Wolfhunter River (Stillhouse Lake #3)(10)

Kezia’s quiet after that for a few seconds. I hear clicks; she’s switched over to texting. I can hear the distraction in her voice as she replies. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. I’ve got the snake guy and forensics dispatched. As soon as the snake’s gone, forensics is going to process that mailbox. If we’re lucky, somebody’s left us a print.”

I can’t imagine anyone fool enough to do that, but she’s right—it’s worth a shot. “Okay,” I tell her. “I’ll wait here until they arrive.”

“I’m on my way.”

Lanny comes back down the hill as the vivid blue sky fades to faint orange above me, and the trees give up their daytime green and become sharp black points. The wind’s died down, and the lake is still. Most of the boats are gone.

I’m standing six feet from the mailbox, and I don’t take my eyes off it.

“Mom?” Lanny says.

“Go back in the house,” I tell her. I’m staring at the mailbox, maybe a little obsessively. “I’ll be there in a bit. I’m waiting for someone.”

“Uh, okay?” She doesn’t know exactly what I’m doing, or what to ask. “Should I go ahead and start the chicken or what?”

“Yes,” I tell her. “Go ahead. Thanks, honey.”

“Okay.” She doesn’t leave. “Mom, are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She frowns at me. “Honey, I just . . . I need some time, okay? I need to work through some things. You go on. Tell Sam I’m okay.” Because I know Sam will be down here next.

She knows damn well I’m not telling the whole truth—and I’m not, because I need to keep her safe—but she goes, finally. I like that instinct in her, to question everything. It will serve her well in the future, even with me. And I’m glad she didn’t stay. I’m very aware—hideously aware, as night begins to fall—that I’m standing out here alone, exposed, and a snake in my mailbox is hardly the only threat out here. What if the person who put it there comes back? What if they’re behind me right now?

I give in. I take a fast look around as my daughter heads up the hill.

No one around. No threats I can see.

But it doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Waiting.





2

GWEN

The man arrives first about ten minutes later. He’s a rough specimen who looks like he’s just spent weeks out in the woods, and I don’t like it. Or him. Or any of this. He says, “Hey. I’m here for that snake.”

“ID,” I say. He blinks.

“What?”

“Show me some ID. I don’t know you, and I’m armed.” I’ve set my feet in a solid fighting stance, centered my weight, and loosened my knees. I don’t know if he recognizes that, but he eyes me warily. I wonder if he’s thinking I’m paranoid.

Well, he’d be right.

“Okay.” He holds up both hands. “Sure. Reaching for ID, okay?”

“Slowly.”

He does, never taking his eyes off me. He reaches back behind him, and I’m bluffing about the gun because I’ve left it in the goddamn truck’s locked glove compartment, and right now I’m kicking myself for that, but when his hand reappears—slowly—it’s holding a wallet. He opens it and pulls out a thick white business card.

“On the ground,” I tell him. He crouches and puts it down halfway between us, as far as he can reach.

I step over and pick it up in one quick, fluid dip, then raise it so I can read it while still watching him.

It’s a nice one, pure white with official black lettering and raised ink. Professor Greg Maynard. He works for the University of Tennessee. Goes to show, you can’t judge a woodsy hermit by his looks. He’s a full tenured professor of biology. How odd.

“Snake?” he asks again.

I point to the mailbox. “Sorry about that,” I tell him. “I just—I don’t know who did this. You understand?”

“Maybe it was just meant as a joke?”

“Open it.”

He gets a cotton sack and a stick with a hook on the end and flips the box open. The snake strikes. The professor doesn’t even flinch, but then, he’s standing at the exact safe distance. “Timber rattler,” he says. “Wow. Cool. You were lucky, that is definitely not a joke. Not a good one, anyway.” I watch, fascinated, as he coaxes the snake out of the mailbox, and it winds down the metal pole of the box to the dirt. From there, he efficiently pins the snake down just behind the head, and picks it up barehanded with an amount of calm I find amazing. The snake rattles and thrashes a bit, but it goes into the bag, and he cinches it shut and ties it securely.

I almost let my guard down until it runs through my mind that it would take someone with these exact skills to put a timber rattler in the mailbox.

“Are those local around here?” I ask him.

He nods. “Sure, out in the woods. Sometimes I find one of them down this far, but it’s not too normal. We see more cottonmouths and copperheads around the water.” Maynard’s thorough. He examines the inside of the mailbox with the light of his cell phone before saying, “Okay, you’re clear. I’ll get this little beauty back to my lab.”

“Lab,” I repeat.