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3

When I got Charley on the phone and told him what Brandon had told me and what Stacey and I had subsequently learned—or not learned—about Mark Redmond and Hammond Pratt, and after I had explained my plan to ask Josie to fly us to Prentiss Pond, his response was exactly what his daughter had predicted.

“It’s better if I call her. Jo’s wicked protective of these Redmond folks. She’s kind of adopted them, it seems. The man’s daughter especially. Let me give her a ring and see if I can persuade her to give us a lift to the pond after the rain clears.”

I’d returned to my office to call him and this time had turned on the lights to avoid the chiaroscuro menace of the stuffed-and-mounted animals watching me with their unseeing eyes.

Listening to the rain, my thoughts bounced back and forth between the reclusive Redmonds and my own personal preoccupation. My biological father had been an emotionally abusive womanizer and dangerous criminal who’d left my psyche scarred in ways I was still discovering nearly ten years after his death. Charley had provided me with a role model of what real fatherhood could be, but I didn’t possess his patience or generosity of spirit. I could barely take care of the wolf in my charge.

I was letting my worries run away with me and needed to knock it off. My wife was one of the most intuitive people I had ever met, almost scarily so. Surely Stacey knew what was happening inside her own body. I needed to trust her.

Charley phoned back within minutes.

“Josie can’t reach them on the radio, but that’s not unexpected with the terrain and the storm. Her Uniden can barely reach them in good conditions. But I spooked her, I have to say, and she says if we’re not up there when the rain stops, she’s going in alone in her helicopter.”

“Great.”

“Why are you so convinced there’s something shifty about this Redmond, Mike? In my experience, there are flocks of odd ducks roosting in the Maine woods. And most of them are harmless. This cabin master sounds to me like just another coot.”

“It’s not just them. There’s Pratt—what’s he up to? And where is he?”

“The man could be lost on a dirt road or have sunk his tires in a mud pit.”

“True.”

“It’ll be a long haul up and back by truck,” Charley grumbled.

He offered to borrow a bush plane, since his own was undergoing a major repair. But I wanted the control, autonomy, and freedom that came with driving my own state-issued truck: an unmarked GMC Sierra that, despite its anonymous exterior, announced me as a game warden to every veteran poacher I passed on the road.

“You can keep me entertained by telling me the old warden stories you’ve told me dozens of times before,” I said.

“Oh, I have a few tall tales you haven’t heard.”

There was humor in his voice now, and I knew that whatever doubts he was harboring about my plan, he was smiling at the prospect of our father-and-son road trip.

I hung up and went to join Stacey in bed. I tried to sleep, while outside, the rain continued to hit the house like buckshot.

* * *

Charley Stevens, being Charley Stevens, arrived before dawn, having driven down the coast from the cottage he and his wife, Ora, owned on Little Wabassus Pond in the pine forests of eastern Maine. My father-in-law had a long, weathered face that was mostly chin and a shock of white hair that bristled when Ora ran a clipper through it each week. He greeted me with a hard clap on the back: his standard greeting.

“I have news from Josie,” he said with a grin. “She spoke with Cady half an hour ago—”

“Cady?”

“Redmond’s daughter. She’s twelve. Her dad was already up and out trying to clear the deadfalls blocking the only road out of Prentiss Pond. But she says everything is fine there, except for being permanently drenched. She’s never heard of this Hammond Pratt.”

“Josie told the kid his name?”

“I thought it was a mistake, too, but Jo claims the girl is mature for her age and she didn’t want to lie to her.”

“I wish she hadn’t done that.”

“I agree, but that’s Jo Jonson. The woman’s got a long history of making questionable decisions, but that never seems to stop her from making new mistakes. Anyway, she’s willing to fly us in if you have your heart set on it.”

“More than ever.”

“Glad to hear it. It’s been ages since I’ve taken a ride in a whirlybird.”

While I finished loading my truck, Charley went into the house to say hi to Stacey. The sound of the flood-swollen Ducktrap River, down the hill, was louder than I’d ever heard it. A raven was calling in the near darkness.

If anything, Josie’s news had only deepened my foreboding. The thought of a child, alone and vulnerable, living at a construction site far from town gnawed at my still-empty stomach.

Overnight, the driving rain had become a faint drizzle. It seemed a promising sign. The National Weather Service was predicting there would be an interval of clear skies between this departing low-pressure system and a brief storm arriving from Canada. I hoped this window would be sufficient for Josie to fly us to the cabin.

