Chapter One

After twenty minutes of sitting still, Kate Hanlon lowered her binoculars and finally moved her leg, hoping to ease the stiffness in her knee. As she idly shifted her position, a twig snapped, sounding so loud in the stillness of the Tennessee countryside that it startled her. She smiled at the petite older woman sitting on the log next to her.

“It doesn’t surprise me that it’s so serene and quiet out here,” Bonnie Mulgrew said in a hushed voice. “But nothing prepared me for how silent and isolated it would feel.” Bonnie, Kate’s friend and former high-school English literature teacher, lifted her gaze to a clutch of trees in the distance. “It’s the silence that worries me. I can’t quite decide...” Bonnie paused.

Kate had started the day excited to spend some time with her former teacher. A month earlier, Bonnie had called Kate from San Antonio about an event near Copper Mill that she’d seen on her Internet bird-watching message boards. Sparrowpalooza Weekend, sponsored by a local animal-rescue organization, Joanie’s Ark, had been hastily formed as a fund-raising event in hopes of cashing in on the reappearance of a rare pair of sparrows to the habitat between Copper Mill and Pine Ridge.

Kate recalled reading about the umber-throated mountain sparrows the previous year when local enthusiasts had photographed the pair of nearly extinct birds, but she hadn’t kept up with the bird-watching buzz. Bonnie had decided to arrive in town a week ahead of the event, partly to have some time with Kate but also to get a jump on spotting those sparrows before the crowds rolled in.

Bonnie waved a hand to get Kate’s attention. “Help me out here, Kate. Take a moment. Don’t move. Don’t even breathe,” she whispered. “Just listen.”

Dressed in khaki pedal pushers, hiking boots, and a camouflage-patterned jacket over a T-shirt, Bonnie shooed a bug away from her dyed platinum-blonde hair and closed her eyes.

Kate followed suit, lifting her face to the warm September sun and shutting her eyes. She could smell dry-ing autumn grass and the damp dirt. She held her breath, hoping that would lessen the distraction, and listened.

The breeze ruffled the thick canopy of mostly green leaves overhead. She thought she heard a car’s engine in the distance, then nothing. “I’m not one hundred percent sure what I’m supposed to hear, Bonnie.”

“The birds,” the older woman said softly.

“I don’t hear any birds.” Kate kept her voice barely above a whisper.

“Precisely!” Bonnie clapped her hands.

Kate gasped at the sudden burst of noise and energy, then broke into a laugh. “So you had me hold my breath and listen for something you knew I wasn’t going to hear?”

“That’s how you learn,” Bonnie said as she pushed up to her feet. She scooped up her black backpack from the ground and slung it over one shoulder. “Use all the tools in your toolbox, Kate. Your eyes, your ears, your nose, your common sense, your intuition, your reasoning power, your intellect—and it doesn’t hurt to throw a little education into the mix as well.”

“All righty. Maybe we should educate ourselves now by trying a new spot.” Kate rose from the log seat and brushed as many bits of bark and leaves from her jeans as she could.

Kate scanned the green hills, noticing that some of the trees were beginning to turn to autumn colors. She squinted in hopes of seeing the blue of a blue jay or the red of a cardinal, even the flutter of white and brown from an ordinary sparrow. Anything. But not a single bird caught her eye.

She pushed back a drooping lock of her strawberry-blonde hair and turned back to Bonnie.

The older woman said, “Should we hike to another spot, or should we get in my car and drive a ways for a completely different sampling?”

Kate was up for anything. She’d always admired Bonnie and credited her teacher with encouraging her natural curiosity. They’d kept in touch mostly at class reunions back in Texas but had become good friends when they’d worked on a project some years back to collect and record their school’s history. Until then, Kate had thought of Mrs. Mulgrew as an “old lady,” when really, Bonnie was only in her late sixties.

Kate shook her head at how each passing year pushed back the line in her mind between middle age and senior citizenship.

“If we’d heard any birds, even in the distance, we might try walking, but I say drive. There are fewer birds here than there were in our spot earlier today.” Bonnie paused to tug a green notebook from her backpack, then slid a printed sheet of paper out of it.

“So, do you think the drop in the bird count is confined to a small area?” Kate took a moment to look around them. She’d been especially careful to check for No Trespassing signs before they went walking out across anyone’s property.

“Well, we haven’t had a very scientific approach, but it does seem like the more we head west”—Bonnie pointed in that direction—“the quieter it gets.”

“Then we should head west,” Kate concluded, “to check out the theory that there are fewer birds out that way.”

“But we have to be careful.” Bonnie inspected the paper she’d taken from her notebook. “I don’t have my official paperwork for the big event, but I did print this out from the Web site for Joanie’s Ark. They only had a crudely drawn map, but they made it very clear that people are supposed to avoid this big area here.”

Kate leaned in to get a peek, but a gust of wind snatched the page from Bonnie’s fingers and sent it sailing. Kate lurched after it but winced as a twinge of pain shot through her body. She knelt down to rub her arthritic knee and shot a look at Bonnie. “I had no idea bird-watching could be so hard on the body.”

“I suppose this is where a tacky person might point out that when just sitting makes you sore, maybe the activity isn’t to blame.” Bonnie gave her a grin and a wink, then headed off to rescue the page, which had gotten snagged on a boulder jutting up from the side of a small hill.

“Thank goodness you aren’t a tacky person, Bonnie.” Kate called after her. “Honestly, I think it’s the lack of activity that’s gotten to me today.”

“I’d like to say that never happens to me, but—” Bonnie let out a sharp cry and tumbled to the ground.

Kate bounded toward her friend, grabbing her arm to help her up and steady her on her feet. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Thanks. Just a misstep.” Bonnie retrieved the map, then froze with the paper in hand, staring straight ahead.