Fox Run (26 page)

I wanted to see how close I could get to her. I ran off a thousand yards due inland then slowed down and circled to the south and headed back towards Elisabeth as quietly as I could. I was pretty sure even in the dense trees and brush I could get pretty close without her knowing. From downwind, I could get exceedingly close to even the shyest of prey, but of course, a were's sense of hearing and smell were better than a rabbit's.

I closed to within two hundred yards with a fairly standard amount of caution. After that, I watched every step, planning my route through the brush for tens of steps ahead. I was absolutely silent. I couldn't hear my own steps, although I felt perhaps she could hear my heart beat. I certainly could.

I slinked to within forty yards of her. I could hear her when she shifted in her seat on the sand, the sand crunching lightly under her. She sighed once, and I heard the occasional huff. When the wind was just right, when focused intently on her, I could hear her heart beating, slow and steady and strong.

I turned to the right. It took me ten minutes, but I exited the brush onto the sand, thirty yards from her. The breeze was blowing my scent out over the lake. I couldn't believe she hadn't heard me. I couldn't believe she hadn't smelled me.

I turned my nose to her. Slowly, I stalked closer, one fox step at a time.

The breeze shifted and immediately her head snapped to her right. She stared at me.

"No fucking way!"

I was only fifteen yards from her.

"No fucking way!" she said again. "Oh my god, Michaela, please don't tell anyone you got that close."

I shifted and she faced away from me, not looking at me.

"Can you hear my heart beating, Elisabeth?"

She strained. "No."

"You can smell me though."

"Oh yes, you're very easy to smell in this form. If I were in wolf form and you are upwind, I can smell you for a very long distance. Anything else and it varies by the wind." She paused and glanced over at me, then looked away. "Michaela, when you're a fox and I am human, I can't tell by smell you're were. I can if I look at you, and I can as wolf."

"If they smell me as humans, they might think I'm a standard fox."

She nodded. I walked closer and she handed me a towel to wrap around myself. "I'm going to walk away. I want to know when you can't smell me anymore."

We spent another hour at it. By the time we were done, I knew one thing. If I could approach from downwind, I could get exceedingly close as a fox. As a human, this was going to be very tricky.

We took the dinghy back to the boat and motored south, a mile from shore. The water was slightly choppy; there was a breeze, and the waves had a mile to form. We slowed down and I climbed down into the dinghy with everything I would need.

"Be careful, little fox," Elisabeth said to me.

I motored to shore, leaving the dinghy anchored to shore but set so I could make a fast getaway if I needed to. I stuffed my clothes into the dinghy and shifted, slipped into the carry harness with the phone, and set off into the woods.

I knew where the cabin was now, so it was easier for me to approach. It was breezy, and I shifted so that my approach would be from downwind. By the middle of the afternoon I was twenty yards from the edge of the clearing and only about ninety yards from the cabin. If the breeze shifted, I would need to retreat, but I watched the cabin for a while then ducked behind a large tree and shifted to human. I crept to a well concealed spot from where I could watch, and I got the camera ready.

It didn't take long to realize I should have brought clothes. I'd been warm while wearing fur, but my human form wasn't very happy. I sighed. I should have thought of that. I would have to shift back to fox now and then just to warm up.

Shortly before what should be dinner time, there was a procession of people to the outhouse, in ones and twos. I was significantly closer than I had been last night, and it was clear I was looking at adolescent boys being led one at a time to the outhouse. I took pictures, all the pictures I could. I didn't know if Elisabeth would be able to identify people or not.

I stayed where I was until evening. Sunset was shortly after seven, and it grew chilly. The wind lessoned and shifted towards the west somewhat, but I decided my current location was adequate. As the sun set, I decided I'd gotten the last photographs I would get from this location, and I replaced the camera in the carry harness and shifted back to fox.

Ah, to be warm again.

I watched.

