Page 1 of Hollow Moon

CHAPTER 1

Knox Marshall heard the crack of a dry twig behind him and froze. In the next moment, a hard voice ordered, “I’ve got you covered, scumbag. Hands in the air. Turn around slowly.”

Knox weighed his choices. If he ran, he could end up dead. Opting to cooperate for the moment, he turned to find himself staring at a guy with long greasy hair wearing camy pants and a dirty green tee shirt. He was holding an automatic rifle like he knew how to use it.

Shit. Knox had been pretty sure he’d stumbled onto something illegal when his wolf’s nose had picked up a strange odor in the Garrett County wood. He should have called for backup and waited for reinforcements.

“Toss that phone over here, boy,” the guy said. Reed thin with a weasel face and tattoos all over his arms, he looked to be in his late twenties, about Knox’s age. Too bad the aroma coming downwind had masked the guy’s ripe scent.

Knox lowered one arm enough to toss the phone and watch it being ground under the heel of a work boot.

“You want to see the camp?”

“What camp?”

“Nice try.”

“Turn around and walk the way you were goin’. I’ll be right behind you.”

Knox did as he was told, silently cursing as he looked for a way to escape this snare that he’d sprung on himself. He couldn’t have done it better if he’d stepped into the iron jaws of an animal trap. He’d come out here to Western Maryland to enjoy some werewolf alone time, living off the land for a few days. Then he’d caught a whiff of something contaminating the woods.

He’d headed back to his car, changed to human form and grabbed his cell phone, thinking he’d get some picture to take back to Decorah Security before it got dark—if there was anything to see. He’d never gotten a chance to take any photos.

Before he could figure out how to escape, he and the guy with the rifle were twenty yards from an old building that looked like it could have been a stable—and smelled like a high school chem lab.

“Hey, Lane,” the guy called out. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

Another scruffy looking man, fifteen or twenty years older than the first guy, stepped into the clearing in front of the building. He was potbellied and totally bald with a tattoo of a death’s-head showing at the neck of his dirty work shirt. Nice.

Instead of a rifle, he was holding a semiautomatic handgun.

He eyed his friend and the captive. “You go out to take a crap in the woods and come back with this?”

“Yeah. Lucky for us.” He waited a beat before adding, “The professor’s not here. What’re we gonna do with him?” the one with the rifle asked.

“We don’t need the professor to tell us what to do.”

The bald guy tipped his head to the side, studying Knox.

Someone from inside the building called out, “We could skin him.”

“Don’t be hasty,” the one named Lane drawled. “Let me think on it.”

Another armed man emerged from the interior darkness, and the two whispered to each other. He looked more civilized than the rest of these bozos, and he obviously didn’t want to call attention to himself by stepping into the open. But Knox burned the guy’s face into his memory.

Finally Lane spoke up. “Put him in the shed out back.” He gestured with his gun and spoke to Knox. “To the right.”

Knowing the alternative was a bullet in the back, Knox moved in the direction the spokesman had indicated, toward a small corrugated metal building.

“Pat him down, Kyle.”

“Hands against the wall. Legs spread,” the guy who’d brought Knox in said.

He did as requested, feeling a half-assed pat down—which unearthed the semi tucked into the waistband of his jeans under his shirt.

“This your fishing pole?” The man laughed and kept searching. “No wallet.”

“Take off your belt and your shoes, and toss them on the ground.”

---