For someone so smart, you sure are dumb…

It was one of my mother’s favorite sayings, always on the tip of her tongue when I brought home straight A’s but didn’t have the sense to cough more while we were at the doctor’s office so he would prescribe the “good” cough medicine. The kind she confiscated for her own recreational use, leaving me to get by with warm showers and tea with honey to combat my winter colds.

From the distance of adulthood, I realize that I was never dumb. I simply lacked the street smarts my mother seemed to have been born with.

Over the years I’ve gotten savvier, crafty enough to bend the rules to my advantage on my way to becoming an award-winning undercover reporter. But I still do my best to stay within the broad strokes of the law. Only rarely have I poked around on private property, and not at all since I was nearly arrested while working on a toxic waste disposal exposé at a prison in Mississippi.

That time, a call to my editor, who excels at yelling at people, got my ass out of a sling before I was strip-searched by small-town cops, all of whom looked way too excited by the thought of discovering what I might have hidden in my orifices. The fact that the prison hadn’t posted private property notices along the far boundaries of its land also helped.

But this time, the “No Trespassing” signs are clearly, obnoxiously in view and, local girl or not, I’m sure the state troopers would only be too happy to arrest me for trespassing. Fucking with the people who are dumping money into this resource-and-opportunity-starved area won’t be taken lightly. And that’s assuming I get past the gate without electrocuting myself.

“Not smart,” I mutter as I wade through the knee-deep snow drifted against the wrought-iron portion of the fence, around to where the chain link starts about a hundred yards into the trees.

I look up, eyes narrowing as I study the coils at the top of the barrier through the flakes that have once again begun to fall. Even if I make it past the gate, the hotel is probably locked up for the holidays, and my lock-popping skills aren’t as finely tuned as they used to be, back when breaking into abandoned buildings was routine. And surely I’ll encounter an alarm system.

I’m more criminally prepared than the average twenty-seven-year-old, but I have no idea how to disable an alarm system. I’ve also brought nothing to conceal my identity from the cameras that have no doubt been recording my every move from the moment I stepped out of my car.

If I’m smart, I’ll head back to town before the snow gets deeper or the roads get slicker, check into the bed and breakfast, and wait until Monday, when hopefully there will be someone up here for me to pester with my questions.

Instead, I crouch down by the chain link fence and begin scooping the snow away from the base with my mittened hands. There’s no way I’ll be able to get over the top, where those electric coils hum dangerously in the otherwise snow-muted forest, but if the ground hasn’t frozen, I might be able to dig my way under.

And once I’m on the grounds, who knows what I’ll find?

I’m hoping there will be Lawler Industries trucks parked in that big lot behind the hotel, where satellite photos revealed grainy images of a fleet of construction vehicles. Or maybe I’ll be lucky enough to find the foreman’s office, a place with work orders, invoices—some sort of paper trail connecting Garrett to this project and, by extension, to the philanthropy in town.

I dig the heel of my boot into the dark earth I’ve exposed, nose wrinkling as a sharp jolt ricochets up my leg on contact. The ground is colder than I would like, but it’s not frozen yet, which means it’s worth looking around for something to dig with.

I turn, scanning the forest nearby, spotting a limb as big around as my wrist sticking out of a drift near where the mountain slopes down into the clearing below. I inch forward, testing the ground before I put weight on my boot, knowing better than to trust the snow to tell the truth about what’s happening beneath it. Thankfully, I reach the limb without incident, but when I try to pull it free, it refuses to budge.

I wrap both hands around the wood and pull harder, but still nothing. Cursing under my breath, I stomp a boot into the drift, making contact with the much bigger log the limb is attached to. Bracing my foot against the bark, I’m about to take another shot at tearing my tool free, when a mournful howl keens through the evening air.

I freeze, my eyes going wide, then wider as a second and a third cry echo the first. I grew up running wild in these woods, and I’ve heard my share of howling, but never this close. It sounds like the wolves are right on top of me, so near every hair on my body stands on end.

The last howl ends in several sharp yips, and I glance down, spotting a lupine shadow as it glides into the clearing below. The wolf sees me, too. Its sharp chin lifts, and its amber eyes fix on mine, sending a chill through my blood that has nothing to do with the sub-freezing temperature.

I take one slow step back and then another, keeping my eyes fixed on the first wolf as more lope into sight, some of them with fur so dark they’re barely visible in the fading light.

At least, barely visible to me. I’m sure that I—the tasty, defenseless prey cornered against the fence—am plenty visible.

“Wolves don’t usually attack people,” I mutter as I inch back along the way I came, intent on keeping the pack in sight until I’m closer to my car. But when the lead wolf—the amber-eyed devil who’s had me fixed in his sights since he appeared on the scene—starts up the incline, any comfort from my own reassurance evaporates in a rush of terror.

My careful steps become an awkward, backward jog, as the lead wolf picks up his speed, quickly closing the distance between us. Behind him, the rest of the pack flows through the forest, leaping over fallen trees and gliding through snowdrifts with an ease that makes my pulse race.

I’m a second from turning to run—figuring the extra speed I’ll gain is worth the risk that I’ll be pounced from behind—when a deep voice breaks the silence like a gunshot.