Cry Wolf
Angela Campbell
Cry Wolf
By Angela Campbell
Andrea Lockhart’s job as a reporter for cheesy tabloid
The Naked Truth
isn’t exactly where she thought her journalism career would end up. She’s determined to make the best of it, but when her editor sends her to Woodbine, South Carolina, to investigate a werewolf sighting, Andrea decides the ridiculous assignment will be her last. Until she meets Sean Hunter.
The last time she saw Sean, he had just beat her out for the position of editor of their college newspaper, and told her she’d never make it as a reporter. Given his grand ambitions, she’s shocked to find him editing the
Woodbine Weekly.
Once they start competing for leads on the werewolf, Andrea becomes determined to break the story first—she can’t let Sean beat her again.
As they each get closer to finding the source of the rumors, the only thing more surprising than the truth are the feelings Sean is able to stir in her, feelings she thought she had left behind…
87,000 words
Dear Reader,
What do you get when you cross summer with lots of beach time, and long hours of traveling? An executive editor who’s too busy to write the Dear Reader letter, but has time for reading. I find both the beach and the plane are excellent places to read, and thanks to plenty of time spent on both this summer (I went to Australia! And New Zealand!) I’m able to tell you with confidence: our fall lineup of books is outstanding.
We kick off the fall season with seven romantic suspense titles, during our Romantic Suspense celebration in the first week of September. We’re pleased to offer novella
Fatal Destiny
by Marie Force as a free download to get you started with the romantic suspense offerings. Also in September, fans of Eleri Stone’s sexy, hot paranormal romance debut novel,
Mercy,
can look forward to her follow-up story,
Redemption,
set in the same world of the Lost City Shifters.
Looking to dive into a new erotic romance? We have a sizzling trilogy for you. In October, look for Christine D’Abo’s Long Shot trilogy featuring three siblings who share ownership of a coffee shop, and each of whom discover steamy passion within the walls of a local sex club. Christine’s trilogy kicks off with
Double Shot.
In addition to a variety of frontlist titles in historical, paranormal, contemporary, steampunk and erotic romance, we’re also pleased to present two authors releasing backlist titles with us. In October, we’ll re-release four science fiction romance titles from the backlist of C.J. Barry, and in November four Western romance titles from the backlist of Susan Edwards.
Also in November, we’re thrilled to offer our first two chick lit titles from three debut authors,
Liar’s Guide to True Love
by Wendy Chen and
Unscripted
by Natalie Aaron and Marla Schwartz. I hope you’ll check out these fun, sometimes laugh-out-loud novels.
Whether you’re on the beach, on a plane, or sitting in your favorite recliner at home, Carina Press can offer you a diverting read to take you away on your next great adventure this fall!
We love to hear from readers, and you can email us your thoughts, comments and questions to [email protected]. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.
Happy reading!
~Angela James
Executive Editor, Carina Press
www.carinapress.com
www.twitter.com/carinapress
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For my mom, for being the first person to encourage my dreams, and for my dad, for sacrificing so much to allow me to pursue them.
Thank you both for believing in me.
And to my editor, Denise Nielsen, for her insightful feedback and encouragement.
Thank you for opening the door to a dream and helping me share my characters with the world. My heartfelt thanks.
How in the
hell
do I get myself into situations like this?
Andrea Lockhart screamed and tried one more time to summon help. Not an easy thing to do while swinging from a rope, upside down, in the middle of nowhere.
Like some stupid pendulum on a clock. Ugh!
“Hello?” she yelled and immediately gasped for breath. She closed her eyes and struggled to subdue the panic attack that was clawing its way past her lungs toward her brain. Her heart had been trying to pound its way out of her chest for a while now. This wasn’t helping.
Easy, Lockhart. You’ve been in tighter spots than this and survived. Just ease the hell off from thinking about it. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Everything is going to be fine.
Opening her eyes, Andrea listened for a response as she reached toward the ground for something—
anything
—to steady herself with, but all she heard was the distant call of some birds deep in the forest. She had been traipsing through these woods, looking for footprints or other evidence to support the article she was writing, when she’d heard a loud snap, felt her legs jerked out from under her and found herself looking at the world upside down.
Some idiot had snagged her in the type of trap she’d thought was only used in bad B movies.
Yep, I’m
so
putting in my résumé at Starbucks if I can ever get myself down from here.
Her jacket swung around her face and heightened that panicked feeling of claustrophobia. Pushing it aside, only to have it fall back in the way, Andrea couldn’t hold back a desperate laugh at the absurdity of her dilemma. She’d witnessed and survived gang shootouts in South Chicago, gone toe-to-toe with corrupt police officials and barely escaped riots in France and the post–Katrina looting in New Orleans. But she’d never been strung up like this before. Oh yeah. This was definitely a new one.
A ring tone for
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
shattered the silence, and Andrea sighed long and hard, as she considered the rectangular object just out of her reach. Too late, she realized her mistake. Her breath tore out of her chest in a hacking cough that drowned out the familiar melody.
Her heart was still beating overtime. The whooshing sound of its frantic throbbing threatened to make her deaf to everything else.
Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.
