It was said the Abenakis considered the tall peaks sacred and never climbed them. Carine didn't know if that was true, but she could believe it.

Most of the main Cold Ridge trail was above four thousand feet, exposing hikers to above-treeline conditions for a longer period than if they just went up and down a single peak.

But today, Carine was content with her mixed hardwood forest of former farmland. Gus had warned her to stay away from Bobby Poulet, a survivalist who had a homestead on a few acres on the northeast edge of the woods. He was a legendary crank who'd threatened to shoot anyone who stepped foot on his property.

She took pictures of rocks and burgundy-colored oak leaves, water trickling over rocks in a narrow stream, a hemlock, a fallen, rotting elm and an abandoned hunting shack with a crooked metal chimney. The land was owned by a lumber company that, fortunately, had a laissez-faire attitude toward hikers.

She almost missed the owl.

It was a huge barred owl, as still as a stone sculpture, its neutral coloring blending in with the mostly gray November landscape as it perched on a branch high in a naked beech tree.

Before Carine could raise her camera, the owl swooped off its branch and flapped up over the low ridge above her, out of sight.

She sighed. She'd won awards for her photography of raptors-she'd have loved to have had a good shot of the owl. On the other hand, she wasn't sure her digital camera was up to the task.

Aloudboomshatteredthesilenceoftheisolatedravine.

Carine dropped flat to the ground, facedown, before she could absorb what the sound was.

A gunshot.

Her camera had flown out of her hand and landed in the dried leaves two feet above her outstretched arm. Her day pack ground into her back. And her heart was pounding, her throat tight.