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sneaker wedged in a crevice and came off.
    In that spasm of exertion Abigail lost control of her lungs and watched with black horror as a final bubble burped from her mouth, and rose shining toward the sun.
    She felt her mouth slacken as the iron in her veins dissolved. Letting go of her ferocious determination, letting go of everything. Her lungs filled and she felt the gentle tug of the current across her flesh. Abigail Bates shivered hard and surrendered.

 
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CHAPTER THREE
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    Sasha knew the woman was dead but waited just the same, holding the root in one hand, the woman in the other.
    The old lady’s clothes rippled in the current, and her hair broke from its bun and flowed forward, long and white like a ghost in a windstorm.
    Sasha checked the surface and saw nothing passing, then she let the body go. With water heavy in her lungs old lady Bates drifted near the bottom, arms loose by her sides, feet tickling the sandy bottom like a drunk tiptoeing home from an all-nighter.
    High in Sasha’s throat a knot began to tighten.
    It would be as simple as taking a deep swallow. A tempting thought. Sasha and Abigail Bates could go arm in arm on a long death march down the Peace. Miles from here their remains would wash into Charlotte Harbor, spill out into open water, then catch the tide as it fanned into the Gulf of Mexico, and in the following days they’d be swept up in the loop current that filtered south and east through the Keys, then the Gulf Stream would catch them and whisk them along on a long clockwork tour of the globe. The large unfailing mechanisms of the sea churning on, carrying the two of them along for the ride.
    That simple. Open her lips and inhale. A beautiful journey.
    Sasha watched the dead woman stumble and drift, sun-light rippling along the sandy river bottom before her.
    The throb in her throat grew. But no. Sasha wasn’t ready to hitch that ride. Soon, perhaps. But now there were promises to keep. Miles to go.
    She released her grip on the root and the water lifted and propelled her twenty feet downstream. With a wild gasp she broke through the surface and swam to the bank.
    Her tracksuit was tucked under a bush nearby and her Ford F-150 was hidden a half mile away on an abandoned logging road. She dressed and jogged to her truck. She saw no one. When she was back on the highway, she held to the speed limit all the way to work.
    In the women’s dressing room she changed out of her tracksuit, hanging her damp bra inside the locker on a metal hook to finish drying. Her security jumpsuit was sandy brown, the color of the landscape she would patrol. A camouflage that made her feel invisible as she roamed the property.
    Out in the hallway, she nodded hello to the four guys coming out of the men’s locker room. Couple of nods in return. Sasha stood to the side and listened to their small talk about the Buccaneers’ new quarterback, listened to one guy’s racist joke, then walked out to her Jeep Cherokee.
    The vehicle was painted the same ashen shade as her uniform, same as the earth and the gray soot that coated the trees and made the sky hazy for miles around. There was real color underneath it all, but it was muted and dull, the way a black-board gets after years of chalk dust films it over.
    She took the access lane for half a mile, went another mile down the public road and parked in the shade of a loblolly pine near the long border of cleared land that ran along the shoulder of the highway.
    A mile away the dragline was at work—its massive bucket scooping up tons of earth in single swipes. She felt the thunder rising from the earth, quaking through the frame of the Jeep. She watched her coffee cup tremble in the holder. She rolled up the window, but it did nothing to still the rumble.
    Sasha was one of five members of the Bates security team who earned a meager wage making the rounds of the three-thousand-acre mining operation. Her afternoon task was