Did Mary feel like she was in the same kind of rut as Deidre?

  She held still to see how that fit.

  No, Mary thought, she was a load of laundry, agitated then wrung out—that was how she’d describe the great uncoupling of herself from a nuclear family—her ex-husband by choice, her children by biological design. And now, through perseverance and effort, she’d moved herself to the dryer. Mary figured it was for a matter of time that she’d tumble around. Then, she’d come out of that stage, too. Hopefully, still warm and wrinkle-free.

  That metaphor tickled the corners of Mary’s lips.

  “I’m listening. Tell me about your new-found teacup considerations.” Mary extracted her fingers from the vice of Deidre’s grip, flipping her hand to rub warmth into her friend’s hands.

  “It used to be that I could care less what I drank my hot drinks out of unless it was styrene or paper cups. I hate how those ruin the flavor, and you get that weird lip feel.” Deidre rolled her lips in.

  “I’m with you on that one.”

  “But now,” Deidre said, “I have certain mugs I want to drink my coffee from in the morning, others for tea. Coffee mugs are taller to hold more. Their circumference is large enough that I can wrap my hands all the way around them without overlapping my fingers, thick enough to feel substantial, thin enough that my lips fit correctly. Smooth enough that I don’t think about the texture and can focus on the flavor of the coffee. I’m happiest when there’s a picture of my son and his friends to keep me company.”

  “Wow.” Mary held her brows high. “That’s specific.”

  “Tea, I like my cups to be smaller, so the flavor is intense when I dunk a bag. I like a narrow bottom and a wide top. I want the sides to be thick enough and heavy enough not to topple if I brush it by accident. The wide top cools the drink, and I can tuck my face down and breathe in the herbal steam. That’s pleasant.” She ran her palms down her thighs and spoke to the highly-polished door as if it was part of their conversation. “I like muted colors—sages and earth browns. Colors that don’t ask me to divide my attention with the things outside the window. In the stillness of taking a sip, I notice small things that change from day to day, in the color of the leaves or the shape of the clouds. I think in my fifties, I’ve learned to sit still and pay attention to the small things, the tiny pleasures.”

  “You’re waxing poetic,” Mary laughed, and it sounded a little nervous. Yeah, Deidre didn’t normally talk like this. Mary wondered if there was something more to this visit than Deidre had told her, so she’d just take the direct approach. “Is there something you’ve been keeping from me?”

  Deidre dragged her gaze back to meet her friends. “I’ve been so busy living life that I have the strange feeling that I haven’t been living life at all. My doctor says anxiety and depression are part of menopause. Maybe that’s what I’m feeling. But I need this to work. I need a catalyst to get me headed in a better direction. You know?”

  No, Mary didn’t know. She was just trying to keep her own head up as she felt like she’d been in that washing machine caught in the whirlpool circling the drain. Mary thought she’d be fine. She just needed some time. But Mary got while she and Deidre were at the same points in their lives—divorced empty-nesters—Mary was still, for today anyway, still in her thirties, and that had to make a difference in perspective.

  The door opened to a woman wearing a traditional Indian outfit, a choli cropped top under a vibrant peacock green sari.

  “You are Deidre,” she said with a British accent.

  “I am.” Deidre stood.

  “How do you do? I am Mrs. V.” She turned her attention to Mary. “And this is the friend I told you to bring?”

  Deidre also turned to Mary, her brows drawing in. “She is.”

  “I will work with Deidre first and with you after,” she offered a regal nod.

  “Oh, no, I don’t have an appointment.” How much had Deidre spent on this woman? Was she digging for another dupe?

  The woman seemed to hear Mary’s thoughts and, with a slow smile and gentle chuckle, said, “None of that is a concern. I will chart Deidre’s path forward. Then you and I will speak.”

  Yeah, this woman didn’t seem like someone looking for a sucker.

  Mrs. V. turned and walked back through the door, leaving it wide.

