But it did not strike.
Not immediately.
It could hear-taste-smell the mouse’s terror, the frenzied, flurried beating of its tiny heart, the sound of its blood thrum-ing though its body, the scent of utter fear rising unbidden from its flesh.
It caught the mouse’s wide-eyed gaze, caught it and held it, hypnotically.
It swayed its triangular head slightly to one side.
The mouse twitched just enough to follow the movement.
The snake swayed back.
The mouse’s small, bead-like eyes followed.
The snake swayed sideways again.
Again the mouse’s eyes followed.
The snake began to sway back to its original position—the mouse intent on the serpent’s deep-set slitted eyes—when without a break in its rhythm, the snake surged forward, its head an impossible blur, jaws extended to their fullest revealing the satin-white lining of its mouth and its fangs protruding and deadly, this time pinioning the mouse, biting down hard, letting the venom drip into the mouse’s quivering flesh.
And the battle—brief but epic—was over.
But the process—the almost interminable process—of consuming the mouse was only beginning.
CHAPTER ONE
“Hello?”
“Lynn, dear, it that you?”
“Victoria?” I darted a quick glance at the old-fashioned Big-Ben wind-up alarm clock on the pine nightstand. Its rigid arms pointed to 7:15. Not that long past dawn.
Even for what was essentially a farming community like Fox Creek, it was a bit early for a telephone call, especially a simple social call to exchange the latest recipes or gossip about the doings of wayward youngsters or brag about the splendid state of one’s gladiolas.
“Victoria, are you all right?” My voice was harsher than usual, both because I had only been awake a few minutes and because of the sudden fear that made me sit bolt upright in bed.
“I’m just fine, dear.”
“Are you sure? It’s only....”
“Yes, of course I’m sure. I just need to ask a favor. It’s about a friend of mine.”
By this time, I was on my feet, cell phone in hand, and on my way to the closet, mentally choosing which clothes I could throw on if Victoria Sears needed me right away.
“But you’re okay?” I repeated. Victoria was, after all, well into her seventies, coming up on her eighties with a speed that I wasn’t sure she herself sometimes recognized, and fiercely independent. Even knowing her for only a few weeks, I couldn’t imagine anything short of a life-threatening emergency that would make the woman call—and call for help—this early. Victoria was a stickler for the proper forms.
Victoria laughed. It was a light, pleasant sound, like water running over stones in a creek bed in early spring. But we were already close enough friends for me to detect something more, a hint of darkness, beneath the sound. That small undercurrent frightened me.
“I’m fine. Really. But I do need your help with...with something that might be rather urgent.”
I had already pulled on a pair of jeans and was shifting the cell phone to my other hand so I could work my way into a blouse.
“What is it?”
“Well, a very dear friend of mine is...is in a bit of trouble, I think. I just got a call from Carver—the Ellises live next door to her—asking if I could get down there as soon as possible.”
“Do you need me to drive you?” Victoria owned a sturdy vehicle and was more than capable of driving herself anywhere she wanted. Perhaps she was more shaken up than I had imagined over her friend’s difficulty—whatever it was—and didn’t trust herself on the road.
“If you could I would greatly appreciate it. The Behemoth”—that was her pet name for her station wagon—“is laid up at the moment. She’s in the garage in town. If you could just pick me up and take me down-mountain and drop me off at the Ellises, I’d....”
“I’ll be there in five minutes.”
“You don’t need to hurry too fast. I don’t think there is any real rush. Not any more. It’s...well, I’m not sure there’s really anything I can do, but I did tell Janet Ellis that I’d be there.”
“I’m almost out the door, Victoria,” I said, buttoning the last button on my blouse.
“Thank you, Lynn dear. I truly appreciate it.”
She hung up.
I rummaged around in my drawer for a thick pair of socks and dropped onto the rumpled bed to put them on. My high-topped hiking boots—a fashion statement I would never dreamed of wearing before I arrived in Fox Creek only a couple of months earlier—were lying by the side of the bed where I had left them the previous afternoon after a long, luxurious tramp into the low mountains behind my cabin. Toppled onto their sides, the boots looked comically like a couple of exhausted soldiers taking a welcome but unexpected breather.
I didn’t know what Victoria might need me for, but I knew enough about the area to come prepared. The last time I had shared an emergency with Victoria, we had had to hike up and down the mountains abutting her home twice, making one of the trips by flashlight long after dark, and this time I was determined to be ready for anything.
I grabbed a bagel from the refrigerator and gulped down a quick glass of icy milk. At the doorway, I nearly bolted through before I remembered to take my floppy straw hat down from the rack and jam it on my head. Estelle had instructed me to take a hat whenever I went anywhere, and her advice had proved useful several times now.
Okay—bagel, milk, hat. Check. And I was on my way.
Victoria’s home—she called it a cabin but it was really much more than that—was only a mile and a quarter from the place I was renting from my mother’s friends, Estelle and Edgar Van Etten. The first time I met Victoria, on that memorable day when Alix Macrorie’s body had been discovered at the foot of Porcupine Falls, I had walked the distance. Physically it had taken me the better part of half an hour but internally, the trek had seemed infinitely longer.
It had been the first anniversary of Terry and Shawn’s deaths, and the last thing I had wanted was to let anyone else intrude on my private sorrows. But I had promised Estelle, and I had made the trip.
And in many ways, that short walk had saved my life.
Now I had a chance to repay Victoria in some small measure for what she had done for me that day.
It took a little more than five minutes of bouncing along the rutted road to get to Victoria’s, but not much more. She was waiting for me at the gate that led from a low picket fence through a garden of carefully cultivated wild flowers to the front door of her house.
She
