Chapter 32: Isabelle
Isabelle was relieved to hear that the ranch hands were amendable to the plan they had come up with. Joey was apparently the lone exception, and even he grumbled an agreement that he wouldn’t touch Isabelle so long as Cormac told him not to. Of course, Cormac and Isabelle didn’t tell the men what was actually going on. What they told them was a simple white lie that they knew they could keep up: they were pretty sure they had fallen in love.
“I believe Isabelle when she says she won’t tell no one,” Cormac said, holding her hand in front of everyone. “She admitted to me that she was startin’ to fall for me, and she’s gonna stay here for a bit to feel this thing out.”
“It’s very intense to love a shifter,” Clint told her.
Isabelle gave a soft, lovelorn smile, hoping to sell the story to even the toughest skeptic. “But we’ve got to give this a shot.” She turned the sickeningly sweet expression towards Cormac. “All I know is I’ve never felt this way.”
The ruse was Cormac’s idea. Isabelle had said that the men couldn’t know why she was staying in case one of them was indeed the source to which Wes referred but she was at a loss for what to tell them.
“I’m staying here now and I’m free to walk around.” She sucked air through her teeth. “I think they’re going to get a little suspicious unless we give them a reason.”
“It’s not one of these guys,” Cormac repeated but in the end, he understood what she was saying. He came up with the plan of them saying they were in love, and looked openly hurt when Isabelle rolled her eyes.
“If you think that’ll work,” she said.
“Shifters don’t mess with each other’s mates. It’ll keep everyone away from you. It’ll...keep you safe.”
Isabelle felt the taut grip of goosebumps when he said it. She suppressed a shiver that her body was aching to course through her. A throb in between her legs started and grew, getting so strong that it began to hurt. She wondered how much of this cover story was a lie and how much was completely true.
“So you do trust me?” Isabelle said after they told Tara the truth and the actual plan. Tara’s face had dropped when they let her know they weren’t really in love. For a second, Isabelle reconsidered lying to the old woman just to make her that happy again.
“Trust ya? Sure, I guess I trust ya.”
“I mean, do you trust me to go out on my own? Like, can I have the keys to the rental car? Can I go into other towns and ask questions you wouldn’t want me asking? That kind of stuff.”
Cormac made a noise Isabelle wasn’t sure how to interpret, and stiffened up for the second time that day. “I hate the idea of you pokin’ around and askin’ questions. The folks around here are good people. They’re gonna be real upset by what you’re drivin’ at when ya talk to ‘em.”
“Journalism is messy,” Isabelle replied with a shrug. “The truth tends to not come so easily.”
Later that day as the three of them were eating alone in the kitchen, Cormac stood up and disappeared into the bedroom. He came back with Isabelle’s keys and placed them next to her plate.
“I trust ya.”
Isabelle put her hands over the keys and stared up at him. “I trust you too.”
She didn’t think it was love but she had to admit it was incredibly strong lust. There hadn’t been a time in her life when she felt physical pain in her cunt just from being around a guy. There was something in the way his eyes seemed to get bigger when she walked into the room. It turned her on to think that he had to see more of her; that he could see more of her.
Aside from the attraction, there was a nagging thought that was hibernating at the base of her skull. A thought that had to do with her boss and this story and why she was sent out here in the first place. It was all a little too convenient that the man who was always trying to pawn her off on some dumb puff piece because she didn’t have a dick had not only sent her there completely randomly but also now wanted her to carry this story, to find the threads and the lead and tie it up together in a format he could sell.
This was the same man who once told Isabelle that he had forgotten her name when she wouldn’t fuck him. “I was trying to keep it in my head,” he said, staring at her with dead eyes and an off putting smile across his lips, “but it never took. Guess you didn’t do enough to stand out.”
She bit her tongue, the way she had her entire life and assumed she would continue doing until she died, to avoid shouting at him that she was one of three women in the entire office, and one of them was his secretary. It wouldn’t have done any good. Wes would have branded her crazy and emotional, and she very well might have been let go. Her only option was to stare back with eyes as dead as she could make them and wait until he got bored of taunting her.
Before she went into the nearby towns to ask questions, she drove to roughly the spot where she had taken off running and pulled the rental off to the side of the road. The sign from the uninhabited development seemed so much closer this time than it had when she assumed she was running for her life, and Cormac’s heavy breathing was right behind her.
Trudging through the kicked up dirt and scraggly plants, Isabelle wondered why she wasn’t considering this as a chance to escape. From the moment she entered the sad, slanted cottage to talk to Cormac, she knew she was in this for the long haul. Her survival instinct was defeated by her desire to find out what was going on. Telling Cormac that she couldn’t walk away from a story was a half truth. The other side of it was that she was pretty sure insidious motives were propelling forward this entire debacle, and it was hard not to picture herself getting sucked under in its wake.
The canister of film was right where she had left it, albeit it a bit dirt and streaked with some unidentifiable fluid. Isabelle wiped it off on her pants, slipping it into her pocket as she swiveled her head to make sure no one was watching her. She thought she was getting increasingly paranoid but there was too much to be worried about; paranoia was beginning to feel like a necessary evil.