  Deidre sent Mary a look that said she had no idea what was going on. With a downturned mouth and a lifted brow, she seemed to ask, “What should I do? Follow her?”

  Mary made a shooing motion with her hands. Watching her friend disappear down the hallway, Mary tipped her head up, whispering her prayer. “Please make this good for her.”

  Chapter Seven

  September Third

  An Estonian Bog

  “Do not walk in that little gutter,” Marilin said with a smile that took the bite out of her words. “It is ant highway. You see?” The naturalist, taking the group on the same hike she’d been hired to provide for the executive retreat, was an affable woman with a no-nonsense presence that immediately put Halo at ease. She seemed completely comfortable with her surroundings as she made her way from the site where they had parked, through the woods, toward the bog. A series of vastly different ecosystems in an hour-long walk.

  Average height for a woman, the team towered over her. And yet, she showed no signs of intimidation. As a matter of fact, she seemed amused by their group of four—Titus, Thorn, Gage, and him.

  Last minute, Honey had switched directions, flying to some undisclosed location to negotiate the release of an Iniquus client being held hostage. Margot was fighting off Covid in Helsinki, and Nutsbe would be coming in tomorrow, bringing Max with him.

  Apparently, Maxi had taken to using the dunny straight off. And he must have learned his lesson on the Virginia mountainside because he aced the snake aversion training.

  Knowing Max would be getting in tomorrow morning, Halo had already talked to Titus about coming back on this trail and out into the bog on his own with his K9. With Titus’s permission, Halo wanted to turn off his shirt’s satellite connection to test how well he could rely on the data pack he carried. A truism that Halo lived by was the saying, “Never trust a gun you haven’t fired yourself.” And Halo applied that dictum to all equipment that went with him into life-and-limb-threatening circumstances. All equipment, he amended since he never knew what situations would present and how each and every item could help or hinder.

  Equally as important, Halo needed to know how Max did in a bog. Out on a hike with the client was not the time to introduce his K9 to an untested landscape. The Virginia search had hammered that lesson home. Yes, Max was aces in the mountains in New South Wales. That didn’t mean that all mountains had the same set of challenges.

  Gage stepped to the side of the four-inch-wide channel as the team watched the parade of ants moving along. “Wow.”

  “Yes, very wow,” Marilin agreed, swiping her fingers through her short blond hair. “This is a good place to stop and look around. First thing—and important thing—you see this tree? This is the tallest tree in the woods. We are about to step into an area where it is impossible to have a known and consistent path. The bog changes with the rains. So, if you get lost and need to return to the trail, look for this grandfather tree, which will be your signpost. This is especially important if there is lightning.”

  “Don’t get near the tree,” Gage said.

  “This is true.” Marilin put her hand on the craggy trunk, and it seemed to Halo that the gesture was meant as a hello to an old friend. “Don’t stand under this tree in a lightning storm. But there is more to this. So, here we have two kinds of rain. One is mushroom rain.”

  “What is that?” Thorn asked.

  She rubbed her thumb over the pads of her fingers and then lifted her palm. She must not have the word. Or maybe “mushroom rain” was the word. It just wasn’t a term that Halo was familiar with. From the gesture, he read it to be a misting kind of rain.

  “This kind of rain is safe,” she said. “The time that you need to move and move fast is if there is lightning when you are on the bog. It is important to get to the tree line as quickly as possible. Aim for this grandfather tree so you can find the trail.” She patted the trunk.

  “Why?” Titus asked. “Is it a question of exposure?”

  “When lightning strikes, the rain that follows is very heavy,” Marilin explained. “You will lose sight of grandfather. You will even lose sight of the woods.”

  Having just been through a torrential rain with three-foot visibility, Halo imagined his time getting Mrs. Haze down that mountain in the make-do rain sack would be about a hundred times easier than getting a group of executives back to the safety of their vans from a bog.

  “And most dangerous,” Marilin continued, “the bog will fill not only with the rain but the water that runs down the hills into that low-lying area. You will—how they say in English—get bogged down. You will not be able to get out or even know which direction to take, trying for safety.”

