The mid-July afternoon was quiet and hot. Through her open windows came the soft roar of Swede Creek a few hundred feet away and the incessant chittering of uncountable birds. Her gaze swept down to the valley floor and landed on the Callister county road a mile away. There, a light-colored vehicle sped along, raising a plume of dust on the hard gravel surface. It slowed and made a right turn into her driveway.

Everything inside her stilled. No one casually dropped in. Only her best friend, Ted Benson, and her housekeeper, Lucille Arnold, ever came uninvited. And only a stranger would hazard her driveway without first calling for a report on its condition. “The Longest Mile,” Ted had named it.

From so far away, she couldn’t recognize the make of the intruder, but like a wary rabbit, it inched forward with jerky stops and starts. She knew why. Ragged potholes, oil-pan-busting stones and deep eroded ruts prevented faster progress.

When the rig reached her cattle guard and the second “No Trespassing” sign, she could see it was a white pickup with a black canopy mounted on the bed. It disappeared into a shadowy tunnel of brush and thornbush at the driveway’s mid-point. Plowing through the jutting limbs and scratchy branches could ruin a paint job. Damage might be avoided if a driver dropped two tires into the deep drainage ditch paralleling one side, but only those familiar with the road were aware of that option.

Alex knew the precise length of time it took to pass through the brush. She drew one side of her lower lip through her teeth and watched and waited for the pickup to emerge.

Minutes later, the bumper and grill came into view. The Late-day golden sun gilded the license plate, making it unreadable, but one thing was clear. Its color was wrong to be an Idaho tag.

Tourists. Outsiders. Probably lost. Otherwise, how and why had they veered this far off the beaten path? More troubling was the fact that they had ignored her “no trespassing” signs, which even the local teenagers no longer disregarded.

She strode to the binoculars hanging beside one window, snatched them off their peg and homed in. The pickup was a late-model Chevy, the plates, California. She could distinguish the silhouettes of a male and female inside.

She lowered the binoculars and watched.

The pickup slowed to a creep where the driveway forked a few hundred feet from her front deck. There, the driver had two choices. The Y’s left leg would bring them straight to her door where she would tell him he had made a wrong turn and send him back to the county road. The right leg would put him on Old Ridge Road, an old two-track running along the crest of a long rocky hogback.

To her amazement, the white Silverado turned onto the right fork, picked up speed and rolled along Old Ridge Road. As she watched it sink out of sight into dense green forest, she felt a little quake in her serenity. Trespassers could have only one destination--Granite Pond, a mile from her back door.

Two summers ago, she had ceased to tolerate anyone traveling beyond her house or visiting Granite Pond without her permission and nothing had changed that. She charged through the kitchen, then the utility room and down the back stairs. In the basement garage, she mounted her Wrangler, backed out and followed the track of the Chevy up Old Ridge Road.

In a matter of minutes, she reached the intersection where a hundred-year-old wagon trace teed with the road. Erosion had turned the old wagon tracks into two knee-deep gouges, now grown over with grass bleached to beige by the merciless summer sun.

She braked and considered her options. She could follow behind strangers with an out-of-state license plate and confront them, taking a chance they weren’t axe murderers. On the other hand, the old wagon trace, only a slightly better choice than driving cross-country, would lead to an obscure horse trail where she could look down on Granite Pond and the surrounding glade without being seen. She knew the horse trail well, had hiked it many times.

Choosing caution over confrontation, she yanked the Jeep into low gear, turned onto the wagon trace and ground her way higher up the hill.

Passable road soon played out and she parked, grabbed the binoculars and set out on foot. She began to sweat. The air felt hot, as if heated by a furnace, and heavy as a tapestry. All around her, the eerie ambience of volatility showed itself in the dull, crinkled leaves of the underbrush. Dry grass and twigs crunched underfoot. Even the normally lush kinickkinick had yellowed and become sparse from lack of moisture. In the ten years she had been spending summers in her Idaho retreat, she had never seen conditions riper for wildfire. A match, a spark, a lightning strike and the whole mountainside could combust.

At the top of a steep wooded slope, she knelt and looked down. She could see where Swede Creek, fed by a glacier atop Wolf Mountain, rushed from a gorge to the west, then tumbled along the flat meadow. Eventually it became a waterfall that plunged to Granite Pond, a crystal-clear pool so deep and cold no one she knew had ever been to its bottom.

The pond dominated center stage of a natural amphitheatre, with limestone monoliths and tree-covered slopes rising on the sides. Even in today’s dry conditions, thick green grass and a profusion of ferns grew around its banks. On the hottest day, standing at the edge of the glacier water, she could feel a chill in the air.

The Northwest was rife with magnificent natural wonders and Alex knew that. But Granite Pond had a single unique feature--it was located on private property, bought and paid for by her.

And there beside it, the white pickup sat.

Some two hundred feet from the pond’s bank, a low-roofed log cabin crouched almost hidden among tall evergreens, its one visible door framed on either side by small square windows. A Forest Service archaeologist had identified it as a Chinese miner’s cabin, circa 1849, a rare and tangible insight into history.

