Eden looked directly at the camera. No smile. “Because my mom makes me.”
Willow appeared uncertain. But Trish guffawed and tilted her beer bottle at Eden. “Yeah, and you will thank your mom for that because that’s how I started. My mom. After I lost my way I realized that my mother—who I used to hate, mind you—had actually given me something to fall back on. An anchor. I realized I was not that much unlike her.”
Eden reached for her glass and sipped. She came across as a sullen and rebellious fourteen-year-old. Angie remembered her own mood swings at that age. Oh, the joys of hormonal shifts on either end of the age spectrum.
A raucous series of whoops and banging erupted from the pub side of the establishment, and the camera swung abruptly around to the source of the sound. Beer bottles and glasses were being raised and chinked, high-fives exchanged as fresh rounds of drinks were yelled for.
Rachel panned over to their server. “What’s all the excitement on the pub side?” she asked the woman.
“Robbie Tollet,” said a male voice. The camera angled to find the voice.
Angie blinked as a man came into view. She was looking through a time warp at the owner of Predator Lodge, Claire Tollet’s father, Garrison. He sure was built back in the day—broad shoulders, thick neck, a swath of black hair, dense beard, pale-green eyes that danced with a wicked mirth beneath a dark thatch of brows.
“Ah, meet Garrison Tollet, one of our guides,” Rachel said for the camera. “Who’s Robbie?”
“My little brother. Twenty-one. Plays for the Winnipeg Jets. Half the village is watching their home boy tonight.”
“I thought union negotiations had resulted in this being an NHL lockout year,” Trish said.
“Ah, this isn’t an NHL game,” Garrison said. “It’s in Helsinki. Jets won their first against Tappara, and now they’re up against HIFK in the final. Could be one of the last hurrahs for the Jets—there’s talk of moving them to Minnesota. Oh, here’s Jessie the Man. Come on over, Jess. Meet the girls.”
A tall sandy-haired male joined Garrison, his smile boyish, his cheeks slightly flushed.
“Ladies, your second guide, Jessie Carmanagh,” Garrison said with flourish.
Jessie’s flush deepened. Angie found his shyness charming. According to the reports she’d read, Jessie Carmanagh had been thirty-three the year of the fateful trip. He was also the father of the young male guide on Angie and Maddocks’s trip.
“When everyone else has arrived and after we’ve had dinner, we’ll get set up with the safety briefing and run through the schedule for tomorrow,” Garrison said, raising his hand to summon the server. He motioned for another round of drinks as he and Jessie seated themselves at the restaurant table.
“What made you become a fishing guide, Garrison?” Rachel zoomed in on his face.
He paused, his green eyes holding the camera. Angie swallowed. His intensity was stark, raw. Masculinity oozed from him. The lightness of his eyes against his black hair and beard was startling. A woman couldn’t help but imagine what he’d be like in bed. Big. Hard. Rough. Satisfying.
“My grandfather homesteaded along the Nahamish,” he said, looking directly into Rachel’s lens. “He bought up huge tracts of forest along Carmanagh Lake, stretching way back into the north mountains, and the land was dirt cheap because no one wanted to live out here at the time. He also started logging an area of Crown land on the south side of the river. He built a mill to process the lumber, and he began shipping it across Canada and into the States. With those original logs, he built Predator Lodge, which my father now runs. We were born there, raised there, and still live in and around the lodge. Hunting and fishing and living off the land is our family’s way of life. I was homeschooled out there. We have extended family living in those mountains to this day. And given the changes in the economy, we’re moving away from the resource industries and segueing more into tourism—guided angling, backcountry skiing, guided hikes, hunting—it’s a natural move.”
“Jessie, how ’bout you?”
Jessie cleared his throat, looking embarrassed. “My family’s into aquaculture—oysters, clams, scallops. Commercial fishing is my thing. But I like to guide on the side. Both ocean and river. We—the Carmanaghs—go back with the Tollets.”
A man of few words, thought Angie as the clip ended abruptly.
The next file showed the other females arriving, tables being pushed together, dinner and more drinks being ordered, introductions being shared. Jasmine Gulati entered the frame. Angie hit PAUSE, took a screenshot, and saved and printed the image.
The woman was stunning. As she entered the room, every face seemed to turn to her like sunflowers to the sun. Angie rewound and played the moment again.
Jaz entering the restaurant was like a magnet being set among metal shavings that began to vibrate along her magnetic poles. The alpha male of the group—Garrison—immediately moved his chair over to make a gap for another chair to be brought in for her. But Jaz declined to sit there, choosing instead to seat herself beside Jessie. An immediate little power play, thought Angie. Jaz said her hellos all around. Garrison eyed Jessie, who looked suddenly flustered.
Rachel took a seat, now including herself in the footage. She must have set her camera on a tripod and left it running. More food and drinks arrived. Hand gestures turned expansive, voices rose, complexions grew flushed, and eyes turned bright and animated as fishing adventures were shared.
Catching any particular thread of conversation was impossible, but among the group Angie identified the German septuagenarian, Hannah Vogel. Now deceased. The woman closest to Hannah in age was Donna Gill, sixty-one, the triathlete. Also deceased. The redhead with freckles Angie pegged as Irene Mallard, forty-two, unmarried, husband having an affair—the “loose vagina” woman now living abroad. The bottle blonde with the hard face and foul mouth Angie identified as Kathi, bitter divorcée, single mother. No child support. Ex paying for sex in his sports car.
Jaz left the table. Angie noted both Garrison’s and Jessie’s gazes following her ass. Kathi moved her chair closer to Garrison. She leaned drunkenly toward him. This caught Jessie’s attention. A strange look entered his eyes as he watched Garrison listening politely to whatever Kathi was saying in his ear. Eden came suddenly and sharply to her feet, a look of disgust on her face. She muttered something, and Hannah reached out and placed her hand on Eden’s arm. Hannah then also rose from her chair and said good night to the group. She and Eden left the establishment together, Hannah with her arm around Eden’s shoulders.
Donna also left as Jasmine returned to the table with a new drink in her hand. Jasmine angled her head, smiled at Garrison, and pointed to the pub section. Kathi’s face darkened. Booze had clearly removed the filter that controlled Kathi’s facial expressions. The men were no longer even trying to hide their overt sexual attraction to Jasmine Gulati. The other women were noticing, too. The footage ended.
The next clip opened in the pub area. Angie presumed Rachel was once more behind the camera, and the filmmaker was clearly pursuing the Jasmine-sexual-interest angle. Her lens was focused tightly on Jaz’s face. Jaz’s black eyes glittered with drink and apparent amusement. But her stance was combative as she pointed her long-nailed finger into the face of a big man with strawberry-blond hair. The male was missing two front teeth. He was flanked by three equally robust males, and they all looked tanked. Two of the men appeared identical. Angie paused, rewound, and watched the segment again. She figured the two could be twins. She took some screenshots of the males, which she printed. She hit PLAY again.
Noise and cheering was loud, but Jaz’s voice came across clear. “So—what? You’re likeallrelated to that hockey player kid? Like, the whole town?”