I waited until a second procession to the outhouse, then gave it another twenty minutes. A wolf stepped out and smoked a cigarette. Inwardly, I smiled. That should destroy his sense of smell for a while. I saw he had a beer in his hand. Good. Maybe they were all drinking.

When he went inside, I began my approach.

I took my time, shifting towards the back of the cabin as I got closer so I would be out of sight if anyone stepped outside. There were no windows on this side of the cabin, and I felt reasonably safe.

I crept all the way to the corner of the cabin without any sign I'd been detected. From inside, I could hear the sounds of rough talking, but it was muffled through the thick walls. I shifted human and waited, listening.

Then I crept around the back side of the cabin. There was light spilling from a window. I slowly slipped to the window, verified I knew where the lens was on the phone, and slipped it over the window so the lens barely peeked. I snapped a picture and looked at it. Then I took another, looked, and then I took a series of pictures, poking the phone barely past the frame of the window from different sides. The entire time, I listened for any shifts from inside the cabin, any sign someone was coming closer to the window.

Nothing.

If Lara's security was this lacking, I would be having a chat with her.

I slowly slinked back to the corner of the cabin, crouched down, and shifted. I used my tail to brush away any signs of human footsteps before slipping into the carry harness and leaving the way I come, spending far less effort on being quiet. They weren't even listening for me.

I reached the safety of the woods with no alarm being raised.

This had been way too easy. I hoped I hadn't been wrong. Maybe this was just a wolf family and not Lara's missing wolves. They should have had patrols out. They should have expected visitors. They shouldn't have been so complacent. Maybe as a fox I should have been able to get that close, but no way should my human form have been able to stand there and take photos.

If this were the right place, I was going to count my blessings from now until the cows came home.

I hurried back to Elisabeth. When I reached the dinghy, I called her.

"Oh thank god," she said. "I was so worried."

"This can't be the right place, Elisabeth. I have to be wrong. This shouldn't have been this easy."

"I'll pick you up. You got pictures?"

"Yes, lots and lots of pictures."

I waited until I saw the boat a mile from shore. I set out in the dinghy. Elisabeth tossed me a line. Once I was on board the boat, I took over at the wheel and Elisabeth stowed the dinghy. It was way too heavy for me, but she made it look easy.

She caught me staring at her enviously.

"I couldn't have done what you did, little fox, any more than you can do what I just did."

I nodded to her. Most of the time, I accepted who I was.

She took the phone from me and began looking through the photos. I turned the boat north and opened it up, taking us away from this section of lakeshore as quickly as I could. Elisabeth's lips pressed together after viewing only five or six photos. She turned to me. "You took more risk than you needed to." She pointed the phone at me. "This is Derek." She switched to the next. "This is Alex. And this one is Jeremy."

She flipped through the rest of the pictures, and there were tears in her eyes. "David, why?" And then her expression hardened, and the sadness gave way to clear, cold fury.

"Elisabeth," I said. "I now report to you and the alpha. I will not argue with either of you until this is over, but I will not take orders from anyone else. I want to know what Lara intends to do for operational security, but I will behave."

She nodded and smiled briefly. "To think, you are actually offering to behave. I never would have expected it."

We found a new cell signal well to the north, not wanting the tracking collar to show up too close to Natalie's property. It wasn't even midnight. Elisabeth grabbed her phone and sent a text to Lara, letting me see it. "Fox is being difficult. Call me when you get this." We anchored off shore and waited.

When Lara called back, Elisabeth told her, "The fox is being unruly. She refuses to shift. She has some choice things to say to you. I think you should be somewhere private, Lara."

"I'll go for a drive. Am I going to cry?"

"Yes."

"Damn it. All right. I'll call you back."

Her phone rang twenty minutes later. "Hey," answered Elisabeth.

"I'm alone."

I held out my hand, and Elisabeth gave me the phone.

"Hello, Alpha," I said coldly. "Are you truly alone?"

"Yes. I went for a drive. I had to order the rest to stay behind. David wanted to send Reggie with me."

"Are you absolutely positively no one followed you?"

