The Guide: A novel (Random House Large Print) - Softcover

Heller, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593460200 ISBN 13: 9780593460207

Verlag: Diversified Publishing, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The best-selling author of The River returns with a heart-racing thriller about a young man who is hired by an elite fishing lodge in Colorado, where he uncovers a plot of shocking menace amid the natural beauty of sun-drenched streams and forests.

“Peter Heller is the poet laureate of the literary thriller." —Michael Koryta, New York Times best-selling author of Those Who Wish Me Dead

Kingfisher Lodge, nestled in a canyon on a mile and a half of the most pristine river water on the planet, is known by locals as "Billionaire's Mile" and is locked behind a heavy gate. Sandwiched between barbed wire and a meadow with a sign that reads "Don't Get Shot!" the resort boasts boutique fishing at its finest. Safe from viruses that have plagued America for years, Kingfisher offers a respite for wealthy clients. Now it also promises a second chance for Jack, a return to normalcy after a young life filled with loss. When he is assigned to guide a well-known singer, his only job is to rig her line, carry her gear, and steer her to the best trout he can find.

But then a human scream pierces the night, and Jack soon realizes that this idyllic fishing lodge may be merely a cover for a far more sinister operation. A novel as gripping as it is lyrical, as frightening as it is moving, The Guide is another masterpiece from Peter Heller

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

PETER HELLER is the national best-selling author of The River, Celine, The Painter, and The Dog Stars. The Painter was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and won the prestigious Reading the West Book Award, and The Dog Stars has been published in twenty-two languages to date. Heller is also the author of four nonfiction books, including Kook: What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave, which was awarded the National Outdoor Book Award for Literature. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in poetry and fiction and lives in Denver, Colorado

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CHAPTER ONE

That first afternoon he dumped his duffel and pack on the rag rug in the cabin and changed fast into nylon shorts. He put a packet of split shot and a small fly box in the breast pockets of his shirt, then pulled the five-­weight Winston rod out of the truck and pieced it together. His wading boots were drying in the back seat and he tugged on wool socks and laced the boots, and slung the lanyard cord over his head that dangled nippers, tippet, forceps, Gink. It was just warm enough and he liked best to go without waders. The water would be icy but he was on his own: he wouldn’t have to stand in the water for hours beside a casting client. He’d be moving fast.

He did. He began at the big dark sliding pool below the cabin and worked upstream. He could see a hatch of mayflies coming off the slow water beside the shore. Blue-­winged olives. He always loved how they rose from an eddy in deep shadow like animated snowflakes and flew up into sunlight and flared in a haze of soft sparks. He crouched on the bank and turned over a rock the size of a brick in the shallows and the silted underside was covered with the pupae of caddis, almost like a crusting of cloves. A stone fly also crawled over the cobble in the unexpected air. Due diligence. He’d fished the mountains of Colorado all his life, and he had a good idea what bugs would be where. He tied on a dry and a dropper, a tufty elk hair stimulator on top and a bead-­head pheasant tail on the bottom. Clients loved fishing this rig and he did, too.

He stepped into the icy water, caught his breath at the first clinch of cold. And then he waded in up to his knees and began to cast.

•

The rhythm of it always soothed him. Laying the line out straight over dark water, the blip of the weighted dropper, the dry fly touching just after, the—­

The tuft of elk hair barely touched and the surface broke. The lightest tug and he set the hook and the rod bent and quivered and a colossal brown trout leapt clear of the water into a spray of sunlight. Jesus. It splashed down and ran straight upstream and he let the fish take the line to the reel and he heard the whir of the clicking drag and he ran after it. He splashed through shallows, slipped, stumbled, half his body in the water, didn’t care if he spooked everyone in the big pool. Somehow he tightened down the drag knob on the reel just a little as he went—­it was sleek this brown, all muscle, and the flash of gold as it hit the air was better than any treasure, God. He ran and fought the fish. Ten minutes, twenty? Who knew. He lost track of time, and of himself. Forgot it was he, Jack, who fished, whose limbs and hands acted without thought. He forgot his name or that he owned one, and for the first time in many months he was as close as he could come to something like joy.

