"What does Alex think, since she was the one who found the bodies?" someone else asked. "Do either of you believe it could have been animals that killed them?"
"Roger Bemis said he saw a pair of wolves prowling around near his property on the west side of town the other day," interjected Fran Littlejohn, who ran the town's small health clinic. Ordinarily she was a reasonable woman, but now there was a strong note of worry in her voice. "Been a hard winter already and it's just started. What's to say it wasn't a hungry pack that decided to attack the Toms place?"
"That's a damn good point. And if it was wolves, what's to say they won't come looking around here, now that they've gotten a taste for human prey?" came another paranoid suggestion.
"Now hold on, everyone," Zach said, his attempt to inject calm getting lost as the voices in the building escalated along with the level of hysteria.
"You know, I saw a wolf right before nightfall just last week. Big black male, sniffing around the Dumpster out back of Pete's. Didn't think nothing of it then, but now--"
"And don't forget that it wasn't more than a few months ago that wolves killed some sled dogs down in Ruby. The papers said they didn't leave anything more than entrails and a couple of leather collars--"
"Maybe the smartest thing to do is to take some action here," Big Dave said from his post at the back of the room. "Seeing how we're stuck waiting on the Staties to get their shit together and come out to lend us a hand, maybe what we need to do is organize a hunting party. A wolf-hunting party."
"It wasn't wolves," Alex murmured, her mind flashing back unwillingly to the sight of the bloodied track she saw in the snow. It hadn't been left by a wolf, nor any other kind of animal, of that she was certain. But a small voice whispered that it wasn't exactly human, either.
So ... what, then?
She shook her head, refusing to let her thoughts wrap around the answer she hoped--prayed--could not be true.
"It wasn't wolves," she said again, lifting her voice over the din of paranoia running as rampant as a disease all around her. She stood up and turned to face the vengeful crowd. "No wolf kills like this, not by itself. Not even the boldest pack together would do this."
"Miss Maguire is right," said Sidney Charles, one of Harmony's Native elders and the town's longrunning mayor, even if he held the office in name only in recent years. He nodded to Alex from his seat in the front row of the church, the dark hair of his leather-bound ponytail shot with gray, his tanned face lined the deepest at the corners of his mouth and eyes, creases earned from his kindhearted, jovial nature. Today he was somber, however, the heavy weight of all this talk of death showing in the slump of his otherwise proud shoulders. "Wolves have a respect for mankind, as we should respect them. I have lived a long time, long enough that I can promise you they did not do this awful thing. If I live for a hundred more years, I will never believe they would."
"Well, all due respect, Sid, but I, for one, would rather not take that chance," Big Dave said, to the ready agreement of several other men standing nearby. "Last I knew, there weren't no season on dealing with problem wolves. Ain't that right, Officer Tucker?"
"No, there's not," Zach relented. "But--"
Big Dave went on. "If we've got wolves threatening human settlements, folks, then it's our right to defend ourselves. Hell, it's our goddamned duty. I sure as shit don't want to wait around until some rangy pack decides to attack again."
"I'm with Big Dave on this," said Lanny Ham, shooting up from his seat like a rocket. He wrung his hands in front of him, his nervous gaze darting around the room. "I say we take action before the same kind of trouble comes to roost right here in Harmony!"
"Are any of you listening at all?" Alex challenged, her anger flaring. "I'm telling you, wolves were not responsible for what happened to Pop Toms and his family. They were attacked by something terrible, something horrific ... but it wasn't a wolf. What I saw out there could not have been done by any kind of animal. It was something else--"
Alex's voice snagged in her throat as her gaze strayed to the back of the church and clashed with a pair of silver eyes so piercing they stole her breath. She didn't know the black-haired man who stood there in the shadows near the door. He wasn't from Harmony, or any of its far-flung neighboring towns. Alex was sure she'd never seen those lean, razor-sharp cheeks and square-cut jaw, or the startling intensity of his gaze, anywhere before in the whole of the Alaskan interior. His face wasn't the kind a woman would ever forget. The stranger said nothing, didn't even blink his inky lashes as she went suddenly mute and lost her train of thought. He merely stared back at her over the heads of the townsfolk as if she were the only one he saw, as if the two of them were the only people in the entire room.
"What do you think it was, dear?"
Millie Dunbar's thready voice jolted Alex out of the unnerving hold of the stranger's gaze. She swallowed on her parched throat and turned back to face the sweet old woman and the other people who were now waiting in silence to hear what she believed she saw out at the Toms settlement.
"I ... I'm not really sure," she hedged, wishing she'd never opened her mouth. She felt the heat of the stranger's eyes on her and was suddenly unwilling to voice what she had been thinking that day in the bush, and in all the torturous hours that had passed since.
"What did you see, Alexandra?" Millie pressed, her expression a heart-squeezing mix of hope and dread. "How can you be so certain it wasn't animals that killed those good folks?" Alex gave a weak shake of her head. Damn it, she'd walked right into this on her own, and now, with almost a hundred pairs of eyes locked on her, awaiting her explanation, there was little she could do to back out of it. Not without making herself look like an idiot and condemning an innocent pack of area wolves to the overzealous attention of Big Dave and the posse that seemed to be waiting for permission to roll out and blow them away with no cause.