"I'm driving along the highway south of Hayward and there are no lights behind me. I'm alone."

I gave the phone back to Elisabeth, and she told Lara everything. When she was done, she said, "The fox wants to know your plans for operational security but has agreed to follow any orders from you or me until this is over."

"Put her back on."

"I'm so sorry, Lara," I told her.

"Me too. I'm sorry about the cage, too."

"You so owe me for the cage. So owe me."

"I know. I am going to send David back to Madison to check on things there, telling him I am worried about things there."

"Have him bring Reggie with him."

"Yes. I will coordinate with Elisabeth as soon as David is gone. Will you really follow orders?"

"Yes. No question. As long as they don't involve me going back in the cage."

"No. No more cage."

"Your part in this is done then, Michaela. I need you safe."

"I couldn't possibly help in combat, Lara. But I can lead you to the cabin, and if you need me to scout, I can. If you send me away, I'll go, but I hope you'll let me be here."

"You've earned it, but you are to stay safe, and I'm going to need Elisabeth. I can't worry about you."

"I'll follow orders."

"Are we all right, little fox?"

"I hope when this is all said and done, you will court me properly."

I heard the smile. "I can do that."

"It will take a little while to move past the stress. We're going to be all right, if you want us to be, Lara. And if you understand that I am fox, not wolf."

"No one else could have done what you did, little fox."

"Not true," I said. "Any decent human investigator would have uncovered this. It wasn't hard. And a human investigator would have brought proper long range photography equipment. I didn't even think of it."

"All right, I won't argue with you, Michaela," she said. "But I am going to remember that it was you who solved this, not anyone else."

We talked for another minute, then I gave the phone back to Elisabeth. They made tentative arrangements before hanging up.

Elisabeth turned to me. "You will follow any order I give you?"

"Yes."

"Even if you don't care for it."

"Yes."

"Even if I send you to the compound."

"Yes."

She took a deep breath. "Michaela. Shift and get in your cage."

I stared for one second, then shifted, climbed out of the clothing, and slinked to the cabin door. She opened it for me, and I walked to the cage. She opened the cage and I stepped in. I lay down with my head on my paws, looking at her.

"Michaela," she said. "I needed to be sure. Please come out of there. I'll never put you in that cage again."

I stepped out immediately, nipped her hand playfully, and accepted some attention as an apology. Then I stepped away, shifted back, and got dressed. While I was dressing, Elisabeth pulled out the maps. She pointed. "This is where we are meeting them."

Operations

At noon the next day, we rendezvoused with Lara's forces at the Lac La Belle docks. Faces were grim, but it was good to see Lara. As soon as we stepped onto the docks, she pulled me into a fierce hug and wouldn't let go. I buried my face in her chest and breathed deeply.

She didn't really release me so much as loosen her grasp, but she kept an arm around my shoulders while accepting a hug from Elisabeth. The three of us walked down the dock to shore and up to a cluster of wolves surrounding three SUVs. Faces were grim.

"Are they loyal?" I asked Lara.

"Everyone is having a hard time believing it," she replied. "If we find what you have said we will find, they will be rock steady loyal for me. If we don't, I won't have support from anyone."

"I think I can handle that question," Elisabeth said. "Everyone, gather around." I handed her my cell phone, Gia's really, but mine for now, and Elisabeth began showing them photos."

"How do we know these were taken where she said they were?" One of the males asked. I didn't recognize him.

"You don't," I said.

"But those pictures were taken yesterday," Elisabeth. "The range of places they could have been taken is small. I can vouch for that, Emmanuel."

"How do we know this property belongs to Natalie?" he asked.

"It is a matter of public record," I said. "I used government sources to track everything down, but once I had, I went back to public records to verify it was readily available."

"I verified the information myself," said Elisabeth.

"When did you do that?" I asked her.

"Your first night out while I was tracking you."

"I checked as well," Lara said.

I nodded at both of them. Good. It wasn't just my word.