Stacey was up and making coffee when I went inside. She was wearing the worn flannel bathrobe she had permanently borrowed from me. I didn’t mention the pregnancy test in front of her father. I had a long day ahead and needed to put the matter—and my fears—out of my head.

“Have you checked in with young Brandon yet?” Charley asked as we set off in my truck.

“He’s supposed to call me when he’s had a look around Hammond Pratt’s cabin at Seboomook Farm.”

The earthbound pilot was dressed entirely in green: rain jacket, nylon flight suit, and baseball cap. Aside from the bone-handled pocketknife I knew he always carried—a retirement gift from his fellow wardens who’d teased him about taking up whittling as an old man—he had brought nothing but a thermos of black coffee. He sipped from the screw-down cup at fifteen-minute intervals, rationing the caffeine, trying to make it last.

As we drove westward, the drizzle turned to a light mist that saturated the air. Fog emanated from every stream and pond. We saw turkeys pecking in the sodden fields, as if they knew no hunter would venture out in all this wet. Then we crested a hill between two blueberry barrens where Charley had once seen a young bear dart across the asphalt. As often happened, this memory prompted another memory, which, in turn, led to a story I had somehow never heard from him before.

I practically swerved into the shoulder when he reached the plot twist. “You didn’t tell me you were mauled by a bear!”

“More like swatted around. I’d gotten between a mama and her cub, and she eased me aside. Sadly for me, this happened about a hundred miles from the nearest hospital. But it’s amazing the uses you can find for a barbless fishhook and some monofilament. It didn’t take more than a dozen stitches to close the wound.”

This was my father-in-law in full: offhandedly recounting a death-defying encounter that, for anyone else, would’ve been one of the defining moments of their life.

Before I could pepper him with questions about the incident, the phone rang. It was Brandon Barstow. I put him on speaker and told him that my father-in-law, the retired chief warden pilot, was riding shotgun and had been fully briefed on the situation.

“So I’m up at Seboomook Farm,” Brandon said.

“Has Hammond Pratt returned?” Charley asked.

“No, he hasn’t. I told Ivanov about having his housekeeper look around the cabin, and he got all cranky and obstinate—”

“Put Ivanov on the phone,” I demanded. “It’s a damned welfare check not a gross violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. Let me talk with him.”

“That won’t be necessary. I told Ivan that Mike Bowditch would be making his life miserable if he threw a fit. You should have seen how fast he folded when I mentioned your name.”

Charley leaned over the center console and whispered, “Your reputation for being a pain in the derriere is finally paying off.”

“Did the maid find anything helpful?” I said, waving away the old man.

“Pratt takes good care of his teeth. He has one of those electric toothbrushes, and there was floss in the wastebasket. He also packed condoms.”

“For a visit to the North Woods in mud season!” said Charley. “The man is an optimist. I’ll give him that.”

“Any indication he might be armed?” I asked.

“Besides the two empty boxes of ammo?”

“Two!”

“Yep. Both handgun calibers: .45 ACP and 9mm. Hollow-point rounds.”

“Where did Mr. Pratt think he was headed?” Charley remarked. “The O.K. Corral?”

Brandon continued his report. “I looked in the car, like you said—a silver Toyota Camry LE with Maine plates. There wasn’t anything in plain sight except four empty cans of Red Bull scattered in the back seat.”

“Send me all the photos you took,” I said. “Maybe we will see something you missed.”

“What else do you want me to do? It seems like we should begin a search for him, don’t you think?”

“We’re getting close to making that decision,” I said.

“How much more information do you need?” The young man’s voice tended to go up an octave when he was peeved.

“You’ll know when I know. It matters why Pratt is looking for Mark Redmond. Answering that question helps us understand the kind of a man we’re dealing with. Who drives up to Seboomook Farm with two guns and a packet of rubbers?”

“Don’t forget the dental floss,” added Charley.

Brandon responded with a sniff, “I’m glad you two think this is funny.”

“Call the car rental company with the plate number,” I said. “Start with the counter at the Bangor airport.”

“Won’t I need a subpoena?”

“Not if you can convince them we’re dealing with exigent circumstances. The company will want you to put in a formal, written request before they consider releasing information. But if you emphasize that their customer might be a missing person engaged in potential criminal activity, they should come through with his name, date of birth, address, and a photo of his license, if we’re lucky.”

“Make sure the agency understands how important it is we have as much info as possible on the man we’re looking for,” added my father-in-law.

“Except we’re not looking for him,” Brandon protested. “We haven’t initiated a search.”

