By then Abigail Bates had spotted three deer in the brush along the river. An eagle, four osprey, a red-tailed hawk feasting on a plump dove, numerous ibis, a handful of limpkins, and a large creature rooting in the shrubs along a section of private farmland. Probably a feral hog, one of the descendants of the creatures Hernando de Soto’s conquistadors introduced centuries before.
Despite the tannic tint, she could see the bottom of the river in most places, twenty to thirty feet deep, and the fish were visible—a snook, one huge catfish, bass, bream, hundreds of minnows flicking by in nervous, synchronized schools.
Because it was midweek and not yet tourist season, the river traffic was light. Only a single kayaker passed her, a stalwart young woman in a skimpy swimsuit who was paddling with the sharp, focused strokes of an athlete in training. The air smelled of snakes and damp mud and an occasional gust of a sharp, insistent citrus scent that made her think of a teenage boy’s first cologne.
A few feet ahead the river narrowed and the cypress and pine and flowering shrubs crowded close to the water’s edge. Abigail steered the canoe around a tight corner. And there, standing about ten yards to her right on an outcropping of rock, was a woman with flesh so white her body might have been carved from cheap soap.
She was long and bony and wore a green one-piece bathing suit.
Abigail paddled two hard strokes on the starboard side to angle away from the woman’s perch on the bank, though at this narrowed spot, the shoreline where she stood was only twenty feet away.
When the canoe was almost abreast of the woman’s position, she dove. Five feet down she frog-kicked toward the canoe with powerful strokes.
When she surfaced nearby, a mouthful of water drooled from her lips. She treaded water and gave Abigail a cheerless stare. The woman had heavy eyebrows, a braided rope of coal-black hair, hollow cheeks, and harsh cheekbones. She was in her mid-thirties and had the gaunt look of one who’d known more than her share of rough treatment. Peasant genes. Italian, maybe Greek. A woman who would be a great attraction for certain peckerwoods in the region—men with a fascination for the exotic.
Almost certainly this was the driver of the pickup truck who tailgated her to the canoe shack. After Abigail turned off, she’d driven down the highway until she’d come to this place where the canoe would be pinched between two banks. Perfect spot for an ambush.
No crime of impulse. This was not the sort of woman who carried a swimsuit in her pickup for river frolics. Which meant she’d followed Abigail with full knowledge of her destination and had brought the required equipment. Abigail’s lungs hardened. Only one person knew where she was headed today. Only one who might have betrayed her.
For a moment they floated parallel, eyeing each other in silence.
At that juncture, with two solid strokes she could be a boat-length beyond the woman and it would be a race downstream.
But she hesitated, for it had never been Abigail’s way to dodge a battle. A fighter as a girl, a fighter still. You didn’t swerve from conflict. You took it on and overcame. Those were her daddy’s lessons passed on from a long line of hardass daddies. Back down once, it becomes a way of life.
She shifted her grip on the paddle, finding a hold that once, many years before, she’d used with a garden spade to hack off a rattler’s head.
The swimmer blew a mist from her lips and slid toward the canoe on an angle that would bring her into range in a second or two.
The moment was gone when Abigail might have fled, and a ghost of gloom swelled within her for she saw she’d erred. She should have raced this lanky woman to the next bend, used the river’s flow to her advantage. But she’d behaved the way old people so often do. A stubborn attachment to habit. Failure to adapt. She’d made that mistake a lot lately. Treating the new world as if it were still the old.
With two precise strokes the woman closed the gap and her hand shot out for the edge of the canoe. Abigail chopped the paddle blade against her bony wrist and knocked her away. While she recovered just out of range, there was another window for escape. But again Abigail faltered.
Sculling one-handed, the young woman rubbed at her damaged flesh and squinted at Abigail with the stony indifference of one who’d absorbed greater pain than any this old woman could deliver.
“Last chance,” Abigail said. “Go back where you came from.”
The woman smiled bleakly, then glided to the bow and took hold. With that effortless act, she had Abigail in her control. No way in hell could she work her way forward in that tippy vessel to attack the woman.
“How long can you hold your breath?” The woman’s voice had a country flavor.
“What?”
“Thirty seconds, forty? How long?”
The woman rocked the canoe back and forth as if testing its balance. Abigail gripped both gunwales and held on. At each tip she was only a degree or two from going over.
“Tell me what you want. I can make it happen. Whatever it is.”
“What I want,” she said, “is to see how long you can hold your breath.”
Like she was taking down a steer at branding time, the woman slung her arm across the prow and twisted the boat onto its side and Abigail slid across the metal bench and sprawled headlong into the river.
The woman looped an arm around Abigail’s waist, securing her with a grip both solid and restrained as if determined to leave no crime-scene bruise. Abigail balled her hands and hammered at the rawboned woman, but she absorbed the blows with the forbearance of a parent enduring a child’s tantrum.
Blind beneath the river, all she could make out was a fizz of bubbles as the woman dragged her toward the sandy bottom, ten feet, fifteen, swimming with one arm, the other locked around her waist. Strong as any man her size, this woman seemed at home beneath the surface, knifing down with an easy power.
As they sank, the water cooled. A swirl of dizzy light spun around her, then she released half the air in her lungs, the glittering froth lifting in a cloud to the surface.
Doing that for the woman’s benefit. If she could make her body go limp, the woman might mistake her for dead and drop her guard.
Through slitted eyes she saw where the woman was dragging her.
A cypress root that bowed out from the bank like the handle of a large door, the door to a bank or some impressive office building like so many Abigail herself had entered. A woman of authority. Doormen holding them open for her. The long car waiting while she did her business.
Abigail watched the young woman take hold of the root as if she meant to open that door for Abigail, show her into the next world.
Above her the riverbank jutted out and put them in shadows and out of view of any passing paddler. She willed herself motionless, though the pain in her chest was vicious and her consciousness was dimming fast.
After a moment more, the woman relaxed her grip and Abigail thought she’d fallen for her ruse. She jerked hard against the woman’s hold, threw an elbow at her face. It missed. She tried a savage kick, but that failed too. The toe of her sneaker wedged in a crevice and came off.
In that spasm of exertion Abigail lost control of her lungs and watched with black horror as a final bubble burped from her mouth, and rose shining toward the sun.
She felt her mouth slacken as the iron in her veins dissolved. Letting go of her ferocious determination, letting go of everything. Her lungs filled and she felt the gentle tug of the current across her flesh. Abigail Bates shivered hard and surrendered.