Acts of Malice Snapshots

Pyramid Lake, Nevada - something awful happens here in one winter in Acts of Malice.

"At Pyramid Lake, the gas station blazed bluish light out into the darkness.  They drove past it to the mobile home park.  Night covered up the rusting and peeling trailers, but emphasized the edgy, insecure feeling Nina had felt on her previous visit.  The people living here were one paycheck away from the streets..."

"She thought she could smell  it with the car door shut."

And that’s when Nina heard it, the sound of the snowmobile approaching from the far side of the mountain, high above them. It roared into view, close enough for Nina to see the driver’s parka.

“High marking,” Collier said, watching the vehicle zigzag up the face. “It’s when they try to go as high as they can on a mountain without tipping over.

The machine lurched onwards. It began cutting back and forth above them as they turned and struggled down the mountain as fast as they could. They both knew what the driver was doing now. All that snow, the tons and tons that had dropped from the sky . . .

They came together way out from the beach, fitting as neatly together as two parts of a zipper. Nina swam away, laughing, and he followed her toward the Mololuas, the two wild islands in the distance.

Potent sun reflecting off virginal snowfields, and, filling a mighty fault line between high mountains, an oval of aching blue seventy-two miles around and sixteen hundred feet deep: Lake Tahoe.