“Lloyd and Sarah are dead.” Debbie wished she had better news for her.
“Oh my…ohmigod.” Tears sprang into Zeta’s eyes, and for an instant, Debbie wondered if it was all an act—if she hadn’t known the deceased that well. Zeta choked back a sob and said, “I’ll…I’ll be right back.”
Debbie glanced at Allan to see his take on Zeta’s behavior. He raised his brows a little at her, but he had a dark look, and she wondered if he knew something more about this…Devlyn. And what was the business with Guy Lamb? Or maybe Allan thought Zeta was somehow involved in the murders.
Zeta returned with a box of tissues, set it on the coffee table, then grabbed one and blew her nose. She took her seat. “Sorry. I’d been upset with Sarah…” She paused and her eyes widened. “They’re dead because of an accident, right?”
“No, they were murdered,” Debbie said. “Why were you upset with Sarah?”
Zeta wiped her eyes again. “She moved here about six months ago, and we met at auditions to play roles in a local theater production. We really hit it off. We went to movies together and had lunches out. Neither of us was seeing a guy at the time, so it was perfect. I had started Wolf Zone about two months earlier, and some of the folks that had participated in the group had moved—like Guy Lamb—or their lives had gotten too busy.
“So I started a new game with some of the same players and some new ones. I asked Sarah if she wanted to play. She was all for it, but I thought she’d want to be a hunter, not a werewolf. Most of the time, the women want to be the hunters and not the prey. You never know people very well until something like that happens, you know?” Tears spilled down Zeta’s cheeks, and she hastily brushed them away.
“I’m so sorry. I’ve had friends like that before—you know, one minute they’re your best girlfriend, doing everything with you, and the next thing you know, they’re stuck to some guy like peanut butter. And that’s the end of the all-girl activities. So I was annoyed with her because she dumped me like I was no one of importance after we’d been really close.”
Before Debbie could ask Zeta any more questions, Allan queried, “So what was she like? What did she like?”
Zeta stared morosely at the table. “I thought she would have a falling-out with Lloyd and come back.” Then she frowned at Debbie and Allan. “Not that I’d just take right back up with her. How she’d acted was not the way to treat friends.”
“Why did you think she might have a falling-out with Lloyd?” Debbie asked.
“He wasn’t right for her. I don’t know. Something was off with both him and his friend. They said they were actors, and they really acted their parts, but they just seemed—intense. Too intense. Like they were getting into their roles a little too much. They had one of the women in tears because they thought she was the wolf and really bullied her. I had to put a stop to it and told them if they didn’t obey the rules, they had to leave the group. They were fine after that. I really thought they should have been the wolves.”
*
Why? Because the wolves were always growly, aggressive, and needed to be put down? Allan hadn’t heard of any Vaughn Greystoke, but many lupus garous used “Grey,” “Gray,” or “Silver” in their names to portray their gray wolf heritage, so that immediately caught his attention. Particularly if Sarah had been in this man’s pack and he was trying to track her down.
Allan had heard of a Devlyn Greystoke, a gray wolf pack leader in Colorado who had mated a red wolf. He’d been in Portland, Oregon, where she had been incarcerated at a zoo and the incident had made national news. Naked woman in the Oregon Zoo penned up with a real red wolf in freezing weather? Then she disappears from a hospital?
Even Allan and his pack members had heard the news and knew the two had to be wolves, though the media thought that Devlyn and Bella were animal advocates, intent on releasing the red wolf into the wild.
Debbie asked, “So what was Sarah like?”
“She was really different from me. She loved to stay out really late, and she was raring to go early in the morning. Who can burn the candle at both ends and still function? Not me. Anyway, she loved the woods. We went camping one night, not really my thing, but she was so enthusiastic about it. So I thought maybe going with her would make a difference. But then she left the tent in the middle of the night. She had me worried sick because she took so long to return. I thought something had gotten her. A wolf or bear or cougar.