The William Kent Krueger Collection #1: Iron Lake, Boundary Waters, and Purgatory Ridge (Cork O'Connor Mystery Series) by William Kent Krueger

Author:William Kent Krueger [Krueger, William Kent]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2012-07-17T04:00:00+00:00

31

THE WATER LOOKED LIKE GRAY EARTH and the paddle in her hand felt like a spade. With every stroke, Shiloh saw herself digging her own grave.

The man in the stern of the canoe hadn’t spoken except to press her for directions. She’d lied to him, tried to misdirect him to buy time. “That way,” she’d pointed, leading them through a narrows between two islands. “Now that way.”

His sense of direction was flawless even though the mist and the drizzle sometimes blotted out everything except the flat water fifty yards around them. “That will take us in a circle,” he said quietly at her back. “Don’t try that again. Which way is it?”

“There,” and she’d lifted her hand grudgingly in the direction of her death.

She’d struggled with despair all her life. She knew that people envied her, looked at the trappings and thought she had it all. They were wrong. Her life was a big beautiful box with lots of ribbons and bows on the outside but completely empty within. The only love she’d ever known was from her mother and that had been wrenched from her a long time ago. Her father had given her everything she wanted except love. She’d been raised by nannies, nuns, tutors, and housekeepers. She’d never had any real friends, anyone she trusted deeply. All she’d ever had was the music.

What would be the loss? Who would even care if she never came out of the woods? She laid her paddle across the gunwales, laid her head down, and wept. The canoe didn’t slow in the least.

“You disappoint me,” he said. “We all die sometime. Wendell Two Knives understood that. He went as nobly as any man I’ve ever known. You would honor him by dying well.”

“There’s no honor in dying if there’s no reason to die,” she wept.

“Dying’s never had a reason. As far as I can tell, the same is true for living.”

It wasn’t true about dying, she thought. Wendell had died for a reason. He’d died for her. And dying herself seemed like no way to honor him.

She whispered his name. Wendell. It didn’t exactly fill her with courage, but it did pull her out of her self-pity.

She considered the knife in the pocket of her jeans. It wasn’t much, but small as it was, she found herself wrapping her hope around it. She had the map in her vest, and a compass, and matches there, too, in a waterproof container. All she needed was a chance.

She wiped her tears and took up her paddle.

“Do you have a name?” she asked.

“Call me Charon.”

“Charon? Charon. Where have I heard that name before?”

Her back was to him. She listened to his voice carefully. His words were like stones, hard in the way he said them. But not without feeling. Rather, they were like a wall behind which the feeling was hidden.

“You said Wendell died a noble death. How?”

“In the end, I cut his throat. A small, painless cut. It doesn’t take much when you know what you’re doing.

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