Her Wolf

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter One

 

 

Audry Bruchenhaus had a great view of the convention center from her corner booth. The convention center was buzzing like a field of dandelions in summer, people going from booth to booth and peeking their heads around searching for something interesting and enticing about the latest eco-saving device or idea. Her booth, which was full of posters and eco-friendly tee shirts for sale, was situated between one hallway entrance and the main display area. NYU Green Club had chosen well.

Currently, Audry was arranging their best-seller on the hanging wall behind them—the Endangered Wolf. Her wolf, really. The image on the tee shirt was from her computer screensaver—a picture of a rust-haired wolf with mesmerizing gray eyes and a number of scars from gun shots and claw marks. Everyone in the Green Club, when they had seen it, had said unanimously that it was the perfect example of their cause.

It was a great money maker too. Nearly everybody liked a wolf shirt. And this wolf had soul.

Pulling up her bushy brown hair into a ponytail to keep the sweat off her neck, Audry heaved a sigh and gazed over the display. She was using this booth as a platform for her own fundraising since she was working on her doctorate and needed money for their rescue efforts in African the countries the intended to visit that summer.

Her cellphone buzzed.

Sighing, Audry picked it up. The picture of her secret roommate, Silvia Lewis popped up. It was a secret Silvia was living with her because Silvia was not on the apartment contract, and Silvia needed a hideaway while the whole mess with her crazy family situation blew over, even after she had gotten a temporary job as a counselor at a private school.

“Hello?” Audry whispered, putting a finger in her other ear to block out convention noise.

<< Hey. Do you want me to pick up dinner for you after your convention thing is over? >>

Audry thought about it. Her group had talked about going to a restaurant that evening. They were going to be at the convention for a week, and she was not sure whether she wanted to hang with all the Masters’ students or the undergrads. It was amazing to how they were actually wearing her out. People were annoying. Audry much more preferred to be among animals.

“Uh, no. That’s ok.” Audry sighed, thinking more on it. “I think I should stick with the group tonight. Maybe tomorrow.”

<< Ok. >> Silvia chuckled. But before she was about to hang up, she said, << Hey, if you can, save for me one of those wolf tee shirts. I want to give one to my brother, Danny. He’ll get a kick out of it. >>

“Do you want one too?” Audry asked wryly, knowing how much Silvia got a giggle out of seeing that particular wolf on Audry’s laptop and now put on a tee shirt.

Silvia laughed. << Maybe later. Are you wearing it right now? >>

“Duh,” Audry said, gazing down at the beautiful silk-screened image on her chest. “I’ve gotta display the merchandise.”

Laughing more Silvia said, << Oh, I honestly wish… >> She didn’t finish.

“Wish what?” Audry asked, feeling tired at how Silvia often stopped in the middle of sentences these days, censoring herself. Audry knew why she was doing it, of course. They had agreed that if Silvia was going to live with her, she had to stop talking about creepy things. But Audry was also incredibly curious, and she hated not knowing what was going on.

<< Nothing. I just wish I could be there if Howie ever saw it. >>

Howie.

Audry flushed a little at the mention of that name. She knew Howie as Rick—Rick Deacon. But Silvia had known him as Howie Deacon—or more accurately, Howard Richard Deacon III—most of her life. Silvia had grown up with him in the same town and often talked casually about the guy. He was their mutual acquaintance, and in many ways what had brought them together as friends. Honestly Audry probably never would have been Silva’s friend had it not been for Rick.

Long story.

Silvia had hung up unceremoniously after that. That was her way. She wasn’t exactly a well-mannered person. In fact, Audry and Silvia were nothing alike. Silvia was going to beauty school. She was also a former follower of the occult. Silvia openly called it witchcraft. These days, the only magic Silvia got into was amazing hair styling and really cool fingernail art. But she was still often rude.

Audry went back to her work at the booth.

“Eh,” a man said, gesturing to one of the posters of her wolf. “Those are for sale?”

Turning to meet his gaze, Audry nodded. “Yes, they’re…” She choked on her words for a second as the man in front of her was mostly dressed in leather—not the faux black leather of goths, but brown sturdy cowboy grade leather. His clothes seemed almost steampunk, as he had numerous pockets and a variety of empty holsters, which in normal cases would have been filled with things like guns and—she imagined—wooden stakes. “…for sale. What do you want it for?”

“Target practice.” He laughed.

With a dirty look, Audry said, “We reserve the right to withhold product from those who do not hold with our values.”

“That’s discrimination,” he said, his eyes narrowing mockingly on her.

“This is an animal rights protection booth,” she snapped. “Go somewhere else for your nasty business.”

