After everything she’d read and heard, Kat expected to feel the earth shift on its axis when they crossed the border of Adirondack Park, but it wasn’t like that at all. Lake George, the first town they came to, was just as neat and picture-perfect as Bluebell Bay.
Granted, she had never seen a stag sharpening its antlers on a mailbox before, but her seaside home had its fair share of exotic creatures. Seals and dolphins, for starters.
And, Kat thought with a shudder, spies. Her early days as Bluebell Bay’s first pet sitter had not worked out the way she thought they might. Not at all. If she hadn’t met Harper and accidentally formed a detective agency, Wolfe & Lamb Incorporated, she wasn’t sure she’d have survived them.
Judging by its tame appearance, Lake George was pleasingly spy-free, but Kat had learned the hard way that appearances could be deceptive. Perfect places often hid perfect crimes. If jewel thieves lurked in nursing homes, any crime was possible anywhere.
“What’s ruby rain?” she asked Harper as the golf courses, burger joints, and water parks slipped away behind them.
“You’ll know it when you see it” was her friend’s enigmatic reply.
Kat was travel weary and fed up with waiting and seeing, but before she could say so, the sunlight caught a maple tree, transforming it into a living flame.
Her breath caught in her throat. While she’d been lost in thought, suburbia had given way to forests with wildfire colors. White birch trees were crowned with gold, and groves of beech and oak with flaming orange.
As the road twisted higher, the first crags poked above the trees. Red maples ablaze with hues of crimson, fuchsia, and vermilion turned every mountainside into nature’s most spectacular art gallery.
“Now do you see about the leaves?” Harper asked with a smile.
Awed, Kat could only nod.
Wildness came into the car like smoke. It was in the clean, sharp air, in the secret silver inlets, and in the talons of the rough-legged hawk that swooped past their windshield to snatch a bloody scrap of roadkill from the asphalt.
Dr. Wolfe stamped on the brakes to avoid it. Barred feathers strained in its wings as it powered away, amber eyes gleaming with triumph.
They stopped for a late lunch in Ticonderoga, a tiny hamlet with the atmosphere of a frontier town in a Western. As they parked beside the lake, two trucks and a Harley-Davidson biker sped off, loaded up with firewood, bottled water, and provisions.
“Wonder what’s going on,” said Dr. Wolfe. “It’s as if they’re preparing for a siege.”
Hardly had she spoken when the door of the general store slammed with a jangle and the open sign flipped to shut. A bundle of newspapers was marooned outside. One headline caught the girls’ eye. TOP SECRET WITNESS HOLDS KEY TO WISH LIST CASE.
“Must be someone mega famous,” mused Harper.
“Or royal,” suggested Kat.
The proprietor of the Full-Belly Deli was on a ladder, boarding up the windows.
“Any chance of a meal?” asked Dr. Wolfe.
“Soup and crackers is the best I can do. We’re shutting early today on account of the weather.”
“The weather? But there’s not a cloud in the sky.”
The chef slid down the ladder and exchanged his hammer for an apron and ladle. “Around here, that can change in a heartbeat. Since yesterday the birds have been acting strange. Not singing; leaving in flocks. The woodsmen are predicting a nor’easter storm the likes of which we haven’t seen in years. Blizzards and gales. The whole kit and caboodle.”
“That’s not what the weather app is forecasting,” said Dr. Wolfe, smiling.
He gave her a hard stare. “When it comes to the weather, I’d trust an Adirondack local over the app on my phone any day.”
Seeing their disbelieving faces, he warmed to his theme inside the dimly lit diner. Halloween pumpkins lined the windows.
“You ain’t experienced winter till you’ve lived through winter in the Adirondacks. At home, we have a rope stretching from the house to the barn, like the early settlers did. Least we know we ain’t gonna die of exposure if we get lost in a snowstorm tending to the horses.”
Harper was skeptical. “Lost in your own backyard? But never in October, right?”
“You’d better believe it can happen in October.”
The sun was still shining when they drove away with bellies full of delicious tomato soup, three blankets—“just in case”—and a sketch directing them to the best leaf-viewing road through the backwoods.
