Chapter One
Forrest
There'saparticularhouron Lake Mercury when it feels like the whole world is holding its breath.
It comes right before sunrise, when the water goes flat and pewter-gray and the mist sits on the surface like it's deciding whether to rise. No boat wakes. No music. No tourists yet. Just the soft slap of water against my hull and the loons calling to each other across the cove.
Most of my buddies sleep through it. Ace paddles early, sure, but even he doesn't come out at this hour. This is mine.
I cut my trolling motor near the drowned timber off Abner's Point and let the boat drift. The bass are stacking up in the shade of those old submerged trees, and I want to know where they're holding before I bring paying clients out here this weekend.
I cast toward the deepest shadow, let the lure sink, and start a slow retrieve.
Three cranks in, something hits it hard.
The rod bows and the line sings, and for about ninety seconds it's just me and a largemouth having a serious disagreement about how his morning is going to go. He fights like he's got somewhere else to be. I let him run, bring him back, let him run again, and finally lift him out of the water—a good four-pounder, broad-shouldered and furious.
"Morning," I tell him.
Then I work the hook free, hold him underwater until he’s regained his strength, and open my hands.
He's gone in a flash of green and silver.
Catch and release. Always has been for me. I've never understood the point of keeping a thing just because you managed to hook it.
And never really acquired a taste for seafood.
I'm re-tying my line when I hear an engine coughing somewhere nearby. The wet, sputtering, dying wheeze of an old motor that somebody's been abusing.
I look up.
There's a beat-up aluminum jon boat sitting dead in the water maybe forty yards out, and a woman leaning over the back of it, yanking the pull cord like she's trying to start a lawn mower.
She's got a ball cap pulled low, a life vest cinched over a gray T-shirt, and a boat full of equipment. Coolers, a mess of nets, some kind of gray plastic tote bristling with antennas, and a clipboard bungeed to the bench so it won't blow away.
What’s she doing out here with all that?
She yanks the cord again. Nothing happens.
"You need a hand?" I call across the water.
She goes still. Then she straightens up and pushes her cap back, and even from here I can see she's not happy about being caught.
"I've got it," she calls back.
She does not have it.
She checks the fuel line, adjusts the throttle, and gives the cord one last clean pull. The motor coughs, sputters, and dies. She growls in frustration.
"Choke cable's sticking," I say. "The lever's open, but the plate isn't."
"I know." She pushes her cap back. "This rental boat has been fighting me for two weeks."
"Didn't say you didn't know. Mind if I hold the cable open while you pull?"
She blows out a breath and looks at me for a long second. Behind her, the sun finally breaks over the tree line and lights up the mist, and the whole cove goes golden, and she's standing right in the middle of it looking annoyed and gorgeous, and I forget, briefly, how to run my own trolling motor.
"Fine," she says. "If you're offering."
