Page 43 of Wind Valley

He abandoned his plate of eggs and strode into the living room. She followed, her heart in her mouth. “Maybe it was just a bird flying by.”

“Maybe. Was it high up or lower down?”

“Lower,” she said, realizing that her bird theory probably wouldn’t hold up. “And fast. Like a streak of?—”

She shrieked and jumped back as something lunged at the window, all bristling fur and snarling teeth. The creature—a wolf?—attacked the glass with its front paws. It lifted its head and let loose a howl that gave her chills even through the thick pane. Then it butted its head against the glass, hard. And again.

She clutched at the back of Lachlan’s t-shirt. He was lunging toward the wolf, waving his hands in the air and shouting, “Go away. Go on, get out of here,” as if it was a dog escaped from the neighbor’s yard.

The wolf slammed its head against the window again, and Lachlan spread his arms wide as if to shield Maura from the inevitable moment it cracked the glass and charged through.

It couldn’t break the window, could it? The horrifying thought streaked through her, just as the wolf dropped down to all fours. It spun around and loped off the deck into the snow, then toward the dark shadows of the woods, dripping blood on its way.

There was a smear of blood on the window too. The poor wolf had bonked himself bloody against the glass.

Maura and Lachlan looked at each other.

“What the fuck?” they both said at the same time.

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Lachlan didn’t want Maura to be farther than about a foot away from him—a distance from which he could still put his own body between her and danger. She didn’t seem to want that either.

She even insisted on coming outside with him to document what had just happened. He lent her an extra pair of snowshoes and they tromped out onto the cold deck to take photos and a sample of the blood smeared on the glass.

Just in case, he strapped his rifle to his back.

“The wolf might be rabid,” he explained as he led the way around the frozen lilac bushes. “That could explain a few things.”

“Would it, though? Is that what a wolf with rabies does? Have you ever seen a wolf in your front yard before?”

He didn’t answer. Of course he hadn’t. Wolves generally stayed deep in the mountains, far away from humans. When he was doing fieldwork around the glacier, occasionally he’d hear a distant howl, but that was as close as he’d come to a wolf. Bears, on the other hand…he’d encountered plenty of those. They didn’t seek out conflict with humans, but food smells attracted them and they weren’t afraid to follow their noses.

Maura stayed so close behind him that their snowshoes kept bumping into each other. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay inside while I do this?” he asked again.

“No. We should stick together. Tell me how to take the sample and you can guard us while I do it.”

He heard the nervousness threading her voice. He got it, of course, but his brain was already sifting through explanations for the wolf’s behavior. Instead of feeling fear, he was wildly curious. With his snowshoes still planted in the snow, he twisted to face her.

“We just have to figure it out,” he told her. “Everything’s scary until you understand it.”

“That’s bullshit,” she said bluntly. Her breath released a cloud of steam in the air. “Even if I understand why a wolf tried to attack us through a plate-glass window, it will never not be scary.”

He smiled ruefully. “Fair point. But at least it won’t be ‘horror movie’ scary.”

“Horror movies don’t scare me.” She gestured for him to go ahead. “They’re just an excuse to cuddle.”

“Then what are we doing out here when we could be inside cuddling? I’m doing this all wrong.”

His joking around made her tense expression ease. “Actually, this is kind of hot. The badass scientist searching for answers in the bloody snow.”

“I’ll take it.”

After a short hesitation, she held his rifle while he took photos of everything—the window, the trail of blood droplets, the erratic path of the wolf footprints. Once he’d documented everything, he scraped blood and saliva off the window into a plastic sample bag.

As he worked, they listened for any sounds from the forest that would alert them to the return of the wolf. All was quiet until an ermine scurried from under the house, making Maura squeal. They watched its sleek white body disappear against the snow, so only the black splotch on its raised tail identified it.

He watched it go, something about its graceful glide triggering a thought. “That ermine is acting perfectly normal. Whatever is affecting the wolves and the moose isn’t bothering that guy.”

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