“It’s pretty as a picture, but don’t linger,” warned the chef. “You wanna be tucked up in your cabin by nightfall.”
They had every intention of being in their cabin by nightfall, but it was near impossible not to linger. The track was a pale ribbon of dirt winding through the flame-leaved forests, empty apart from the occasional hiker or lone vehicle.
Each turning they took was more breathtaking than the last. Dr. Wolfe and Harper kept hopping out of the car to take photos. Kat took the opportunity to peer between the pines, hoping to spot deer or moose.
She was curious too about the human forest dwellers. They were few and far between. She’d seen some idyllic log cabins in sunlit glades and others with moss-covered rocking chairs on the porch and rusting cars in the yard.
Now, though, there was only forest.
“How much longer till we reach our cabin?” she asked plaintively as they stopped for yet more leaf pictures. “I need the bathroom.”
Her mum sighed. “Why didn’t you go when we stopped at the gas station?”
“Didn’t need it then. Now I do.”
They were in luck. Around the very next bend was a nature-viewing area, with an arrow indicating a compost toilet in the woods.
The cubicle was occupied. As Kat sat on a fallen tree to wait, an SUV grumbled into the parking lot.
Through the foliage, she watched a tall man, a stocky woman, and a girl of about her own age get out of the vehicle. On the road, a police squad car rolled by.
“Goodness, it’s like Piccadilly Circus in the wilderness,” said Dr. Wolfe. “Kat, Harper and I will be right over there taking photos of the lake. You’ll be able to see us. Yell if you spot a bobcat on the prowl. We’ll come running.”
She and Harper headed down to the water’s edge with their cameras, comparing notes on film and shutter speeds.
Shortly afterward, the woman and girl came up the path, the former saying peevishly, “I asked if you needed the restroom when we were at the gas station and you were adamant you didn’t.”
“Well, now I do. You shouldn’t have given me chocolate milk.”
“I was trying to keep you hydrated.”
The woman seemed taken aback to see Kat sitting on the log. “Oh, hey there.”
Her gaze darted from Kat to the closed door of the cubicle to Dr. Wolfe, who chose that moment to wave to Kat from the lakeshore. Relaxing, the woman smiled warmly at the girl. “Sweetheart, I need to make a call. I’ll be under that shelter at the trailhead. Holler if you need me.”
The girl perched on the log beside Kat. She was wearing a cherry-pink baseball cap and a cornflower-blue neckerchief the same color as her eyes. “Always in trouble,” she said with a conspiratorial grin. “Why can’t they understand that when you don’t need it, you don’t need it, and when you gotta go, you gotta go!”
“Don’t worry, I just had the exact same conversation with my mum,” said Kat.
The girl’s father materialized near the shelter. He had a buzz cut and arms as thick as maple branches. His aviator glasses glinted briefly in Kat’s direction. As he leaned against a post to talk to the woman, his voice carried clearly through the trees. “Who’s our girl talking to?”
“Some kid.”
“Yeah, but what if—?”
“Quit fussing. We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“Why’s she chatting? We need to get going.”
“There’s a line.”
“A line? Out here—in the middle of nowhere?”
“I guess there’s a shortage of restrooms in the wilderness.”
The man snorted with laughter. “Well, there’s no shortage of trees.”
“Yeah, but every tree trunk might conceal a sleeping bear.”
“You think there are bears in these woods? Grizzlies?”
“Black bears. Four thousand of ’em.”
“You’re kidding? Four thousand? Uh, I think I forgot to lock the vehicle. I’ll go check on it.”
Kat did her best to pretend that she hadn’t heard, but a giggle escaped as she pictured the man hunkered down in the vehicle, hiding from invisible bears. She clapped a hand to her mouth. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh at your dad.”
The girl laughed. “No offense taken. He’s not my dad anyway; he’s my uncle. Personally, I’d love to see a grizzly or any other bear. I adore animals.”
“Me too.” Kat smiled. “Especially cats. I have one. A Savannah. He’s quite wild and so enormous that the man who rescued him called him Tiny as a joke. Want to see him?” She slid a photo out of the sleeve of her phone.
