But hunting what? Cork wondered. Jenny and him? The baby? Something else entirely? Impossible to know.
Cork tried to put himself inside that man’s brain, to stay ahead of his thinking.
If the mystery man believed someone was still on the island, he would probably work his way carefully from one end to the other, keeping to the cover of the downed trees. It would be hard to move quickly or quietly, so what would his advantage be? Cork figured if it were him, he’d make sure that he had firepower on his side. He’d have brought a good rifle with a powerful scope. He’d have brought field glasses. Maybe he’d even have dressed in camouflage, or at least clothing that would blend easily into the underbrush. If he was as cruel as the torture of the young woman in the cabin indicated, he’d shoot to maim, to disable, and in that way try to ensure an opportunity for interrogation, the kind of sadistic interrogation the young woman must have endured.
But to what end? What was the purpose of what had occurred in that isolated place? Inflicting pain for pain’s sake? There were people capable of such inhumanity, but this felt different to Cork. The woman’s isolated situation felt purposeful, a hiding. If the storm hadn’t destroyed the tree cover, the cabin would be difficult, if not impossible, to spot from the water. It was a rustic structure but had been comfortably accommodated. Until the fallen pine had breached the roof, it was sturdy. The cooking had been done on the Coleman, so no fire in the stove and no smoke to give away the location. All in all, not a bad place to hide. But why and from whom? The man in the cigarette boat, what had he been to the dead girl? Protector or prison guard? Keeper or killer? And what was he now to those he hunted?
The baby was yet another unanswered question. Clearly, he’d been hidden, and the place of his hiding had been prepared long in advance. The dead girl must have known they were in danger. She’d done her best to save the child, maybe even sacrificed herself. But why? What was the importance of the baby to anyone but her? And was the baby the reason she died?
And then he wondered, with a bitter edge that shamed him, would this child be responsible for the death of another woman? Because he knew without a doubt that Jenny was prepared to sacrifice herself, if it came to that.
Cork was exhausted; his brain was going in dizzy circles, and he couldn’t think clearly. It didn’t much matter. In a little while, when the sun rose, all his questions would be answered, one way or another.
EIGHTEEN
Rose couldn’t sleep. She was tired through and through, but her brain kept working, wouldn’t give in to exhaustion, circled and circled, always coming back to the same place: Everything was in God’s hands. It was always a question of submitting to his will. Wasn’t it?
But what did that say about God when his will seemed to be visiting one affliction after another on the people she loved? What could possibly be his purpose?
In his bunk on the other side of the small cabin, Mal slept dead as stone. Rose finally slipped out of her own bunk and went to the window. In the east, she saw a thin vermilion line, the approach of dawn. She also saw Aaron, standing alone on the dock, hands deep in the pockets of his jeans, staring where the day would break. Quietly, she dressed in the clothes she’d worn the day before, put on her canvas boat shoes, and eased herself out the door.
The birds were calling to one another. She realized that, after the terrible storm, everything had been stilled, even the sound of the birds. Had they fled to safety somewhere and now returned? The air was cool and moist, the wind steady and fresh against her skin. She smelled the scent of wet earth and evergreen coming from the woods at her back.
“Can’t sleep?” she asked as she approached Aaron. She’d softened her voice in order not to startle him.
He turned his head, showing the strong profile of his face. She didn’t know much about him, but she could clearly see one of the reasons Jenny had been attracted to him. With all that tousled hair and those haunting green eyes and the brooding aspect of a poet, he was beautiful.
“Can’t stop worrying,” he said. “Can’t stop wondering where she is out there, if she’s okay, if she’s hurt, if she’s scared, if she’s—” He stopped himself.
“If she’s even alive,” Rose finished for him. She stepped to his side and stood near enough that she could feel the warmth of his bare arm. “I’ve been praying all night that they’re safe.”
He stared at the bloodred line in the sky. “I don’t believe in prayer. But right now I wish I did.”
“I wish you did, too. I find that, when I have no control over something, it’s a comfort to let go and put my trust in a prayer.”
Aaron said, “Did you pray for Jenny’s mom?”
“Yes.”
“Excuse me for reminding you, but it didn’t do much good.”
“Not for my sister, no.”
Somewhere far out on the lake, in water that was still the color of night, a loon called. It seemed an utterly sad sound.
“I’m sorry,” Aaron said. “That was unkind of me.”
“Maybe, but it was the truth of how you feel. It helps me know you better.”
“This,” he said, lifting his hands in quiet frustration, “wasn’t how you were supposed to get to know me.”
“Nor you us. It is what it is.” The vermilion line in the east was growing wider and more diffuse, and the surface of the lake had picked up a hint of color, which was the hue of old blood. “She was worried about you.”
“Why?”
“Only one of you, lots of us. And the O’Connors can be clannish.”
