Raised by Wolves

by James Patterson, Emily Raymond

Genres: Domestic Thrillers; Supernatural suspense

Synopsis

A small town is shaken up when two kids appear, claiming to have been raised by wolves, ransacking a local grocery store and biting police officers. But the kind police chief who takes them in can't make sense of their story:  Something's not quite adding up.

Where have they been all these years?

Release date: November 19, 2024

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 400

Sample

THE KIDS COME crashing out of the eastern Idaho woods like someone’s chasing them. They’re filthy. Barefoot. They dart across the highway, quick as deer. An old Toyota 4Runner honks and swerves, missing the boy by inches.

“What the hell?” the driver shouts after them. “You lookin’ to be roadkill?”

The teen boy and girl tumble down the berm and sprint across the parking lot of the Grizzly Grocery and Bait Shop. The boy flings himself at the glass door, pushing it as hard as he can. It doesn’t open. He snarls and spits in anger.

He pushes the door again. Snarls louder when it doesn’t move.

Suddenly he bends down, picks up a rock, and smashes it into the glass. A spiderweb of cracks fans out. He hits the glass another time, shattering a small hole in it. He hits it again and the hole gets bigger. Glass daggers rain down onto the asphalt. He’s about to land another blow when the girl pushes him aside.

She pulls on the door.

It opens.

For a second, the boy looks shocked. Then he cackles with wild glee. He throws the rock aside and runs barefoot over the glass into the store. The girl follows right behind him.

“Hey!” the store clerk yells. “Hey! What the hell’re you doing? Get back here! I’m calling the cops!”

They ignore his spluttering fury. They burst into the candy and chips aisle, laughing maniacally. The girl swipes a bag of cheese puffs from the shelf and tosses it to the boy, who catches it in his mouth like a dog. He whips his head from side to side until the bag bursts open. Cheese puffs go flying. The girl grins and catches one midair with a snap. She grabs a handful off the ground and shoves them into her mouth. The chili-lime-spiked flavor makes her cough.

She pops open a can of Coke and guzzles it down. Then she bats cookie boxes off the shelves. Rips them open and shoves four Oreos in her mouth at once. The boy jumps up and down, jaws chomping on tortilla chips, eyes wide and wild-looking.

The store clerk appears at the end of the aisle. “Hey, you!” Dale Wilson yells. “Stop! Get out of here! You crazy shits!”

The boy twists the cap from a Gatorade. Red fruit punch flavor goes streaming down his face and onto his filthy shirt.

“Quit that!” Dale practically screams, his voice going girl-high with panic.

The boy turns and grins at him, and Dale’s jaw falls open. The kid’s got freaking fangs!

The girl starts laughing again as she shoves more food into her face. She’s having the time of her life.

An old man makes the mistake of turning into the aisle with his cart full of prune juice and wet wipes. He goes white as a sheet when he sees two filthy kids in tattered clothing going nuts on the junk food. He leaves his cart where it is and runs gimpy legged out the door.

The kids can’t stop laughing. The food’s still flying every which way. The floor’s a mess of crumbs and juice, dirt and glass and blood.

Dale’s moved farther away, but he’s still yelling at them. “Is this some kind of TikTok challenge bullshit? Because it’s not freaking funny!”

The boy turns to him again. The kid’s eyes have gone darker than midnight. They don’t even look like human eyes anymore. His lips curl back from his mouth. And a low, bone-chilling growl rumbles up from his throat. It rises in volume and pitch as the kid comes toward him.

Moving on all fours.

Dale feels his bladder go slack, and the warm piss running down his leg. He turns around and runs.

POLICE CHIEF CHESTER Greene streaks up to the Grizzly in his black-and-white. Officer Randall Pierce comes peeling into the parking lot ten seconds later.

“Wolves, Chief?” Randall scoffs, favoring a bum knee as he climbs out of his cruiser. “Brenda Lake must’ve had a few too many tequila sunrises.”

“That’s Brenda’s Friday-night problem,” Chester says. “Last I checked it’s Tuesday afternoon.” He notes the smashed front door, the glass sparkling on the ground. A wolf couldn’t do that—wouldn’t do that.

A bear might, though. He puts his hand on his pistol.

His boots crunch on glass as he goes inside. The store looks like a tornado hit aisle two. There’s food and plastic food packaging everywhere, and a thin stream of red juice snakes along the floor. Chester looks toward the register. “Looks like Dale’s long gone,” he says.