The girl studied the picture with delight. “That’s hilarious. Tiny, your own personal leopard. I’d do anything for a cat like that. At home in New York City, I’m not allowed any pets. My dad claims he’s allergic, but I don’t believe him.”
A long desolate cry cut through the trees from the lake. Kat jumped up. “What was that?”
“Only my favorite sound in the world. It’s a male loon’s yodel. They’re divers—aquatic birds—with black-and-white plumage. They always look as if they’re dressed for the Oscars.”
She cupped her hands and mimicked the loon’s haunting call. To Kat’s astonishment, the unseen loon responded.
“My nan taught me that,” the girl said proudly. “She’s crazy about birds. Dad thinks she’s crazy in every way, but that’s only because she’s as fierce as a lioness when it comes to righting wrongs.”
A shadow crossed her face. “Last time I saw her she was, anyway … Uh, do you think we should knock? Whoever’s in the restroom must be taking a nap.”
Kat was beginning to suspect that the cubicle was empty but was reluctant to say so because she was intrigued by her companion. “Let’s give it another minute. Tell me more about your nan.”
The girl brightened. “She’s tough and cool and doesn’t care what anyone thinks. It freaks Dad out that she’s dyed her hair every color of the rainbow. A lot of people talk about helping others or saving nature. She goes out and does it. One time she found out that the reason the loons on a lake near her house were being careless parents and forgetting to feed their chicks was because this evil company had leaked toxic metal into the water. They were the sorriest people on earth by the time she got through taking them to court.”
The woman was calling from the path. “Riley, sweetie! Everything okay?”
“All good … Aunt Jo. Still waiting.”
As her aunt moved away, Riley lowered her voice. “Can I let you in on a secret? I don’t actually need the restroom. It was an excuse to be in the woods for a while, breathing in the pines. I used to come here a lot to see my nan, and I miss it. These trees, the loons, they’re like friends to me, and I don’t have many of those. Not real ones.”
Impulsively, Kat said, “This is my first time in the Adirondacks, and I don’t know where anything is, but if you’re staying anywhere near us, maybe we could hang out sometime this week. I mean—if you wanted. Sounds as if you love animals and nature as much as me and my best friend, Harper, do. We’ll be your friends in a heartbeat. I’m Kat with a K, and that girl taking photos of the leaves is Harper.”
The girl gave her a strange look. “I wish…”
Out of nowhere came a furious, icy whirlwind. It tore through the high branches and churned up old leaves and twigs, sending gold leaves cascading over their boots. Whitecaps stampeded across the lake. Then, just as abruptly, the wind was gone.
In the silence that followed, scarlet maple leaves floated down. Kat fancied she could hear their jewel-like tinkle. They landed soft as velvet on her upturned cheeks.
“Ruby rain,” she breathed.
Riley gave a joyous shout. “Yes, ruby rain!” She twirled around like a ballerina en pointe.
Kat blinked. Riley’s uncle was crunching at speed through the debris, as inscrutable as a commando in his aviator shades. He smiled at them in a way that made Kat think he was not in the habit of smiling.
“Apologies for interrupting, ladies, but time is marching on. Riley, have you forgotten your cousins are preparing a meal for us? It might be speedier for you to use the restroom there. Say goodbye and let’s go.”
He strode off up the path, clearly expecting her to follow.
Riley’s smile was gone. “Bye, Kat with a K,” she said politely. “Good to meet you. Hope you have a good vacation.” She hurried after her uncle.
“Wait!” Kat ran after her and pressed the photo of Tiny into her hand. “I want you to have this. He looks scary, but he’s the best friend anyone could ever have. He’s my protector, and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind being yours.”
The girl was momentarily speechless. “B-but I don’t have anything to offer you in return. No, hold on, I do. Have my BUFF neckerchief. It’ll keep you warm. Winter weather’s moving in. That whirlwind was a warning.”
“Then you’ll need it,” protested Kat, but Riley rushed away and didn’t look back.
“Kat, Kat, check out these photos,” cried Harper. “The shafts of light turn the forest into a cathedral.”
As Kat admired the images on Harper’s camera, she sneaked a glance at the tree-lined parking lot. It was empty apart from their car. Faster than seemed possible, the family in the SUV had gone.
Now you see them; now you don’t.