CHAPTER TWENTY

The truck bounced and skidded over the rough terrain as Michael drove them toward Tazlina Lake. The Tazlina River began at the far northeastern tip of the lake, about ten miles from their lodging in Nelchina. The rental truck was fairly capable over rough terrain, but the ground was growing steadily worse the farther into the wilderness they drove. Soon, they would have to abandon it and proceed on foot.

Faith considered the possibilities, but at this point, there weren't many to consider. There were tensions between all of the Nature's Guardians for different reasons, but only one man had a reason to hate all of the other members of the group. Only Graham Nash had been universally despised by everyone. True, Lisa hadn't despised him, but from his perspective, Lisa had allowed the group to oust him. He would be angry with her, too.

He was also the only member of the group who hadn't been accounted for at some point during this investigation. Kelly's whereabouts were unknown now, but she had been home at least two days ago.

Faith frowned. "Why didn't the neighbor report her missing? Why didn't we hear about this yesterday?"

"I don't know, but it's pretty common for people not to report missing persons until it's been far too long. People don't want to believe the worst, so they assume the best and ignore the problem until it gets too big to ignore or resolves itself without any action on their part."

Faith shook her head. "So what, the neighbor didn't think it was a problem that she didn't check in?"

"He said she rarely did. He was the one who asked her to check in. He always does, and she always says she will, but she never listens."

Faith smacked the dashboard in frustration. So they had a young woman who thought she was invincible and a neighbor who didn't think it was his problem. Damn it, why were people so stupid?

"And we still have no news of Graham Nash?"

"No. He didn't have a lot of friends, and his neighbors said the same thing everyone else has said about the rest of the group. He always disappears with no warning, sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks without telling anyone where he's going or when he plans on coming back."

"Well, we need to find him. It's more likely than not that he's our killer."

"I think at this point we should focus our efforts on finding Kelly Connor," Michael replied. "If she's the potential victim, then we need to get her to rescue ASAP."

"Yeah." She smacked the dashboard again. "Shit. This is just…"

"Nothing we haven't done before," Michael reminded her.

"We haven't done this in a massive wilderness," she countered. "Everywhere else, the victim's always been traceable. They go to their homes, and they go to work. Maybe the park or the subway station. Kelly could be anywhere over one hundred square miles of land right now. Even when we were hunting that killer in the cave in Idaho, we didn't have as much ground to cover."

"You're right," Michael said. "Let's give up. There's no way we can do this. We'll just act like Wyatt and throw our hands in the air. After all, this is just what happens in the wilderness."

"You're not helping," she snapped.

"Neither are you. So how about instead of being pissy that this job is difficult, you focus on doing it."

"I am focused!"

"No, you aren't. You're focused on the killer back home who might be chasing you, the fact that the media wants to pester you about West, Turk's retirement, your cold feet with David, and these feelings for me that have resurfaced out of nowhere."

His words were a knife in her gut. "That's not true. I just… look, they're not out of nowhere. And damn it, it's a lot, okay?"

"It's always a lot," he replied. "Always. Every problem with you is huge and immediate and terrible and has to be dealt with right this damned second or else. Just…" he sighed. "You know what, forget it. You're right. I shouldn't have brought this up. Let's both of us put our minds to the job and find Kelly Connor."

To punctuate the end of their conversation, the truck skidded over a patch of ice and spun sideways. Michael swore and twisted the wheel, doing his best to keep the truck straight while it slowed to a stop.

Michael sighed again. "I guess we're done driving."

Faith looked out of her side window. Ahead of them loomed Tazlina Lake. In daylight, the ice probably gleamed a beautiful, brilliant white, but at night, it was a pool of solid black.

Michael shut the engine off and picked up the CB from the dash. "Special Agent Prince. Truck is disabled near the mouth of the Tazlina River. Proceeding on foot from here."

The two of them jumped out of the truck and turned their flashlights on. The terrain was rough but passable on foot without too much difficulty. Faith turned the beam onto the highest setting and shone it into the distance. She could just make out the dim black line of the river three hundred yards away.

"Follow me," she said. "We'll look around this side of the river."

"You don't think she'll be closer to St. Anne's Lake by now?"

"I think we're here," she replied. "So this is where we'll look. Responders from Glennallen are checking the other side of the river and working their way inward, and Anchorage PD has helicopters looking through the wilderness around St. Anne's Lake. This is the best we can do."

"Right. Good point."

They reached the mouth of the river a few minutes later. Turk put his nose to the ground and trotted forward, sniffing for any sign of Kelly.