Her only salvation, it seemed, lay just out of reach.
Once she’d gotten over the shock of what had happened, she had grappled with and lost her grip on her cell phone. Now it taunted her, half-buried under a mound of leaves, alternately buzzing and pelting out the tune. It was as if the stupid thing was laughing at her.
She was sure it was Brandon calling.
Oh yeah. I would really love to give him a piece of my mind right now.
If only.
Best she could tell, she was more alone in these woods than a nerd on prom night. The sun had lowered in the sky, peeking through the trees like an unwanted observer. Andrea glanced at her watch. Had she really been hanging here for half an hour already? It seemed so much longer.
When did it get dark around here? Maybe another hour or two?
Not good.
Come on. You’ve been in tighter spots than this, Lockhart. Think.
Andrea tried to lift her arms and grab the rope clamping both her ankles together from the tree limb above. If she could just—
The sound of a stick breaking nearby caught her attention. She dropped her arms, felt the blood rush to her head again, making her dizzy as her body swayed like crazy.
“Hey!” she yelled. “Over here! Please! Is somebody there?”
Nothing.
Dammit.
Andrea screamed in desperation. Her labored breathing sent her swaying again, and the swell of hot tears coated her eyes. She was going to die here. Alone. Helpless. And only God knew where.
Her friends, her family, her enemies—this would be how they last remembered her.
Hanging from a tree limb like a damned piece of meat.
Something in her line of vision moved. Something dark and big and—
A low, ominous growl echoed around her, rumbling in her ears.
An animal?
Oh God.
Andrea willed her body to stop moving as she fought to bring her breathing under control. What kind of animal was it? What kinds of animals were native to this part of South Carolina? Bears? Wolves?
Werewolves.
A ridiculous thought, but there it was. Wouldn’t it be something if she actually found the evidence she was searching for, right before it tore her to shreds and ate her for dinner?
Don’t be ridiculous, Lockhart. Werewolves do not exist!
Maybe it was just a dog. A harmless dog lost in the woods.
Or a rabid dog looking for its next victim.
Her ears strained for sounds of movement again, but all she could hear were the damned birds chirping back and forth. Had she seen something, or was her mind starting to play tricks on her?
“Hello?” A young man’s faint voice came from somewhere in the trees.
Oh, thank God.
“Oh my gosh! Are you okay, lady?”
A tall figure wearing a pair of sneakers and jeans approached at a run. The man dropped something to the ground and reached for her legs. At least he didn’t look like something straight out of
Deliverance
. Well, all she could really see of him were his jeans and sneakers. But still.
He leaned down and looked at her. A University of South Carolina baseball cap shadowed his face, which looked pretty clean aside from a few pimples. “Are you all right?” he repeated in a voice barely seasoned with twang.
Andrea laughed, more in relief than humor. “I’ve been better.” His hands steadied her, and her head swam from the sudden stop of motion. “Can you please help me get down from here?” Her voice croaked.
He looked around as if searching for someone. “Did somebody do this to you?” Her body jerked as his hands worked to free her feet from the rope at a hurried pace. “Should I call the sheriff?”
Andrea’s first impulse was to blame her editor for sending her on this stupid assignment, but she doubted the sheriff could arrest Brandon for that.
“No, no sheriff. I haven’t seen anyone. I think I just stepped into somebody’s trap.” The guy didn’t seem to be making any progress freeing her jeans-clad legs. Although it was hard to view anything from this angle, she could tell he was young, no more than a teenager. Kind of scrawny too. Just her luck. “Do you have a cell phone? Maybe you could call somebody to help get me down?”
“Maybe I can just cut you down.”
Andrea looked at the object he’d dropped. It was only a camera. Not a machete or other sharp tool capable of sawing through thick rope. Not even a hunting rifle to put her out of her misery.
Figures
.
“Do you have something to cut me down with?” She took a deep breath and coughed again. Maybe he had a hunting knife in his jacket.
“Uh, well, not really.” His hands patted down his body and pulled a cell phone out of a pocket of the baggy jacket he wore.
Oh, good. He’s calling for help!
She prayed she wasn’t going to die or throw up before help came.
Find something to focus on, Lockhart.
Her eyes caught and studied the professional-looking lens lying a few feet away. She recognized the model of camera from her time in the many newsrooms she’d been fortunate—or unfortunate—enough to call home throughout her decade-long career.
“Hey, tell your friend not to bring an audience.” Andrea looked at his camera and felt sick again. She had a sudden image of a TV news crew showing up to capture her misfortune, with the clip being picked up by national news and aired for all the world to see. “This is embarrassing enough. Please?”
“Don’t worry. My friend and I will get you down.”
Preferably without a picture of it plastered on the front page of this town’s or
any
newspaper, she thought, closing her eyes and sending up a silent prayer that her luck wasn’t that rotten.
“Thank you.” She hoped his friend was stronger than this guy looked. And wasn’t a pervert or serial killer. Seriously. She had enough problems. “So, what’s your name?” If the kid got her down from here, she would consider naming her first child after him.
“Reed.” He seemed to be looking for the end of the rope now. “Reed Coleman. What’s yours?”