Randall says, “I’d run, too, if I was him.”

“Police!” Chester calls to the seemingly empty store. “Come on out now. Come slowly, and you won’t get shot.”

There’s no answer.

Then Chester hears it: low growling coming from an aisle to the left. Randall peels off to come at the intruder—whatever it is—from the other side.

Chester grits his teeth. What’s he going to find? It doesn’t sound human, that’s for sure.

He spins around the endcap and points his gun down the aisle. It takes him a second to process what he’s seeing. Two skinny kids, dirty and disheveled—the girl’s shoving chips into her mouth like she hasn’t eaten in days, and the boy’s crouched down and growling.

Randall appears at the other end of the aisle. Spotting the barefoot kids, he looks so surprised Chester almost laughs. “What the—” he says.

The kids freeze. Chester lowers his gun.

“My name’s Chester Greene,” he says calmly. “I’m the chief of police, and I’m going to need you to put down the Doritos.”

The kids blink at him. They turn their heads to eyeball Randall, then back to look at Chester.

The girl reaches into the bag and shoves another handful into her mouth. And the boy—well, he snarls at Chester. His mouth’s orange with Dorito dust.

“The chief said ‘Put down the Doritos,’” Randall repeats.

Chester takes a step forward and the girl flinches. She looks about sixteen, with gray eyes set deep in a fine-featured face. The boy’s younger, maybe thirteen or so, with uncombed hair that reaches past his shoulders. Chester knows all the kids in Kokanee Creek—especially the ones who do dumb shit like this—but he’s never seen these two before.

He tucks the gun into its holster and takes another step in their direction. “What are your names? Where are your parents? Where’re you supposed to be? You skipping school right now?”

The boy’s growl gets louder. The girl presses herself against the shelves and bares her teeth at him like a dog would. Chester keeps walking, low and slow. “You must be really hungry,” he says. He’s moving toward them slowly, gently, the way he’d approach an animal caught in a trap. “But you can’t just help yourselves to the chip aisle. You know that, don’t you? You can’t make messes like this. How about we go outside and talk about it?”

The boy’s snarl turns into a warning bark, and it makes the hair on the back of Chester’s neck stand up.

“Can you understand me?” Chester asks. “Do you speak English?”

They both growl at him.

Chester’s still making his slow progress when Randall launches himself toward them. He’s big and fast, in spite of his bum knee, a former Utah State wide receiver. The girl’s faster, though. She dodges him as the boy trips him, and Randall lands hard and goes skidding on the floor toward Chester. The kids pounce on him like starving wolves on a goddamn elk.

Randall roars in rage as fists pummel him and nails rake his face. As Chester rushes forward to protect his fellow officer, Randall tases the girl. She falls off him, convulsing, her eyes wide in shock and pain. Randall gets to his feet. He’s going for the boy next.

“Stop!” Chester shouts. “They’re kids.”

“That effing little animal bit me,” Randall whines. He slips on the spilled Gatorade. The kids skitter away down the aisle and around the corner. “She could be rabid!” He reaches for his gun.

Chester says, “Keep it holstered,” as he creeps forward.

If he can corner these two, he can calm them down. Talk sense into them. Maybe they were hiking and got lost. Maybe they were in a car accident. Or maybe they’re high on something synthetic and weird and need a junk-food fix. All he knows is if they were actual criminals, they would’ve gone for the cash register.

He finds them cowering in the back corner of the store.

“Hey,” he says in a half whisper. “We’re not going to hurt you. Randall’s sorry about the Taser.”

They’re huddled together, shaking. The boy makes a sound that’s more like a whimper.

“Just put your hands where I can see them. Let’s go outside together, okay?”

Chester’s less than ten feet away from them when they run.

They’re so freaking fast he barely sees them pass by as they dart for the exit. Chester lunges forward, sprinting faster than he has in years. He takes a flying leap and catches the girl’s ankle. They go down. He rolls to the side and gets his hand around one skinny wrist, and then snap, he’s got one cuff on. Before she can fight him off, he gets the other cuff on.

Randall’s got the boy by the front door. He’s cuffed too, and he’s spitting and snarling. But he calms down when he sees Chester leading the girl toward him.

They have the same gray eyes. The same high forehead.

Siblings, Chester thinks.

But who the hell are they? Where the hell did they come from? And why haven’t they said a single human word?

