Chapter 30: Isabelle

Once it sounded like Cormac was out of the main house, Isabelle cracked the door to her room and peeked into the hallway. Tara was standing stock still in the kitchen, unsure of which way to look or where to direct her attention. It was obvious to Isabelle that she had been spotted but Tara didn’t seem to be doing much of anything so she opened the door the rest of the way.

“Are you going to try to stop me if I run outside?” Isabelle asked. It was mostly a bluff. She didn’t have the keys to the rental car or any money. Most of her things had been confiscated when they decided she was a prisoner. Still, her survival instinct was operating in high gear, and she considered herself to be in pretty decent shape. Even if it took her all day to walk to the nearest town, she would do what she had to do to stay alive.

“I won’t do nothing,” Tara told her. She beckoned. “Please. Come ‘ere. You know I don’t want to ‘urt no one.”

Isabelle went to the kitchen, standing warily in the doorway. Tara didn’t invite her to sit down, and Isabelle had no intention of doing so. She hovered, on edge and on guard and on her toes should she have to make a break for it. Tara looked so tired and drawn that Isabelle found herself leaving the constant state of fear in which she had spent the last twenty four hours. When she kissed Cormac, her fear had dulled slightly but remained intact. Now it was piecing apart and clattering around her feet. This woman in front of her, shifter or not, wolf or not, was scared herself; she was in pain, fretting about the past and the future. Isabelle took a step forward, and the two of them studied each other in the dusty, pale light of the kitchen.

“If I left here,” Isabelle started to say, “I wouldn’t tell a soul.”

“I know. I know.” Tara motioned to the phone hanging on the wall. A number was jotted down on the pad mounted next to it. “Someone, she called for you. Say you need to call ‘er back as soon as possible.”

“What did you tell her when she called?” Isabelle asked, thinking at just how comfortable this old woman might be with bold facing lying.

“I told ‘er you were out. I say you were with Cormac.”

Isabelle almost blushed. Instead, she swallowed a lump in her throat and crossed the kitchen to the phone. The number had a Denver area code but it wasn’t a number she was familiar with. A tornado of thoughts, of options now that she was standing with a means of communication in her reach. A number she could call and scream for help to. Tara couldn’t stop her though they could all certainly kill her before help was sent. That was a distinct possibility; it unleashed itself from the vortex of the tornado and planted itself behind her eyes.

She punched in the phone number and waited as the line rang. A male voice answered with a grunt. “Yeah.”

“Uh, hi. Whoever this is, you called me. Isabelle.”

The voice perked up. “Isabelle? Hey, it’s Terry.”

“Terry? What is this number? Why are you calling me out here?”

“It wasn’t me, actually. It was Wes. He wants to talk to you about something. I don’t know what it is but he’s making a huge deal about it.”

“Like what? What does that mean?”

Terry rolled a gravelly grunt around the back of his throat. “He doesn’t want any calls to you coming from the normal phones. He’s got this weird one in his office that he’s had me or that idiot secretary of his sitting by until you called back.”

Rarely did Wes give that much thought to Isabelle. She had a sprig of flattery battering the inside of her ribcage before it went inert, and the anxiety set in. Ninety percent of the time, Wes couldn’t care less if Isabelle was there or not; covering a story or not; dead or alive. Then out here in the desert when she’s been held against her will on a stupid assignment she was too experienced for, he had something to talk to her about. He had something to say to her. No good was going to come of this; that much she knew.

Terry handed the phone off to Wes then there was a stretch of muffled banter as Wes chased Terry out of his office. Whatever had to be said, it had to be said only to Isabelle.

“Can you hear me, Isabelle?” Wes asked, his voice lower than normal. He sounded the way Tara looked but there was an energy coming through the phone that set Isabelle’s nerves on edge. “I want to let you know something.”

Her mouth was running dry; her heart was beating so fast it was causing a cramp in her lungs. “I can hear you, Wes.”

“I was handed a very exclusive piece of information, and I realized that you may have come across the same thing. A source out that way tells me there’s some strange breed of wolf walking around. You hear anything like that?”

Isabelle locked eyes with Tara then turned her back to her, cradling her half of the conversation to the wall. “Wes, what do you mean when you say a source?”

“It means I know what’s going on out there. Well, maybe I don’t know everything but I know enough. I know you’ve got something special on film, and I know you’re willing to give that film up if it means you won’t be hurt.”

“Listen.” She dropped her voice as low as possible, hoping Tara couldn’t hear her. “I don’t want to betray these people, alright? You don’t understand what kind of danger they’ll be in.”

“Isabelle, can I level with you?”

She sighed. “Yeah. Go ahead.”

“We’re going to find a way to break this story with or without you. If you want to be a part of it then you bring me the proof I need. After that, I promise that you’ll get what you want. I won’t send you out on these shitty assignments anymore.”

“You’d say whatever you had to at this point.”

