Chapter One
Children drown silently.
The toddler reached for the ball and toppled softly into the pool. Her arms and legs flailed valiantly as she fought a desperate solitary battle to survive. She opened her mouth to cry out, but gulped water instead. Instinctively, she locked her jaws to stop the overwhelming rush of water from invading fragile lungs. Her blue eyes widened in heart-catching fear, and she had a moment of bewilderment at the betrayal of the mother who should have been there to keep her safe. She began to lose consciousness, and the irises of her eyes rolled back until only the whites showed. As the water closed over her ears, the pretty song of the bird nearby became a muffled trill and soon dissolved completely. It was the last sound she heard. All was quiet. Air seeped from her delicate nostrils and she sank until she drifted lifelessly, like a formless amoeba, along the bottom of the pool.
The red ball she'd reached for bobbed merrily on the crystal blue surface.
"Noooooo."
Lannie woke with the familiar cold sweat beading her hairline.
"Damn."
She sat up, drew up her knees, and wrapped her arms around them. Eyes still closed, forehead pressed hard against her knees, she rocked back and forth.
"Gracie, lacey, dancing daisy, makes her mom a happy lady." The singsong rhyme they'd made up jangled in her head.
"Dammit, dammit, dammit."
Lannie hadn't been there when her daughter Gracie drowned, but she knew this was how it happened. She'd suffered this vivid nightmare almost every night since Gracie's death three years ago.
But she deserved the nightmare. She deserved to suffer every damnation that came her way. She should have been there for Gracie.
A gruff bark, and then a soft whine made her smile. She stretched out a hand and found the wiry head of O'Bryan, the Irish wolfhound who had slept at her bedside for the last two years. The reassuring feel of his rough, warm coat soothed her.
"It's okay, Bry," she whispered into her knees. "Only twice this week. I'm getting better, huh?"
He whined again.
She lifted her head and laughed. "Okay, okay. I know it's time to get up."
Early June sunlight streamed through the square screened windows. The rustic one-room log cabin faced east. When she'd first arrived she'd resented the cheery intrusion of the sun first thing every morning and had kept the shutters closed, preferring the dimness. The sun picked up the golden hues of the log interior, carefully crafted more than one hundred years ago by men who knew how to build fireplaces that drew and structures that survived. And, though the nights were still cold high on this North Carolina mountain, she kept the shutters open now and welcomed the light.
Five minutes later she was following her morning routine: letting O'Bryan out, slipping on her soft moccasins, poking up the embers that remained in the fireplace from last night, making coffee in the old tin pot and placing it on the Coleman camp stove to boil, pulling on her threadbare jeans and blue and orange Florida Gator sweatshirt.
O'Bryan barked, and she opened the screened door to sit on the stone stoop with him. Coffee mug in hand, she surveyed the colorful scene before her. The only sounds this morning were the distant wheezy cheee-up of a pine siskin, and close-by, the energetic whir of a hummingbird.
She held her breath and froze as the ruby-throated hummingbird hovered over the vivid red Indian pinks growing wild next to the stoop. She could have reached out her hand and touched its tireless body. For a blessed, sacred moment she and the hummingbird existed alone together, and then the tiny bird took impatient flight.
This had been her solitary domain for two years. Though she suspected friends had an idea where she'd disappeared to, only three people knew for sure: her father, and her friend and former law partner, Nell Smathers, and Wilkie Talley. Just this spring she'd followed her father's suggestion that she get help to put in her garden, and she'd hired their former handyman and mountain caretaker, Wilkie.
Guilt and grief had kept her company here for a long time. She hadn't really begun to appreciate the isolated plateau until the last few months, and now woke up each morning looking forward to any gifts the mountain was offering up that day.
Waves of blue-green spruce and hemlock stretched before her for endless majestic miles. Budding mauve and deep-rose hardwoods blended their colors artfully with the evergreens. A dawn mist drifted, weaving lazy lavender ribbons haphazardly through the summits. The effect was ethereal and soothing.
June might be heading into early summer elsewhere, but here near the top of Haystack Mountain early spring flowers and trees still blossomed. Yellow dogtooth violets radiated over the ground all around her and disappeared into the sharply sloping treeline.
Bry's tail began to thump rhythmically.
"Yes, I don't know how you know, but yes, we're going into town today."
She tossed the dregs of her coffee onto the ground and stood up.
"Okay, you big brute, give me a few minutes to perform my pitiful beauty routine, and then we'll leave."
Inside the cabin, she washed her face, brushed her teeth, and drew a brush through her thick red hair. A quick glance in the small rectangular mirror that hung on the wall told her that she should, at least, tame her hair in some manner.
Where was the green ribbon she'd had a month ago? She rummaged in a drawer, found a worn shoestring, contemplated its use, but then discarded the notion. The crumpled ribbon, saved from a birthday present from her father, finally showed itself in the rear corner of the drawer. Quickly, she bunched the mass of hair into a ponytail and secured it with a rubber band and the ribbon. She had no idea what she looked like from the neck down and didn't care. Grabbing her shopping list, she left the cabin.
Bry waited for her beside the olive-drab Jeep parked at the rear of the cabin and across the creek. The 1950s army-issue jeep was perfect transportation for Bry. It had no top or sides, so he could spread his big body in just about any direction. He sprang in easily, and sprawled across the back seat, his head hanging over the side. They splashed through the shallow creek that ran near the cabin and tore down the mountain. Gears screaming, brakes straining and protesting noisily, they followed a barely discernible two-track path, sloshed recklessly through other knee-high streams, and finally emerged onto a rocky dirt road that led to the main highway three miles away.
As she approached the highway, the boulder-strewn, spine-shattering ride smoothed to a rocky crumble, and she shoved into fourth gear.
The Panoz AIV roadster's swift and powerful passage up the curling mountain highway pleased and matched the personality of its owner. Drum Rutledge pressed the accelerator, and a small smile lit his grim face at the immediate response of the small car. He didn't want to be here in the first place, so he took extra pleasure in the performance provided by the special-built roadster. He also had to admit that the cool bite of mountain air was a refreshing relief from the hot weather in Charlotte.
Other than the brisk invigorating air, he found no enjoyment in his first trip to High Falls in five years.
Two reasons brought him here today: one a business favor for a friend in New York, and the other in response to an urgent phone call from the caretaker of his summer house here. A violent storm, not unusual this high in the mountains this time of year, had caused extensive damage and the man wouldn't take responsibility for repairs until Drum inspected the lodge.
He chanced a quick glance at the passing terrain and realized he was probably passing some of his own land. Usually a small, discreet dark-green si
