Read Online Unbound by Meredith Noone - Free Book Online Page B

though – and you look nothing like that dog. So I looked up wolf-like dogs on the internet.” Sachie frowned. “You don’t really look like a husky or a malamute, either. There are whole websites that tell you the difference.”
    He turned off the light and got into bed. Ranger lay back down, feeling unsettled, and was almost asleep when Sachie spoke again.
    “You’re definitely a wolf. You’ve got the build for it, and the right head shape, and your paws are huge . Your fur is right, as well. But here’s what I don’t understand: All the sites I’ve been on have said that wolves are really bad in the house. Like, really bad. They’re supposed to tear things up and be impossible to house break and are sort of… unpredictable. You apparently need fences eight feet high that are dug into the ground so they can’t dig out, and they’ll chase small animals and kill and eat them. Even wolfdogs are terrible.”
    Sachie was silent for another minute or so, but the wolf was wide awake, his heart beating like a drum against his ribcage.
    “I don’t think people would let you roam around Tamarack if you were going to eat their cats,” Sachie said. “I saw you with Mister Liddell’s cat last week. Tippy Cat. You know? The little tabby with the blue collar with the bell. She walked right past your nose and you didn’t do anything. But maybe you’d been out in the forest eating elk or something, so you didn’t need to eat her. I don’t know. You spend a lot of time in the woods. Is that where you were last night. In the woods?”
    The wolf wondered what Sachie would say if he knew that actually, he’d been curled up safely in a hotel in Norfolk with Michelle Devereaux, eating salty, greasy fast food. He whined, softly.
    “Maybe you’re just a really weird dog,” Sachie said, after a while. “You don’t look like one, though.”

    On Tuesday morning, Detective Bower sat down with Sachie at the breakfast table, his expression so unusually grim that Ranger wondered if someone had been killed a night early.
    Sachie must have noticed it, too, because he put his piece of toast back on his plate and said: “Whoah, Dad. What happened?”
    Detective Bower blinked, running a hand over his face. “Nothing. We didn’t manage to catch him.”
    “Okay.” Sachie drew the word out disbelievingly. “Then why do you look like someone spat in your cornflakes?”
    Ranger choked on the cream of wheat he was eating out of a ceramic bowl with violets on it, regurgitating a mouthful of milk onto the kitchen floor. Both Sacheverell and his father cast him disgusted glances before returning to their conversation as if nothing had happened.
    “I need you to go to Eli’s place after school today,” Detective Bower said.
    “I was just there yesterday, and I’m going again tomorrow. Is there a reason you want me to go to Eli’s today as well?” Sachie asked.
    Detective Bower nodded, pensively. “The killer only targets people who are alone. He’s willing to kill men and women on their own property. I just – I don’t want you here alone in the evening when I’m not back yet. Do you understand?”
    “Yeah,” Sachie said, then paused for a moment. “Wait, does that mean when I was here last Tuesday, alone, for five hours before you got home, I could’ve been brutally murdered? Dad !”
    “I don’t know,” Detective Bower said. “Maybe. Maybe not. The killer – they’re only killing certain types of people.”
    “Healthy people?” Sachie asked, his hand drifting to his chest to hover over his heart.
    The detective shook his head. “No. I wouldn’t have called at least a couple of the victims healthy , as such. Just – what have you learnt about the town of Tamarack in school, Sachie?”
    Sachie blinked, looking a little thrown by the abrupt change in subject. “Not a lot more than you told me,” he said. “It was founded in the 1700s by a guy called Absolon Devereaux, who came here and made a treaty with