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“About the same.”
The wolf lifts his head to sniff the air and then lowers it again. Storm approaches and circles him, sniffing from a distance.
“Has she encountered wolves in the wild?” Lilith asks.
“A few. Most keep their distance, though she did have one who was very interested, and she thought that was great… until she realized he wasn’t looking for friendship. She was in heat.”
“Ah, the plight of being female. A male seems friendly. You entertain the hope of frolicking through the forest, only to discover that he just wants to jump you.”
“Right? So she’s being careful right now. Also she’s not in heat, which helps. She does have a canine friend, though, and he’s at least half wolf. A similar situation to Nero’s—we found him as a puppy, his mother dead.”
“Is he here? Nero might react a little more strongly to a young male.”
I shake my head. “He’ll be coming, but probably not until later this year.”
Dalton brings out a plate with a flatbread salmon sandwich, two kinds of pickles, and homemade potato chips.
“You’re hired,” she says as she takes it. “I like my dinner at seven.”
He shakes his head and drops back into his chair.
Lilith takes two bites of the sandwich. Then she sets the plateon her lap and reaches into a small backpack at her feet. She extracts a homemade leather bag and passes it over.
I open the bag and pull out a woman’s glove.
“I found that early this morning,” she says. “I thought it might belong to your missing woman.”
It’s a woman’s knitted glove. Not expensive, but warm. We’d bought them by the boxful for the crew.
“Is it yours?” she asks.
“Our brand, yes. Presumably from one of our women workers.”
“Can’t be many of those on a construction site.”
“Two-thirds, actually. But there’s an easy way to check this one.”
I head into the house and come back out with the bag containing Penny’s scent marker, along with two more gloves, which I’d taken from the stockroom for my own use. I set all three gloves on the deck.
“Storm?” I say.
She circles wide around Nero and hops back onto the deck. I hold out the scent marker. Then I point at the three gloves and ask if any of them belong to the same person. Nero rises and watches with interest as she delicately sniffs one glove and then the second and then the third. She returns and touches her nose to one and then looks at me.
“That’s Penny’s,” I say as I give Storm a thank-you pat. “Where did you find it?”
“Between the miner’s camp and the mountain.”
“Can you take us there, please?”
“If I can get a jar of these pickles to go.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
We’re in the area where Lilith found the glove. When we near it, she stops and surveys the landscape. Nero gives the slightest grunt, as if hating to interrupt her train of thought. Then he walks three paces to the left and looks into the forest.
“Yes, of course,” she says. “Thank you, Nero.”
We follow them in. Storm is sticking close to me, and it feels fifty percent like protection and fifty percent like a child hanging close to her mother in the face of other, unfamiliar children. When we’ve gone about ten paces, Storm stops and gives a low growl. Nero looks back, as if startled that this seemingly calm canine has randomly decided to threaten him. Then he sees that she’s looking into the forest.
