CHAPTER 63

AROUND ELEVEN THAT MORNING, with the sun nearing its zenith in the impossibly blue skies, we were on what Officer Fagan described as a “rarely used side trail,” roughly one mile and several thousand vertical feet from where Bree’s cell phone had transmitted more than two days before.

Fagan was not kidding that the route was rarely used. She had to duck down behind her windshield to avoid getting whipped by the thin saplings overgrowing the trail.

I did the same, feeling the saplings grab at the sled runners and the sleeves and legs of my coveralls. More than once, I thought one of my boots had gotten snarled in the brush and would pull me off the machine.

Finally, we crested a knoll. Fagan stopped her sled at the edge of a ravine and faced the steep, snowy flank of a mountain on the other side.

She got out binoculars and looked all around us. “Far as we can go,” she said, climbing off the snowmobile and lifting the seat.

“Where do you think she was?” I asked, getting off my sled into knee-deep snow.

“I think I can show you,” the Mountie said. She pulled out a padded bag with a ballistic cloth exterior and unzipped it, revealing a compact Swarovski spotting scope and a tripod. After several tries, she fit them together and aimed the scope up the mountain.

“That’s roughly where I put the transmission location,” Fagan said at last, standing back. “You’re looking at it at sixty-five-power magnification.”

I shuffled forward in the deep snow, peered into the scope, and saw thick firs, sheer rock, and ice high up the side of the crag. My stomach turned over.

“She could not have been up there,” I said. “Not alive.”

“I know,” Fagan said. “But I knew you wouldn’t believe me unless you saw it with your own eyes.”

“It had to have been a mistake,” I said. “Or Maestro tossed her phone out of a plane. Or her.” The thought almost made my knees buckle.

“Go back?” she asked.

“Where’s that lumber camp?”

“Far. We’d never make it back tonight. Like I said, you’re better coming at it from the west side of the park.”

“What about that abandoned mine?”

“It’s a ways too, but I know a spot where you can look at it from up high.”

Three hours later, as I was feeling like I’d wrestled a tiger while running a marathon, Fagan finally stopped her sled. We were up high, looking almost due south across a great expanse of snowy wilderness.

Again the Mountie set up her spotting scope and looked through it. After several minutes, she stood back and said, “You should see the outline of the old mine building there.”

I pushed up the visor of my helmet and looked through the scope. I saw a distant snow-covered hilltop and the suggestion of a building wavering like a mirage. I was about to stand up when I caught movement near the building.

I put my left mitt over my left eye to see better. At first I saw nothing, then I clearly spotted movement.

“There’s someone there,” I said.

“There is not,” Fagan said.

“Moving right to left away from the building. Take a look.”

I stepped back to let her peer through the scope again. She was there for several long moments before she said, “I do see something moving. I can’t say it’s a man.”

“What else could it be?”

“Moose? Elk?”

When Fagan stood up, I said, “Can we get closer? Check?”

The Mountie thought a moment. “I think there is a trail to the mine. But it’s older than the ones we were on. And as I remember, there’s warnings for sleds to stay out because there’s still mine debris on it—tailings, pieces of pipe, and old cables that could snag our runners.”

“We need to check.”

Fagan looked up at the clear blue sky and finally nodded. “We’ll be back at the Meacham trailhead around midnight, but I’m game if you are.”

“More than game,” I said.

She took us south for another hour. The sun was getting low in the southwestern sky when we reached a series of long, linked, snow-covered alpine meadows and stopped to refuel.

“We get to the end of this chain of parks, we should be able to get a good view of that old mining area before dark,” she said. “Then it’s a long slog out.”

“I’m ready for it.”

Fagan shifted in her saddle as if to start again, then pulled off a mitt, unzipped her coverall, and got out her binoculars. She pushed up her visor and peered ahead down through the meadows and then behind us.

“We’ve got company,” she said.

“Really?” I said, pivoting on my machine. Seven snowmobiles about a half a mile behind us were roaring our way.

“Son of a bitch!” the Mountie said.

“What?”

Fagan stuffed her binoculars inside her coverall, pointed at the plastic scabbard on the side of my sled. “Get your rifle handy, Dr. Cross. It’s that same bunch from earlier today. And I think they’ve all got automatic weapons.”