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“What the hell are you doin’?” Cole demanded, but I shushed him.
“I’m sorry, sweet thing. I wouldn’t do this unless I had to,” I whispered. I carefully pushed back bloodied fur and studied the edges of the wound. They were clean—too clean—no rough or severed edges, no tears, no… anything. “A knife didn’t do this.”
“What do you mean?” Declan asked.
“Even the sharpest of blades would leave some kind of evidence to tell us what it was,” I told him. “This cut is perfect—straight line, edges. No one is perfect. It’s almost mechanical or…”
“Or what?” Maverick prompted. I didn’t answer as I shoved to my feet and took a long step back to look at the entire situation all over again.
No shoe prints.
No paw prints.
No broken grass or weeds.
No upset dirt.
No signs of struggle.
At all.
Why wouldn’t she fight back? She had to be a good one-seventy to two hundred pounds, muscular and strong. She would’ve put up a fucking fight. No one just laid down to take being gutted.
And that positioning… one paw curled to her chest, neck long and snout stretched out, tail rigid.
Almost like a hunting dog.
“But we’re not dogs,” I murmured. Someone behind me said something—I didn’t have a fucking clue. We weren’t dogs. That thought was stuck on replay as I worked out the oddity laid out in front of me. “We’re not…”
I took another step back and glanced down the road. I could see the entry into town from where we stood.
“What’s that way?” I asked, interrupting whatever their conversation was. I knew the fucking answer, but I needed a sounding board.
“The vet’s office,” Lucas said.
“The vet’s office,” I repeated. My gaze flicked to the wolf. “The vet’s office… do both Charlotte and Cecelia still use the woods behind Connor’s office to go running?”
“Yeah.”
“And we’re what… half a mile away?” I continued. I didn’t wait for an answer as I stepped back to the road, bypassing everyone. My brain was fucking rolling. “His office is on the other side of the street… that means they’d be on this side… we don’t cross streets… it’s too dangerous…”
Any wolf knew to avoid the roads. It was a surefire way to get yourself into fucking trouble. What if a car hit us? What if someone from town saw us? Too many fucking variables. Cecelia or Charlotte wouldn’t have crossed the fucking street—not for a damn thing in the world.
I stepped into the street, staring into the woods on the other side. I scanned fucking everything I could.
No disturbances.
No footprints.
No fucking struggle.
Tail pointed right to the vet’s office.
Nose pointed to…
“The town sign,” I whispered. I took off at a fast jog down the road.
“Killian!” Declan called after me.
