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Suze smiled, and stepped off the road.

The deer track ran along the hill above the stream, a faint flat trail cut by generations of delicate hooves. At first, Suze inched her way along, tapping trees with the stick-cane, not entirely trusting her feet, pushing back the fear that jabbered at her mind, You can’t do this, you’re nearly blind, you have to be sensible. . . .

But she went on, and it became easier. Then suddenly, a mile along, the shrubs ahead of her exploded in a thunder and rush of movement, and she nearly leapt into the creek in terror before the noise resolved itself into the identifiable repeated thump-swish of a pair of fleeing deer. She leaned against a tree, weak with reaction, and tried to laugh.

Another half mile, and she was beginning to wonder if she’d imagined the whole scenario, the electricity and water—

And then she stopped. Between one step and the next, a peculiar tang brushed the air: not trees, not the odors of damp and stone from the creek. It was such an unexpected addition to the night, it took her a while to identify it.

Chilies. Someone in the area had recently cooked a meal of chilies and cumin and tomato. Mexican food, and now the savor of coffee. It was incongruous, and brought in its wake a note of the ominous that kept her where she stood, undecided. What the hell did she expect, that the men illegally camping here would offer her a plate of rice, a cup of coffee, take her on a tour of their patch?

Because she could smell that now, too, an acrid odor of exotic vegetation. The breeze that brought the odor also stirred up the rich susurration of plants, tall and full, rising up before her. Suze had smelled cannabis growing before, in hilltop patches in Mexico and South America. It smelled much the same here.

It had taken her some time to put together all the threads. Courtney’s exclamations over the winter’s high electrical bills, when power stolen from Janna’s lines had warmed and illuminated someone’s well-concealed greenhouses. Digging in the night, but only when the cabin was dark. Ten thousand gallons drained from the tank, watering the crop when it had been transplanted into open ground, flowing into the roots once a week, on Mondays.

And the other threads, those that stretched into the future, the unknown: How the local drug squad’s helicopters would be gearing up for its annual sky searches, while the stand, nearly ready for harvest, stood vulnerable to potential thieves. How paranoia would be at its height. How the boss man would not trust his year’s income to hired hands; he would be out here, keeping guard.

How he would be armed.

Suze’s recent, timorous self quailed at the thought of what she was about to do. Go back to the cabin, it urged; You can get a prescription, for Christ’s sake. Be sensible! But sensible was not what Suze Blackstock was all about. Suze Blackstock was a woman who wove darkness and walked into the unknown, a woman who used adrenaline to bleed off unbearable pressures. Who used near-suicide to keep her from the real thing.

She straightened her shoulders and stepped into the luxurious growth, heading toward a dancing glow as if toward a lover’s eyes. When the stand was at an end, she held her hands up as if seizing the straps of a parachute, and took a last step out in the open. Her blood thudded through her veins as she prepared to weave herself, one way or another, into this place: On the one hand, the joy of Janna coming home; on the other, the terror that she, Suze Blackstock, was about to be shot dead; the two extremes acted as counterbalances, with her in the middle, standing firm.

But the shot did not come, not with her first appearance from the plants. When the flurry of movement near the fire had ceased, she cleared her throat and sent some words out toward the indistinct figure that remained, wondering which way the words would tip the balance.

“You guys are using kind of a lot of our water and power,” she said. “I wonder if you might be interested