“I’ll be in touch from Jackman after I finish my interviews. And I might want to meet you later at Seboomook Farm. Keep your schedule open this afternoon and evening.”

After we’d signed off, I cast a look at Charley. “What do you think?”

“About Brandon? That he’s exceptionally hardworking and thorough for a young warden. Has a bit of an attitude, but that’s just his youth showing.”

“What I meant was, what do you think we’re going to find at Prentiss Pond?”

“I have decided to withhold judgment pending further investigation.”

I wished I had that gift.

4

Our route almost perfectly bisected Maine, taking us via country roads and logging highways from the rocky coast to the forested highlands that bordered the province of Québec.

Three hours after we’d left my home on the coast, we crested the height of land above Jackman.

In 1842, surveyors had drawn a jagged line along the watershed of those hills and mountains. Where the streams flowed south and east, joining and gathering in volume, and where they turned finally toward the Gulf of Maine, lay the United States. Where they coursed west, spilling in cataracts into the St. Lawrence River, was Canada. You could stand astride Slidedown Mountain, as I had done, with one foot in one country and the other foot in another and feel very much like the Colossus of Rhodes in miniature.

Now the entire Moose River Valley was spread before us, the lakes deep blue and almost entirely ice-free except in the coves. There, the shadows of the mountains kept the sun from touching their stubborn gray crust. I knew I was looking into Canada from this vantage—that the arbitrary, invisible border zigzagged along the farthest peaks—but I didn’t feel as if I had approached the edge of anything, not the way you recognize upon seeing the ocean, for instance, an absolute division between one thing and another.

“Have you ever seen this country so freakishly green the first week of May?” Charley asked.

“No, but I think we’re looking at the new normal.”

He pointed west. “There’s some nimbostratus beyond Burnt Jacket.”

It took me a moment to spot the dark smudge of rain-bearing clouds above the shoulders of the mountain.

“Then we’d better not waste time taking in the view.”

I eased my foot from the gas and let gravity pull the truck down the hill toward the village.

Jackman nurtured its reputation as a frontier town: the last stop on a very long, very wooded highway before you cross into Canada. It boasted two mottoes: the one emblazoned on banners hanging from the light posts (THE SWITZERLAND OF MAINE) and the other printed on bumper stickers on the mud-spattered pickups parked outside Bishop’s Store (MORE MOUNTAINS, LESS ASSHOLES).

It was hard to argue that Jackman was undersupplied with mountains, although none of them rivaled the smallest of Alps. To the south of town, snowcapped Sally Mountain rose from the cobalt waters of Big Wood Pond; beyond Sally, the dromedary hump of Attean climbed into view above the lake that shared its name; beyond the lower reaches of the Moose River loomed Number Five Mountain with its telltale fire tower, and its fraternal twin, Number Six Mountain. Beyond them, the next storm was gathering.

As for the paucity of assholes, well, I’d heard differing views from the wardens who worked the area. Whatever their opinions, all of my colleagues agreed that the locals were hard as nails. People who live along the rough edges have to be as rough as the land itself. And Jackman had always been a settlement in the wilderness.

Charley had once described Jackman to me as “the truck stop that time forgot.” But seeing its half-empty streets again for myself, I thought we might well have returned to an era when river drivers spilled out of saloons to brawl in the streets, and the boardinghouses brought prostituées down from Québec, along with the bootleg whiskey that fueled the nightly melees.

“Take a right after that bridge,” said Charley. “We’ll follow the Heald Stream Road to the River Road. Josie’s place is on the north side of the stream, across from the airstrip. In the summer, she ties her de Havilland up to a float outside her door.”

I followed his directions and found myself almost immediately confronted with what might best be described as a flash mob of white-tailed deer. The two biggest bucks vaulted for cover, but the does and yearlings reacted with varying degrees of concern, indifference, and lassitude. Some gave us long, dismissive looks before wandering casually off into the evergreens, disappearing instantaneously and absolutely into the trees as only deer can do.

“I take it the people in Jackman feed them after hunting season,” I said.

“Yeah, folks put out corn, oats, barley, and such.”

“The first day of hunting season must be a regular shooting gallery here, as accustomed as these animals are to humans.”

“A blind man could bag one—and probably has.”

The Moose River was so high with meltwater and surplus rain that it no longer had banks as such; the flood had crept into the forest, submerging the roots of the trees to form a bitterly cold swamp. Someone’s aluminum canoe had floated off a lawn and was now wedged between two maples in the latte-colored water.