He laughed more, but he did not quite leave yet. His eyes raked over the wolf on the tee shirts and the posters. He asked, “How did you get that picture?”

Audry huffed. “I took it. I do nature photography on the side.”

Smirking at her, the man looked Audry up and down, taking in her bushy hair, her blue green eyes, her tee shirt and jeans, and her fit physique. He chuckled to himself as if shrugging something off.

“What?” she snapped.

Grinning wider, he said, “You got in close proximity to that wolf?”

She raised her eyebrows. “You know that wolf?”

He smirked.

“You’ve shot at that wolf,” Audry ground out tightly, knowing the kind of person who would.

He just smiled as though proud of it.

Huffing, Audry shook her head. Of course. It made total sense. This wasn’t just any old steampunk LARPer. He was one of those nut-jobs from the Supernatural Regulator’s Association. Those psychos who actually believed in things like werewolves and hunted every full moon for one.

Those schoolmates in the booth with her stared at him, appalled.

“What?” Jandra Washington exclaimed. Her dark face pulled into a long opened-mouthed gape at the hunter. “You have the gall to come here and ask for a poster to shoot a wolf you tried to kill? Get away from here! Get!”

He laughed more. But he backed up. Jandra was more dangerous than Audry could ever be to a LARPing white male hunter. He could make one stupid remark and Jandra could scream racism—never mind what he was doing was totally unrelated.

He strolled off.

One of the booth workers hissed to Audry, “That’s the third weirdo asking about that wolf. Audry, where did you get that picture of that wolf?”

Sighing, Audry closed her eyes. She fingered the chain to the necklace she always wore, then she pulled it out from under her shirt. “See this?”

They nodded. They had seen it before.

“I dug this bullet out of that wolf’s leg. That’s how I got the picture,” she said. Then she shook her head more, thinking about that day. “I was working on my Master’s then. Almost two years ago.”

“But how come they all know that wolf?” they asked.

Rolling her eyes, Audry went to open up another box of merchandise. One of the other workers had already sold three tee shirts in that short time, and her box was getting low. She needed more larges. “Because, for some odd reason that wolf is connected to a really powerful family, and those nut jobs think he is a werewolf.”

They stared. One of them laughed.

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope,” Audry said, and she went back to work.

As people came and went, some of their booth workers went off to attend various panels and speakers. Most of them had come to help at the fundraising booth because it was their free ticket into the venue and some famous people were going to show up. They heard that Al Gore, Bill Gates, and Greenpeace were going to be in attendance. Someone from the UN was going to talk about sustainability and agenda 2030. And of course, rumor had it that that Mr. Howard Richard Deacon III would be there in a panel and quite possibly a question/answer session as he had been consistently attending these conferences in place of his father since he was eighteen.

The girls at the booth started talking about him.

“I hear he is superhot,” that gal said as she marked the time he was going to speak on her schedule.

“He might be hot, but man, he is the one percent,” her friend retorted. “I doubt he cares about anything but making money.”

“Well, he needs a lot of bodyguards,” one of them remarked.

“Of course he does. The dude is stinking wealthy. I heard he gets attacked at nearly every conference he has been to.”

“Attacked?”

“Yeah. Like the first time he came, he had acid thrown on him.”

Audry moaned. “That’s not what happened.”

They looked to her, surprised.

“I was there,” Audry said with hanging shoulders. She passed over a poster to a patron, collecting the money for it. “It was when he signed my permission form for me to do my Master’s project on his land.”

They stared more.

“No kidding?”

“What happened?

Sighing, Audry explained, “It was more like an allergy attack. The Deacons have severe allergies. They’re allergic to weird things like honey and some kind of flower. And some jerk put that flower in front of a fan near the stage and he went into anaphylactic shock.”

They stared more.

The patron also stared. Then he asked, “Really? When was that?”

Audry blinked at the patron then counted on her fingers, “Let’s see… about four years ago, maybe? Possibly three.”

“And he still comes to these?” one of her group murmured.

“I don’t think he has a choice,” Audry replied, looking to her. “I think it is all part of him taking up the reins of the company.”

“You know a lot about him,” one of her booth mates murmured.

Moaning, Audry shook her head. “I know people who know him. And I have bumped into him on occasion.” She gestured to the wolf posters. “And he knows all about me rescuing that wolf. He was there at the time.”

“No way,” they murmured.

“I want a tee shirt too,” the patron said, smiling.

“Do you think he’d buy one of our shirts?” one of her booth mates asked.

Audry cringed. She didn’t want to have to deal with Rick Deacon again. Trouble seemed to follow that stoosh ginnygog. Besides, her last encounter with him had been embarrassing.

