Then in a flicker, the cat vanished back into the forest.

Danny remained with his pistol still pointed. After a full minute, he slowly sank into the center of the boat. He hugged his knees to his chest. He sensed the big cat had moved on, but he wasn’t going anywhere. He would rather starve than ever move closer to shore.

As he watched the forest around him, he could not shake the memory of the creature’s gaze. There had been nothing bestial in those eyes, only calculation and assessment. It had seemed to be judging him, deciding what was needed to reach him.

In that moment Danny knew the broken tree limb had not blocked his way by accident. The cat had done it purposefully, to separate the two men. It had gone after his father first, recognizing the greater threat, knowing its other prey was trapped and at its mercy. With Danny snared as surely as a crab in a pot, he was easy pickings for later.

Only something had drawn the beast off.

Something more troubling than a boy in a boat.

Chapter 10

Jack crossed over the swinging bridge. He didn’t bother with the moldy rope rails that lined both sides. He didn’t look down-though several wooden slats of the bridge had long rotted and fallen away. He carried his weight with the easy balance of the familiar.

Ahead, his family home rested on one of the small islands in Bayou Touberline. The land was really no more than a hillock pushing out of the black water, fringed by mats of algae and edged by saw grass. The house sat on the crown of the island, a ramshackle construction of rooms assembled more like a jumbled pile of toy blocks. Each marked additions and extensions built as the Menard clan had grown over the past century and a half. Most rooms were now empty as modern life lured the younger generations away, but the core of the ramshackle structure remained, a sturdy old stacked-stone home. It was there his parents still lived, well into their seventies, along with a smattering of cousins and nieces and nephews.