“Can’t say I’ve ever seen the Moose this high,” said Charley. “That’s the farm, ahead on the left.”

He didn’t need to provide directions. The Robinson R44 Raven helicopter on the paved helipad outside the barn-turned-hangar told me whose home it was.

It was an impressive spread, dominated by a massive old farmhouse with a steep roof and smoke feathering from twin chimneys, a wall of stacked cordwood to feed the fires, a fenced chicken coop, and in back, a rocky pasture where heavy-uddered goats grazed with the same blithe indifference as the deer.

The only surprise—and I can’t say the sight didn’t give me pause—was the gleaming white pickup in the drive.

The vehicle was a Ford Explorer belonging to the Canada Border Services Agency. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen a foreign patrol truck on the American side of the Boundary, as locals called the dividing line between the two nations. Maybe I never had.

“Now, there’s a surprising sight!” exclaimed Charley. “It seems one hell of a coincidence that Josie is entertaining an agent of the Services frontaliers this fine morning.”

“Or no coincidence at all,” I said.

5

The temperature in Jackman was at least fifteen degrees colder than at home. The rain might have pummeled the snowpack until the ground was mostly bare, but I spotted white pockets lingering beneath the shaggiest evergreens. I shivered and zipped up my Gore-Tex jacket as I stepped from the truck.

The cold air, blowing down the hillside, smelled faintly of goats.

Beyond the waiting helicopter, the double doors of the barn stood yawning. Josie had been forced to widen the entrance so that she could tow her Robinson R44 Raven inside for the winter or ahead of damaging weather. Coming from within, I heard voices: a man’s and a woman’s.

I readjusted my belt, heavy with the tools of my trade.

Warden investigators are essentially plainclothes detectives. Even though I was dressed in civvies, I was carrying my SIG P226 service pistol on my belt, two magazines, a multitool in a sheath, and handcuffs in a leather case. The key to the cuffs was attached to the ring I used for my truck and house keys. But a fellow warden who used to be a Navy SEAL—trained to escape hostage takers—had advised me to cut a slit in my gun belt where I could hide a second key between the layers at a six o’clock position.

“You never know when your own gear might be used against you,” he’d said in a syrupy southern drawl. “God willing, you’ll never need that spare key, but if you ever do, you’re going to kiss me for having taught you that trick from the Coronado handbook.”

Inside the dark, drafty space, we found Josie gabbing with her Canadian visitor. The hangar was even colder than outside. The sunlight shining through the open doors didn’t reach the straw-strewn depths of the former barn. The air smelled of oil, hydraulic fluids, solvents, and paint: aromatherapy for the mechanically minded.

Jo Jonson was that rare specimen in life, the person who looks exactly as you imagined they would: a woman in her late sixties, prematurely aged by weather and misfortune, but vigorous and erect in posture.

She threw her long arms wide. “Chuck Stevens, you handsome devil!”

No one, absolutely no one, called Charley by that nickname. Or so I had believed until this moment.

“In the flesh, Jo.”

She wore her silver hair cut short; I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn she trimmed it herself with sewing scissors and a hand mirror. A pair of aviator sunglasses perched atop her head. She was dressed as if she’d planned on spending the day splitting hardwood to feed her stoves, wearing an oversize plaid shirt, flannel-lined jeans, and service boots stained with oil and tree sap. As a collector of North Woods memorabilia, I immediately coveted the hand-tooled sheath on her belt and the deer-antler hunting knife inside it.

“How do you manage to get sexier as the years go by?” She loomed over Charley as they embraced, but her kiss on his lined forehead was the definition of chaste. “You’re becoming a regular Christopher Plummer.”

My father-in-law, with his jutting jaw and deep wrinkles, bore not the slightest resemblance to the charismatic late actor.

“I hope we haven’t interrupted an important confab,” he said.

“The officier and I were just shooting the shit. Monsieur Nadeau, I’d like you to meet Chuck Stevens, the second-best pilot in Maine.”

The Canadian was tall—six-three or -four—and broad shouldered. His hair was sandy, but his eyebrows had already turned white. His skin was exceptionally pale except where the capillaries flared along his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. His ears were an even darker shade of red. His eyes were the color of faded denim but without the softness.

He was dressed not in the green fatigues of a field agent but in the crisp navy uniform I associated with officers who staffed the fortified checkpoints at the border. Although he wore a dark blue ballistic vest over his shirt, his sidearm was conspicuously missing from his holster. He’d probably been forced to leave it behind when he’d crossed over from Québec. Whatever his rank in his home country, here in Jackman, he was no longer a law enforcement officer but a visiting foreign national.

