “I want to know what happened on it.”

Eastwind looked over as the body bag was loaded into the coroner’s vehicle. “It was a hiker. We don’t have an ID yet.”

She made the sign of the cross over her chest. “Accident or health-related? And how long have they been up on the mountain?”

There was a pause. And that answered the first question, didn’t it.

“Tell me,” she demanded.

“He was attacked by an animal. That’s all I’m going to say.” Eastwind leaned in and looked her right in the eye. “And I expect you to keep this to yourself.”

“Where was he found?”

“That’s all I’m—”

As the double doors of the van were slammed shut, she snapped, “Where.”

“North Granite Ridge. Another hiker found him and called it in. Remains are two days old, and now, if you’ll excuse me.”

The sheriff walked off to the other officers, and Lydia looked back at where the remains had been marched out of the forest.

After a moment, she went to her car and got in. As her dinner grew cold and she forgot about her hunger, she headed back to the office. When she arrived on-site, she didn’t bother going over to the parking area. She pulled directly up to the WSP’s front entrance.

Getting out, she had the key ready as she approached the door—but when she went to put it in the lock, she glared up at the roof line. Night had solidly arrived since she’d left and the motion-activated light was supposed to come on.

The fact that it didn’t was just one more thing to add to the broken list. At least they had a new groundskeeper, right?

As she got her phone and triggered its flashlight, she hoped it was just a blown bulb, instead of an electrical problem.

Stepping inside, she canned the security system and went directly down to her desk. Turning on the lamp beside her computer, she signed in and accessed the mountain’s camera feed program. There were nearly a hundred units mounted in trees in the preserve—which sounded like a lot until you considered how many acres there were.

But there was one on North Granite Ridge.

Closing her eyes, she rubbed her St. Christopher medal between her thumb and forefinger as she waited for that specific feed to load. The recordings were kept live for one week before they were put into permanent storage on the cloud—so it wasn’t going to matter how many days or nights ago the attack happened. Although Eastwind had said forty-eight hours.

When the image was set three days prior, Lydia tilted her monitor and sat closer to the desk. The view of camera #046 was of a clearing that ran laterally north to south, nothing but scrubby brush marking the rock ledge. The lens unit was mounted about fifteen feet from the ground, and there were four stations for the wide-angle to lock into. Back on Monday, the position had been on the second one … and it provided about a thirty-foot field of vision ahead of its station.

The default program moved the camera through its stations every seventy-two hours on a coordinated schedule with the other feeds—unless it was manually overridden. So there was a good chance the attack wasn’t caught. Especially if it occurred behind the tree or in and among the other pines that crowded up tight to the clearing.

Hitting the play button, she continued to rub the pendant her grandfather had given her. “Show me … show me …”

The only thing that moved was the spooling time counter down on the lower right hand of the feed, the date static, the seconds running by, the minutes waiting on the sidelines for their cue, the hours going nowhere soon. She increased the speed, watching the angle of the patchy sunlight shift over the landscape, the lazy flight paths of vultures more like the quick dive bombs of barn sparrows, the clouds marching across the screen, the greenery twitching like it was itchy. When night came, things went shades of green. And then the dawn brought the standard color back.

Deep inside herself, in the place that she refused to dwell, much less acknowledge, Lydia knew what she was going to see, knew it sure as she could recognize her own reflection. Cold sweat bloomed across her chest under her clothes, and beneath the desk, the heel of one of her running shoes beat out a quick tapping—

As soon as the man dressed in camo shot into the camera field, she cut the fast forward, everything resuming in real time. She took a good look at him—and couldn’t tell much. He had a pack on his back, hunter-like clothes, and a brimmed hat that was pulled down low on his face. Moving along, he seemed confident and aware as he scanned the environs—

The attack came from on the left, the wolf leaping forward with such stealth that the man didn’t even glance in the direction of the predator. One moment, the hiker was upright, the next he had a hundred-pound female gray wolf locked on his throat. The impact of the animal’s body knocked the human off his feet, and the wolf didn’t release. Even as the man punched at the head and snout, and then kicked, and tried to roll, there was no movement from the jaw. No shift of the bite, either.

Lydia hit pause and sat back, covering her face with her hands. As she squeezed her eyes shut, she saw only the wolf, with the distinctive silver stripe down its back, and its lithe body, and its dagger-like teeth.