Like most landlubbers, she was less afraid of shallow waters-coves full of stones and half-submerged logs-than she was of deep. Though the brutal cold of Superior would drown her a quarter of a mile from shore just as mercilessly as it would ten miles out, Anna seldom came in from open water without a sense of returning to safety. “Safe harbor”-a phrase she’d heard bandied about since childhood-had been given a depth of meaning with Lake Superior ’s first angry glance.

“You’re new,” Kenny said as if he echoed her thoughts. “You weren’t here last year.”

Anna refocused on her passenger. “Displaced desert rat,” she replied. “I haven’t been warm or dry since I left Texas.”

“It’s not like it used to be,” he went on as if she’d not spoken. “Used to be people on the lake took care of each other. You’d never pass a vessel in distress. Never. We could’ve sunk out there and nobody’d‘ve so much as thrown us a line. People don’t care. All they care about’s getting a campsite before the next guy.”

“Did somebody pass you?” Anna asked, remembering the other blip on her radar. On such an ugly sea, it struck her as strange, though it was not uncommon. The brotherhood of sport fishermen, if it ever existed, was largely relegated to legend now; another link in the chain memory forged back to the mythical good old days.

“Not passed. A white boat with green-I didn’t see the name or I’d report it to the Coast Guard. They were out in the lake near where the Kamloops went down, headed east.”

“Maybe they didn’t see you. The fog’s been cat-footing around. Are you sure it wasn’t red and white? The Third Sister was heading this direction. They’re diving the Emperor tomorrow.”

“Green. And they saw us. They’d‘ve had to. Not a sign. The bastards left us sloshing up, to our knees in bilge. They probably heard the rainbow were running in Siskiwit and couldn’t wait. When my dad used to bring me out here-oh, twenty years ago at least…”