CHAPTER 62

AT FIVE A.M., OFFICER Fagan pulled up outside my motel room and honked. I was finishing up a text to Mahoney, telling him where I was and where we were going.

He had texted me while I slept fitfully to tell me that the acting director of the FBI had used the briefing with the incoming attorney general to pitch herself as the best choice for permanent director while simultaneously distancing herself from Ned’s Maestro investigation.

I didn’t need to be there, he’d written. It was performance art, with me taking a lot of heat. I don’t know if I’m still on the case at the moment. I’ll let you know tomorrow.

Fagan honked again. I grabbed my pistol in its holster, put on my down coat, gloves, and hat, and went outside. She was at the wheel of a big Ford pickup attached to a trailer that held two Arctic Cat snowmobiles and a pull-along sled.

The storm had ended. The temperatures had plunged to twenty below zero.

“How far in is it, Officer Fagan?” I asked as I climbed into the pickup, shivering.

“Call me Molly. I figure it’s seventy kilometers. More than forty miles, anyway. There’s a burrito and a coffee there for you in the sack on the floor.”

“Forty miles in this cold?” I said as she pulled out and I found the coffee. “How are we going to stay warm enough to get all the way in there?”

Fagan motioned with her thumb to the back seat. “I’ve got extra insulated coveralls, boots with heaters, mitts with heaters, goggles, face masks, and a pack and a helmet for you. An avalanche transceiver too. I think they’ll all fit you. They belonged to my predecessor. He was big like you. The pack includes emergency medical gear, everything from bandages to blood coagulators. I also brought a hunting rifle with a scope for you and a twelve-gauge Ithaca pump-action gun with slugs for me.”

“Expecting trouble?”

“I just like to be prepared, which is why the under-saddle compartments of both sleds are filled with survival gear: double-wall tents, sleeping bags, freeze-dried rations, and fire starters.”

“So we’re not going to die from exposure?”

“Not if we can help it.”

We bounced down a rough road and parked at the trailhead beyond Meacham. The moon was three-quarters full and the stars were brilliant. I got the avalanche transceiver positioned correctly on my chest and struggled to get the insulated coveralls over my pants and parka.

The boots were clunky and very warm. The mitts came up to my elbows. The helmet was equipped with a two-way radio.

The coldness of the air took my breath away and with all the clothes I wore, I could barely manage a waddle when we got out of the truck and pulled the helmets on. Fagan backed the snowmobiles off the trailer and showed me the controls.

“Don’t over-gun the accelerator if you feel her bogging in deep powder,” the Mountie said over the helmet radio. “Just stand and get your weight forward. The engine will do the rest.”

“Okay,” I said, the uncertainty plain in my voice.

“Stay behind me and you’ll do fine. But with this new snow, we’ll have to be really careful when it gets steep and deep.”

With the guns in plastic scabbards attached to the snowmobiles and an extra twenty gallons of fuel in green jerricans strapped in Fagan’s following sled, we set out on a trail heading south-southwest an hour before dawn. With all the new snow, I was glad she was in front breaking trail. But her sled blew so much powder snow behind it, I had to slow down and let a gap form so I could see. I was lucky. The terrain was mostly flat in those first ten miles. Once I got the hang of the accelerator and learned how to shift my weight opposite the direction of a turn, I was almost keeping up with Officer Fagan as the first light showed in the east. The sun rose, transforming the trail through the snow-coated conifer forest into a shimmering, dazzling, and bitingly cold tunnel.

Bree and John are not equipped for this kind of cold, I thought. If they were out in the storm the past two nights, they’re dead.

Fifteen miles in, the way got steeper and the snow deeper, and my inferior riding skills were exposed. I had to stand, sit, and throw my body around to wrestle the sled up the incline, and I was sweating hard when we reached the top of a plateau.

The wind was howling. It cut through the coveralls and the down coat, made it to my wet wool sweater and vest. I started to shiver, and I was shaking from cold an hour later when we came to an intersection of trails about twenty miles in, halfway to the GPS coordinates from Bree’s phone transmission. One trail went almost due north.

“I have to get warm,” I said, teeth chattering.

“That first trapper’s cabin is ahead a kilometer or so. We’ll get in there and get a fire going, dry out.”

“A kilometer,” I said. “I can make that.”

We continued on the trail and reached that cabin we’d seen on Google Earth. There were seven snowmobiles already there, riderless and idling. Smoke was coming out of the chimney.

“They already have a fire going for us,” Fagan said. “Let’s talk to these folks and see what they know. Leave your sled running.”

It sounded like a great plan to me, and I hurried after her. Inside, we found three women and four men huddled around an old-fashioned potbellied stove, their helmets and gloves off.

“I’m Officer Fagan with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” she said after pulling her helmet off.

With the arms of his coverall tied around his waist, revealing a very buff torso, a bald, cocoa-skinned guy wearing a spandex beanie smiled as he stood up. In a British accent, he said, “Lucas Bean. You coming to rescue us, then?”

“Do you need rescuing?” Fagan said.

“We did last night,” one woman said in a British accent. “Got trapped in that other cabin in the storm. Had to sleep in our gear. It’s not as airtight as this place.”

Bean nodded. “We had enough food to last, though. And water. And gas.”

“Heading out?” Fagan said.

“Soon as our fingers thaw,” the woman said.

I said, “You see anyone else back in here?”

“In that storm?” Bean said. “Not a chance.”

“Are you all from other countries?” Fagan said.

“From all over,” Bean said, smiling again. “Looking for new trails to ride, and I think we got in a wee bit over our heads.”

“A way bit over our heads, Lucas,” another woman said firmly.

There was something slightly awkward about Mr. Bean and his friends, but then again, they’d passed the night in an uninsulated shack with cracks in the wall at twenty below zero. While they dressed to leave for the trailhead at Meacham, we stood around the woodstove until I could feel my feet and hands again.

After drinking a cup of hot coffee, I told Officer Fagan I was ready to push on. The Mountie damped down the firebox and we went outside and found Bean and his group getting ready to ride out.

“Serious power sleds,” Bean said, gesturing at the RCMP snowmobiles.

“Meant to get us there and back again,” Fagan said. “Be safe, Mr. Bean.”

“You as well, Officer Fagan,” he said, tugging on his helmet. “You as well.”