THE KIDS ACT pretty calm—like they’re in shock, maybe—when they’re put into the back of the police car. But the minute Chester shuts the door, they go apeshit.

The girl kicks the back of the seat with her dirty, bloody, bare feet and the boy pounds on the window again and again. His fists hit the glass with sickening thuds.

Chester puts his face right up to the window. “Don’t do that! Hey! You have to calm down! You’re going to hurt yourself!”

The boy sends his forehead crashing into the grille part of the partition. Chester winces. That must’ve really hurt.

“Where’s a frickin’ tranq gun when you need one?” Randall says. He’s rubbing his wrist where the girl bit him. It’s bleeding. He spits a brown stream of tobacco juice into the parking lot. He says, “I hope the little beast knocks himself unconscious.”

Chester smacks the window and yells, “Stop!”

The boy’s still snarling and spitting. But then the girl stops kicking at the seat. She leans over and nuzzles her head against the boy’s shoulder. Just like that, he goes quiet.

Chester waits a few beats. Then he walks around to the front of the car and slides in behind the wheel. Nothing happens. He can hear them breathing in the back seat.

Panting. Whimpering a little.

He turns around to face them, speaking through the grille. “I’d really appreciate it if you could stay calm for the duration of the ride. Do you think you could manage that?”

Silence.

“I’ve got a good feeling about it,” he says. He’s lying. “Also, while we’re sitting here, I’m real curious about your names.”

The girl’s got a thunderstorm brewing in her eyes. But she doesn’t speak.

Chester reaches way back to grade school memories, when he earned the alphabet in sign language. He spells out slowly, letter by letter, “Can you understand me?”

Both kids just glare at him. He drops his hand. All righty then. No ASL.

“I’ve got a few things to say before we start driving,” Chester says, more for his sense of duty than for them at this point. “So I’m hoping there’s some part of you that understands it. You two are in a little spot of trouble right now. Because here in Kokanee Creek, we don’t smash doors. We don’t eat things we haven’t paid for. And we definitely don’t bite officers of the law.”

He still can’t see a flicker of understanding cross their faces.

He turns on the car.

“We’re going to take a little ride now,” he says. “Try to keep calm. You’re doing good right now. Real good.”

When the engine revs, the boy starts to whimper again. And when Chester pulls out of the parking lot onto the highway leading into town, the whimpering gets louder.

“It’s okay,” he says over his shoulder. “We’re just heading over to the station.”

As the cruiser picks up speed, the kids look more and more freaked out. They start bouncing around a little. Chester can see the boy sweating in the rearview mirror, so he rolls down the window a crack. The boy lifts his face to the breeze, his nose twitching.

Chester thinks, They must be on drugs. What kind, though?

It’s just a short drive into town. They pass the abandoned lumber yard, then the Wendy’s billboard. LATE NIGHT GREAT NIGHT, it reads. TURN LEFT AT THE LIGHT.

The boy makes a noise that almost sounds like a word.

Chester turns and says, “Did you just speak?”

No answer.

“You two still hungry? You wish I could take you to Wendy’s?”

There’s silence for another second. And then the boy throws back his head and howls so loud that Chester’s ears ring.

THE KOKANEE CREEK police station occupies half a small brick building in the center of town; the other half houses the public library. Across the street there’s a hair salon and a pub; down the block there’s a cafe, an antiques store, a kayak rental place, two churches, and the Dollar General.

In other words, the town of Kokanee Creek isn’t much more than a wide spot in the road.

Chester helps the girl out of the car and escorts her into the station, while Randall takes the boy. Pearl Riley’s on dispatch, and her eyes go wide when she sees those rough-looking kids. “Are they from the Grizzly?” she gasps.

“Call Lacey,” Chester tells her. “Have her bring food.”

He turns to Randall. “I don’t know if they can’t tell us who they are, or if they won’t, so we’re going to have to figure it out for ourselves. See if anyone’s reported missing kids. Runaways, maybe. Start with Washington, Oregon, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho—but go wide. They could be from anywhere. Call Dr. Meyer, too. We’re going to need physicals. Drug tests.” He runs his hand through his graying hair. “We got any extra socks lying around?” he asks Pearl. “If not, see if Lacey can find some.”