“What choice do you have, kid?” Wes asked. “Can you hear me, Isabelle? This is happening, and you can be there when it happens.” He hacked a cough directly into the phone. The sound of it made Isabelle wince. “Call me at this number if you need to,” he told her, “but I recommend not calling me until you’ve got proof of those werewolves or whatever they are out there. Am I coming through crystal clear, Isabelle?”

“Couldn’t be any clearer, Wes. No questions from me.”

She heard Wes mutter, “good,” but had brought the phone back to its cradle quickly so as to not have to listen to anymore of his voice or coughing or breathing. The noises coming out of him nauseated her; the cramp in her lungs clenched lower and moved towards the base of her spine.

“Isabelle?” Tara asked after Isabelle had hung up the phone but hadn’t turned around. “What did the lady ‘ave to say?”

“It wasn’t the lady that time, Tara.”

“Who was it?”

Isabelle faced her and slumped against the wall. She was having trouble pinpointing where she was in time and space. The room faded in and out of her vision, and the only thing she could focus on was the sliver of horizon she saw out of the kitchen window. Then the rock formation next to it. Then it all faded to a soft gray again.

“I think I need to sit down.”

Her voice had come from somewhere but she couldn’t place it. She hadn’t felt the normal vibrations in her throat; it seemed like her lungs didn’t expel any air. An air of panic had seeped into the room. From the slowly contortion of Tara’s features, Isabelle was positive she felt it too.

“Tell me what is ‘appening.” Tara was by her side, taking hold of her elbow. “What did ‘e say? Who did you talk to?”

One full formed thought lifted itself to the surface of Isabelle’s mind: I have to tell Cormac. Tara’s fingers pressed into the crook of her arm, tensing as the silence sat heavier. I have to tell Cormac. She couldn’t force the words to move from inside her head to her mouth. When they got close to her throat, close enough she had thought for them to turn into sounds, they strangled and collapsed to dust.

“Where…” The rasp in the back of her mouth nearly caused Isabelle to gag. “Where is he? I have to…”

“Cormac? ‘E’s outside somewhere.”

Isabelle bolted to the front door. Only when she was out in the white heat did she realize that Tara hadn’t tried to stop her; that no one else was around. If she could take off now unseen, she’d have a fighting chance. Except that she wasn’t wearing shoes and she was heading on foot sans money and ID towards towns that might be populated with people just like Tara and Cormac. Or worse, like Joey. Unwilling to show decency and mercy. Unwilling to let a human escape when he was handed the perfect excuse to bleed them dry.

But there was a stronger reason than the practical ones. Isabelle thought that in some way, she owed this to Cormac, to tell him that danger and exposure was en route, and none of them knew quite how to stop it. She didn’t forgive him for holding her hostage the way he had. She didn’t think she ever would. The fact of the matter, the fact that looked transparent and unequivocal in the indifferent light of day, was that they acted the way they had because of fear. Isabelle knew first hand how fear and cowardice can make good people do bad things.

Fear had been the reason for so many of Isabelle’s own choices earlier in her life. It was only when she saw how much harder it was to live with the options she selected due to fear that she learned how to steel herself against the frightening possibilities that came from taking risks. Risks made her stomach drop out, and they were supposed to. That was by design.

“If it was easy,” she had said one night over cocktails to a group of friends curious as to why she was driving herself to the brink of exhaustion for a boss that ignored her and a workplace that treated her with disdain, “then everybody would do it.”

Difficult choice after difficult choice; risk after risk. It had all led her here to a moment in time, stranded and barefoot in the desert, where there was no easy option, no path of least resistance. There was a chance to escape, and there was a chance to warn someone of an impending storm. When the landscape was as barren as this place was, people were used to seeing storms coming in from a mile away.

Isabelle stayed close to the side of the main house, keeping her eyes on the paddock. She was pretty sure she saw most of the men there but she didn’t see Cormac. Clint and Joey were both riding the biggest stallions around, Clint skillfully leading his over jumps. Creeping along the shadows, she scanned the rest of the ranch. Cormac wasn’t anywhere to be seen. His truck was there so she knew he hadn’t taken off. She was running too much of a risk being out there, and the finite shade of the house was only protection from a distance. The second one of the men got closer, they’d see the unmistakable form of the tall woman they hardly knew. If she didn’t spot Cormac soon, she had to get back inside.

The side of the house radiated heat even though the sun was no longer pounding down onto it. Isabelle leaned her head against the pockmarked plaster and sighed. For the first time in years, she truly had no idea of what she needed to do.

Her eyes landed on the door to the broken down cottage. The other day, the door had been so firmly shut that it looked almost welded into place. Like it was dangerous and uninhabitable and would bestow an ancient, unrelenting hex on whomever dared cross into it. Today though, Isabelle saw a seam of light coming from between the molding and the door, could see a slash of the flooring just past the threshold. Another single thought lifted itself to the top of her mind: Cormac. With nothing else in her head and nowhere else to go, she started towards the barely open door, hoping that he was in there, knowing that she was out of options if he wasn’t.