He was almost under the bridge when he raised the rod high and brought the exhausted trout in the last few feet and unshucked the net from his belt and slid it under this beauty and cradled her in the mesh. She was a species of gold that no jeweler had ever encountered—­deeper, darker, rich with tones that had depth like water. He talked to her the whole time, You’re all right, you’re all right, thank you, you beauty, almost as he had talked to himself at the shack, and he wet his left hand and cupped her belly gently and slipped the barbless hook from her lip and withdrew the net.

He crouched with the ice water to his hips and held her quietly into the current until half his body was numb. Held and held her who knew how long and watched her gills work, and she mostly floated free between his guiding fingers, and he felt the pulsing touch of her flanks as her tail worked and she idled. And then she wriggled hard and darted and he lost her shape to the green shadows of the stones.

Thank you, he said again after her but it was not so much said as an emotion released; released like the fish to the universe. He straightened. He was almost under the plank-­and-­timber bridge and he looked up and he saw the camera.

•

It was a black fish-­eye lens fixed to the main beam. A half bubble three inches across. Glassy like nothing else out here, inanimate and silent. Was someone watching him? Should he be bothered? He was. Kurt hadn’t mentioned any cameras. He splashed his face and glanced up at it again. Was it menacing? It was just a camera. But he felt violated. Because he had so given himself—­to the river, the fish, the first afternoon on a new stretch of water—­because he had, for the first time maybe since the death of his friend Wynn, allowed himself to feel a shiver of peace. He was pissed that he had thought himself completely alone and someone might have witnessed it all.

Fuck it. He had his hand half-­lifted to give the camera the finger, but stopped himself. Whoever might be on the other end, he didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. He waded back to the far shore, ducked under the bridge, and fished on. A kingfisher dropped from a limb above him and swooped upstream to the next perch and kept him company. And he didn’t have to look back to know there was another lens on the upstream side of the bridge.

•

He fished. He was in no hurry now. He didn’t care if he was in time to chat it up with the guests, or meet the other guide, or the staff. He fished with the evening sun on his back, and around the tight bend, south, into shadow. Fuck ’em. Maybe not the best attitude for a new job.

But the fishing was a separate thing, as if the spilling river and the breezy afternoon could not be stained. They couldn’t. Around the bend was another long riffle with a scattering of boulders, and low ledges foaming into smooth black pools and he could see why fishers went crazy. There were still a couple of hours of good daylight and he had to make himself turn around.

•

He was back at the cabin at 6:05 and he rinsed in the hot shower, put on jeans and boots and a snap shirt, and coasted the teal bike down to the main lodge at 6:20. The clouds had cleared, it would be a cold night, and they already had a fire roaring in the stone hearth. Overkill, Jack thought; it might be sixty degrees outside. To the left of the fireplace were half a dozen tables, four of which were set for dinner. A swing door with a little window led from the dining area to what must be the kitchen. To the right of the hearth was a U-­shaped mahogany bar where five people sat on stools, and a tall broad-­shouldered Brit with shaggy blond hair presided behind it. Ginnie the Enforcer. Two-­Drink Ginnie. He knew she was a Brit because she called, “Ahh, come on in, mate. We’ve been expecting you. You’ve barely got time . . .” And he heard the sigh of a cap being cracked and she set a sweating bottle on a napkin on the polished wood, Cutthroat ale. “Come in, don’t be shy. Everyone, this is Jack. Jack, Everyone. Have a seat.” The conversation stopped and Everyone turned on their stools.

“Scooch a bit closer, love,” Ginnie said to Jack, and she raised a no-­touch thermometer from behind the bar.

•

Suddenly staying at home and working the ranch with a taciturn father was looking more appealing. It was the second time in a few hours that Jack had been set back on his heels. Ginnie was exuberant, she had little use for polite preliminaries, she left no room for second thoughts. He got it. In this way she was the perfect maître d’hôtel of a rustic getaway for the rich and famous. Once the guests got used to her provincial pub manners...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Diversified Publishing
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593460200
• ISBN 13: 9780593460207
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 336
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Purmerul LTD; https://strengholt.nl/en/; ; 22 Liuleburgaz Str., floor 4, app. 9; Plovdiv; Bulgarien