Chapter 11: Not an Act

"Is that a threat?" I said, loud enough for the whole yard.

Wendell straightened up, smiling.

"It's advice, cousin. Wolves get strange on the full moon."

He got in his silver truck and drove away.

The foreman watched him go and spat on the gravel where he'd stood.

"Lock your door tonight," he said.

That night I sat cross-legged on my bed with the photos on my phone.

Then I zoomed in on the cut cable for the hundredth time.

The three pictures I'd taken that night were all I had.

The cable ends, close, in a hard white flash.

Every strand was sheared flat.

Smooth as a coin.

I sat up straight.

My cable cutters had a nick in the left jaw.

I'd chipped it on a bolt the first month of the program and never had the money to replace them.

Every cut they'd made for two years left a little ridge on the copper, a tiny raised tooth where the nick bit in.

These ends had no tooth.

Not one.

I called Judd.

He answered on the second ring, sounding like I'd woken him.

"They weren't my cutters," I said.

"What?"

"The cable. Whoever cut it used clean jaws. Mine are nicked. Mine would have left a mark on every cut."

He was quiet for a moment.

"Wendell rubbed copper on yours," he said slowly. "Just to make them look used."

"And cut the real cable with his own."

"Can you prove the nick?"

"Ozias has my cutters in his desk. Anybody who looks at the left jaw will see it."

"And the real ones?"

"Wendell keeps every tool he owns at the timber yard," I said. "Down on the county road. Off pack land."

I heard him sit up.

"No," he said.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were going to."

"Tomorrow night," I said. "You can be lookout or you can stay home."

The pack's timber yard sat on twenty acres along the river, outside the line where pack land started.

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