Closing her eyes, she could still see it.

Dramatic enough for Hollywood, Harlin Nichols (her ex) had stormed into a posh New York party (where she was attending with her cousin Vincent to represent her grandfather’s business) to confront Rick, loudly accusing them of having a torrid affair—which could not have been further from the truth. And though Rick had handled it in stride, Audry could not quite walk through that part of town without feeling sullied. She wasn’t fond of hanging out with the well-to-do crowd anyway. That was a part of her family history she wished to distance herself from at all costs.

“I don’t care if he does,” Audry said.

“He could sell them for us,” one of them remarked off-handedly.

“No.” Audry glared hard at him, heavily shaking her head. “Keep him out of it. This is my project. We don’t need a handout from the One Percent.”

And that was it. No more argument.

But her booth-mates still whispered over who would be coming with Howard the Third at the convention center. Not his regular bodyguards would be there, someone had heard. An NYPD cop was going to attend with him. Another person retorted that they had heard it was a CIA agent. This piqued Audry’s interest. Their other friend said that Howard the Third was not going to have any bodyguards at all this time, but was just attending with friends.

“That’s ridiculous,” Jandra protested. “A rich white dude does not go around without bodyguards. They just don’t.”

Which was mostly true. Audry recalled, however, that Rick often did go around without bodyguards in public places. He just dressed normal. No fancy suits. But she knew at this function he would be in a suit and tie of the finest make, making him look like the most eligible bachelor alive.

However, the talk got Audry thinking, and she said out loud, “He has friends who are cops, and one who is CIA. So all of it can be true.”

They all stared at her.

“Do you know everything about him?” Jandra asked.

Blushing, Audry shrugged. “Like I’ve told you—I’ve met him. I’ve even briefly met a few of his friends.”

Which was actually a lie—though not entirely untrue.

“A few? As in how many?” one of them asked, laughing.

Rolling her eyes, Audry counted on one hand, “I dunno. I was at his ski lodge for my Master’s research. He briefly introduced his friends from school before I left for home.”

Which was technically true… for that instance only. Audry just did not want to openly admit it, but she had done more than briefly meet his friends. And not just those friends. And though she and he were barely talking on friendly terms, Audry had on occasion exchanged words with people who knew Rick very well, including in New York Society’s Junior League. Besides them, she was—of course—involved with people like Silvia Lewis. And through Silvia, she had regular conversations with Rick’s friend from Massachusetts, Daniel Smith. He was Silvia’s brother who came by frequently to make sure Silvia was safe from their weird family connections to ‘witchcraft’. And because Daniel came around a lot because Silvia was hiding out with her, Jessica Mason—Daniel’s good friend (and Rick’s friend) and an NYPD cop—also visited a lot. But Jessica had come to make sure Silvia wasn’t going to harm Audry. At least at first.

Jessica later came around more frequently to complain about her boyfriend, Andrew—who turned out to be Rick’s best friend—with Silvia who knew Andrew well and could commiserate. Andrew, apparently, had gotten so wrapped up in med school that he had been neglecting Jessica. From that, Audry, Silvia, and Jessica had (against all odds) bonded over boyfriend grief—especially as it took a bit more for Harlin (Audry’s ex) to get the hint that he ought to give up on Audry before he ended up with the rest of his life in jail.

Eventually Andrew had come around and became a better boyfriend. About the same time Silvia had moved together with Audry to a new apartment. And most recently, Jessica had handed Audry their wedding invitation, where Rick would most likely be the best man. Unfortunately, their wedding nuptials were during Audry’s planned Africa trip, and neither group could postpone it. It was a weird friendship.

“Hello!” Jandra waved her hand in front of Audry’s face. “Earth to Audry. Someone is asking you a question.”

Audry blinked, having not realized that she had spaced out. She turned to see who was asking the question.

It was pretty, honey-colored blonde with bright blue eyes who was wearing a flowing peasant-style dress. There was something peculiarly feral about this young woman, though she did not act in anyway ill-mannered that would give such an impression. In fact she smiled politely like a southern gal and said with the sweetest accent that had to have come from Georgia, “I’m so sorry. I don’ mean to interrupt your thoughts or nuthin. But I was just wonderin’ about those tee shirts you are sellin’.”

Shaking off that odd feeling, Audry straightened up and smiled. “These? We’re selling them for twenty dollars each. It is for good cause. We are doing an animal rescue trip in Africa.” 

The honeyed blonde smiled more, though it was a little like she was thinking how cute, but totally wrong. “No. That wasn’t exactly my question.”

