Forever

“And there are not many options here. You could reveal the wolves for what they are, but —”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said hurriedly.

“—I was going to say that I do not think that is feasible. Telling Mercy Falls that they have a pack of wolves carrying an incurable infectious disease right after we discover that they have killed a girl …”

“Won’t end well,” I finished.

“And the other option is to try to motivate more animal rights groups to save the pack as wolves. It didn’t work in Idaho, and I think the time frame will be impossible, but …”

I said, “We thought of moving them.”

Koenig stilled. “Go on.”

I stumbled over the words. Koenig was so precise and logical that I felt, again, as if I needed to match it. “Someplace farther away from people. But then … it could just put us in a worse situation, unless we know what the people are like. And I don’t know what the pack will be like in a new place, without boundaries. I don’t know if I should try to sell Beck’s house to buy land, or what. There’s not enough money to buy a complete territory. Wolves range hugely, over miles and miles. So there’s always a chance of trouble.”

Koenig drummed his fingers on the wheel, eyes narrowed. A long moment of silence went by. I was glad of it. I needed it. The ramifications of my confession to Koenig felt unpredictable.

“I am just talking as I’m thinking,” Koenig said finally, “but I have property, a few hours farther up in the Boundary Waters. It was my father’s, but I just inherited it.”

I started, “I … don’t …”

“It’s a peninsula,” Koenig interrupted me. “Pretty big one. Used to be an old resort, but that’s all shut down because of old family politics. The end of it is fenced off. Not the best of fence, just box wire between trees in some places, but it could be reinforced.”

He glanced over at me at the same time that I looked at him, and I knew we were both thinking: This might be it.

“I don’t think a peninsula, even a big one, would be big enough to support the pack. We’d have to feed them,” I said.

“So you feed them,” Koenig said.

“And are there campers?” I asked.

“It faces mining land,” Koenig replied. “Mining company hasn’t been active since sixty-seven, but they hold on to the land. There’s a reason why the resort didn’t make it.”

I chewed my lip. It was hard to believe in hope. “We’d still have to get them there, somehow.”

“Quietly,” Koenig advised. “Tom Culpeper won’t consider relocation an alternative to their deaths.”

“And quickly,” I said. I was thinking about how long Cole had been unsuccessfully trying to trap wolves, however, and how long it would take to catch twenty-odd wolves and how we would transport them hours north.

Koenig was silent. Finally, he said, “Maybe it’s not a good idea. But you can consider it an option.”

An option. Option meant a plausible course of action, and I wasn’t sure it was even that. But what else did we have?

CHAPTER FORTY

GRACE

The interminable day finally ended when Sam came home with a pizza and an uncertain smile. Over the pizza, Sam told me everything that Koenig had said. We sat cross-legged on the floor of his room, his desk lamp and Christmas lights turned on, the pizza box between us. The desk lamp was next to the one sloping wall by the roof, and the way the wall diverted the light made the room seem warm and cavelike. The CD player by Sam’s bed was turned on, low, some smoky voice singing to a piano.

Sam described everything that had happened, making a little sweeping motion with his fingers across the floor with each one, as if unconsciously moving the last thing out of the way before he told me the next. Everything was a sort of a wreck, and I felt completely adrift, but I couldn’t help but think how much I liked to look at him in this low yellow light. He was not as soft as when I’d first met him, not as young, but the angles of his face, his quick gestures, the way he sucked in his lower lip to think before going on — I was in love with all of it.

Sam asked me what I thought.

“Of?”

“All of it. What do we do?”

He was stunningly trusting of my ability to logic it all through. It was such a lot to take in — Koenig guessing the secret of the wolves, the idea of moving being plausible, the thought of trusting all our fates to someone we barely knew. How did we know that he would keep our secret?

“I need another piece of pizza to answer that,” I said. “Didn’t Cole want any?”

Sam said, “He told me he was fasting. I don’t think I want to know why. He didn’t seem unhappy.”

I pulled the crust off a piece of pizza; Sam took what was left. I sighed. The idea of leaving Boundary Wood was a disheartening one. “I’m thinking it wouldn’t have to be permanent. The wolves being on the peninsula, I mean. We could come up with a better idea later, after the hunt business had all died down.”

“We have to get them out of the woods first.” He closed the pizza box and traced the logo with a finger.

“Did Koenig say he’d help you get out of trouble? I mean, about me being missing? Obviously he knows you didn’t kidnap and kill me,” I said. “Does he have some way to get them off your back?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say anything.”

I tried to keep the frustration out of my voice; I wasn’t really frustrated with him. “Don’t you think that’s kind of important?”

“I guess? The wolves have only got two weeks. I can worry about clearing my name afterward. I don’t think the cops can find anything to pin on me,” Sam said. But he wasn’t looking at me.

“I thought the cops didn’t suspect you anymore,” I said. “I thought Koenig knew.”

“Koenig knows. No one else. He can’t just tell them I’m innocent.”

“Sam!”

He shrugged, not meeting my gaze. “There’s nothing I can do about it right now.”

The thought of him being questioned in the police department was acutely painful. The idea that my parents might think him capable of hurting me was even worse. And the possibility that he could be tried for murder was unthinkable.

An idea presented itself.

“I have to tell my parents,” I said. I thought about my conversation with Isabel earlier that day. “Or Rachel. Or someone. I have to let someone know that I’m alive. No dead Grace, no murder mystery.”