“Good to meet you, Chuck.” Nadeau displayed no Québécois accent whatsoever, but he was unusually hoarse, as if he’d punished his vocal cords singing at the top of his lungs the night before.

The two men shook hands.

Josie had called Charley “the second-best pilot in Maine,” but I doubted anyone in the Northeast could surpass his skill in flying single-engine aircraft. My father-in-law’s imperviousness to teasing was a virtue I hoped to absorb from him. Ten years on the job, I was still too easy to bait: a bull always on the lookout for red capes and rodeo clowns.

“Who’s that with you, Chuck?” asked Josie, squinting at me as if I were a near-invisible wraith.

“Josie Jonson, I’m pleased to introduce my son-in-law, Warden Investigator Mike Bowditch.”

She had a strong handshake and a mobile, expressive face with cheeks that glowed through skin permanently tanned from decades spent under the hot sun and raw wind. Her manner was light and unaffected. However apprehensive I might have been about what we’d find at Prentiss Pond, she seemed to be suffering from no such concerns.

“I was pulling your wiener, Mike. I recognize you from your wedding photos. Sorry I couldn’t attend, but I had to fly some caribou hunters up to Labrador.”

“You wouldn’t happen to be Jack Bowditch’s son?” interrupted Nadeau in a rasping voice.

On my deathbed, I wondered, will the priest delivering the last rites ask me that same damned question?

“I am.”

I wasn’t surprised that Nadeau recognized my name. My father had been the subject of an international manhunt before he died. At one point, the searchers had feared he’d managed to cross into Canada. Both the Services frontaliers and the Mounties—probably the Sûreté du Québec, too—had been put on high alert.

“I met your old man a few times along the corridor,” Nadeau said. It strained his voice box to speak. “He liked to sneak back and forth across the slash for kicks. I can’t say I was surprised to hear that Jack had finally become a murderer. He was always destined for it, in my opinion.”

“And what brings you to Josie’s door this morning, Officier Nadeau?” Charley interjected. No doubt he wanted to keep me from snapping at the man’s casual rudeness.

Nadeau considered the old man’s question, but his blue stare never left mine.

“I had a meeting with my counterpart at Jackman Station. Josie and I have met many times on my side of the border when she’s assisted us with aerial searches—missing persons and the like. I thought the time had come to pay her a visit at home. With all this rain, Jo, I’d expected you to have the de Havilland in the water.”

“The river’s been too high to tie up the floatplane,” she said. “I’ve got it in a hangar at the airstrip across the stream. But it’s ready to fly. I’ve been having too much fun flying the Raven.”

“So Nadeau’s visit was a spur-of-the-moment thing?” I asked, not quite believing this Canadian had decided to visit Josie’s house at the exact moment a mysterious man was asking questions about her mysterious builder.

“I suppose you could call it that.” Nadeau checked his watch: a gold Rolex that looked too expensive for a government employee. “I’m afraid I have a meeting back in Armstrong. If you’ll excuse me . . .”

As soon as I heard his engine turn over, I addressed Josie. “Is it common for you to get unannounced visits from the Canada Border Services Agency?”

“What are you thinking, Mike?” Charley asked.

“I don’t believe Officier Nadeau was here by accident. What did he want to talk with you about, Josie?”

“The Canada Border Services Agency knows Mark is building a cabin for me. It’s not a big secret in Jackman or across the Boundary. Nadeau wants to build a place of his own and was curious how the job was going. He thinks he can lure Mark over to Lac-Mégantic after he’s done working for me, but that’s never going to happen. I tried to tell him the Redmonds are nomads.”

“And that’s all? Nothing else?”

Her bright expression went suddenly dark, like a light bulb had blown behind her eyes.

“He might’ve asked who else had been out to the pond to see the construction.”

“Who else has been out here?”

“No one that I know of.”

“And you didn’t find the question unusual?”

She cocked her head. “In what way?”

“Why would Nadeau care about Redmond’s visitors?”

“I have no idea. What does any of this have to do with your missing person?”

“Maybe nothing, but these are questions I’m hoping to ask your builder.”

She advanced on me until I could smell the sickly sweet gum she was chewing.

“You wouldn’t be misrepresenting to me why you want to talk with Mark, would you? Because if you are, I’m going to be more than disappointed—I’m going to be pissed.”

