Page 24 of Wounded Christmas Wolf
Rocket nuzzled up against her leg, and she leaned down to pet the dog’s soft head. Cupcake was already on the porch, sniffing at something in front of the door—had one of the neighbors left something there? “Hey, drop it, Cupcake. Leave it.” If someone had left food on the porch—on theflooron the porch—surely they remembered that the farm had dogs? She hoped she wasn’t going to have to deal with a veterinary emergency tonight, on top of everything else.
Whatever was on the porch, Cupcake seemed more puzzled by it than truly interested in eating it or carrying it around. He sniffed at it and then, inexplicably, growled.
“Rocket, no, leave it, heel,” Holly ordered, when the border collie started to surge forward. Rocket was considerably better with voice commands than Cupcake, and fell back to Holly’s side.
Cupcake meanwhile was sniffing at the thing again. It definitely wasn’t food. She could see fabric; something wrapped in a piece of cloth, maybe? Holly moved Cupcake out of the way and bent over to see what it was.
And then she screamed.
JACE
Jace was halfwayup the hill when Holly’s scream hit him like a lightning bolt.
He had no conscious recollection of deciding to move, or even of moving, before he was sprinting down the hill in long bounds. It was something beyond decision or thought, and it came from the deepest, most instinctive part of him, the wolf side of him.
Holly was on the porch of the farmhouse. She was kneeling, with the dogs nuzzling anxiously at her, and she was alone; all of this he took in at a glance. What had made her scream? She had her knees together and something cradled in her lap.
Jace crouched near her. He cautiously put a hand on her shoulder, and she startled a little. “It’s okay. It’s me.” He kept his voice steady, trying to crush down the adrenaline. It would have been easier if there had been someone to fight. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
She might have slipped on an icy patch on the porch. But her scream hadn’t sounded like the startled yelp of someone who had fallen over. There was real fear and hurt in it.
And yet there was nothing nearby to have threatened her. The dogs didn’t look like they sensed a threat; they were only puzzled and upset because their mistress was scared and unhappy.
Holly raised her head. Her eyes were wet. “It’s one of my dolls,” she whispered.
That didn’t make any sense. Jace frowned at the thing in her lap, a mess of broken white pieces and fluffy pale foam and tattered fabric—oh. Suddenly he realized what he was looking at. It was one of those antique dolls with a china face and hands and feet, the rest of the doll made up of a stuffed body and dress. One of the girls in the group home, a long time ago, had a doll like that; it was a keepsake from her grandparents.
But this doll had been damaged. Destroyed. The fabric of its dress and body were deeply gashed, with stuffing bleeding out the holes. One of the arms was dangling, nearly separated from the body.
“Did the dogs do this?”
“No,” Holly whispered. “I—I mean, I don’t think so.”
Her voice quavered. Jace went down fully to sit on the porch, so that he could put an arm around her. She leaned into him a little. Rocket stuck her wet nose in Jace’s ear, and he gently but impatiently pushed the dog away.
“Can I?” he asked Holly quietly.
Holly put the doll in his hand. She was shivering a little, and leaned into him more.
As soon as he got a close look, he saw why she said it wasn’t the dogs. The doll had been cut with a knife. Someone had gashed its body, torn the dress, broken the china face and hands.
The sheer anger that it would take to destroy something in this way was horrifying.
“Who would do something like this?” Jace asked.
Holly shook her head helplessly.
Jace pushed away Rocket again and helped Holly stand up. “Was the door locked?”
“No. We never lock the door here.”
And up at the tree farm, with vehicles coming and going, they would never have noticed if someone had pulled into the farm yard and then left again. “Stay out here with the dogs,” he said. “I’ll check the house.”
Holly recoiled. “You don’t think there’s someone?—”
“I don’t know. But I’ll look around.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” Holly whispered, almost too quiet to hear.
