by Maddie Day
“It’ll take me longer to get my degree now, but one good thing is that Zen is going to be my advisor.”
“I liked her.”
“She’s very cool,” Lou said.
“Did you know I bought my store from Charles’s mother-in-law?”
“Really?”
“Jo Schultz. She’s a very sweet, very sharp older lady, but she hadn’t been keeping it up at all. The place was kind of a wreck, even upstairs where she lived.”
“It isn’t a wreck now. You’ve done a fabulous job with it.”
I thanked her. “I’m working on the upstairs now, too.” We kept going until we came to an opening in the trail, with a clear path leading off to the right. “Want to check that out?” I asked, pointing my pole. “It might lead down to the lake. We can watch the ice fishing.”
“Sure. Lead on, O guide.”
I took a right. The snow was deeper here, since it didn’t look like anyone else had taken the same turn. I lifted my knees and pushed down, breaking trail for Lou until my thighs burned. After a minute the snow parted over a small stream, but a couple of wide logs had been laid over the water as a bridge. We crossed and trudged along as the path sloped downward, soon opening up to a clearing at the edge of the lake. The bank was only a foot high, so I figured out how to maneuver myself down. When Lou caught up, she just jumped onto the lake.
“Wow, what a beautiful sight.” I leaned on my poles and surveyed the expanse as a cloud blew over the sun. The lake was covered with snow, of course, but the wind had carved drifts in places and swept it clean down to the ice in others. The whole scene had a bluish tint, even the trees at the far edge. A figure sat on a red stool across the way near a clearing at lake’s edge. I could spy the truck we’d seen in the parking lot behind him.
“Come on. We can work up more of a sweat on the flat,” Lou said.
“You’re not already sweating?” I unzipped my jacket halfway down and ran a finger around the neck of my wicking turtleneck.
“It’s good for you.”
“You think it’s thick enough to walk on?” It had taken me, the Californian, a couple of years to trust that it was okay to walk on water. Frozen water, but still it made me very, very nervous the first time I walked on a solid lake. It just didn’t seem right.
“Uh, yeah. You think ice fisherpeople would sit on it all day long if it wasn’t? The paper said it’s been ten inches thick all winter. Okay, wimpie?” Lou didn’t wait for me to answer and set out at a fast walk. “And we can get back to my car in a straight line,” she called back.
At least she wasn’t running again. When a gust of wind chilled my chest, I zipped up again and followed. I wasn’t a wimp. I was just a Southwesterner.
She started singing out loud, which made me smile. I caught up and walked next to her, but I couldn’t quite keep up with her energetic pace. We were about halfway across when I spied a dark hole in the snow ahead. As we drew nearer, I saw that footsteps led away from the hole in the direction of the guy on the stool.
“Seems kind of far out to be drilling a fishing hole,” I said.
“Avoiding the competition, I’d guess.” She detoured around it and kept going.
I paused at the hole. It was a couple of feet across, and the water on top had already iced over again. I leaned over and peered in. It seemed odd that with all this cold, fish were still swimming around down there, carrying on their lives as if it was June or October. Maybe I could spot one. I saw something move and squatted to get a better look.
I stared. And grew cold, not from the wind but from dread. No fish was that brightly colored green. No fish on earth sported a tidy black goatee.
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2016 by Edith Maxwell
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ISBN-13: 978-1-61773-927-9
ISBN-10: 1-61773-927-8
First Kensington Mass Market Edition: June 2016
ISBN: 978-1-6177-3927-9
First Kensington Electronic Edition: June 2016
