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situation.
    She was right about our similarities. In many ways she was more than my match. With fly rod or spinning tackle Rusty could out-cast me on accuracy more than half the time, though on my best throws I could beat her in length by a few yards. She knew the backcountry as well as I, and was fearless and deft steering her skiff around the tricky shoals, narrow passes, and coral heads that filled those shallow waters. She could pole the boat for hours without rest, in wind and hard currents. In bright sun or overcast, she could detect the nervous riffles of bonefish or tarpon from fifty yards. She was the only female guide working out of Papa Joe’s marina in Islamorada. Nine guys and Rusty.
    A few other women guides were sprinkled around the Upper Keys but none with Rusty’s reputation for finding fish. She had secret spots, and super secret spots, and a few spots so secret even I didn’t know where they were.
    On my kitchen table she’d unrolled a three-foot-square laminated sheet. It was an aerial picture of a watery region dotted with islands. She’d set a saltshaker on one corner, pepper on another, and a novel at the bottom.
    â€œWhat’re you reading these days?” she said, tapping the book.
    I bent forward to study the chaotic array of islands, inlets, and coves. Creeks threaded like capillaries through marshes and scattered scraps of dry land. It was clearly the Ever-glades, but it was taking me a minute to get my bearings.
    â€œWhat is this, Rusty?”
    Her lips held a faint smile. I knew the look. She had a fish on—nicely hooked. Now she was letting it run, playing it. A quiet, self-assured expression.
    â€œTitle sounds like some kind of thriller.”
    â€œSugarman recommended it. Said it was good.”
    â€œIs it?”
    I looked back at the photo, a growing awareness starting to warm me.
    â€œNot very.”
    â€œWhat’s it about?”
    â€œCome on, Rusty. You don’t care about the book.”
    â€œWhat’s it about?”
    Her smile deepening a degree. So confident.
    â€œBunch of ex-Navy SEALs and Army Rangers pull off some twisted caper. Our hero whips their asses one by one. White hats, black hats.”
    â€œSounds like your kind of story, Thorn.”
    â€œNot really.”
    â€œNo?”
    â€œI was twelve when I stopped reading comics.”
    â€œBut Sugarman liked it.”
    â€œSo he said. I’ll have to ask him why.”
    I looked back at the photo and touched my finger to one of the larger bodies of water.
    â€œHell’s Bay?”
    â€œYou got it.”
    â€œWhat is this? A satellite shot of the Glades?”
    â€œMuch better,” she said. “Satellite photos don’t have nearly the detail as this. Plus the stuff you can download, some of the images can be five, ten years old. The rate that mangroves grow, flats and channels shift, it wouldn’t do us any good.”
    â€œAnd this?”
    â€œTwenty-three different photographic images spliced to-gether.”
    I still didn’t get it. So she explained about her friend Sherman Beams, how last spring Rusty paid him to fly his Cessna back and forth between Lost Man’s Creek and White-water Bay for a couple of weeks. Using a belly camera and a wide-angle lens, on successive cloudless days they’d criss-crossed the whole area east of Ponce de Leon Bay and Shark River, laying out meticulous grids across that jumble of islands and winding waterways. When they had all the images collected, Rusty got her brother to dovetail the assorted photos into a single panoramic shot on his computer.
    â€œTeeter did this?”
    â€œTeeter’s a genius about some things. When he had it all pieced together in a single image, I took it to the PhotoLab, and they blew it up and laminated it.”
    My finger was tracing paths through the familiar maze of islands and rivers and networks of channels. Where the peninsula of Florida ended and the