Audry noticed others with her. Several peculiar-feeling people with her. All of them had an off-the-plantation and out-of-them-hills kind of look about them—like they had never really been in the big city, but they knew all about it.

“What I was askin’ was, that wolf in the picture—how did you get picture of it? Did you buy it somewhere?”

Shaking her head, feeling all that group’s eyes on her, Audry replied, “No. I took the picture myself.”

The group stared more intently.

The blonde’s eyes widened like a tenderly shocked southern belle. Her hand flew up over her mouth and she gasped, almost like one would expect from Scarlet O’Hara. “Ya kiddin’ me?”

Audry shook her head. “No. I do nature photograph as a hobby. I have a full book of my stuff for sale if you want to take a look. I sell postcards also.”

“Do you have them here?” Jandra asked Audry, her eyes raking over the group also. All of them were white—which Jandra, to be frank—found suspicious. She also didn’t like their southern accent. It bothered Audry when Jandra did that because she was blind to how she was profiling other people based on their color and background. Unfortunately there was no way Audry could address the issue without being accused of being racist also.

“Sure I do,” Audry said. “I just didn’t think of them as big sellers. With the popularity of texting, people don’t use snail mail anymore.”

She pulled out from under the table a box full of her postcard prints. She also took out one of her books. Truthfully, Audry only brought such stuff out for the big wigs—the people with the money who liked coffee-table books and paper things. Half the environmentalists at the conference looked down on the use of paper, and often shot her dirty looks when she sold them.

A bunch of the boys reached for the book, poring through it. They only stopped on the page including the major predators, and they lingered on the pages with the wolves. Audry only had a few.

Her college group also peered at the cards, snatching up a stack. Jandra flipped through them, slipping out the ones with cheetahs on them.

The blonde smirked at it, then looked to Audry again. “Amazin’.”

Audry grinned with pride.

“Is that what you do? Go to wild places and take pictures of wild animals?” the blonde asked.

Audry shook her head with a chuckle. “No. Actually I am an animal rescue worker. Like I said, we’re raising funds for an Africa trip. However, I’d like to start my PhD studying North American wildlife and how to better preserve them.”

The blonde looked sincerely impressed.

So did the others. Some of them pulled out money for the postcards—nearly all of them of wolves.

“You like the wolves?” Audry asked, glancing back at her tee-shirts, thinking about sales. “Do you want to buy a shirt?”

They grinned, several nodding.

“But we don’t have a lot of spending money,” a guy with vibrant amber eyes said. He didn’t have as strong of an accent.

A number of them chuckled.

“I want one,” the blonde said, digging into her purse.

Audry guessed at her size. “Small or medium?”

As the blonde held out the cash, she said, “Medium, please. A little loose is good.”

The men in the group chuckled.

But then the blonde said as she exchanged the money for the shirt. “But what I really wanna know is, where did you take that picture of that wolf?”

“New England,” Audry replied, jotting down notes in the accounting book and producing a receipt. “At one of the Deacon family’s wildlife reserves.”

The blonde blinked at her, her pupils narrowing a little. It sent a tremor though Audry that she could not explain. “Really? And when was that?”

“About two years ago,” Audry said, trying to fight off the nasty sensation that was rippling through her. She got the feeling that this lady was deathly interested in knowing the location, though it wasn’t clear why. “But there were no wolf dens there. He was a lone wolf. And locals said he only comes around on rare occasions.”

“Was that the same time you did your Master’s?” Jandra asked her.

Audry nodded, feeling uncomfortable. Of course it was. She already told her about the bullet for pity’s sake.

“You know, I heard a rumor that those Deacons keep pet wolves,” Jandra said. “I bet you anything it was his pet. He was there when you were there.”

“For only three days,” Audry protested. “We hardly even talked. All he did was ask me about the state of the wildlife and ague that he could never be a vegan.”

One from that group giggled. The others looked likely to laugh—including the blonde, though she set a keen eye on Audry.

“That’s messed up,” Jandra said, shaking her head. “That whole family is weird.

Audry was about to agree, having met his grandparents and his mother the last time she had bumped into him.

“I know,” the blonde replied, leaning in. “His father is a major control freak.”

“You heard that too?” Jandra said with a nod.

Chuckling, the blonde shook her head. “No. We know it, because we know Rick Deacon.”

Meeting the Summer Fling

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Two

 

 

The entire booth of people stared back at them—Audry especially.

The honeyed blonde stuck out her hand toward Audry and said, “I’m Daisy MacTire.”

Audry cautiously received her grip, Daisy’s slim fingers fitting around her hand with a gentle handshake. “Um…”

“I’m sorry.” Daisy blushed. “Let me explain myself—and us, actually. We’re actually lookin’ for Rick Deacon. He’s a friend of ours. Or was. We figured he would be here, and we really need to talk to him.”

