The sneaky little son of a bitch waited until she was completely engrossed in the first position of the Yang style of tai chi chuan before he brought out the big gun. “How long you gonna wait before you talk to Liam again?”

She couldn't control the start his words gave her, but she could-and did-bite down on her verbal response. She said nothing, trying to recapture the peace of mind that had been hers only moments before.

“It's going on three months, Wy,” Moses said. He stood upright and walked around to face her. “Too stubborn, is that it? Too damn proud to make the first move?”

She stayed in position, staring straight ahead as if she could bore through his skull with her eyes. If only.

He waited. He was good at it. It was six a.m. on a sunny Sunday morning in July. The birds were singing or honking or chirping or croaking. At the foot of the cliff the massive Nushagak River moved by with stately unconcern. Wy had a six-week contract to fly supplies into an archaeological dig ten miles west of Chinook Air Force Base. Moses had volunteered to take Tim to his fish camp upriver for the silver run, away from the rough crowd of boys he had fallen in with during the school year. He'd learn to run a fish wheel, salt eggs, fillet and smoke salmon and, she hoped, realize what a rush it was to earn money of his own. Best of all, he'd be out of the reach of his birth mother, who was prone to fly in from Ualik and, after a night at the bars, shove her way into Wy's house and demand Tim's return, even if the last time he'd been in her custody he'd wound up in the hospital, broken, bruised and bleeding.