“Show me a family that isn’t. But I’m guessing that’s not what was really worrying her.” He turned to her fully, and even in the dim illumination that was a long distance from daylight, she could discern the intensity in his eyes. “She’s talked to you, I know. Things haven’t been exactly easy between us lately. I wasn’t even sure I should come. Now I look out across this lake and I think to hell with the small squabbles. I just want her to be with me and be safe.”
“I understand.”
He studied her and nodded. “She’s told me a lot about you, about everyone. She’s pretty high on her family.”
Rose smiled. “We’re all pretty fond of her, too.”
Jenny hadn’t said much about Aaron’s family, and what little she did wasn’t encouraging. They lived somewhere in Virginia, near D.C. They had money, from banking, she thought. Aaron was their only child, which to Rose meant that they should dote on him. But Jenny said there was something not right in his relationship with his parents, something festering, something that Aaron wouldn’t talk about but that kept him at a distance. He hadn’t been home in several years, and if his parents wanted to see him, they had to come to Iowa. They almost never did. She had yet to meet them.
“You really heard a smuggler out there?” Aaron asked.
“We heard a boat running through the dark. From what Seth said, the circumstance seemed consistent with the action of a smuggler.”
He thought about that, then his gaze made a long sweep of the lake. “A big place, this. Probably not much chance of them running into that kind of trouble, don’t you think?”
What she thought was that she didn’t know the Lake of the Woods and so had no idea what might be possible. What she said was “I’m sure you’re right.”
“I guess we should try to get some sleep,” he said.
“Do you think you can?”
“Maybe I’ll try saying a little prayer before I lie down.”
He didn’t look at her or smile, and she had no idea if it was meant as a joke.
She hoped it wasn’t.
NINETEEN
The cigarette boat roared out of the glare of the rising sun, just as Cork had predicted. He shielded his eyes and squinted and watched it race over water that reflected morning sunlight with painful brilliance. It swung to the far side of the island, where he lost it behind the bald rise that backed the old, damaged cabin. The engines cut out suddenly, and Cork suspected that the b
oat had entered one of the many inlets along the island’s shoreline, where it would anchor.
He slid toward a small formation of rock that was like a lifted shoulder, slipped into the long trough of morning shadow that it cast, and tried to be still as the stone where he lay. He scanned the island across the channel for any sign of the man who’d come hunting. The birds had returned, and he saw white pelicans roosting along rocks that shot up from the waterline like a row of molars. An eagle rode the wind, circled the island, and finally landed in the crown of one of the few ragged spruce trees that had survived upright. It was an hour before he saw movement of a larger creature near the center of the island, scuttling over a long outcrop of flat-topped rock. Cork wouldn’t have seen him except that the rock was pale as ice and the mottled green of the man’s camouflage fatigues stood out for a few moments in sharp contrast. The figure quickly crossed the rock and vanished amid the debris on the other side. He was too distant and too soon gone for Cork to make out how heavily armed he might be. From the man’s position, Cork was fairly certain that he was, in fact, working his way down the length of the island.
Cork had been right in much of his thinking so far. Not that it pleased him. During the night, as he’d kept his lonely vigil atop the rock, he’d allowed himself to hope that he might be wrong about everything. That the man had fled the island in order to alert the authorities and let them deal with the girl’s murder, and that with the morning light they would come, and he and Jenny would be rescued. Of course, there was the fact that the man had already returned once and carried away the girl’s body, but maybe there was a reasonable explanation for that, too, one that, because he was tired and battered, Cork simply wasn’t seeing.
Now, as he watched for the lone figure to reappear, he was pretty certain the man had taken the body to dispose of it. No corpus delecti, no proof of a crime. This time the killer had returned to be certain that, if there were witnesses, they, too, would disappear.
Now Cork speculated that the man in camouflage would reconnoiter the island and probably find the smashed dinghy and the little shelter Jenny had built and understand that someone had been there after the storm but was no longer. He would realize that in this place visited by no one, someone had come, thrown there by providence and the storm. They’d found the murdered girl, and maybe the baby, and then what? Been rescued? Probably not, or at least not yet, since the island was so remote. So what, then? Gone somewhere else would be the most obvious answer, slipped off the island seeking a better hiding place. And where would that be? The hunter’s gaze would swing across the narrow channel to the only stand of trees in sight that was still upright and offered shelter.
Cork began planning for what he knew would come then.
* * *
She’d heard the engines kick in and had listened as they whisked the man to the island where the girl had been murdered, and then she’d waited, which was hard to do. She wanted desperately to be up on the rock with her father, observing the man’s movements, knowing the way things stood. But the baby couldn’t be left alone, and she knew that one more body above the trees would be one more object the man who hunted them might spot. Better, she understood, to stay below, to see to the baby, and to trust that her father would be her eyes.
But she could still use her brain.
