A wide, black shadow crossed the skiff, skimming along the surface of the lake like a skipped stone, and Daniel nudged Jake with a knee. Both men glanced up to watch the massive bird soaring past on the breeze.
“Bald eagle,” Jake said.
“She’s getting ready to lay, I think,” Daniel murmured, watching the bird as she rose on the draft with a long, pronged tree branch clutched in her talons. “She’s been going back and forth over the lake for days.”
Without warning, the fishing pole jerked in his hands, and Daniel gripped it tight, wrenching it back. There was a fish on the line, a big one, and he pulled hard, grimacing. Beside him in the boat, Jakewhooped and abandoned his own rod as he scrambled to look over the side.
“Bring him up!”
Daniel battled with the fish, ignoring the sharp discomfort with every turn of the reel.
“You’re losing him!”
Wrenching the pole, Daniel leaned forward, peering over the side of the skiff into the lake. Pearly lances of sunlight sliced through the gray-blue water, dancing with the rocking of the boat, and his fishing line cut a straight path through them into murky depths with no end in sight. How far downwasthis thing?
Daniel leaned back again, propping his feet against the bottom of the skiff and jerking the rod with all his might, muscles straining. Without warning, the line snapped free, and he fell backward with a grunt, striking the back of his head on the thin lip of the boat as silver fireworks exploded across his field of vision.
“You okay? You all right?”
Jake’s voice sounded far away, underwater, and Daniel tried to nod, which worsened the pain at the back of his skull.
“I’m fine,” he managed.
“Turn, let me see it.”
Daniel turned his head slightly, and true to form, Jake whistled. “Bleeding, but not too bad. We’d better get you back. Put some ice on it. I can drive you down to Doc Porter’s—”
“No.” Daniel cut him off with another shake of his throbbing head. “I’m fine. I just need to lay down for a minute.”
Jake looked doubtful, but he reached for the oars and pulled them through the water with swift strokes, angling the skiff back toward the boathouse. When Daniel looked up, Jake offered him a half-hearted smile that didn’t clear the concerned look in his eyes.
“It’s really not your day, brother.”
Daniel nodded grimly. He was beyond exhausted, and both hishead and wrist were throbbing. Jake dragged the oars backward as they reached the dock, and the skiff nudged it gently.
“Too bad about the fish,” Jake said as he looped the rope around the piling, and Daniel nodded again, but didn’t answer as he climbed onto the dock and staggered toward the door.
He couldn’t care less about the fish. He’d taken enough life for today.
Chapter 6ANNIE
Lake Lumin Road was rougher up where it burrowed into the foothills, and the Jeep teetered and bounced over large rocks and gaping potholes as Annie drove to the lake with a tight-fingered grip on the steering wheel.
The last of the day’s light was falling sideways through the trees, brassy and tired, and a violet dusk was spreading outward from deep pockets of fir and fern, but Annie’s eyes were not on the loveliness around her. Her gaze was fixed on the road ahead as she scanned the trees for the firstNO TRESPASSINGsign that was sure to pop up at any moment.
She was sore and tired from the long hike back up to Lewis Ridge, and the dense forest outside the Jeep only made her warier about the confrontation ahead.
The Wagoneer swung around a gentle curve and Annie’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel.
“Here we go,” she said as the firstNO TRESPASSINGsign appeared, nailed to a crooked post leaning out over the road. The second was fixed to a tree trunk, as was the next, and the one after that. For a quarter of a mile, she passed sign after sign as the road climbed upward toward an unseen peak.
In her head, Annie ran down the list of bullet points she’d need to cover with the man who had posted these signs. The cougar near his property. The access she needed to his land. What he should be looking out for, and instructions to contact her if he came across any trace of the big cat.
The terrain leveled out at last, and ahead a brighter swatch of land appeared through the trees, flat and open with the glimmer of sunlit water beyond. This had to be it.
The road took a final turn around a narrow bend and the Jeep went with it, Annie slamming on the brakes at the sight of an aluminum gate blocking the way ahead.
The tires juddered on gravel like the grinding of teeth, and her entire body tensed up as she skidded over the road, slowing, sliding, finally screeching to a stop less than a foot from the gate.