I hadn’t meant to offend her with my questions—I had mistakenly assumed she welcomed bluntness, given her otherwise gruff demeanor—but the protectiveness she felt toward Redmond told me I shouldn’t look to Josie Jonson for objectivity in this matter.

“I need to make a decision whether the Warden Service will or won’t initiate a search for this Hammond Pratt. Right now, we know very little about him other than he’s been asking questions about the Redmonds. I’d like to ask Mark why that might be.”

I considered telling her about the empty ammo boxes Brandon had discovered in Pratt’s room, but her suspiciousness made me hesitate. I worried that if I pushed her, she might refuse to fly us. Stacey hadn’t exaggerated how cantankerous the woman could be.

“I promise I’ll make the conversation as quick and painless as possible.”

She clutched her strong jaw for dramatic effect. “Every dentist in my life has used those same words. And every time I left their offices, I spent the next week sipping soup through a straw.”

Charley again adopted the role of peacemaker. “How did you come to find Mr. Redmond in the first place, Jo?”

“Dumb luck—which is why I’m afraid of ruining it. I flew a client to New Brunswick last year, and he showed me a fishing cabin Mark was finishing on the Cascapédia River. It was the most beautiful camp I’d ever seen. The logs were so tight an ant couldn’t have crept between them. Mark got to talking, and as it happened, he had never done a job in Maine and was intrigued by the project I had in mind. The fact that he could harvest the wood from the hills around the pond interested him.”

“How long has he been working for you?” I asked.

“Started last fall, getting building materials on-site. He’s been up all winter. Him and Cady. I thought they’d take mud season off, but he wanted to finish the interior: floors and cabinets, et cetera. The man is, like, the Michelangelo of cabin masters. I don’t know how I got so lucky to find him, but I’m not letting him go. That’s my worry here—that you’re going to spook him, being law enforcement, and he’s going to quit on the spot with my job half-done.”

“I understand,” I said.

“I hope you do!”

“Still,” I said. “It must have been tough on his daughter, spending the entire winter in the woods with no one but her dad for company.”

This statement seemed to affect Josie. Charley had told me she had been a mother herself. She blinked several times but somehow remained dry-eyed and responded with a smile that only bordered on the tremulous.

“It’s true I felt sorry for the girl, living so far from kids her age, but Mark is about the best father I’ve met. I saw him one time with a Spanish edition of Doña Flor. He told me he was learning the language to teach Cady. She’s not even a teen, but that kid knows more than most college grads.”

Charley let out one of his signature guffaws. He enjoyed playing up his affect as an old Mainer. “I haven’t even met Mr. Redmond, and he’s already making me feel parentally inadequate!”

Josie cast a worried glance at the light angling in through the hangar door. “We should get moving while we can.”

Again, I had to wonder if my unfounded suspicions were leading me astray.

The man Josie had described sounded quirky but no more suspicious than most North Woods recluses. And he seemed like a caring and attentive father, too. Was I inventing reasons to suspect him of being someone other than he seemed? Based on everything Josie had told us, Redmond was a decent man while Hammond Pratt was almost certainly bad news. What if we flew to Prentiss Pond and, instead of finding an idyllic cabin, discovered a blood-soaked killing ground?

Copyright © 2024 by Paul Doiron. All rights reserved.

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About Pitch Dark by Paul Doiron:

Legendary bush pilot Josie Jonson can’t believe her luck when a skilled builder just happens to show up after she purchases land near Prentiss Pond. All Mark Redmond asks in return for building Josie’s dream cabin is that he be left alone to homeschool his 12-year-old daughter, Cady.

For Maine game warden investigator Mike Bowditch, the intensity of Redmond’s secretiveness is troubling, especially in light of suspicious criminal activity being reported around the area―including rumors of an armed man offering large sums of money in exchange for the location of Redmond and Cady. Josie, though hesitant to violate the trust of her prized builder, eventually agrees to fly Mike and his father-in-law Charley Stevens to the secluded pond in an attempt to protect Redmond and Cady. But hours after landing, the trip takes a dark turn when they witness a horrific murder and are taken captive themselves.

Freeing himself, Mike is forced to set off through the impenetrable Maine forest towards Canada, alone and unarmed in pursuit of a mysterious fugitive. As he navigates a windblown landscape choked with deadfalls and blocked by swollen streams, he marvels at his enemy’s bush craft. The killer possesses skills surpassing his own, and Bowditch can’t tell if he is the cat or the mouse in this dangerous game. Can Mike Bowditch stop his adversary in time to save the life of a young girl, or will he be forced to watch another innocent soul die?