She was impressed by the straightforward quality of rules among the pack. Joey had backed off almost the second Cormac announced the false plan, whether he was suspicious of the timing or not. Isabelle could have sworn she saw him grimace when Cormac arrived holding her hand as if he was disgusted by the whole affair but he said nothing to her about it and kept his distance for the rest of the night. Isabelle still had the creeping sensation of him watching her, a feeling she knew she might have to get used to.
Back in the rental car, Isabelle took the scenic route to the general store she and Cormac had visited the other day. In actuality, she got a little lost on the winding mountain roads but had found her way eventually. The drive had helped relax her; helped her remember that at one point not that long ago, she had been excited to spend a few days out here. It helped her remember that she had needed a break and a change of scenery, and had it not been for all this insanity, she’d already be back in Denver, sitting hunched at a desk in an office where people dismissed her, ignored her, harassed her. Besides, when she was here, she got to be with Cormac. Simply standing alongside him made her palms sweat and her mouth run dry.
As she got closer to the town, a truck she thought she recognized blew past her, crossing a lackluster double yellow line to get ahead. There weren’t too many roads that kept up the pretense of traffic laws; Isabelle had noticed how few of them were paved or painted correctly.
“Everyone out here has the same truck,” she told herself, coasting smoothly into the town, pretending to herself and anyone who happened to be watching that she was in no rush and there was no such thing as urgency. “Don’t make yourself crazy.”
Crossing the street to talk to Gus at the general store, Isabelle knew for certain that she was being watched but that had more to do with the old men who stopped speaking the moment her long, muscular legs unfolded out of the car. She was always happy that she was tall, and now more than ever. At least her size put up a bit of a buffer between her and the men who might be tempted to talk to her. Sometimes they saw the height and the build and the close cropped hair and went from wanting to hit on her to assuming she wasn’t interested in men. Mostly, they just whispered to each other, obvious and pointed in their male intimidation. Isabelle loved it when she spotted them doing that; it made her feel powerful, threatening. There wasn’t enough of that feeling in her day to day life.
Gus was inside and seated, watching blurry eyed a portable TV set wedged into the corner of the counter. He glanced up as she entered, a cursory check to see which of the regulars it was, then got to his feet when he recognized her.
“Cormac’s friend, right?” he said. “From Denver.”
“That’s right. Can I ask you a few questions, Gus?”
Gus stared down the barrel of the miniature recording device Isabelle had produced from her bag. He chewed the inside of his mouth before answering. “More questions ‘bout wolves?”
“Sort of.”
“I told ya what I know.”
Isabelle smiled in a patronizing fashion and shook her head. “Gus, you didn’t tell me anything and you know it.”
Gus sat back down and crossed his arms over his chest. Isabelle was more than familiar with this posture. She had seen it dozens of times when she hit a nerve with an interview subject. In this case, it happened so fast and before she had really started to probe so she knew there was plenty here that Gus wasn’t ready to divulge.
“I dunno why you people from Denver care ‘bout some wolves in the desert,” Gus told her, pushing his lips outward in a defiant pout. Isabelle thought he looked like a child throwing a tantrum though she realized Gus probably thought he looked stern. “So ya saw some wolves? What’s the big deal?”
“We can dispense with that whole game now.”
“What whole game?”
Isabelle leaned forward, bringing the recording device closer. “Why don’t you just tell me what you know about shifters?”
Gus stood up so fast that he knocked over his stool. It hit the ground, causing a noise that startled the both of them although Isabelle hid her surprise better than Gus did. She was just glad there was no one else in the store though the old men sitting directly outside the plate glass window turned their heads slightly to see what made the crashing sound.
“Shifters,” Gus repeated, bending over awkwardly and seemingly painfully to right his stool. “Like people who change into other people or somethin’?”
“Or animals. Specifically wolves.”
Gus sat back down, shook his head, crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re talkin’ fiction, lady. Maybe you should be the next Stephen King and leave news reportin’ to the people who can tell the difference between stories and life.”
Isabelle was undeterred. She raised one eyebrow and licked her lips. “You’ve never seen anything odd around here? Never heard anyone talking about weird creatures they couldn’t explain?”
“Maybe a town drunk or two when they were on a bender but I got more sense than that to believe what they say.”
“So there’s nothing you want to tell me? Nothing about the people around here or the wildlife? Nothing interesting comes to mind at all?”
Gus snorted, hacked up a loose from the back of his throat, and spit it expertly into a trash can next to him. “Nothin’ interestin’ happens ‘round here,” he told her with a smile that was weak at best. “That’s the way we like it.”
Isabelle put the recording device away and started towards the door without saying goodbye. It was obvious to both of them that he was lying. Even Gus knew he hadn’t made a decent show of hiding the fact that he had more information than he let on.
As Isabelle pushed the door open and it rang out its welcoming jingle, Gus stopped her. “Why ya askin’ these questions for? Just get back to Denver. Tell that boss of yours not to send ya out this way again. It’s no place for a lady ‘round here.”
Isabelle gave one last patronizing smile, this one triumphant in its beam. “Well that’s perfect for me because I’m no lady.”
She could tell Gus was watching her as she made her way back to the car. In fact, she could tell they were all watching her but each of them for different reasons. The old men were watching her because they were dreaming of the day they were young and handsome enough to have the nerve to approach a woman like her; Gus was watching her because she was asking too many questions, and he just knew that she was going to be bad news.