Chester takes the girl by the elbow and maneuvers her over to fingerprinting. As he raises her cuffed hands to the ink pad, he takes in how hard and calloused they are. She’s got the palms of a weatherbeaten rancher. “Don’t worry,” he says gently, before pushing her thumb into the ink pad. “It’s just for identification purposes.”

She holds herself perfectly still and silent the whole time. So does the boy, for all ten fingers, but he pants audibly.

“You’re doing good,” he says to the kids. “I appreciate your cooperation.”

The boy gives a little whimper. His ferocity’s all gone. His thin shoulders slump.

“We’re going to need to keep you here for a little bit,” Chester goes on. “Till we figure out where you belong and find whoever’s looking for you.”

“If them two were mine, I’d say good riddance,” Randall mumbles.

Chester glares at him before turning back to the kids. “I hope you can continue to stay calm, because it’ll be a lot more pleasant for all of us that way.” The girl glances nervously at the jail cells with their peeling paint, their old-fashioned bars and locks. “Yep,” he confirms. “That’s where we’ve got to put you for now.”

As they approach the first cell, a figure calls out from one of the concrete beds.

“Who ya got there?” Dougie Jones rasps. Dougie lives ten hard miles outside of town, so last night he’d put himself in jail to sleep one off. “Is that Ray? I told that fool not to drive.” Dougie sits up and rubs his eyes. Does a double take. “Well, slap my ass and call me Susan, you’re mighty young to be scofflaws!” He grins at Chester. “All you need is two more criminals and you’ll have to hang a No Vacancy sign on the jail.”

“Or you could leave,” Chester points out.

Dougie considers this. “Maybe after snack time.”

“There is no snack time,” Chester says.

Dougie shrugs. “Hope springs eternal.”

Once the kids are inside the cell together, Chester reaches through the bars and removes their handcuffs. “You’re safe here now,” he says. “When we find your folks, we’ll do our best to get you out of here. Though that won’t necessarily be the end of your troubles.” He shakes his head. “What were you thinking, acting like that?”

The silent girl just stares at him. But the boy walks over to the far corner and turns to face the wall. It takes Chester a second to realize what he’s doing.

“Hey!” The little shit’s pissing in the corner, four feet away from the toilet. “What the fuck!” Then Chester shakes his head. “Okay, I get it. You had to mark your territory. Because you’re a damn wolf or whatever.”

The boy turns around and bares his teeth in what might be a grin.

“They ain’t even housebroken?” Dougie cries.

“Pearl!” Chester yells. “Randall—one of you. Bring me some Lysol and towels.” Pearl comes hustling over, and Chester takes the supplies and shoves them through the bars.

Chester watches the girl struggle to make the spray nozzle work. Is she stupid? he thinks. Strung out? Finally she manages to squirt the cleaner on the floor, and then she wordlessly directs her little brother to wipe it up.

Chester offers them soapy paper towels for their hands and faces next. It won’t make them smell better, but he figures that at least it’ll get the blood and dirt off.

By the time these various messes are taken care of, Lacey’s walked down the street with takeout from her diner, and the smell of burgers overpowers the smell of Lysol. The boy comes up to the bars, sniffing madly.

“Miss Lacey brought you some food from her restaurant,” Chester tells him.

“My cook called in sick,” Miss Lacey adds, “so I made it myself.”

The kid snuffles the bag all over, drooling, before his sister takes it away from him and opens it.

She looks up at Chester with her cold gray eyes. “Thanks, Officer,” she says. “And thank you to Miss Lacey, too.”

“YOU CAN TALK?”

The poor police chief staggers backward like he’s been slapped. I could probably knock him flat by blowing on him.

Yes, absolutely I can talk. But growling feels so good.

Now that we’ve established I’m capable of speech—and seeing as how this is my life we’re dealing with—I’m going to take over the story. I think it’ll work better that way.

For the record, my name’s Kai, and I’m seventeen (I think). My brother, Holo, is fourteen, give or take. At this particular moment, we’re all each other has in the world, and we are not happy to be here. Surely you can understand why.

The chief gets his balance back and immediately starts glaring at us. “What was all that howling about then? And all that pretending that you didn’t know what I was saying to you?”

I hold up a finger. I’ll consider talking again after I’m done getting whatever this delicious-smelling thing inside the bag is into my empty stomach. I pull out two paper-wrapped packages, and I smell fatty meat. Warm bread. Holo and I tear the packages open with our teeth.

“Hamburgers,” . . .