  “Oh,” Gage said.

  “Not only this, but more. There are the winds. The winds become aggressive. There are many trees in the woods that stand but are not alive. The strength of the wind will make them fall. With the sound of roaring in your ears, you will not hear them coming down until they are on top of you. The wind is very strong. Very dangerous. Very intense.”

  “The client will be out here in three weeks,” Titus said, “at the end of September. Our research says that September and October aren’t in your rainy season.”

  “Yes, historically, this is true.” Marilin started forward again. “I say this is a very good time to be here for the weather. Our rain season—the time when we expect the lightning rain—has been for most of my lifetime in June and July. Our heaviest rains come in November. But as things change with our climate, we no longer depend on this. Last year, in September, we had several lightning storms. Very bad. Trees in the road. Emergency vehicles cannot pass. Bad.”

  “What about in the city? How do they do in the rain?”

  “Tallinn?” Marilin shook her head. “Is not good in the rain. It is an ancient city not built for today. The roads become impassable. When it rains, stay in your chair with book, relax. It will pass. But when we are out here on bog, I will watch the sky and give warning to go back. When I say this, we act. We don’t argue.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Titus said.

  “Go back to ants.” Marilin pointed. “See this pile of dirt that comes to my waist just below us on the hill?” She didn’t stop for an answer. “This is anthill.”

  “Anthill?” Thorn asked. “It’s over three feet—a meter tall.”

  “Yes, millions of ants.” They stopped. “Bears love to eat the larva. Sometimes, I come into woods and find anthill toppled over from bears having a feast. You see beside your foot?” she asked Titus.

  Halo followed her gaze. “Bear scat,” he said. They didn’t hand out pepper spray at the beginning of this hike like they had done on the Mrs. Haze rescue. Once home from that mission, Halo had done some research into bears. And though the Virginia black bears were less fierce than grizzlies, they could still be ferocious and deadly. And the bears he’d seen in the movies were still the visual that came up for him. “So the bears, if we see them out here, we just get big and make a lot of noise?” Those were the instructions listed on the many state and national park websites he’d read through.

  Marilin blinked at him for a moment, obviously trying to put his words into context. “Make noise? No.” She shook her head. “We are in bears’ home. We are guests. If we see bear, we slowly and respectfully back away while it goes on about its business.” Her brow creased. “You yell at bears where you come from?”

  “There are no bears where I come from.” He pointed toward the scat. “I just … I’ve seen their piles before in America.”

  “Okay. Well good that we stop here. I show you.” She leaned down with a sharp blade in her hand. When she stood, she had a large mushroom in her fingers. “These are chanterelle mushrooms.” Deftly, she sliced off a portion of the stem, saying, “Yes, this one is good. You should taste it.” She handed a piece first to Titus, then worked her way around to the other team members. “People come from all over to go into the Estonian bogs at this time of year for hunting mushrooms. Russians come. You see their cars parked along the road of the forests.”

  “Russians?” Titus bladed his hands onto his hips. “Do they ever create issues in the bogs? Anything my team needs to be aware of?”

  “No.” She pointed beside him. “Right now, your team needs to be aware of this mushroom.”

  There, beside a bush, was a little cluster of red mushrooms with white spots that Halo had seen in almost every child’s fairytale illustration. His gran would call the outcropping charming and turn them into a watercolor.

  As the men turned and formed a semi-circle, Marilin said, “This is called ‘fly agaric mushrooms’ or ‘Amanita muscaria.’ These are how they say, ‘magic mushrooms.’ They contain psilocybin and psilocin that works as a hallucinogenic.”

  “Is it illegal here?” Thorn asked.

  “To have it in your pocket, yes. To try to sell, yes. If someone picked it up and ate it in bog?” She shrugged. Then added emphatically. “Don’t pick it up and eat it in bog.”

  “Why? What would happen?” Halo asked.

