"Naturally." Anna unboxed her binoculars. Above the little lake, the land was sloped and thick with undergrowth. Nearer the water the bushes thinned out, creating a small natural meadow. The pine forest straggled down unimpressively, the trees thirty and forty feet apart.

"And you figure this Balthazar really was a high school student, not just some guy?"

"Maybe not high school but young. He never made any attempt to show me what he knew. The more education you get, the more irresistible that becomes."

"Six or eight weeks ago," Anna said as much to herself as Joan. "About the time George Fetterman was kicking the bucket."

"Several more e-mails like that," Joan went on. "Late July around then. Then no more for a week or so. Then the map idea comes up. The questions become very specific. Where the bears eat, when."

"About this time we're packing to head out for the first round of DNA traps. Same time as the truck and horse trailer are found abandoned," Anna said.

"Yes. Near as I can figure."

"And you told him…"

"Flattop burn, glacier lilies."

"Then we go down with the dead woman and you've got mail."

"I tell him Cathedral Peak for army cutworm moths. And, in a week or so, Flattop, west side, huckleberries."

Rory pushed up beside them. "You think some guy is trying to trap a bear or something? Like to put in a side show?"

"Not exactly," Anna said.

Rory came and went. Napped in the last of the sun. Anna and Joan stayed where they were, raking the hillside with binoculars.

Once Joan nudged Anna and pointed. A black bear, nearly the size of a grizzly, ambled out from the scrub below the clearing. Through the glasses Anna could see its nostrils open and close as it checked for danger. By good fortune and foresight they were downwind. Dressed in muted colors, lying low on the rock, they watched it unseen.

A quarter of an hour later a small grizzly sow, probably not quite three hundred pounds, came from higher up. She was a rich brown, almost the same shade as the black bear who, like many of his compatriots, was black only in name, not in hue. With her was a single cub, one born this season.

The cub ran after her, nipping and tugging at her ankles. Anna smiled as she and Joan simultaneously said "awww" under their breath.

Half an hour more and Anna was getting wiggly. Joan had spent so many hours in uncomfortable positions watching empty tracts of land that she'd slid easily into research time and moved not at all. But for the slow arcing of the glasses as she scanned the area, Anna would have suspected her of having fallen asleep.

Ten minutes before sunset, when down-canyon winds, the night breath of the mountains, was chilling the back of Anna's neck, Joan whispered a prayer.

"Oh, my heavens," she said. "He's a god. I must apologize to the lab at the University of Idaho."

"Where?" Anna demanded. "Where?"

"Shh. There. Twenty degrees west of the last tree. Closer in. There. Rory!" she hissed. "Wake up. Come up. Bring your glasses."

Anna was scanning the huckleberry-choked hillside, seeing nothing but a blur. Then he was there, standing on his hind legs easily eleven feet tall, easily twelve hundred pounds and an incredible golden color. The rays of the setting sun struck him full on the side, the light flaring like fire on his pelt, running in sharp liquid flame over the pale guard hairs of his hump and the tops of his ears. "Jiminy," Anna breathed. "Boone and Crockett, eat your heart out."

"See him?" Joan whispered to Rory, who had belly-crawled up between them. "An Alaskan grizzly."

The magnificent creature was no more than twenty yards from where they lay. He had been feeding on the huckleberries that grew thick through a low cut in the hillside, little more than a ditch, but sufficient to hide him from sight until he stood up on his hind legs.

"I see him!" Rory hollered, sudden and loud in his excitement.

"Shh," Joan hissed, but it was too late. The great golden head turned in their direction. The nostrils flared and the huge paws twitched. Even at a distance of sixty feet, Anna could see the claws, four-inch nails, dull white against the slightly darker fur of the animal's belly.

Brown eyes looked at the three of them, locked with Anna's then the bear looked away, growled as if uncertain. His great forelegs swung, the incredible power in them rippling smoothly beneath the backlit hide.

The black bear, the sow, even the little cub stopped feeding. The black bear huffed and snorted, the sound an unhappy pig would make. For an instant it looked as if he would stand, meet the challenge. Then he chose the better part of valor, turned and loped away, quickly hidden by the ensnaring tangle of brush.

The cub squeaked and hopped in excitement and earned a stern cuff from its mother. Silence settled back, unbroken by the noises of foraging animals. Unbroken by the sound of breathing. Consciously, Anna stopped holding her breath.

Crack. Crack.

Not nearby but carrying clearly in the still air; the sound of twigs breaking, or of wood on wood. The sound Anna had heard the night the bear tore up their camp, the night she'd dreamed a bear stalked her hiding place in the rocks on Cathedral Peak.

Crack.

The great golden bear looked back at Anna's rock and roared, a huge and awful sound that shook the hair on its chest and bared teeth red as blood in the failing light.

"You go," Anna said quietly.

"Anna-" Joan whispered.

"You fucking go!Take Rory." Anna didn't-couldn't- take her eyes off the bear. Behind her she heard hurried scraping as Joan and Rory slid down the back of the rock out of the bear's line of sight. Anna doubted her vehemence had convinced Joan to leave. Rand would be intent on saving the boy. A fear of bears, faced with a bear of this magnitude, was bound to melt Rory's mind.

"Don't let him run," Anna whispered. It didn't matter that Joan didn't hear her. Joan knew more about bears than Anna ever would. Except maybe what it felt like to be eaten by one.

Crack.

Again the bear roared and dropped to all fours, never once looking away from Anna.

Fleetingly she wondered if she'd been wise sending Rory and Joan away. Bears were less likely to attack groups. There were records of grizzlies attacking groups of three and four but it was less common than attacks on a single person.

But this wasn't a regular bear. Joan knew it too-or sensed it. That's why she'd gone.

For a moment the bear waited, huge golden paws flattening the grass, his great head swaying from side to side as tiny bear thoughts in his small bear brain shook into alignment. Anna had not moved. She could not decide whether to make herself small and nonthreatening or as large and imposing as possible. She had a hunch with this bear it wouldn't matter a damn what she did. The need to run made her legs trembly. She ignored it. Not from bravery but because the image of the bear lunging at her back was too terrifying.

She slipped the can of bear spray from her belt. Coming from behind her was rustling, then a thump. Either Rory or Joan, like a Japanese maiden in a horror movie, had tripped and fallen while fleeing the monster.

The great bear heard it too. His head ceased to sway. A roar built in the massive chest as his eyes focused to the left of Anna's rock. Springing to her feet she began waving her arms over her head. Large and imposing it was to be then, though at five-foot-four and one-hundred-twenty pounds, Anna felt woefully inadequate.

"Hey bear, hey bear," she shouted.

Crack. Crack. Crack. A low whistle.

The grizzly charged. Never would Anna have believed an animal that size could move that fast. The sun dyed his coat red and the fur rippled as he came, beautiful and shining like that of a well-groomed golden retriever. Anna was so transfixed by the uncanny beauty she forgot to be afraid for a second, forgot to turn profile, forgot she was not supposed to look the animal in the eye, forgot she held bear spray in her right hand.