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Ruth was in Clara’s cottage with her landline. Reporting back.

“River’s still rising,” Ruth shouted into the phone. Partly to be heard over the roar of the river and partly because she always shouted into a phone.

“Did you see that?” Myrna shouted into Clara’s ear.

Damn her, thought Clara, who was busy trying to pretend she hadn’t seen anything.

But Myrna rarely looked away from some awful truth. Preferring to know rather than to live in blissful, if dangerous ignorance. It was one of her worst qualities.

“They’ve shifted.” Myrna turned and yelled across to Ruth. “Tell them to hurry. They’ve shifted.”

“What’s that?”

“They’ve shifted!”

“Well, you’re pretty shitty, too!”

Gabri, standing beside Ruth in the kitchen, grabbed the phone. “Here, give me that. Reine-Marie? The sandbags are beginning to shift.”

“Merde.”

“Hey! Hey!”

They turned and saw a flashlight approaching.

“Keep digging,” Armand yelled into Billy’s ear, then jumped off the backhoe.

“What’re you doing? This’s my land,” came a man’s voice.

Armand gestured to Reine-Marie to stay where she was and walked toward the light and the shout. “Sûreté. Who are you?”

But he knew the answer to that. Because he knew whose land they were on.

Jean-Guy left the river and joined Armand. The man was still twenty paces away. And held a flashlight in one hand and something else in the other.

“He’s got a gun,” said Jean-Guy, his sharp eyes not leaving the man slipping and stumbling toward them.

“Oui,” said Armand, and took a step in front of Reine-Marie. “A .22. Hunting rifle. Saw it earlier, in the search. He has a permit.”

“Fuck,” muttered Jean-Guy, shaking his head.

A .22. Small-gauge. But it could still do damage. To a gopher. A fox. A human.

“This’s private property,” Tracey shouted. “Get off.”

They were downwind of him and could smell the whiskey. The donkeys had been put in the barn overnight, so it was just humans now, in the field.

“Monsieur Tracey, it’s Armand Gamache. We met earlier today.”

“I don’t care who you are. You’re on my land.” Tracey stopped ten paces away and raised his rifle. “Get off.”

“Armand?” said Reine-Marie, stepping forward.

“It’s all right,” he said, and put his arm out to gently move her behind him.

Obviously, she thought, his idea of “all right” and hers were very different.

“What’s happening?” came Gabri’s tinny voice down the phone. “Reine-Marie?”