Free Isabel and the Wolf: (Part 1) by Ariana Hawkes

Chapter One
    There was something in the road up ahead. Isabel was several hundred yards away when she saw the flashing blue and red police lights, and the flashing orange lights of what looked to be a logging truck – the only illuminations to the dark, straight, two-lane road leading out of town. All else was woods. The trees pressed close on either side; tall, blank-faced pines, leaning towards the road, as if they wanted to repossess it. To Isabel there seemed something sinister about their numberless regularity, stretching ahead in a never-ending line. The thought of how many more were standing behind them, in rows and rows, back into the hills made her shiver.
    She began to brake earlier than she needed to, nervous of the road. There had recently been a heavy rainfall and it was waterlogged. To her untrained eye, it looked like it hadn’t been built with the slight curve that roads were supposed to have to let the rain drain off at the sides, but it was totally flat. And roads like these were part of the experience she’d been looking for when she came out here from Chicago, she reminded herself. Her headlights picked out spots where the rain had pooled into potholes, and her little Mini Cooper felt skittish in her hands, as if the slightest wrong move could send it sliding out of control.
    Isabel brought the car almost to a stop well ahead of the vehicles, and crawled towards them. Now she was close enough to see that there was a fallen tree in the road. It was huge, blocking both lanes and crashing into the woods on the other side. Her headlights revealed the wet, black trunk and she shuddered, thinking what could have happened if someone hadn’t seen it before she’d come driving down the road. There were some guys from the logging truck talking to the cops, but there didn’t look to be any action going on. She groaned. Until this moment, she’d been on schedule for being 15 minutes early for her date, which, for her, was unheard of.
    “ Let’s arrive on time ,” the final message she’d received from her date said. She’d liked it. It was simple and direct, and it gave her the curious sense that he knew her in some way, although she hadn’t at any point mentioned her flair for disorganization. So, for once, she’d tricked herself into thinking that the meeting time was a full half hour earlier than it was.
    But all that effort had come to nothing. She was trapped on the only road that led to the town and the bar where she and Peter would finally meet for the first time. Isabel glared at the men talking to each other as they waved their arms at the tree, scratched their heads, and paid her no attention whatsoever. She needed to make a decision fast. Opening the car door, she looked down at the road. The rain was maybe an inch deep all over, and she was in her new scarlet kitten heels. There was no way she was going to ruin them. She closed the door again and leaned on her horn instead. Immediately, the men turned around to look at her, squinting in her headlights. After a long moment, one of the cops detached himself from the group and walked over to her. Isabel opened her window all the way, and he poked his head through. He had blue eyes and tousled dark-blond hair beneath his sheriff’s hat and he smelled of woodsmoky aftershave.
    “Hey there, miss,” he said.
    “Hi, Officer,” Isabel replied, stifling annoyance at being referred to as “miss”.
    “That tree’s certainly making its presence felt,” she said.
    “That it is,” he said. He crinkled his eyes, and waved an arm towards the logging truck. “Looks like we’ll be here a couple more hours.”
    “When did it come down?” she asked. He shrugged hugely.
    “No way of telling. Someone put a call in an hour ago, but these roads out here can be so quiet, especially when the weather’s like this, it could’ve lain here half a day or more.”
    “But no-one got hurt by it?”
    “No – by some miracle. They were driving real slow, on