  “Depends. Each mushroom has a different, how you say? Different toxicity. So dangers depend on how specific mushroom grew. Depends on person’s body and mind. Depends on quantity.” She adjusted the straps of her pack. “I don’t touch them. I don’t want to rub my eyes or pick a berry with those fingers and accidentally ingest it. Any of it. So why? Many things. It makes you feel like you are in a dream. Maybe like you leave your body. Sometimes, people think they can see clearly for the first time in their lives. Sometimes, the five senses are jumbled up. People smell music. They hear colors. Sometimes, their vision gets blurry to be effectively blind for a time. Watery nose. Dripping eyes. Wet, you know? Lots of sweat and too much saliva in the mouth. Some Estonians use this for medicine. But you have to be knowledgeable, learning how to do it right way from your grandmother. You don’t wish to make mistake.” Her blue eyes twinkled with amusement. “You know, they think this is where Santa Claus story comes from. The people eats the mushroom and sees the flying reindeer.” She bent again to cut the stems on the other chanterelle mushrooms at her feet and put them in the basket, dangling from her left elbow. She stopped and closed her eyes, breathing in deeply. “You smell that? A little bit lemony?”

  The team stopped and sniffed.

  “Yes, this is Labrador tea smell. It is a plant that is all over. It is hallucinogenic also. It is the reason many come out to the bog. It makes you feel good, relaxed. You lose sense of time. So make sure you have a watch. Maybe set an alarm. Time drifts when you smell this plant.”

  “Is it dangerous, too?” Thorn asked.

  “Sure, it’s like most things, right? For one person is fine. If you have an allergy, this is not fine.” She pointed. “See there? More fly agaric. Little bit different coloring.”

  “Huh,” Thorn put his hands on his hips. “Let’s say one of our group read up on the possibility of finding the fly agaric mushroom out here in the bog and sampled it, how long would it be effective in their system? Would they need medical care?”

  “It could be very bad, you know?” Marilin said. “The person would have to be very sure that they are eating the right mushroom. If they make a mistake?” She shrugged. “They could die. There is deadliest of mushrooms out here. All over.” She turned and pointed at a mushroom that Halo couldn’t tell was any different from the mushroom he’d just tasted.

  “The nightshade. You hear this in the news?” Marilin asked. “There was a woman in Australia yesterday convicted of three counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder. She made a beef Wellington that she served to her guests, and it was made with the nightshade mushroom.”

  “In Australia?” Halo asked. “Yeah, we have nightshade mushrooms in the wet areas. We have to watch that our dogs don’t get into them,” Halo said, thinking with nightshade and fly agaric, he’d need to keep Max on a tight lead. The rattlesnake was scary enough. But then there was antivenom. Halo could do nothing to protect Max from poisonous mushrooms other than keep control of his nose.

  Titus caught Marilin’s gaze. “And we just ate …”

  “Chanterelle. I am very good at identifying them. I collect them for my friend who has a restaurant. Nobody gets sick. No police knock on my door.”

  “When we have the tour go out, perhaps point out the mushrooms and label them, but let’s not have them taste-testing them,” Titus said.

  “Are you sure?” Marilin asked as she started down a path not readily visible. “I will only hand out safe mushrooms.”

  “Most Americans get their mushrooms from the store,” Titus explained. “They won’t necessarily be aware of the subtle differences that you see. If you handed them one and another looked similar, I could see someone from my culture picking it up and putting it in their mouth.”

  Marilin looked bemused. “We just tell them to leave the red mushrooms alone.”

  “All of the mushrooms,” Titus said.

  “Okay. Well, over there, you see? Those are wild raspberries. Will you allow the people to eat those?”

  Chapter Eight

  September Third

  Haute Nendaz, Switzerland

  Mary had been musing over the puzzle that asked the player to remove the ring from the whole. She had no clue how one would go about solving this enigma short of taking a blow torch to the game. When the door swung open, Mary quickly dumped the puzzle back in the bowl and pulled her hands back like a child who had broken a don’t touch rule.