Shivers went down Audry’s arms. She continued to stare.

“You see, he used to be my boyfriend,” Daisy explained… which got ripple of gossip through everyone at the booth and near it. “But his father didn’t like him being with a girl like me, and the old man broke us up.”

“No kidding?” Audry felt her mouth go dry.

Daisy nodded. “Yep. The man has got an agenda for his son. You know, Rick and I used to exchange secret letters, and then post cards—but his daddy had them intercepted and I-dunno-what done to them. Rick and I had planned to get married after he graduated, but his father obviously stopped that. And I haven’t heard from him in over four years.”

Daisy’s group nodded with commiseration. Most of them were college age, the majority men. The few gals all looked like they were just along for a tour, just off the set of that old TV show Dukes of Hazzard.

“Do you happen to have his phone number?” Daisy asked Audry in particular. “His father changed his phone the last time I tried to call, and he threatened us—”

“Us?” escaped Audry’s mouth before she could stop herself. She was enraptured and at the same time bewildered as Daisy seemed to be talking like Rick had dated her community and not just her.

Daisy flushed, ducking her head sheepishly. “Actually, he seemed to think our entire town was bad for him. Too lowbrow.”

The group nodded like a gang of hillbillies.

“He was our friend,” one of the others said. “He was going to spend that summer with us when his dad flipped out and dragged Rick away. It was weird, you know.”

“I don’t have his phone number,” Audry replied, feeling a mite dazed. Her mind was trying to go over what they were saying with an attempt to piece the events over when Rick knew these people. “I hardly know him.”

Four years ago, Audry’s mind calculated. Rick had to have been barely out of high school. If that were that case, his father wasn’t totally acting nuts. Rick would have been eighteen—too early to get engaged. Though he was a legal adult, they would have been a pretty young couple, and it could not have been that serious.

Daisy sighed. She then looked around the convention center, thinking. “He comes to these things, I hear. I really need to talk to him.”

Audry inwardly groaned. She really had hoped to avoid bumping into Rick again. So she said, “I hear he is going to have a question/answer session. You can get a conference schedule and go to one of them. It would be a guarantee that he will be there.”

That got a chuckle and a smirk from Daisy. “I suppose so. Do you have one of those? A schedule?”

Jandra handed hers over. “We’re going too.”

“I’m not,” Audry interjected. “I’m staying at the booth.”

“Are you kidding me?” Jandra said with a crooked eye. “You know ‘im.”

“I don’t care,” Audry retorted with a moan. “I didn’t come here to meet up with Rick Deacon. Honestly, I was hoping to avoid him. Trouble follows him everywhere.”

Those in Daisy’s group raised eyebrows. They shared whispers. In a way, they were agreeing.

“I want to go to that,” one of the guys said, taking the pamphlet from Daisy’s fingers.

Jandra smirked at him, pointing to the position on the schedule.

Others surrounded him with the intent to leave just then. They waved to Daisy and marched off with those of the NYU booth. Audry could tell they were counting on Rick’s hick friends to introduce them to the guy. He was famous after all.

But Daisy did not leave. She leaned against the booth table and sighed a bit, almost melodramatically—in a way one would expect her to spout some kind of Shakespearean soliloquy real soon, starting with the words, ‘Ah me.’  

“You’re not going?” Audry asked, wishing she would. She got the feeling that blonde was staking out that area as her territory.

Daisy shook her head and smiled at Audry. “Nah. I don’t wanna meet him like that. I really just want to talk to him.”

In that moment, Audry could tell that a lot more had gone on between Daisy and Rick than just dating. When Daisy had called him a boyfriend, she had deeply meant it. But somehow the word did not seem right.

“Can I confide in you?” Daisy asked, almost reading Audry’s unease.

Audry shrugged. Everyone seemed to do that. Maybe she just had that aura about her—one that screamed “Confess to me!” Jessica confided a lot in her. Silvia, a ton. In fact, every one of her former roommates seemed to use her for psychotherapy. It was burden, like people were drawn to her just so they could spill their guts.

“Rick and I…” Daisy sighed heavily, a memory clearly going through her mind. “We had something special. I felt like we were fated….”

Audry inwardly cringed. She didn’t believe in fate. And though she liked romance, this was stupid.

“…I mean, when we made love, it was like, so powerful,” Daisy’s soft sighing voice woefully explained. “Like… like reachin’ the stars. And I have never felt love like that since.”

A coldness swept over Audry. Daisy’s

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 12.07.2018
ISBN: 978-3-7554-7903-1

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