How to Flirt With a Naked Werewolf - Molly Harper [46]
“Oh, yeah, that’s likely.” I snorted. “Does Buzz know about this whole wolf thing?”
“It wasn’t really something I could work into our dating conversations,” she said, smiling as she shook her head.
“But if he didn’t know, why did he get so wound up over not telling the police about the wolf attacking Teague?”
Evie gave me a sheepish little smile. “He thought maybe you imagined the wolf. He didn’t want that to get around. This is a small town. You don’t want to become known as Crazy Mo.”
“I knew it!” I exclaimed. “I knew he didn’t believe me.”
Evie shook her head at my incensed tone. “Mo, my family, the pack, we don’t tell outsiders our secret. For Cooper to have trusted you with this, it means something.”
We pushed our way back through the kitchen entrance. I sighed. “Evie, don’t start—”
I stopped short when I saw Buzz, Abner, Walt, Nate, and Gertie gathered around the counter, looking stricken. Nate’s arm was around Gertie. Gertie was wiping tears from her face, leaving streaks of mascara on her round china-doll cheeks. Walt looked as if he wanted either to cry or to punch something.
“What’s wrong?” I asked Buzz.
Buzz squeezed Evie’s hand. “There was an attack, out at Susie Q’s place. Gertie found her in her driveway this morning. Susie’s pretty messed up. Her throat’s practically torn out. If Gertie hadn’t come along when she did . . .” He cast a sidelong glance at Gertie, who let loose a little sob. “The ambulance took her to the hospital in Dearly. She’s in intensive care.”
I pulled Buzz and Evie aside, my voice low. “Did someone beat her up?”
“No,” Buzz said, his jaw clenched. “This wasn’t a person, Mo. It was an animal. There were tracks everywhere and some fur. It looks like Susie was attacked by a wolf.”
My stomach flipped. How could it be a coincidence that the morning after Cooper went on a “wolf run,” Susie was found bleeding and bitten in her driveway? Honestly, how many giant wolves could there be running around Grundy?
Wolf-Cooper hadn’t so much as snapped at me, even in the painful aftermath of the trap. He’d been gentle, friendly. And he hadn’t had a speck of blood on him besides his own. But what if he’d just been too weak to want to eat me? Maybe werewolves knew better than to bite the hand that bandaged them. What if I’d rescued the wolf that had attacked Susie Q?
People came and chewed over Susie’s attack with their burgers and fries, and each seemed to have some story about seeing a wolf or chasing one off their property. Walt grumbled that the “damn tree huggers” and their programs that declared wolves a protected species increased the population, and now we were all going to be overrun with predators. Alan gently reminded Walt that the government had instituted bounty programs for hunters who brought in wolf carcasses and allowed hunters to shoot wolves from aircraft as “predator control.” Abner retorted that maybe we should start our own bounty program in Grundy. The conversation had me reaching for my Tums and praying for a distraction.
I was grateful when Gertie mentioned that someone needed to go by Susie’s place to take care of her dog. I volunteered to go on my lunch break. I loved to scratch behind Oscar’s ears whenever I visited Susie at the post office. The idea of him padding around the house, alone and confused, was a little heartbreaking.
As I pulled up to Susie’s neat little A-frame house, two miles outside town, I could hear Oscar frantically scratching at the door. He was used to being out and about all day and seemed indignant about being locked up. I walked to Susie’s door, ignoring the obvious bloody patch of grass near the driveway, and used Gertie’s key to let Oscar out.
Oscar was a pitiful black-and-tan specimen of dachshund-hood. If you looked in the breeding manuals for dachshunds and saw all of the things professionals try to eliminate from their lines, you’d have a description of Oscar: barrel-chested, with a wide, fat head and flat, chubby paws and a perfectly rounded stomach that refused to arch. He looked like a Rottweiler that had been shrunken