Read Online Isabel and the Wolf: (Part 3) by Ariana Hawkes - Free Book Online Page A

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    She walked into the center and saw Josie immediately. She was dressed in a bright orange blouse and a denim mini skirt, and she was balanced on the edge of a table, chatting to Rob, while he seemed to be absorbed in something on a laptop screen.
    “Bella!” Josie called, before Isabel had a chance to greet her. She was a little apprehensive about seeing her, given how they’d parted the previous time, but she saw only friendliness in Josie’s sparkling black eyes. “It’s great to see you!” Josie jumped down from the table and threw her arms around her.
    “I was hoping to catch you for lunch, but your neighbor told me you were here, so I thought it’d be a good opportunity to say hi to both of you,” Isabel explained rapidly.
    “Well, I’m very glad you did. Rob’s been working like crazy lately, and hasn’t even had time to stop for lunch, so I’ve started becoming ultimate homemaker and bringing him a lunchbox everyday!”
    “Oh, hey, Isabel!” Rob said, finally looking up from his laptop and seeing she was there. He walked over and gave her a hug.
    “So what’s been keeping you so busy?” she asked, when they’d enquired how the other was doing.
    “There’s so much stuff going on with the wolves at the moment. The one I told you about looks to be the tip of the iceberg. We’ve come across four more that seem to be unrelated to the local packs. They’re quite significantly bigger, and their coats are different – we’ve seen two more like black bears, one brown, and one that was almost white, which is pretty much impossible. They’re not Mexican grays, that’s for sure. If I didn’t know better, I’d say someone with an exotic – and highly illegal – collection had released them into Gila. Two out of the four we shot didn’t even get knocked out by the dart – they just ran off with it stuck in their hide. With the most recent two, we managed to take blood and measurements and tag them. But what’s weird is that, within 30 minutes of releasing them, the tags stopped emitting a signal. It’s possible that one of them could have malfunctioned, but both? It just doesn’t make sense.” Rob paused and massaged the back of his neck. “And what’s even weirder is that the photos I took of them didn’t come out – not even one.”
    “I’d put it down to Rob’s camera skills, but the fact is, you can’t go wrong with the digital camera he uses. It’s just point and shoot,” Josie added.
    “So they came out blurry, or what?” Isabel asked.
    “Have a look at them.” Rob retrieved his laptop and turned the screen so they could all see it. There were twenty or thirty photos, all of the forest floor, and all perfectly in focus. Almost all of them featured a dark shadow in the center, in the approximate shape of a wolf, as if the wolf had been between the photographer and the camera’s focus, so only the shadow was visible.
    “How would you get that angle, though?” Isabel said. “The sun would have to be really low in the sky, and shining clearly through the trees, which doesn’t seem to happen much in Gila’s dense foliage.”
    “That and the fact that the wolves were lying down, out cold when I photographed them.” On five of the photographs, there was no shadow, but a bright flash of light, as if the sun had hit the lens directly, obscuring the image. The edges of the shot were blurry gray, with no sign of foliage.
    “These are equally bizarre. I look in the viewfinder as I take the photos – as you might imagine – and I would’ve noticed if I’d been blinded by a flash of sunlight.”
    “And again, the angle’s all wrong,” Isabel said.
    “Nothing adds up here. And to tell you the truth, it’s been keeping me awake at night,” Rob said, his forehead furrowed.
    “I can testify to that,” Josie stage whispered.
    “Sorry, honey,” he draped an arm around her shoulder.
    “I’m only kidding, babe,” Josie said, and puckered her lips towards his for a