The sheriff leaned forward and aimed his flashlight around the interior of the car, illuminating the shattered remnants of my windows. “Jeez, what happened?”
I sat on my hands to keep them from shaking. My mouth was drier than the Taphouse’s fried chicken. “I think I just steamrolled a guy with my car a mile back.”
Kepler chuckled. “Honey, I saw that on the way over. You ran over a wolf. Splatted it real good, by the looks of it.”
A wolf?
I rubbed my temples. “No, Sheriff. There were two people. They jumped me in the Taphouse parking lot and chased me down. I ran over one of them with my car just back there.”
Kepler shone his flashlight into my eyes, and I looked away, using my hand to shield them. “Have you been drinking?” he asked. “Taking any substances?”
Heat lined my jaw. “No, sir. And don’t talk to me like that. You know me, and I know what I saw. I was attacked.”
The sheriff sighed. “All right. Tell you what, I’ll call Randy’s Towing to pick up your car, cause it sure as heck looks like it needs fixing. You and I can take a ride, and I’ll show you what happened. Then I’ll drop you back at your place. Okay?”
I nodded, shut the car off, and stepped out.
My head spun as I got a good look at the vehicle. The Gran Fury looked like it had been through hell and back. In addition to the broken window and the steam rising from the engine, huge claw marks streaked across the door, hood, and roof.
Holy hell.
The sheriff hung up his phone. “Randy’s on his way. Just leave the keys in the glovebox. You can head over tomorrow morning to get things sorted out.”
“Thanks,” I murmured as I hid the keys.
I took one last look at my precious, wounded car and climbed into Kep’s cruiser. How was I ever going to pay for all this?
Kepler made a U-turn, and we headed back to the scene of the accident. A mile down the way, his headlights illuminated a dark lump in the middle of the road. The sheriff pulled over and turned on his flashers.
Pulse racing, I climbed out and followed him across the road to the body. The beam of his flashlight swept over the crumpled form, and I froze.
A dead wolf. A giant, dead wolf.
“You’re lucky you hit this animal straight on and didn’t swerve into a tree,” Kepler said. “A lot of people kill themselves trying to miss an animal.”
Nausea caught me off guard, and I staggered over to the side of the road and threw up on the grass. Thankfully, I hadn’t eaten before my shift, so most of what came up was iced tea.
Kepler laid a couple flares beside the wolf’s body and joined me when the heaving finished. “You okay?” he asked, handing me a stick of gum.
I got off my knees, scraped the gravel out of my palms, and popped the gum in my mouth. “Yeah, just in shock.”
“I’m sure. It’s a hell of a sight. But it’s good that it’s dead, really. I was just over at the Taphouse responding to the attack there when I got your dispatch. This beastie mauled one of the customers pretty good. The man’s all tore up and in a coma, but the paramedics think he’ll live.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “I was there. He wasn’t attacked by a wolf. It was a man and a woman!”
Kepler tilted his head. “Savannah, you’ve been watching too much TV. The poor fellow was mauled by an animal.” He kicked the corpse of the wolf with his boot. “This animal.”
I started to protest when a pair of headlights swept over us. A truck rumbled around the bend and slowly pulled to a stop. The headlights stayed on, and a car door slammed.
The sheriff held one hand up to shield his eyes and put the other on his holster. “Hold on, there. Identify yourself.”
A gruff baritone voice came out of the darkness. “Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. I see you have a dead wolf on your hands. Permission to approach?”
The voice was thick and rich, like honey, and made my skin tingle.
“DNR?” the sheriff asked. “Amazing you were alerted so fast.”
“We were in the area. Been a lot of wolf activity,” the voice said from the darkness.