She loved it, had paid workmen to cover the dirt floor with wood and install glass panes in the windows. Then she had added an antique iron bed where she slept on warm August nights, a reclining chair where she spent hours reading or working intricate needlepoint designs that cleared her mind of all else. The idea of a thoughtless stranger dropping a cigarette or building a campfire anywhere near this precious place jarred her. Her resentment of the trespassers doubled.

Though she didn’t recognize the pickup, the woman who climbed from the passenger side looked familiar. Alex watched her walk around to the driver's door. Even above the sounds of the waterfall, giggly, feminine laughter echoed up. The man climbed out and pulled her to him.

Through the binoculars, Alex could see only the man’s back, but he appeared to be tall with wide shoulders and short dark hair. She zoomed in on the woman.

"My God. Cindy.”

Alex couldn’t think of a female alive for whom she held more contempt than her ex-husband’s trashy girlfriend, Cindy Evans. Alex would fight her tooth and toenail to keep her away from Granite Pond and the old cabin.

She marched back to the Wrangler and rummaged for a weapon, found the handle to a heavy duty jack in the back. Other than protection, she didn’t know her intentions, but the hard, heavy feel of cold steel against her palm gave her courage. A search among scattered broken limbs yielded a straight thick branch adequate for a staff. Using it to keep from slipping, she side-stepped down the hill.

At the bottom, the waterfall’s roar absorbed the sounds of her footfalls. She crept from behind a wide-trunked pine tree to the front of the pickup for a clearer view. A few feet from the cabin's front door, Cindy teetered on one foot peeling off panty hose while the stranger's hands did something beneath her skirt. Without a doubt, they believed no one else was within miles.

"Hey!"

Alex swung the jack handle with all her strength. It thudded against the pickup’s left front fender. The impact vibrated up her arms.

The stranger’s head jerked toward her. Cindy shrieked, doubled over and grappled with her panty hose. "I didn't know you were home,” she cried, as she twisted into her clothing.

"What difference does that make?” Alex stamped forward. “You can’t come here any time." She planted herself in front of the stranger. "You get off my property."

The stranger struggled with his zipper, sputtering curses and glowering at the dented fender.

He was a head taller than she, much bigger than he had looked in the lens of the binoculars. Fight-or-flight streaked down Alex’s spine. She had taken an urban self-defense class, could remember a knee to the groin, but no way would he get that close. She tightened her grip on the jack handle and backed up, putting space between them. "I've called the sheriff.”

A snort came from Cindy, accompanied by a glare of superiority. "Don't worry, Doug. She hasn’t really.” She sauntered around the Silverado toward the passenger door, straightening her hair. “Even if she did, he ain't gonna do nothin'."

The stranger’s eyes cut to Cindy.

“C'mon. Let's get outta here,” the tramp said. “She's crazy and she’s got guns. She may pull one out."

“And don’t you forget it,” Alex said, anger adding a tremble to her words.

"Oh, yeah?” The stranger’s voice rumbled out in a raspy baritone. "If anybody's got a right to be pissed off here, lady, it's me.” He stepped toward her. His finger jabbed at the Silverado. “Take a look at that fender. That’s a new rig.”

She backed up and raised the jack handle. "Stay away from me."

“Doug,” Cindy yelled from the pickup. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

The next thing Alex knew, the stranger had wrenched her weapon from her hand and was standing in front of her nose to nose. “I oughtta wrap this around your neck.” He threw the jack handle to the side. “You owe me, lady. It’ll cost a thousand dollars to get that dent fixed.”

Alex backed up again, her eyes burning with tears. She hated crying, hated feeling afraid.

His expression softened. “Christ, don’t cry.” He raised a palm. “Look, let’s calm down here. I didn’t know”--he pointed behind himself in Cindy’s direction--“the lady with me didn’t know we weren’t supposed to be here.”

“That’s a lie. She knew.”

He stooped, picked up the jack handle and handed it to her. “Here. This looks like something you might need.”

Alex could see in his eyes he wouldn’t harm her, though he might be mad she had struck his pickup. The sense of danger past, she forced her spine stiff again and snatched the jack handle from him. “I meant what I said. You get out of here.”

“We’re going. But don’t think I’m forgetting that fender.” He marched to the pickup, got in and slammed the door. She waited until the rig had crawled back onto Old Ridge Road before climbing up the hill to her Jeep.

By the time she reached her house and the living room windows, she could see the pickup making its way down the driveway, the taillights bobbing as it crossed bumps and potholes. Her thoughts churned. Long before Alex had divorced Charlie McGregor, he had taken Cindy to the cabin for clandestine trysts. Alex had even caught them there. That was bad enough, but what kind of arrogance made the woman believe she had the right to drag a stranger to it?

And who was the stranger? Though Cindy called his name, Alex had been so steeped in anger, a triviality like a name hadn’t registered. His face seemed familiar in a distant, nagging way. With thick brows framing silvery eyes, a strong square jaw and defined lips, it wasn’t a forgettable face. Good Lord. When had she noticed all that? She hadn’t paid attention to such details about a man’s appearance in more years than she could remember.

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