staring at the sky with a rising sense of dread. Overhead, the crystal blue of the
morning had given way to an ominous purple, and to the north, the sky was
nearly black with roiling storm clouds. It felt as if the temperature had dropped
twenty degrees since earlier in the day, and the air was oppressively heavy. Her
skin clammy, Leslie shivered and sprinted toward Dev’s truck. Flinging her
briefcase into the backseat, she slid behind the wheel and speed-dialed the
lodge at the same time. She was forty minutes from home if she pushed all the
way.
“Mom? What’s it like up there?”
“The wind is up and the lake looks nasty. It’s going to be a good blow. Where
are you?”
“On my way home.”
“They’re talking about trees down and power out. We aren’t expected to get hit
for another couple of hours yet, so you should be Þ ne. Drive carefully.”
“What about Dev? Have you talked to her?” Leslie asked urgently.
Because she was out of radio range at the ofÞ ce, she’d left the two-way in the
lodge for her mother to monitor.
“I was just about to call her.”
“Tell her I’ll be out to get her as soon as I get home.”
“Leslie, you can’t go out on the lake. The waves are two feet high already and
there’s a small craft warning.”
“She can’t stay out there in this!”
“I’ll call the forest rangers, then. You’re not going after her.”
“Fine. Call Natalie Evans in the Bolton Landing ofÞ ce. Tell her she needs to go
get Devon. Call her right now.”
Leslie switched on the windshield wipers, although the rain, which had just
started, was still light. “Mom?”
“You just worry about driving. I’ll take care of things here.”
“Call me back as soon as you know what’s happening.” Leslie tossed the
BlackBerry onto the seat beside her. Thankfully, the Northway was relatively
clear of trafÞ c as everyone was trying to reach shelter,
• 145 •
RADCLY fFE
and she pushed Dev’s truck to eighty. Then she switched on the radio, watching
the road as she punched buttons in search of a local station.
Finally, she found the all-news station.
“…winds to Þ fty miles an hour, small craft warnings on all regional waterways,
and heavy ß ooding expected on many of the secondary roadways. The
governor has declared—”
Leslie tuned out the rest of the weather report. Summer storms often brought
high winds and torrential rain, but they usually weren’t sustained for more than
an hour or two. But an off-season variant of a clipper could last twenty-four
hours or more and might dump a foot of rain. She thought about Dev in a tent on
an island that was likely to be buffeted by gale-force winds and ß ooded by high
waves. She stared at the phone, and as if she had willed it, it vibrated. She
snatched it up.
“Hello?”
“Dev says she’s Þ ne. Not to worry.”
“Bullshit. Of course she isn’t Þ ne!” Leslie ß icked on the turn signal so
vehemently the lever nearly snapped off. “I’m exiting now and I’ll be home in
twenty minutes. What did Natalie say?”
“I could only reach the ofÞ cer on the desk. They’re all out evacuating campers
from the islands.”
“Tell him you want to speak to Natalie Evans. Tell him it’s an emergency. Tell
him if you don’t speak to her, I’m going to have someone’s ass.” Leslie gunned
the truck onto Route 9 and fought with the wheel as it skidded on the wet
pavement. “Son of a bitch.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Just call them back.” Leslie clutched the phone and switched the
wipers to high as rain battered the windshield. Her chest tightened and out of the
blue, the ß uttering started. She blinked as a wave of dizziness swept through
her and she shook her head angrily to dispel it. “I don’t have time for this.”
To her relief, the brief episode passed and her vision cleared. She concentrated
on what needed to be done. If her mother didn’t reach Natalie, her choices
were few. In fact, there was only one choice.
She jumped out and sprinted through the steady rain to the lodge. The wind had
picked up, and she noticed that most of the leaves had turned over, their
bottoms to the sky. It was a sure sign that the barometric pressure was falling
and a big storm was on its way. Eileen met her at the door.
• 146 •
WHEN DREAMS TREMBLE
“Did you reach Natalie?” Leslie gasped.
Eileen shook her head. “The ranger in the ofÞ ce promised to get a message to
her. She knows Dev is out there, Leslie. She’ll get her.”
“Natalie’s going to be lucky to get all the campers out of the campsites. And she
has to do that Þ rst. She has to. Besides, she knows that Dev is better equipped
than anyone else to ride out the storm, so she’ll leave her till last.” Leslie hurried
to the small ofÞ ce beyond the dining room and snatched up the two-way.
“Dev? Dev, do you read me?”
“Leslie…hear you.”
Even through the static, the sound of Dev’s voice instantly quieted her racing
heart. “Hey you. I’ll be there in an hour. Everything okay?”
“Don’t …co…ere. D…you read…on’t… Les…”
“An hour, Devon. See you then.” Leslie switched off and turned to Þ nd her
father watching from his wheelchair in the doorway. Hastily, she bent down and
kissed his cheek. “Hi, Daddy. Welcome home. I’m sorry, I have to go right
back out.”
