He looked at me across the current. Something moved in his expression—not surprise, more like recognition. The lookof a man who'd heard something accurate. He turned back to the water without answering, and after a while, he made a cast that was about as good a cast as I'd ever seen anyone make. A cutthroat came up out of nowhere and ate it cleanly.
He played it without rushing, and I watched him the way I'd been watching him all week. The patience of it, the way he gave the fish exactly enough and not one bit more.
"She said you were perceptive," he said, while the fish was still on.
"Mae?"
"June." He kept his eyes on the rod tip. "While you were in the back. She said, ‘Don't let the sweet face fool you, she sees everything.’"
I felt heat move up the back of my neck and was glad he wasn't looking at me. "June doesn't have a filter."
"I know." The fish came to his hand, and he held it in the current and let it go. Then he looked over at me. "She wasn't wrong, though."
I held his gaze across the water and didn't fidget, which cost me something. The river moved between us and the mountains stood up on every side and I thought about what Mae had said that morning—the face you make when you know something and you're waiting for permission.
"No," I said. "She usually isn't."
He almost smiled. The almost was becoming familiar enough that I'd started to look for it, which was its own kind of information.
We fished until two and walked back to the trucks. I drove home with my waders still damp and the kind of tired that came from being outside all day doing something you loved.
June texted me before I'd gotten my boots off.So?
I looked at the message for a second.
So nothing, I wrote back.We fished.
Her response came in four seconds.You're going to be so annoying about this, aren't you?
I set the phone down and didn't answer, which was answer enough. I pulled up my waders to dry and thought about the way he'd said she wasn't wrong like it was just a fact he was comfortable with.
I was going to have to do something about that.
4
HALE
I'd scouted the canyon stretch two weeks before I'd had any reason to bring someone to it.
That was habit—learn the terrain before you need it, know where the exits are, understand what you're working with before it matters. I'd done it with every place I'd landed for the last twelve years. Hollow Peak had been no different.
I'd walked every accessible mile of the river in my first week, mapped the access points, noted the stretches that saw pressure and the ones that didn't. The canyon stretch was three miles from the nearest pull-out and required a wade through a technical stretch that most clients couldn't manage. I'd marked it and moved on.
Standing at the Switchback counter on Friday morning, I heard myself asking Mia if she wanted to see a stretch I'd never shown anyone.
She said yes before I'd finished the sentence.
We drove up separately and met at the pull-out at nine. I watched her get out of her truck and check her wader boots—heel, toe, buckle, done. She already had her rod rigged.
She looked up and caught me watching. "What?"
"Nothing," I said. "You're ready."
"I'm always ready." She shouldered her pack and looked up the trail. "How far?"
"About forty minutes. There's one technical wade maybe halfway up—thigh deep, fast current, rocky bottom. You'll want to use your staff."
She looked at me. "I don't own a wading staff."
