Still the hawk circled lower.
It had descended to no more than forty feet above the lake.
Gurney was moving quickly now.
The hawk seemed to hesitate for a moment on its flight path, rocking on its broad wings from side to side, as if assessing the significance of a second figure entering the scene.
Just as Gurney was concluding that his presence had scared it off, it wheeled sharply toward Madeleine, diving at her with startling acceleration.
In an effort to break into a flat-out sprint, Gurney slipped and fell. He scrambled to his knees, pulled out his Beretta, and shouted, “GET DOWN!”
As Madeleine turned in his direction, the plummeting hawk extended its razor talons, and Gurney fired.
The gunshot caused Madeleine to flinch, ducking just enough that the talons flashed by harmlessly over her head.
Amazingly, the hawk came around again in a wide circle, rising thirty or forty feet above her before beginning a second dive.
This time Madeleine ran, sliding, half-falling, out toward the center of the lake. Again the hawk swooped down past her head in a near miss—with Gurney clambering to his feet, running after her, shouting to her to stop, to not go any farther on the ice.
As the hawk, at the far end of yet another circle, turned in toward Madeleine, Gurney spread his feet in a solid shooting stance and steadied his weapon in a two-handed grip. As the bird streaked past him he fired. He caught a glimpse of a tail feather breaking off and twirling around in a passing gust before settling on the ice.
The hawk passed only a few inches over Madeleine’s head. Then, instead of circling again, it rose gradually up and away, disappearing finally over the treetops at the end of the lake.
Madeleine had stopped running. She was about fifty feet ahead of him. She looked to be out of breath, or crying, or both.
He called to her. “Are you all right?”
She turned toward him and nodded.
“Come back this way. We need to get off the ice.”
She began walking toward him, slowly. When she was ten or twelve feet away, he heard a sound that stopped his breath.
CHAPTER 48
As she shifted her weight onto her forward foot, from directly beneath it came the strained creaking of ice about to break apart.
“Stop! Don’t move!” cried Gurney.
She halted like a freeze-frame in a video.
“You’ll be all right. Just try not to move.”
Gurney searched for solutions, but the only thing that came to mind was a sequence in an action-adventure movie he’d seen as a kid. A Canadian Mountie had pursued a bank robber onto a frozen river. The ice began to crack around the fugitive. The Mountie told him to lie down on the ice to spread his weight. Then he threw him a rope and pulled him to safety.
The scene was silly, but the weight distribution part made sense to Gurney. He persuaded Madeleine to lower herself carefully to the ice, lie flat, and spread out her arms and legs.
Needing something to take the place of a rope, he retreated to the shore, hoping to find a fallen pine branch long enough to do the job. He grabbed the longest one he could find, dragged it out onto the lake, and extended the end of it to Madeleine.
“Grip it with both hands. Don’t let go.”
It was a painfully slow process. Sitting on the ice to give himself better traction and pushing himself backward with his heels, inch by inch he pulled her out of harm’s way.
As they were finally approaching the security of solid ground and getting to their feet, Austen Steckle and Norris Landon came running from the lodge.
Landon had a long tow chain coiled around his arm. “You’re safe. Thank God! Sorry it took me so long. Damn door latch was frozen on the Rover.”
Steckle looked grim. “What the hell happened out there?”
“Did you see that damn hawk attacking my wife?”
Landon’s eyes widened. “Hawk?”
“A big one,” said Gurney. “Swooped down on her. She was trying to get away from it. Ended up out there on the middle of the lake. I didn’t think hawks attacked humans.”
“Normally they don’t,” said Landon.
“Nothing normal about Wolf Lake,” muttered Steckle. “Last summer a goddamn owl attacked a little girl on the shore, ripped her face. And the summer before that a black bear did a pretty good job on a hiker—”
“Those shots we heard?” said Landon. “Was that you shooting at the hawk?”
“That’s what scared it off.”
Landon turned to Madeleine. “You must be a wreck after all that. Was the ice under you actually starting to give way?”
“I thought I was going to die.”
Gurney took Madeleine’s arm. With shoulders hunched against the wind, they walked back across the lake road, into the lodge, and on into the Hearth Room, where a fresh fire was blazing. It wasn’t until they were standing in front of it that Gurney realized his teeth were chattering.
Landon went straight to the self-service bar. A minute later he joined them at the fire, handing them each a small crystal tumbler half full of an amber liquid. “Cognac. Best medicine for thawing out the bones.”
He and Gurney drank. Madeleine sniffed at hers, took a tiny sip, winced at the strength of it, then took another.
Landon downed the last of his drink. “This cognac’s not bad at all.” He studied the bottom of his empty glass for a long moment. “Making any progress on the crime front?”
“Things are becoming a little clearer.”
“That’s good to hear. If there’s anything at all I can do to help . . .”
“I appreciate that. I’ll let you know.”
“How’s it looking for Richard?”
“Better than it was.”
Landon looked surprised. “Care for another cognac?”
“Not now, thanks.”
“Right. Well. Stay warm if you can.” Raising his hand in a mock salute, he left the room.
Madeleine was holding her palms out toward the fire. Gurney moved closer to her. His tone was gentler than his words. “Maddie, what the hell were you doing out there on the ice?”
“I don’t think I can explain it.”
“Tell me whatever you can.”
“I really did just go out to get some air, like I told you.”
“But then you walked out on the ice.”
“Yes.”
“What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that in my mind, my memory, I’m always on the shore.”
“On the shore of Grayson Lake?”
“Yes.”
“So you decided to go walk out on the ice?”
“Yes.”
“Was this something Hammond suggested you do?”
“No. There was no plan. I was standing in front of the lodge. I happened to look out at the lake. And suddenly I wanted to be out there.”
“Out there like Colin?”
“Maybe. Maybe I wanted to feel what he felt.”
CHAPTER 49
Despite the blazing fire, the moaning of the wind in the chimney was creating a mournful atmosphere in the Hearth Room. It made the prospect of retreating to their bugged suite attractive by comparison.
As they were passing through the reception area, Madeleine stopped by the big glass-paneled door. Gurney stopped with her.
Thinking of the two shots he’d fired at the hawk brought to mind the image of the dislodged feather twirling down. “Wait just a minute,” he said. “I want to get something.”
He opened the door to a blast of frigid air and ran across the road and out onto the lake to the place where he remembered seeing the feather fall. It was still there, sticking up through the new snow just enough to be visible. He grabbed it and hurried back to the lodge, where he examined it briefly—a segment of a russet tail feather with a shattered quill. Then he stuffed it in his pocket, and he and Madeleine headed upstairs.