Something gave way inside me then. I could argue with people. I could argue with logic. But I couldn’t argue with that look in the wolf’s eyes.
“So what do you want me to do?” I asked Mike quietly. “This is the biggest deal of my life.”
Mike scratched at his stubbled chin with his damaged hand and yanked open the back door of the truck. “If we can’t talk him out of it, then he rides with us.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said. “Dennis will pass out if I show up to a business meeting with a wolf.”
“Frankly, I don’t care what Dennis thinks,” Mike said. “I care about getting through the day in one piece. If I haul you off without that gray monster and something happens, I figure he’ll come find me later and settle the score.”
He turned to the wolf and gave a sharp whistle. “All right, big guy. You’re security detail. Get in.”
Thunder’s whole posture changed. The wild aggression gave way to something almost businesslike. He looked at me, waiting for the final word.
I waved a tired hand. “Go on, then. You win again.”
The wolf didn’t need asking twice. One jump and he was in the back seat, facing forward like he intended to supervise the whole trip.
I lowered myself into the front passenger seat, where the heater was working overtime. “This is some circus,” I muttered, fumbling with the seat belt. “Those city people are going to laugh me right out of the room.”
“Let ’em laugh,” Mike grunted, shifting into gear. “Usually the last one laughing is the one still breathing.”
The truck lurched forward and started crawling down the snow-packed track away from my log cabin.
The old vehicle bounced over ruts while we pushed through the winter woods. The engine roared against the rising wind. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Thunder sitting perfectly still, like a carved statue.
His yellow eyes kept scanning the road ahead. His ears twitched at every sound. In that moment he wasn’t a pet. He was a guard on duty.
“You know,” Mike said after a while, “my grandmother used to tell stories from the old mountain families. She believed sometimes the dead came back in animal form to steer the living away from trouble.”
“That wolf of yours is too smart for an ordinary animal.”
“That’s enough of that,” I said, though something cold shifted in me anyway.
“Laugh if you want,” Mike said. “But up here, things don’t always run by city rules. If that wolf insisted on coming, then he smells danger. And real danger usually isn’t weather. It’s a person smiling at you while planning something else.”
I didn’t answer. I was thinking about Dennis—the orphan kid from the group home. I’d taught him how to swing a pick, how to read stone, how to make a life for himself. Was Thunder trying to tell me that boy was the danger?
The thought felt ugly, almost obscene. But every time I looked at the wolf in the mirror, I felt the cold sink deeper under my coat.
Our truck kept descending through the white curtain of snow, carrying three grim passengers toward whatever was waiting.
All three of us, in our own way, seemed to understand that the ride home might not be simple. My head had made one set of decisions. My tired old heart hadn’t caught up yet.
I watched the snow-covered pines slide past the window and thought about more practical things—the sale, the money, the chance to finally rest after years of hard work in cold mines and dark mountain tunnels.
I’d found that small but rich gold deposit by accident twenty years earlier. I’d registered the rights legally and worked it honestly ever since. Everything I did there was aboveboard…
