Free Isabel and the Wolf: (Part 3) by Ariana Hawkes

people I’d been meeting since I’d been here, and, when I mentioned your name, he said you were cousins!”
    “Oh! Ră zvan!”
    “No – ” Isabel was more confused than ever. “His name’s Peter.”
    “Petre,” Josie said, and the word sounded foreign in her mouth. In fact, quite similar to Peter’s accent. Josie laughed. “ Ră zvan is his first name, and Petre is his middle name. He probably introduced himself to you with his middle name, as he thought his first name would sound too out of place.” Isabel smiled thinly, feeling stupid that she hadn’t known his first name. But, first name, middle name, whatever, Josie had known who she was talking about in the diner. “We’re not first cousins, though. We’re like third or fourth, or something,” Josie continued.
    “Yeah, Petre said that. So, you are part Romanian?”
    “In terms of blood, almost completely, actually. But the culture has mostly been lost through my family line. I don’t even speak the language, apart from a few words.”
    “Shame, it sounds beautiful, at least from what Peter’s been saying to me.” Josie’s face twisted, barely perceptibly, but Isabel knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that her initial suspicions of jealousy had been correct. The truck came to a stop, cutting off their conversation. Rob and Trey jumped out.
    “Wolves are primarily nocturnal,” Rob said. “Although the strange ones we’ve been seeing recently have all been spotted hunting during the day.”
    “How do you normally track them during the day, then?” Isabel asked.
    “We have to find their lairs first. Then we have to encourage the pack to come out. It’s a painstaking process. First we use this device.” He showed her something that resembled a gun from a bad sci-fi movie. “It emits a series of sounds that are very irritating to a wolf’s ears, although we can’t hear it at all. This wakes ’em up, and the pack’s alpha comes out to investigate. We shoot him with a sedative and carry him some distance away. After we’ve taken our usual measurements, we wait. When he doesn’t return, the betas of the pack go out to look for him. We shoot them too, and repeat the process. This gives us enough genetic information about the pack, so we don’t usually hang around to shoot the omegas.”
    “So, now we’ll be looking for lairs?” Isabel asked.
    “I’m not sure, to be honest. Since we found the others by chance as they were hunting, I’m not sure what our strategy should be. This area is close to where we saw some of the others, so I guess we’ll cover a section of the forest each, and look out for tracks and any other signs.”
    “Do we get to use guns too?” Josie asked.
    “Unfortunately you need a license to use them, so the answer’s no.”
    “So we’re just here for decoration?”
    “No,” Rob grinned. “I’ll need to rely on your photography skills if we catch any, and you can help us out by looking for tracks as well.” Isabel rubbed her foot into the earth. In the depths of the forest, the ground was slightly damp, but she doubted how long tracks would survive before turning to dust. “And not just footprints – look out for signs of what they’ve eaten – bones or fur, and what’s passed through their bodies as well. We’ll split up, and maybe you ladies want to stay together?” He passed them a walkie-talkie each. “If you find anything, tell me, and I’ll come find you. Josie’s phone is linked with mine via GPS, so I’ll always be able to figure out where you are.”
    “Ok, let’s go!” Josie shouted, and skipped off into the woods, in the opposite direction from the two men. Isabel followed her. “There’s no way we’re going to find anything, by the way,” Josie said. “Rob’s just getting desperate, and clutching at whatever straws he thinks will help him solve the mystery. And, if we do see a wolf, by the time Rob comes with his gun, it’ll be long gone.”
    “Yeah, this had occurred