He reached out his hand for the comfort of the little cat and stiffened. There was no warm, friendly little body curled up next to him.
“Paulie?”
His voice hit the quiet of the woods like a hammer on granite, hardly denting or scratching the silence all around him. It sounded dead, flat, alone.
“Paulie?” he called again.
There was no familiar scrambling of little feet, no warm, wet snout nuzzling his hand, no purring, nothing. Diamond felt around with his hands, sure Paulie must have rolled away from him in her sleep. No Paulie.
Slowly, carefully, he reached for his flare gun, silently groping in the darkness for his running shoe. His hand gripped the familiar outline and followed the sole along to the tongue. The shoe was empty. He groped all around, like a blind man, tapping his fingers amongst the carpet of cedar twigs, but there was nothing.
“What the hell?” he whispered, jerking his head up to scan the woods around him.
A twig snapped nearby, then there was a slight rustling in the trees. Diamond turned to face the sound.
“Paulie?”
For an instant the moon came out from behind a cloud, and in the woods beyond him it reflected off something shiny before skidding back behind another cloud. He stared after it, willing his eyes to see, and slowly he picked out something on the very edge of his vision, a darker smudge staining the blackness of the night, standing in the shadows of the trees, barely perceptible, upright. Too small for a bear. Human? He felt the goose-bumps rise all over his body, a cold prickle of fear rapidly building into a crescendo, overwhelming in the suddenness of its vicious grasp, rearing out of his grogginess like some nightmare. He struggled to his feet, his heart racing like the rapids, and cried out in frustration as his sleeping bag entangled his legs. When he looked again there was nothing. He waited, head cocked, listening.
“Who’s there?” His voice was caught by a gust of wind and flung into the silence, as if to the wolves. He could taste the fear now, like some unwanted sickness, clammy, unhealthy, rising like bile. He stood there scanning the trees and called out again and again, in an odd, strangled mixture of fear and anger. Nothing. Only the shadows playing tricks on him.
Too late, he sensed movement behind him and whirled. In the split second it took for the horror of what he saw to surface, he raised his hands to shield his head. The impact of the blow across his chest knocked the wind out of him and sent him sprawling onto a rock outcrop, his head glancing against the rock and stunning him as he lashed out with his arms. He felt his mind spinning out of control, weaving in and out of consciousness.
A grisly, high-pitched scream careened through the forest. He felt a sudden overwhelming weight on his chest, pushing out the air he tried to breathe in, and he knew, in a spiralling crescendo of fear and terrifying clarity, that the scream had been his.
The dull roar of the rapids merged into a roaring in his head. His mind fell into slow motion, tumbling over memories and daydreams, and the pain, the violent jabbing pain, was followed miraculously by a delicious feeling of overwhelming calm that enveloped him. Its fingers gently probed the recesses of his mind, easing the pain until, quietly, gently, like wind whispering through trees, Jake Diamond was gone.
chapter one
“I wanted to kill him,” I said, as I scrambled out onto the rocky shore and steadied the canoe. I waited for my brother to respond, but he just grimaced at me as he slowly unwound his six-foot frame and stepped out of the canoe. The water lapped gently against the gleaming silver hull, safe now in the eddy, as it nudged the rocks where I squatted impatiently. Out beyond the eddy I could see the smooth, luminous sheen of the water, stretched like cellophane almost at the ripping point, as it gathered speed and funnelled between the two tree-lined rocky shores. Somewhere around the corner and out of sight it would rip apart and splinter into thousands of ragged shards of white boiling water — just as my life sometimes threatened to do, I thought.
The canoe suddenly jerked toward me as Ryan hauled out the first of our packs and, grunting, dumped it unceremoniously on the rocks beside me.
“Leave it alone can’t you, Cordi?” he groaned. “You’re like a dog with an old bone, slobbering and chewing on it even though there’s nothing left.” When I didn’t answer he sighed and said, “We’ve gone over it a thousand times. So he’s a jerk. It’s past. Over. Done with. Finito. For God’s sake, let it die.”
As if to underline his words he stooped and flicked the bow painter at me, then went to secure the canoe with the stern line. He was right, of course, but I couldn’t get it out of my mind because I knew I should have said something to the suave bastard. I’d been checking the glass tanks that housed my frogs in the zoology building where I worked as an assistant professor when Jim Hilson quietly materialized behind me and curled his hands around my hips and squeezed. “Cordi, my dear, have you heard the news?” I elbowed him in the gut, and he let me go as I turned to face him. He held up his hands in self-defence and with an ingratiating smile said, “I just thought you should be the first to know.”
“Know what?” I asked, marvelling that such a handsome face, with its burnt umber eyes, thick straight shaggy brown hair, full lips, and a button nose, could be so irritating. We’d worked together as partners on and off on some research projects, and he always, without fail, seemed to come out on top, with his name front stage centre and mine trailing behind. Why I kept co-authoring papers with him I could not fathom. He was so irritating.
“I think you might be out of a job,” he said, pulling a long face, but the cheery tone of his voice revealed his real feelings. He didn’t say anything more, forcing me to ask why, which irritated me even more.
“You didn’t make tenure.” I didn’t say anything at all, fighting back my anger and disappointment as he stood there peering at me solicitously. I had been so sure I’d be considered for tenure.
“How do you know that?” I asked in anger.
He smiled knowingly and said, “Poor little Cordi. You have to know the right people to get the information you want.” Which translated into he did, and I didn’t. “That’s why you have such a hard time getting ahead.” I bit my tongue hard and tried to think of all the devastating retorts I could say, but all I could think of was “Go to hell,” which wasn’t exactly imaginative.
“I could help you, Cordi. You and me — we make a great team,” he said, sidling closer to me. After two years of this I was getting sick of Jim’s game. I backed away and ignored him.
“Don’t you want to know?” he asked, moving closer.
“Know what?” I asked, and backed away again.
“If I got tenure?’ He waited for my response, but I just stared at him.
“You’ll be sorry to know that I didn’t,” he said. But of course I was glad, which made me feel a bit guilty, but only for a moment.
“It’s just you and me now, Cordi. And one of us won’t be here this time next year.”
I looked at him and said, “Would you please get to the point.”
“I also heard that an assistant professor is on the chopping block, come spring,” he said, “and I think it’s going to be you.”
He smiled again and shrugged, holding out his overly muscled arms to me, inviting a hug. I moved away, saying nothing, too afraid my voice might crack, furious at myself for not being able to come up with some witty remark.
“You know why it won’t be me, other than the fact that I’ve published more papers?” he crowed.
When I didn’t answer, his face suddenly twitched in annoyance and he abruptly answered his own question. “Because for your last year here they’re saddling you with the perennially