Free Sometimes the Wolf by Urban Waite

the two men and told them it was only a couple minutes away. The big man in the passenger seat was dressed informally in a worn pair of jeans and a padded flannel button-up. The last few buttons on the shirt left loose at the collar to allow for the rolls of skin that appeared below his jaw.
    The driver turned and looked back down the street and then when he turned back, still holding the coffee-stained address between his fingers, said, “You show us where it is and we’ll have you back in five minutes.”
    “Five minutes?”
    “Yep, you’d really be helping us out.” He reached behind him and pushed the door open from the inside. “Get in,” he said. “We’ll bring you right back.”
    She stepped in and brought the door closed behind her.
    When they came to the intersection with the dangling caution light she told them where to turn and they followed the lake road. The shadow of the mountains over much of the lake, but far to the east a sliver of gold was still visible on the water.
    “You heard what Driscoll was saying to the deputy today?” the man asked.
    “Some of it,” she said.
    The man smiled up at her reflection in the rearview. “So you were eavesdropping?”
    “No, of course not.”
    “It’s okay if you were,” the man said, kidding her still, his smile wide beneath his thin lips. “If the deputy is in trouble it’s better we hear about it sooner than later.”
    “I didn’t hear anything really. They were talking about his father,” Cheryl said. “You’re here about his father, right? So you must know the story about him.”
    “We’ve heard some stories.”
    The man watched her in the rearview and when they came to the driveway leading to the Drake property Cheryl pointed it out and told them how far up the house was. “Are you two here to take him back to prison?” she asked.
    The man looked up at her in the rearview again and then broke away. He was driving on the lake road still, Drake’s driveway now a quarter mile behind them. “What’s up ahead here on this road?” the man asked.
    “Nothing. Logging. A couple more houses.”
    “Can you keep a secret?” the man asked. His eyes were on her again and with his free hand he touched a button and dropped all the locks on the doors.
    The sound made Cheryl jump, her fingers to the door handle before she knew she had placed them there. When she looked back to the front, the big man was climbing over the seat with one large hand outstretched toward her.

Chapter 5
    D RAKE SAT ON THE back stairs, drinking a beer and staring out on the orchard. The sky tinged a deep blue in the west and the first stars already showing. The little garden Sheri kept, dug out and lined with earth-turned rows.
    He put the beer to his lips and tipped the bottle back. He’d given it a lot of thought through the day. What Driscoll had said, what Gary had tried to tell him, his father. It was all a mess. Drake kept running it around in his head. A footrace that never seemed to have an ending, just around and around until someone dropped dead.
    He scuffed the heels of his boots over the dirt at the base of the stairs, digging a hole. The apple trees set in lines all the way to the forest. A patch of disturbed earth at the edge of the orchard where they’d buried their child in a grave the size of a shoebox. No one but them—and now Drake’s father—knowing anything about it. All of their lives somehow entwined by this fact.
    The new knowledge about his father adding to it all and piling on. He didn’t think he would tell Sheri about Driscoll’s coming to see him that morning, about what he had to say. He didn’t want her trying to guess, as he was now, whether there was any truth in the story. He didn’t want to add to the pressure. A feeling that had settled over Drake all through the day. Like everybody had agreed to take a ride on Drake’s back—Driscoll, Patrick, and Gary—all at once and none of them offering to get off.
    Drake took a swallow