“Your mother told me about your friend.” Paul Harris backed his wheelchair up
to allow Leslie room to pass. “It’ll be rough out there on the water, sweetheart.”
“Good thing you taught me how to handle the boat, then,” Leslie called on the
run.
“Check your gear before you head out,” he shouted after her.
“I will. Don’t worry.” Leslie pulled her mother’s rain slicker off a coat tree just
inside the back door and slammed out. Pulling it on, she hurried down to the
docks. There wasn’t much of a margin before the storm really broke, but she
calculated there would be just enough time to get there and back. She jumped
into the boat and did a quick check in the storage lockers for the critical items—
battery-powered searchlights, the GPS transmitter, an inß atable life raft, and
PFDs. She shrugged into a life vest and zipped it up, then released the tie lines
and pushed the boat away from the dock. As she turned the key in the ignition
and revved the motor, she thought grimly of backwash and the effect of the
propellers on the sediment in the shallows. Right now, that seemed far less
important than reaching Devon. In fact, she couldn’t think of a single thing that
felt more critical.
She hunched her shoulders against the driving wind, narrowed her eyes in the
pelting rain, and thrust the throttle to the max. The boat leapt forward, the big
motor whining as the bow crashed heavily in the
• 147 •
RADCLY fFE
troughs between the waves. Her teeth kn
ocked together painfully, and she
clenched her jaws and spread her legs to steady herself, keeping a death grip on
the wheel. She didn’t think about the impending storm or the rising chop. She
thought about Dev. This time, she had no intention of leaving Dev to face danger
alone.
• 148 •
WHEN DREAMS TREMBLE
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Leslie! Leslie, do you read?” Dev held the two-way close to her ear with one
hand and dragged her tarp over the equipment cases she had piled in a rocky
cul-de-sac near her campsite with the other. She waited a full minute for a
response, then jammed the radio into the front pocket of her anorak. “God
damn it.”
Rain drummed steadily against the leaves overhead, but the canopy was not yet
saturated and only a slow drizzle was getting through to her. The wind had
picked up, though, and it wouldn’t be long before the rain penetrated the last
remaining barrier between her and the angry sky. She piled rocks around the
edges of the tarp and hastily trenched it as well as she could with the small
folding shovel she’d packed with her camping gear. Then she trenched her tent
could Þ nd. Thunder rolled and a sheet of rain sliced through the trees, hitting
her in the back of the neck, immediately soaking her shirt.
She couldn’t even be bothered to swear, but just pulled her hood over her head.
After checking one more time to see that everything was as secure as she could
make it, she skidded down the narrow path to the shore, following the trail
through the trees she’d created by her daily trek to the lake. By the time Dev
reached the shore, the wind buffeted her body and she needed to lean forward
to maintain her balance. The thin rim of sandy beach was gone, washed away by
the pounding waves. Clinging to the slippery bank with an arm around a tree,
she pulled out the radio.
“Leslie? Leslie, this is Dev. Where the hell are you?”
She hoped someone had had the good sense to keep Leslie off
• 149 •
RADCLY fFE
the lake. The surface of the water was so churned up it looked like the ocean
rather than an inland lake. The sky had darkened to the point where she needed
to use her ß ashlight to check her watch. It’d been a little over an hour since her
last communication with Leslie. Dev squinted into the rain and scanned the lake,
but the visibility was less than Þ fty yards. She jammed her hands into her
pockets, hunched her shoulders against the wind, and ignored the cold as icy
rain soaked through her jeans below her anorak.
Five minutes later, she heard it—the sound of an engine laboring somewhere in
the inky mist. She switched on her ß ashlight and waved it in a wide, slow arc
above her head, squinting so hard into the rain that her eyes ached. The air
howled like a creature in pain, and for a moment, Dev thought she’d imagined
the sound of a motor. Then a ß icker of light caught her eye, went out, and ß
ickered on again. A rhythmic on and off that she recognized as a bow light,
cresting and disappearing into the troughs between the waves as a boat fought
its way to shore. She couldn’t make out the Þ gure in the boat as the craft
wallowed, spun sideways, and threatened to go over. Miraculously, the pilot
maneuvered the bow around until it pointed toward shore again, but the water
was so rough the boat couldn’t land. Holding the ß ashlight above her head with
one hand, Dev waded into the water up to her thighs and stretched out an arm.
“Throw the line!” she shouted against the wind, knowing it was hopeless. She
could feel the words being forced down her throat before they’d even cleared
her lips. Nevertheless, a line snaked through the air and whipped across her
chest. Reß exively, she caught it and wrapped it around her forearm.
