CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

After an hour of traveling, they had covered about six miles by Faith's estimation. Her lungs burned, and a stitch threatened to form in her side. She regularly ran this distance back home, but running during the cool Philadelphia mornings was a very different thing from jogging over rough terrain in a parka during the freezing Alaskan winter at night.

Relief came, but not in the way Faith wanted it. Turk slowed ahead of them and then stopped. He cocked his head for a moment, then barked and put it to the ground again. He moved slowly up the trail, crossing from side to side and looking for the scent he had lost.

Michael huffed and puffed up to her, stopping at her side and putting his hands on his knees. "Holy… shit," he breathed. "I'm… out of shape."

Faith didn't have the energy to sympathize with him right now. "Turk lost the sent," she said. "It's gone. He can't smell her anymore."

"Really? Oh… crap…"

She shook her head. "Come on, there has to be a clue around here. The scent wouldn't just die off."

"Maybe it would," Michael said. He had caught enough of his breath that he didn't have to gasp after every few words. "Scent is caused by chemicals, usually pheromones or odors from bacterial secretions."

She rolled her eyes. "Lovely. That's what I needed to know."

"Well, it's important because freezing temperatures can cause bacteria to die off and pheromones to freeze or change chemically. It could be that the scent literally froze. Take your parka off."

The last sentence was such a non sequitur that it took Faith a moment to be sure what she heard. Watching Michael strip his own coat off, followed by his boots and pants, convinced her that she had heard right. "Are you serious?" she asked.

"Deadly serious," he said. "I'm not kidding. If you sweat in this kind of cold, you can die within minutes. The sweat will freeze over your body and give you hypothermia. Take your parka off until you cool down, then we'll get dressed again."

Faith shook her head. "I'm taking your word for it."

She removed the thick coat, fur-lined boots and plush pants, setting them on the ground next to Michael's. The cold immediately pierced through the heat of her recent exertion, but she found to her surprise that she remained warm. She had pushed herself nearly to her limit.

"We'll say two minutes," Michael said. "It's colder than hell out here, so that should be enough time to cool us down."

"Colder than where?" Faith asked.

"You've got to read Dante's Inferno ," Michael replied. "The ninth circle of hell is frozen."

"Who goes there?"

"People who betray someone close to them."

Faith felt a touch of discomfort at that, though she couldn't quite say why. "Got it. Well, I'll take your advice, but if Turk picks up the scent again, we're running again."

"Oh yeah, for sure. I just figured we should wait to die until after we rescue Kelly."

Despite her terror, she chuckled at that. Her laughter was short-lived, though. Turk still hadn't picked up the scent, and they were miles from anywhere. She wasn't worried about getting them home safely. They had satellite phones, compasses and guns. She was worried that if they lost Kelly's trail now, they might not pick it up again.

She decided to call Wyatt. If they could get more eyes here looking for the trail, then they would have a better chance of finding it. It might be hours before they got here, but that would be better than waiting. Damn it, she should have called him the moment Turk found the trail.

She dialed the number, and a moment later, Wyatt said, "Hello. Got something?"

"Yeah. We followed Kelly's trail south from the Tazlina River for six miles along what looks like a hiking trail or a game trail of some sort. Turk lost the scent now, and he's trying to find it again. Can you send some people over to help look for her?"

"Sure, but you should know that we're a long way from you right now. It's going to be at least two hours before we reach you."

Faith sighed. That's what she was afraid of. "All right. Just get here when you can. Nothing on your end, I'm assuming?"

"Nothing. If your dog picked up a scent, then she's probably closer to Tazlina Lake than St. Anne's Lake. We'll keep searches throughout the area, but we're going to focus on the area you three are looking. Call me if Turk picks up the scent again."

"Okay. Will do."

He hung up, and Faith looked at Turk. He was about forty yards ahead of her, moving slowly over the frozen dirt and sniffing at the ground. A shiver ran through her, not from the cold, but also, her heart rate had calmed, and the cold was starting to be a problem again.

"Come on," she told Michael, "let's dress up."

Michael nodded and began pulling his parka back on. Now that she wasn't overexerting herself, the outfit was a welcome shelter from the shockingly cold air.

