Julie bit down on her lip. “You’ve trusted me before Alex. I’m asking you to do it again. I really think… sense Kieran should go on to Lovell. I think that whatever he’s looking for, that’s where he’ll find it. Call it another of my ‘feelings.’ ” She steeled herself for what would come next. “And I think you should come back, Alex.”
Silence. Julie squeezed the receiver. “Alex?”
“I heard you. I’m sorry, Julie, I have no intention of leaving Kieran now. He still needs me, and I’m going to see this through, just as I told him.” She paused. “You said you had a feeling. Is there more to this, Julie? More I should know?”
Julie fought a brief battle within herself. If she revealed what she suspected, what she believed, it was only going to make things more difficult for Alex. She didn’t need any more complications right now. And Julie had sensed no danger from Luke Gévaudan. His warning about Alex had been subtle, not pointed.
But there was still time to ask for Grandma’s help in this, find Luke and try to get more information.
“Just be careful, okay?,” she said at last. “Keep checking in as often as you can, same arrangement. Especially when you get to B.C. Don’t go to Lovell until you’ve called, in case I have more to tell you.”
“I promise.”
Julie sighed. “Good. We still have stuff under control on this end. The cops don’t have any solid leads so far.” She gave a brief, grim laugh. “Howie’s bunch hasn’t had much success in their hunt for the black wolf, either. How are things with you and Kieran?”
Another long silence. “Fine.”
Yeah. Right. Julie had given Alex a lecture about hanging on to something good when she found it, and now…
Julie rubbed the back of her neck, feeling the roughness of goosebumps on her skin. “Alex, I—”
She broke off, arrested by something she’d glimpsed out of the corner of her eye. A shape—a man’s silhouette, there one minute and gone the next, vanished around a corner of the nearest building several yards away.
“Listen, Alex, I’ve got to go. Call me again when you can. And be careful.”
She hung up quickly and sprinted across the lot. The sky was dark and lowering, and the sidewalks were almost empty here near the edge of town. She looked around the corner of the building where she’d seen the man.
He was walking away, wrapped in a dark, somewhat tagged coat, a knitted cap pulled low over his head. Not Luke or Howie or anyone else she recognized right away.
Then she remembered when she’d seen that particular coat and cap before.
Old man Arnoux. The recluse she’d once mentioned to Alex. She knew he’d been in town lately. He’d been seen with Howie’s bunch, undoubtedly after the same black wolf they’d been hunting. As he’d been five years ago. There’d been a few stories back then devoted to the odd old man’s obsession with that black wolf, even when nearly everyone had been concentrating on Cheryl’s murder.
Old man Arnoux. Julie shook her head. She hardly knew him, had never even spoken with him. He’d have no reason to listen in on her conversations—and even if he was trying to listen, he couldn’t have heard a damned thing from that distance. Not even with the keenest hearing.
Julie turned back for the garage, wondering why that odd, shivery feeling refused to go away.
Chapter 14
Kieran stared out across the prairie from his place beside the truck in the gas station parking lot, listening to the distant murmur of Alexandra’s voice on the phone.
She was talking to Julie. Kieran didn’t eavesdrop, though he could have. His hearing was good enough. But things had been tense between him and Alexandra during the hours they’d spent traveling, and they both needed their privacy now.
Everything was going as well as could be hoped. So far they’d been lucky—all last night and early this morning, following provincial routes paralleling the Trans-Canada Highway, they’d met only scant local traffic. They’d passed numerous tiny farm towns before pulling off the road to wait out the bulk of daylight hours, and hadn’t once glimpsed the local law enforcement. No one had paid any attention to Julie’s battered truck.