Winter Howl (Sanctuary)

Chapter One

Renee took the last sip from her Samuel Adams and set the finished bottle down next to the first one. She smiled and nodded at Marie, who had come over to take the empty bottles and leave the receipt. There were no words between them. Usually Marie would chat to her customers, but she’d learned when she’d moved to Antoine five years ago that Renee Chambers would not look at her, half of the time wouldn’t talk and the other half of the time would stumble through some painful attempt at conversation. Renee had got better as she’d come to know Marie, but it was still more comfortable for both of them when Renee didn’t try to talk and Marie didn’t try to make her.

Renee left the cash tip on the table, clenched the leash and slid out of the booth. Her legs stiffened when she saw Josh Beall and Marcus Levinson a few booths down. She had not seen them come in, and although she had heard their laughter, she hadn’t recognised it as theirs. She would have to walk by them to leave. The warm body against her leg reassured her, nudged her in the right direction. She took one step, then two. Her knees loosened and let her walk. She instinctively—and fruitlessly—tried to hide in her long, light blue coat.

“…saw her at the supply store getting her checklist squared away,” she heard Josh say.

“What’s it been, two months since she last came down here?” Marcus asked.

“Three months. Won’t come back down till spring. You can practically set your seasons by her.” He belched, then coughed, pounding his chest a bit.

“What does she do up there all alone, anyway?” Marcus asked.

“Roswell says she gets a lot of mail,” Josh said. “He says she has help, but I don’t believe it. She wouldn’t let anyone up there. I bet she does it all herself. Completely crazy.”

Renee closed her eyes and breathed in. She was not so egotistical as to believe that everyone in Antoine talked about her, but it was just her luck that she had to walk by these two rubes when they were. Neither was too far into his mug for slurred speech, but they were far enough that they couldn’t gauge their volume.

“Maybe she does porn,” Marcus suggested. “You know, video stuff.”

Josh snorted. “Frigid bitch like her? Don’t think so.” He leant forward conspiratorially. “Hey, what if we went up—?”

“Hey, Renee,” Marcus said, even more loudly then they had already been speaking. Josh turned around, his scruffy but reasonably attractive face lighting up with a sly grin when he saw her huddled against the booth table behind them.

“Speak of the scared little devil,” he said, raising his glass. “Want a drink? You look a little tense.”

Renee’s eyes darted from Josh to Marcus to Marie to the door. At another nudge to her leg, and she stepped towards the door.

“Yeah, come on, sweetie,” Marcus said, misinterpreting her direction. “We’ll make it worth your while.”

How?
Renee thought.
By drooling on me and trying to feel me up with all those smooth moves you’ve cultivated over the last ten years?
She didn’t say anything, of course, just kept inching along until she finally started past the table.

She lurched forward when Marcus delivered a hearty smack to her ass. It didn’t hurt, but Renee could feel her face start to burn and her chest tighten. At least she could move her legs faster now that she was past them.

“Hey, now, none of that in here,” Marie called from behind the bar. “Have a good day, Renee. Don’t be such a stranger.”

“You always run away,” Josh shouted after her.

“I wonder why,” Renee muttered, her tongue looser now that she was out of the bar and no one was looking at her. “Come on, Britt, one more stop before we go home.”

“Hey, Mommy, can I pet the dog?”

Renee winced at the high frequency of the voice and hoped that the mother would know the appropriate way to answer her child. No such luck.

“Hello, miss. Can my daughter pet your dog?”

Antoine was not exactly a highly populated town, but it had a fair tourist trade, particularly downtown Main Street, which was described in most tourist guidebooks as colourful, cheerful, folksy, and unique. Renee did not know about unique or folksy, but many tourists liked to come by for the ambience. And like most townies, the Antoine population had both respect for tourist dollars and frustration with the tourists themselves.

Especially when tourists did not know a service dog when they saw one.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Renee said, emphatically not looking at the woman. That sometimes helped, and the warm feeling of Britt against her leg reassured her. “She’s working.”

“Oh, I’m sorry… Hey, wait, you’re not blind.” The overly polite apology turned into a similarly grating voice of parental annoyance. “If you didn’t want Lisa to pet her, you could’ve just said. There’s no need to lie.”

“I’m not lying,” Renee said. In fact, she was a terrible liar, but that was not the issue at hand. “They do more than help blind people. Please… I need to…”