Chapter 8: Silver Jaws

"Where on the ridge?" I said.

"I don't know. The wind's wrong. We can't get his scent."

"I'm in Cold Creek. I'm going up."

"Jolene, there are..."

I hung up on him.

Ross was already holding the front door open.

"My son," I said. "He's six. He's lost on Pike Ridge."

He didn't ask how a six-year-old got from forty miles north to Pike Ridge in a morning.

He just ran for the truck.

The fire road up Pike Ridge was all ruts and rock.

Ross drove it like he'd driven it a hundred times, which he had.

"Where would a kid go?" he said.

"Toward the house. Toward the town lights. He knows the water tower."

"Then he'd come down the south face. The creek side." He swung the wheel. "That's where I pulled four of those traps."

My stomach dropped.

The truck came around a bend and he hit the brakes.

There were wolves on the road.

Six of them, standing in the ruts like they'd been waiting.

Gray, brown, one almost white.

Every one of them was the size of a pony.

Ross's hand went to the radio and stayed there.

He didn't key it.

"Those aren't..." he said.

"No," I said. "They're not."

The white wolf lowered its head and stared at the truck.

Then all six of them turned and bolted downhill into the trees.

I heard it a second later.

A high, thin cry, far off, below us.

Not a howl.

A child's scream, coming out of an animal.

I was out of the truck before it stopped rolling.

I ran down the slope after the wolves, sliding on the needles, grabbing at trunks.

Ross was behind me, crashing, yelling my name.

The creek was at the bottom.

There were wolves all along the bank now, ten or twelve, pacing and whining.

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