“Andrea.” She sighed. “And it’s very good to meet you, Reed. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate—”
Her body dropped. She squealed and reached for the earth below as her long hair bounced around her face, but the rope held and jerked her to a stop a couple of inches shy of the dirt. Her fingertips gripped the dirt, but just barely.
“Oh my gosh! Are you all right?” the teen asked, hurrying to her side.
Oh, yeah. Just peachy.
Her head—which had already been aching—now felt like the entire cast of
Dancing with the Stars
was tapping out the Quickstep on top of her brain. “Maybe you should wait until your friend gets here.” It was obvious the kid didn’t know what he was doing, and she valued her limbs too much to let him experiment with her rescue.
“Uh, sure.” He gave the rope a contemplative look but lowered himself to the ground a few feet from where her head hung. He took off his hat and twisted it with his hands. “I’m sorry about this. Mr. Jenkins must have been setting out traps again. He was a sniper in the Vietnam War, not to mention a little crazy. You aren’t the first person to get caught in one of these.”
“You’re kidding.” It hurt too much to try to look at him, so she closed her eyes. “What’s he trying to catch?”
“Uh.” He cleared his throat. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
One side of her mouth tugged upward. The kid really had no idea who he was dealing with here. “Wanna bet?”
“Well—”
“A werewolf, right?”
He tilted his head, presumably to get a better look at her. “Huh?”
“This trap is for a werewolf, isn’t it?” It was an effort, but she managed to hold out her hand in greeting. “Andrea Lockhart, the
Naked Truth
. I’m in town to write a story about your, er, werewolf.”
His eyes went wide in surprise.
“The tabloid? No way!” He accepted her handshake with more vigor than she appreciated. It caused her to start swaying again. “That’s so awesome. I’m a reporter too.”
“You
are
?” Her head was really swimming now.
“Well, sort of. I work part-time at the local paper after school. You know, I take pictures and stuff.”
She’d planned to stop by the local newspaper office, but Andrea had only been in Woodbine, South Carolina—population two thousand and sixty-one—for four hours. During that time, she’d met a motel clerk who’d practiced his off-key song for an Elvis impersonation contest on her, talked with a waitress who swore Andrea was a dead-ringer for her poor, departed cousin Lynette and played twenty questions with a jumpy, paranoid sheriff’s office desk clerk who wouldn’t so much as tell her his name once she told him why she was there.
To investigate werewolf sightings.
Oh, Lisa, you’re laughing your butt off right now, aren’t you? I once came so close to a Pulitzer, and now I’m dangling from a tree in the middle of nowhere, trying to track down a mythological creature.
Pathetic.
She pushed aside the painful memory of her friend. If Lisa were alive, Andrea would probably still be chained to her desk at the
Sun-Times
, pounding out much more ordinary stories.
Talk to the kid. Get your mind off the situation.
Get your mind off of Lisa.
“This must be fate.” Her breathing was still labored. “Maybe you can help me round up some old articles when I get down from here. I understand your paper has reported quite a bit on sightings of this, er, alleged creature.”
As Andrea had learned from her research, the
Woodbine Dispatch
had even coined a name for the town’s urban legend—the totally unoriginal Woodbine Werewolf—when residents and tourists had begun reporting sightings of an upright, furry, human-sized beast with menacing red eyes and long, intimidating claws. Andrea had been more than a little skeptical about covering the story but the promise of a healthy paycheck had worn away any reluctance she felt.
“Are you kidding?” Reed scooted closer to her head. “Sure, I’ll be glad to! But Sean is the guy you probably want to talk to. He’s our managing editor, and he’s covered the story pretty much from the beginning. Don’t worry. He’s on his way to help.”
Oh, great. Fantastic way to meet a colleague. Could this day get any worse?
Reed stood up again, towering above her. “Really. Don’t worry. You’re just lucky I came along when I did. Not many people come out to this part of the woods much anymore.”
“Yeah? So what were you doing out here?”
“We had a sighting here last week. I’ve been checking it out.”
Of course. Andrea had been doing the same thing.
She thought her head might pop off. She groaned aloud.
Focus on werewolves.
“So your editor…his name is Sean? Sean what?” She tried piecing together the information he’d given her so far.
Andrea knew a lot of journalists, but she’d never been to South Carolina. She figured this editor would be short, stocky, dressed in a sloppy necktie and wearing overly large glasses. Either that or he would be young, as green as grass and jaw-clenching arrogant, thanks to a position inherited from family money. She hated playing to stereotypes, but she’d met too many small-town editors who fit one or both of those categories.
Then again, this town had already proved unpredictable—and totally weird. As long as Reed’s editor was capable of getting her down, he could dress in drag for all she cared.
“Sean Hunter, yeah,” Reed said. “He’s not far from here. Don’t worry. He was supposed to go see Mr. Thomas on White Falls Road, which isn’t even a mile away. That dude has a two-hundred-pound pumpkin he wants a write-up on. Sean’s a handy guy, so I thought about calling him before anybody. He’s probably got a handsaw in his truck somewhere. He’s fixing up his place out by the lake. He’s even—”