She was thinking: What if the man checked the whole of that devastated island? And what if he found the shelter she’d built but didn’t find her? What would he think? What would he do?
She paced, cradling the baby, who was sound asleep in her arms. Dragonflies darted through the shafts of sunlight, and bees hovered around what might have been the only wildflowers for miles. She barely noticed these things, because her mind was so focused on trying to anticipate the thinking of the man who hunted them.
He would, she decided, wonder first if they’d been rescued, but the evidence—the smashed dinghy, the shelter itself, and the fact that they were in a terribly remote area of the lake—would tell him no. If he was smart, he would understand that they’d fled, looking for a safer hiding place. And where would that be? The only stand of undamaged trees anywhere in sight. He would eye those trees like a hawk might eye a patch of tall grass where it understood a mouse could hide. And then he would come for them.
They had to be prepared. They needed a plan.
That was as far as she’d gotten when she heard the slither of her father down the sloping face of rock. He was sweating when he finally stood before her. He looked grimly at the baby.
“He sleeps like a log, thank God,” he said.
Jenny asked, “What about our hunter?”
“He’s working his way down the island, looking for us.”
“Where is he now?”
“Halfway. We’ve got maybe forty-five minutes before he reaches your shelter.”
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “He’ll know we’re here. It’s the most logical place.”
“I agree. Unless we divert him.”
She could see that he was ahead of her in his thinking, but as soon as he spoke those two sentences, she was right there with him.
“No, Dad.”
“It’s the only way,” he said.
“Make you the target, right?”
“As unappealing as that is to me, yes.”
“There’s got to be another way.”
“I’d like to hear it.”
He waited, but they both knew he was right. Maybe if they had hours to think, to plan, to prepare, but they had only minutes.
“Where?” she said.
“The island just to the south. It’s larger than this one, so more area to hide in.”
“But no cover. Everything’s blown down.”
“This is how I figure it. There’s a bluff at this end.”
“I remember it,” Jenny said. “It’s got a cliff face that drops straight down forty or fifty feet to the waterline.”
“That’s the one. I’ll swim to the island and haul ass up the back of the bluff and make myself visible. I’m thinking our hunter friend, when he stumbles across your shelter and finds you gone, will climb that outcropping with the cedars on top. It’s got the best view of the whole area. He’ll look back at where he’s been, and then he’ll look around at other possibilities.”
“And that’s when he sees these trees.”
“Yeah. So I have to make sure that he sees me, too. Best if he sees me instead.”
“You said if you were him you’d come well armed. So he’ll probably have a good rifle.”
“Probably,” her father agreed.
“Dad, that bluff you’re talking about is only a couple of hundred yards from those cedars. Even a bad shot could pick you off easily, and I’m thinking this guy’s probably pretty good.”
“I’ll do my best not to give him much of a target. And I need to stay alive so he’ll come for me there and not give any thought to you here.”
“I don’t like this.”
“I don’t either. But we don’t have much time, so I guess we’re stuck with it.”
“What if . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to say it.
“If he gets to me? Good question. And I’ve got an answer. After he’s seen me, I’m going to make myself scarce. He’ll beat cleats back to that launch of his and come hunting me. As soon as he leaves those cedars, you put everything on the raft I made and . . .”
“And what?”
He looked at the baby, looked at him not with love but with a kind of regret. She was afraid that he was going to suggest that she leave the child behind, and if he did that, she would hate him.
“You take the baby back to the shelter,” he went on. “If our hunter gets past me, that’ll be the last place he’ll look for you. But, Jenny, you’ve got to leave no trace that we were ever here. I mean nothing, do you understand?”
“Yeah, Dad.”
“Okay.”
He took a deep breath, and then he hugged her, with the body of the sleeping baby bet
ween them. She understood that, if things went bad, it might be the last time they ever touched this way. She felt herself on the edge of despair and knew that she couldn’t allow herself to go there.
“Dad, take the knife.” She nodded toward the blade that lay next to the Coleman stove.
“No, you keep it.”
She shook her head. “If he gets through you, the knife won’t do me any good. That’s the truth, and we both know it.”
His face went hard. He took the knife and slid the blade into his belt. He kissed the top of her head as he passed, then ran for the lake.
Jenny laid the baby carefully in the wicker basket and turned to her own duty.
TWENTY
First thing in the morning, Bascombe spoke with the mainland and learned that, in addition to the missing O’Connors, half a dozen other people were still unaccounted for, all visiting fishermen staying at lodges in the area. A search effort by local volunteers was being organized. Neither Lake of the Woods County authorities nor the Coast Guard station in Warroad could send help; with the devastation that the derecho had wreaked on the communities along the lake’s southern shoreline, they already had their own hands full.
“Like always,” Bascombe said, scratching at his beard, “we’re on our own up here. But don’t worry. We know what we’re doing.”
The O’Connors were happy to believe him.