When they were dressed, they caught up to Turk. The dog didn't seem to mind the cold, but he growled in frustration every few seconds when his efforts still failed to turn up any sign of Kelly's scent.

Faith shone her flashlight beam around, looking for any sign of her, but what was she going to find? Surely, the cold hadn't killed the scent so much that Turk wouldn't pick it up from the remains of a camp. Of course, Turk didn't actually know what Kelly Connor smelled like.

That thought chilled Faith again. For all she knew, they had just run six miles into the wilderness following a trail that had nothing to do with Kelly Connor. And she had just called all of their resources to look for her out here.

"You don't think Turk might have picked up another scent, do you?" Michael asked. Apparently, he was thinking the same thing.

"I hope not," she replied. "He's normally pretty good. He knows we're looking for a person, so odds are he's following a human scent. It might not be Kelly, though."

"Could be the killer," Michael suggested.

"May we get so lucky," Faith replied. "Either way, we're kind of stuck trusting his nose." Turk gave her an injured look, and she explained, "but like I said, he's usually pretty good."

"I know," Michael said. "I'm just worried."

"Me too."

They walked for another ten minutes or so before Michael said. "Here's another sobering thought. What if there are traps out here that we don't see?"

Faith frowned. "Shit. I didn't even think about that." She scanned her flashlight slower and more purposefully over the terrain ahead. "That would be some ironic ending, wouldn't it? Two FBI agents killed by traps set by the very killer they were chasing."

"Yeah, thanks for that," Michael quipped. "I always say there's nothing like an exceptionally morbid train of thought when we're looking for a missing person and a murderer."

"You do say that humor sometimes helps ease the tension in situations like this."

"Am I drunk when I talk like that?"

Once more, she laughed in spite of her own anxiety. "I miss hanging out with you." She didn't mean to blurt that out either, but she didn't try to backpedal away from the conversation this time. "I think that's what's going on with me. I mean, you're married, and I'm with David. There's a lot going on in my life, and I think that's part of what's making me go crazy, but also I miss being your friend."

"You are my friend. That never stopped."

"I know, but… it kinda did."

"How?"

"Well, we don't see each other anymore unless we're at work."

"We're at work more often than we're not at work. This is hugely inappropriate for me to say, considering the past few days, but I spend more time with you than I do with Ellie. A lot more. That's part of why Ellie and I have talked about me retiring."

"Exactly. That's my point. You're with her now." She quickly added, "and that's fine. Really, it's wonderful. I like her, and I'm glad you're happy. But… I guess one of the things I thought would never change would be you and me as best friends who did almost everything together. I miss grabbing drinks with you after work, going out on weekends, watching movies or sports games together. You know, you were my person."

She looked at Michael and saw him wrestling with the information she'd just given him. "I'm sorry," she continued. "I know I'm making everything worse, but I have to get this off of my chest. You were my person, and I don't mean that to say that you were the person I liked having sex with the most or the person I thought I would marry. I just… I thought we'd be friends forever and we'd be… well, doing the same things until we got old."

She fell silent, and that silence held. Turk continued to slowly zigzag across the trail, nose to the ground, tail switching back and forth. Faith wanted to look back at Michael to see how he'd reacted to her words, but she was afraid of what she'd find.

And it was true. She missed him. She missed him a lot. The past two and a half years felt like an eternity, and part of that was because her routine had been taken away from her, and everything that had come around to replace it had refused to stay still long enough for her to get used to it.

Michael was her routine. He was her partner, not just at work but in life. She wasn't sure if she had any romantic feelings for him, but she knew that she needed him to be there whenever she needed a friend, and their lives were moving in different directions now. She wasn't sure how much longer she could count on having him there, and she wasn't sure if David could fill the hole he would leave behind.

She didn't dwell on these thoughts for long, though. Turk barked and began to run through the forest away from the trail. Just before Michael and Faith followed, a piercing scream split the night air.

Faith's blood froze. That was a woman's scream. Kelly.

The two agents looked at each other in alarm, then sprinted after Turk. Faith caught glimpses of his fur in her flashlight beam as he rushed toward the sound, desperate to find her before whatever trap she'd sprung took her life.

Faith felt the same wish, and when a second scream followed the first, her throat constricted. Oh, please don't let them be too late. Not again. Not when they were so close.