CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"It looks like Lisa might have whitewashed some of the details surrounding the group's split," Michael said.

Faith finished the last of her sandwich and replied. "Yeah? What did you find?"

"A group chat. Wyatt came through with the group's cell phone records. It took a little while to piece everything together since the members have different cell phone providers, but I managed to get things organized."

The two of them were in their hotel room. After napping for a few hours, they had launched right into the case again. Turk had finished his lunch and now sat in between the agents, listening intently as they discussed the case. Faith had tried once more to contact the group members and once more had no luck. Meanwhile, Michael had enlisted Wyatt's help obtaining phone records to see if there was conflict between the group that Lisa had failed to mention.

"Talk to me," Faith said.

"Well, as Lisa and Robert said, communication was never fantastic between the group members, but it suffered a serious breakdown starting about five months before the split."

Faith scooted her chair closer so she could see the texts. She caught a whiff of something pleasant and asked, "Is that a new cologne?"

"Yeah. Ellie got it for me."

Faith felt a pang of jealousy. That wasn't good. What the hell was going on with her lately? "It's nice."

"Thanks." He looked at her sideways. "You okay?"

"Fine. What's going on with the texts?"

He shrugged. "Well, to start, Lisa was definitely the most active member of the group. She was also easily the most controlling."

"That's not surprising. Did she rub people the wrong way?"

"Hard to tell. There's nothing specifically directed at her, but a lot of the members started making their own plans without her."

"That's a pretty clear message."

"It is. Lisa's not the biggest target here, though. It looks like a lot of the conflict was centered on Jake Thornton and Kelly Connor."

Faith raised an eyebrow. Lisa had said the two of them appeared close. "Really? They didn't get along?"

"They did for a long time. They would take camping trips alone at least once a month. Fast forward to five months before the group is dissolved, and that ends abruptly."

"Any reason?"

"None discussed here. They just stop talking to each other. Jake stops talking to the group at all. When Kelly interacts with others, she gets curt one-word replies or veiled insults. Jake leaves a month after that, and Kelly leaves two weeks later."

"Interesting. And no reason given?"

"None."

"Anything centered around our victims?"

"Other than the possibility that people were chafing under Lisa's leadership, no. Nothing jumps out."

"Hmm. That's odd."

"It is. Here's another odd thing. Over three years of the group's existence, there are a total of nine texts from Graham Nash, and every single one is either a confirmation that he's attending an event or him declining to attend. Other than that, he doesn't talk to anyone."

"That's very odd."

"Well, we knew he was an odd guy."

Faith leaned back and crossed her arms. At the moment, Graham Nash was looking like their best bet for a suspect, but Jake's and Kelly's behavior was odd too. And those three were the main participants of the group that Faith and Michael couldn't contact. She wondered again if they could be working together.

She sighed. They still didn't know enough. They needed to talk to these three. It might be worthwhile to start an official search for them.

Her phone rang. She looked at the number but didn't recognize it. It was an Alaskan area code, though. She answered. "Hello?"

"Hello, Special Agent Bold?"

"Who is this?"

"I'm Jake Thornton. I just got back from a hiking trip and found several messages from you on my cell phone. It looks pretty serious, so I was wondering if I could talk to you and your partner sometime soon and hopefully clear up any suspicion surrounding me."

Faith and Michael shared a look. "Do you have any plans right now?" Faith asked.

"No, I'm free. I work as a freelance photographer, so I get to make my own schedule."

"How convenient." Especially if you need to take extended time off to murder three of your former friends. "Where would you like us to meet you?"

"You can meet me at my house. Or if you want, we can meet at a restaurant in Glennallen."

"Your house is fine. Give us the address, please."

He provided it, and Faith said, "Wonderful. We'll see you soon."

As soon as she hung up, Michael asked, "Are you sure it's safe to meet at his house? He could have the entire place rigged."

"If he's the killer, he either doesn't have evidence at his house, or he does, and we'll find it. If he's not the killer but has information we can use, he'll be more comfortable sharing it in a private place, not a public place. Besides, there's two of us and one of him. And we have Turk."

"We hope there's one of him," Michael reminded her. "He could be working with Kelly and Graham."

"Turk counts for two people," Faith said. "So we still outnumber them."

Michael chuckled. "That sound right to you, Turk?" Turk barked, and Michael said, "All right then. Let's go."

***

Jake Thornton lived in one of the far-flung properties removed from the central clusters of Glennallen. It was situated on the northwestern edge of the jurisdiction on the shore of Island Lake, a mile-long body of water fed by snowmelt. It occurred to Faith that if Jake was luring them out there to kill them, he would have plenty of time to do that before reinforcements could arrive.

Well, they had taken risks before. Sometimes you had to do that in jobs like this.

They parked near the road and walked the seventy yards or so up a pitted gravel drive to his front door. He walked onto the porch before they reached the house and lifted a hand in greeting. He was around Michael's age and devastatingly handsome, with dark hair that showed only a few strands of gray and piercing blue eyes.

"Good to see you, agents."

"Is it?" Faith asked. "Usually people aren't so happy when we show up."

He chuckled. "Well, if I'm being honest, I was just being polite. I don't love that I'm being looked at for murder."

"Most people don't," Michael replied. "Especially if they're guilty."

"Well, I'm not guilty. And I'd like to convince you of that."

