Time is strange how it slows, stretches. She had a similar experience once before during a head-on collision on a snowy highway. Under extreme life-and-death stress, one really does have occasion to observe things in slow, protracted motion that in real time occur in a smashing blink of an eye. Claw upon frozen claw, she inches closer to the bank. She gropes for the sticks of leafless scrub growing along the river’s edge. The bank is very steep here. For a while she lies panting, half in and half out of the water, the side of her face resting in slimy green moss and black loam. It smells like compost, like mushrooms. Like a garden pond with koi.
A sound reaches into her consciousness—a raven. Cawing. It must be close, right above her somewhere in the trees on the bank. Otherwise she wouldn’t hear it above the boom of Plunge Falls. The raven is a scavenger. It’s smart. It knows she is dying. It will go for her eyes first, the soft parts of her body. Her mind begins to go dark.
No. No!
I must keep my brain alive. It’s all I’ve got now. My mind. Use it. To command my body to live.
She lies there panting in the slippery mulch of soil and moss and dead leaves, struggling to comprehend her situation, the sequence of events that sent her into the river. Her brain fades to black again. It’s almost a relief now. She welcomes it. But a stray little spark in the blackness does not die. It flares slightly. Flickers. Then bursts to hot life as fear strikes a jumper cable to her heart.
You.
I think of You. My fear is suddenly for You, who I once thought didn’t matter.
Her eyes flare open wide. Her pulse races. Adrenaline pounds through her blood.
You matter now. Now that I see death.What do they say about people who survive against all odds when others would surely perish? About that man who sawed off his own arm to free himself from the rock jaws that trapped him; the young woman who descended a snowy mountain after a plane crash wearing a miniskirt and no panties; the female teen who survived feverish, insect-ridden months in the Amazon jungle after falling like a whirling seedpod from the sky while strapped into the passenger seat of a commercial airplane; the man who drifted for months on a raft in the ocean? They all returned to civilization with one common refrain. They say they lived, survived, did it for someone. A loved one. The thought of that loved one infused them with a superhuman strength to fight death, because they had to go home. To that loved one.I must go home for You. I must live for You. This changes everything. Everything. I can’t let You down. I’m all You have.
Slowly she reaches for a clump of roots, drags herself up the bank an inch. She gathers breath, strains to grab a higher clump, pulls. Pain screams into her body. She relishes it. She’s still alive. She fights death knowing that one slip, one lost grip, will shoot her back down the slick bank into the water. And over the falls.
She’s almost at the crest of the bank. She stops, gathering breath, marshaling reserves, retching. Fog creeps over her, thick with moisture and gathering darkness. She senses something again. She’s not alone. A strange combination of hope and dread sinks through her. Slowly, very slowly, terrified of what she might find, she looks up. Her heart stalls.
A black shape among the trees. Standing deadly still. Silent. Watching from the gloam. Observing her struggle.
Or is she hallucinating? Wind stirs boughs, branches twist, and the shape moves. Coming closer? Or is it just shadows in the wind?
Painfully, slowly, she releases a fist-hold on grass, making precarious her position on the slick bank. She raises her free hand, stretching her arm out toward the shape.
“Help,” she whispers.
No movement.
“Please. Help ... me.” She lifts her hand higher, giving gravity more power. No response.
Confusion chases through her. Then it hits. Like a bolt from the blue. And as she realizes what is going on, why this is happening, all hope is sucked out of her body. It robs her last vestiges of strength. Her outreached hand has tipped the balance, and she begins to slip. She gathers speed suddenly, gravity thrilled to have her back, tumbling and sliding her in her waterlogged waders and boots all the way back down to the river. She lands with a splosh. The current grabs at her with delight as the human figure continues to study her in silence from the trees above. A final thought cuts through her mind as she goes under.
It’s impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it.
But who will pay if I drown?
How will You get justice? How will anyone know?
Because the dead cannot tell.
CHAPTER 1
SUNDAY, OCTOBER28
TWENTY-FOURYEARSLATER
Sixty-five-year-old Budge Hargreaves spotted the mushrooms the moment he entered the grove—golden funnels pushing up through a carpet of pine needles and twigs, crumbs of black loam still fresh upon their lips like bits of chocolate cake yet to be wiped off.
Excitement crackled through him. Finally, he’d lucked onto a good spot. He could harvest these beauties before the light faded completely. He clambered over a moss-covered log thick as his torso, wincing as his arthritic knee gave an audible click.
Rain dripped from the bill of his cap as he crouched down among the ferns. Using his knife, he gently prized a large chanterelle free from the soil. He wiped off the wet pine needles, sniffed the fungus—fruity, like apricots. A little peppery. Unlike the toxic false chanterelle, this was the real deal.
Carefully, he placed his find into the airy bag he wore slung across his blaze-orange vest. His dog, Tucker, a wirehaired pointer, sported a blaze-orange vest, too. And a bell hung on his collar. They were into the dying days of October—killing season in these parts. Budge had no intention of either him or Tuck being mistaken for deer in this dark section of the Nahamish woods. Just last fall a couple of hunters had put a slug into the heart of a black Lab a few miles east. They’d claimed they’d thought the dog was a black bear.
Fuckers. No bear hunting allowed in these parts, ever. And all they had was permits for deer, so why in the hell was they using shotgun slug for deer?He glanced up suddenly as it struck him. He hadn’t heard Tuck’s bell in a while. His dog liked to go on ahead, nose around a bit on his own, but usually he wasn’t out of sight or earshot for long.