Fortunately, her jacket protected her arm, because the rope immediately
tightened like a noose. She could feel it biting into her skin even with the
protection of the nylon. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she leaned backward
toward shore, using her body as an anchor to keep the front of the boat directed
toward land. Each time the rope loosened she stepped backward, keeping the
guideline tight.
She could see Leslie’s face now, screaming something to her.
One step. Two. Three. Dev stumbled, fell backward into the lake, and lost her ß
ashlight. The rope around her arm loosened as she swallowed water and ß ailed
in the shallows just offshore. Coughing and sputtering, struggling in her boots
and wet jeans, she tried unsuccessfully to regain her feet. Then an arm circled
around her waist and steadied her. She broke the surface spewing water and
gasping for air.
• 150 •
WHEN DREAMS TREMBLE
“Are you crazy?” Leslie shouted. “You could’ve gone under the boat and gotten
tangled up in the propeller. I could have killed you!”
“Look who’s talking,” Dev shouted back. “What the hell are you doing out
here? You’re lucky you didn’t capsize in the middle of the lake and drown.”
“The storm’s coming in faster than they predicted,” Leslie said, ignoring Dev’s
chastisement. “The lake’s too rough to make the return trip now.”
“Let’s secure the boat and get to high ground!”
Even as they shouted, Dev and Leslie both grabbed the towrope and dragged
the boat as far up onto what remained of the shoreline as they could. Then
Leslie staggered up the muddy bank and began wrapping the line around a
rocky outcropping. Dev joined her, and between them, they secured the boat as
well as they could.
“We’ll be lucky if it doesn’t wash away,” Dev said, her mouth close to Leslie’s
ear.
“We’ll be lucky if we don’t wash away!”
“Come on,” Dev said, taking Leslie’s hand. “Follow me.”
Just as they cleared the underbrush and reached the relative sanctuary of the
forest, a tremendous crash sounded overhead and a giant pine toppled and fell
almost directly on top of them. Dev yanked Leslie with her as she dove off the
trail and against the base of another evergreen. The trunk of the falling pine
ended up canted against the tree that protected them, about four feet above their
heads.
“Are you okay?” Dev yelled.
“Scratched up a bit, but in one piece,” Leslie called back.
“We need to crawl out from under here and head uphill. I’ll go Þ rst. Hold on to
my jeans so you can follow me.”
“Be careful.”
Dev pushed at the branches with one arm and forced a tunnel through them with
her head and shoulders. Now and then she registered discomfort, but her whole
body felt bruised and battered and a little more pain barely mattered. Once she
cleared the maze of branches, she turned on her back and reached down for
Leslie’s arms to pull her free of the debris. Leslie crawled out and collapsed on
top of Dev. The rain was so heavy it felt as if they were at the bottom of a
waterfall and, once again, Dev was breathing water. She coughed.
Leslie sheltered
Dev’s upturned face with her body. “You’re bleeding!”
• 151 •
RADCLY fFE
Dev pressed her cheek to Leslie’s chest and managed to draw air into her lungs
instead of rain. “I’m okay. The…campsite’s…a hundred yards from here.
Let’s…go.”
“Are you sure you’re not hurt?”
“I’m good.”
Reluctantly, Leslie slid to the side so Dev could get to her knees.
Then Leslie wrapped her arm around Dev’s waist and helped her up.
When Dev tried to pull away, she tightened her grip. “Don’t be stubborn.
Just get us there.”
Traversing the slope was like walking through a sluice jammed with logs. The
rain was a solid wall of water, and branches skimmed by out of nowhere,
bouncing off their bodies and scraping their faces and hands. After what felt like
an interminable struggle, Dev stumbled to a halt next to a nylon tent. With hands
numb from cold and swollen from batting away projectiles, she fumbled with the
zipper and Þ nally got it open. Together, she and Leslie pushed through the ß
ap, Dev zippered it behind them, and they both collapsed onto Dev’s sleeping
bag.
For Þ ve minutes the only sound in the small tent was the rasp of their arduous
breathing. Then Dev sat up, fumbled in the dark, and Þ nally turned on a
battery-powered lantern. The tent roof and sides billowed in and out as if it
were a living, breathing organism.
“Some storm,” Dev muttered, setting the light on the metal lid of a cooking pot
in one corner of the tent.
“Uh-huh,” Leslie said.
Dev pulled off her anorak and spread it out in one corner. “You shouldn’t have
come.”
With a grunt of effort, Leslie rolled onto her side to face Dev.
Although generously called a four-person tent, the tent was designed for two
people to sleep with just enough space on either side for a little bit of gear. Dev
had obviously brought all of her critical equipment inside, because there was
barely room for the two of them on the sleeping bag.
And that was taking into account the fact that the steel toe of one of Dev’s spare
boots was pressed into Leslie’s backside.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, all hell is breaking loose out there,”
Leslie said.
Dev glared. “My point precisely. That was a crazy stunt. Here, let me have your
jacket.”