"You can start by giving us an alibi for last night."

He sighed. "Well, I can show you my satellite phone. It tracks my position by GPS at all times. I've never had to use it to defend myself from something like this before, so I don't know if there's a way you can verify that it's telling the truth."

"I'll take a look," Michael said. "Faith, why don't the two of you have a conversation while I do this?"

"That works for me. While we're here, Jake, do you mind if my K9 unit takes a look around your property?"

"Be my guest," Jake said. "I should warn you, though, we get bears coming to the lake sometimes."

"He's smart enough not to piss off a bear," Faith replied. "Go on, boy."

Turk put his nose to the ground and trotted off, sniffing for clues.

"What's he looking for?" Jake asked.

"Any scent that matches the crime scenes," Faith replied.

"Got it. Well, come on in. You want coffee?"

"I'm all right, thank you."

"Mind if I have some."

"Not at all."

He led Faith inside the cabin. Unlike Lisa Blackwood's mostly spartan dwelling, the interior of Jake's home was as modern as Faith's own apartment. A flatscreen tv dominated one wall, and in the kitchen, high-end stainless-steel appliances gleamed underneath a fluorescent light.

Jake noticed her reaction and said, "Yeah, I'm not as hardcore as Lisa and Graham were." He poured himself a cup of coffee and asked, "What were the crime scenes, anyway? Where were they killed?"

"Cabins in secluded spots in the wilderness."

"And you're sure it wasn't bears?"

"Unless bears know how to swing pickaxes and set up snares now, I'm pretty sure."

"Ah." He sat down and sipped his coffee. "Damn. I'm sorry to hear that."

Let's hope so. "So tell me about your time with Nature's Guardians."

He chuckled, somewhat bitterly. "Well, it was fun until it wasn't."

"When did it stop being fun?"

"About the time everyone started getting pissy with each other."

She raised an eyebrow. "Can you expand on that?"

He shrugged. "That's really all it was. For the most part, there was nothing serious. Just little squabbles that wouldn't stop. I honestly don't even remember what most of the arguing was about. Just immature crap. I stayed out of it mostly."

"You've said something to that effect twice now. For the most part, nothing serious. You stayed out of it mostly. Talk to me about the parts that were serious and the things you didn't stay out of."

He smiled, and there was no somewhat about the bitterness in that smile. "The short version is that I fucked up."

She smiled patiently. "I'm gonna need the long version, Jake."

He sighed. "Yeah, I suppose you do. Well, if you've talked to Lisa, you might have guessed already. Assuming she didn't tell you straight up. I had an affair with Kelly."

Faith nodded. "She didn't tell me, but I'm not surprised."

"Neither am I. I'm not going to try to act like I'm a good person, but she was absolutely irresistible to me. I loved my wife, but there was no way I was going to say no to that."

"I take it you're not married anymore."

"Absolutely not. I didn't initiate anything, not that it makes it any better. But we didn't do anything, and I guess I thought if she didn't start anything, I'd be okay."

"But she started something?"

"She came into my tent the first night of our group trip to Wrangell-St. Elias. She stayed in my tent every night after that."

"I see. Is that why you left the group?"

"Yes. It's why both of us did. The thing is, no one was super close in Nature's Guardians. We were friends, but we weren't bosom buddies. Kelly and I didn't think anyone would mind if the two of us hooked up. Turns out they did. They never said as much, but the way they treated us after that, it was like we were diseased. Then my wife found out."

"Did someone from the group tell her?"

"I can't see how else anyone would have found out. I… well, I kind of blew my top. I started shouting at people, demanding to know who had done it. No one came forward, and when Lisa told me I needed to stop being a dick—her words—or leave the group, I left. Kelly left a couple of weeks after me."

"And are you two still together?"

"No," he said with a chuckle. "No. We had that camping trip together, and that was it. I lost a twenty-five-year relationship because of that. I'd been with my wife since I was sixteen, and one pretty blonde blows a kiss at me, and I throw it all away."

"It's a tale as old as time," Faith said. That was as close to sympathy as she could come for him.

"Yeah." He shrugged and sipped more of his coffee. "Guess I made my own bed."

Michael walked inside and nodded at the two of them. "I checked the phone. He was never within ten miles of our crime scenes."

Faith tried to hide her disappointment. She didn't feel great about hoping anyone was a murderer, but she really hoped to put an end to the killing. It was frustrating to know they had hit another dead end.

Still, Jake might have something useful for them. "Before we leave you, can you tell us the locations of any cabins frequented by the members of your group?"

He laughed. "I mean, I can tell you the ones I use. There are a dozen of them."

"A dozen?"

"Those are just the ones I use. If you're talking about the whole group, there might be over a hundred."

"Just in this area?"

"Oh no. Hundreds of square miles. We move all over the place, Special Agent. If you were hoping to watch potential crime scenes, you'll need an army. This is Alaska. For all of its good qualities, it has the major drawback that it's very, very easy to get away with murder here."

Turk walked inside right after Jake said that. He snorted and dipped his head at Faith. He hadn't found anything.

Jake must have noticed the disturbed look on Faith's face. "I don't mean to be callous. That's just part of survival. Much as we like to think we're the dominant species on Earth, if you take us out of our comfort zone, we're as weak and vulnerable as any animal."

The problem is that our hunter is in his comfort zone. And everyone else was weak and vulnerable.