Faith looked around. Besides the massive pool of darkness that was Tazlina Lake and the ribbon of black formed by the river, there were the towering evergreens that loomed over them like predatory creatures lurking in their own shadow, waiting for one of the soft juicy grubs stumbling through their home to trip over a root and slake their thirst with its blood. The image was macabre, but not nearly as macabre as the reality that the bodies of their three victims represented.

The ground was rock-hard, frozen by the harsh Alaskan winter. The nights here fell to twenty below zero, sometimes even colder than that. In her thick parka with her mask, gloves and boots, Faith was warm enough as long as she kept moving, but even protected by the thick fur, the cold still chilled her skin. She couldn't understand why any of the Guardians would want to be out in this weather. The summer was cold enough, but this was deadly. A person could die if they stopped moving or if their fire went out at night.

Maybe that was part of the thrill for people like Kelly Connor. Maybe "survivalism" was just another way to say, "cheating death." Maybe the knowledge that one mistake or even one bit of bad luck could mean the end of their lives made this lifestyle exciting for them. Faith didn't know if Kelly was aware of the fact that there was a human killer out there hunting for her, but she knew that there were bears and wolves around. She knew that the weather could kill her even if a predator didn't. She knew that if she suffered an injury alone in the wilderness, she would probably freeze to death long before help got to her.

But she still went out. Even knowing the risks, she still did what she loved doing. From Faith's perspective, she was being irresponsible and foolish, but maybe from Kelly's perspective, hunting serial killers after being nearly killed by them several times was foolish. From her perspective, enlisting in the Marine Corps to go fight a war thousands of miles from home might be just as stupid as going on a solo hiking trip during the Alaskan winter was to Faith.

It was an odd trait of humans that they fought so hard to push limits and ignore boundaries. Any other animal would avoid dangerous conditions like a plague. If they endured dangerous conditions, it was only because they had no choice, like a polar bear who swam dozens of miles through the Arctic Ocean to find food because he would die otherwise, or salmon who swam upstream and risked predation by brown bears and eagles only to die of exhaustion after they mated because if they didn't, their eggs and young would be eaten en masse by other fish and seabirds in the ocean.

In fact, nature was full of examples where animals risked danger to avoid worse danger, but as far as Faith knew, humans were the only living things that sought danger for no other reason than to experience a thrill. That was probably what drove humans to become the most adaptable, intelligent and dominant species on the planet, but it was strange to think that so many people were obsessed with doing things that no other animal would even think to attempt.

She wondered where Kelly was now. If she was alive, was she thinking about how exciting it was to be cheating death alone in a harsh and cold wilderness? Was she looking at the vast sky and huddling closer to her fire, regretting her decision to come alone? Was she regretting her choice to pursue a hobby that could at any moment sever the rest of her life and leave all of her hopes and dreams and plans unfulfilled?

And if the killer's trap had already found her, did she wish in her last terrifying moments that she had found fulfillment in something else, something that wouldn't have ended with her bleeding out in the forest where she might never be found?

She was so lost in these thoughts that she jumped when her cell phone buzzed. It was Wyatt.

"Bold here," she replied. "Did you find Kelly?"

"No, but we found Graham Nash."

Her eyes widened. She quickly put the phone on speaker and motioned for Michael to listen. "Say again, Wyatt? You've found Graham Nash?"

"We have. He's in Montana."

Faith came to a stop. "What?"

"He's in Montana. He lives in a commune twenty miles outside of Billings. He's been there for two months. According to him and several other members of the commune, he hasn't left the community since arriving. I guess he met a woman there and decided he didn't want to be a survivalist anymore."

"Son of a bitch," Faith swore.

As always, she felt a touch of guilt that learning someone wasn't a murderer disappointed her, but it meant that the killer was still some unknown entity out there preying on people. Her best lead had evaporated once more.

"The good news is we can focus all of our efforts on finding Kelly," Wyatt replied. "I'm doubling the search parties. We're putting more search parties out there, and we have her name and face on all of the alert networks, including GPS alerts."

"Right. Good. Thanks. Keep us posted, okay?"

She hung up and swore again. She knew she had been short with Wyatt but damn it! Why was it so hard to find killers? Why did they always have to kill more people before she had enough evidence to locate them and bring them to justice? Why—

Turk's bark interrupted her. He looked back at them and barked again, then trotted swiftly down a steep and narrow game path. Michael and Faith followed him as fast as they dared, and from time to time, he stopped and waited to allow them to catch up.

Faith's heart pounded, but with hope this time. Just when she was ready to despair, Turk had found Kelly's scent.

Please let her be alive. Please don't let us be too late.

If she could find Kelly, then it would be worth it. If she could save her before the killer reached her…

Please. Please, please, please…