SO DARK

(A Faith Bold Mystery —Book Eighteen)

B L A K E   P I E R C E

Blake Pierce

Blake Pierce is the USA Today bestselling author of the RILEY PAGE mystery series, which includes seventeen books. Blake Pierce is also the author of the MACKENZIE WHITE mystery series, comprising fourteen books; of the AVERY BLACK mystery series, comprising six books; of the KERI LOCKE mystery series, comprising five books; of the MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE mystery series, comprising six books; of the KATE WISE mystery series, comprising seven books; of the CHLOE FINE psychological suspense mystery, comprising six books; of the JESSIE HUNT psychological suspense thriller series, comprising thirty-eight books (and counting); of the AU PAIR psychological suspense thriller series, comprising three books; of the ZOE PRIME mystery series, comprising six books; of the ADELE SHARP mystery series, comprising sixteen books, of the EUROPEAN VOYAGE cozy mystery series, comprising six books; of the LAURA FROST FBI suspense thriller, comprising eleven books; of the ELLA DARK FBI suspense thriller, comprising twenty-five books (and counting); of the A YEAR IN EUROPE cozy mystery series, comprising nine books, of the AVA GOLD mystery series, comprising six books; of the RACHEL GIFT mystery series, comprising fifteen books; of the VALERIE LAW mystery series, comprising nine books; of the PAIGE KING mystery series, comprising eight books; of the MAY MOORE mystery series, comprising eleven books; of the CORA SHIELDS mystery series, comprising eight books; of the NICKY LYONS mystery series, comprising eight books, of the CAMI LARK mystery series, comprising ten books; of the AMBER YOUNG mystery series, comprising eight books; of the DAISY FORTUNE mystery series, comprising five books; of the FIONA RED mystery series, comprising thirteen books; of the FAITH BOLD mystery series, comprising twenty books (and counting); of the JULIETTE HART mystery series, comprising five books; of the MORGAN CROSS mystery series, comprising thirteen books; of the FINN WRIGHT mystery series, comprising seven books; of the SHEILA STONE suspense thriller series, comprising ten books; of the RACHEL BLACKWOOD suspense thriller series, comprising eight books; of the THE GOVERNESS psychological suspense thriller series, comprising nine books (and counting); and of the new JENNA GRAVES mystery series, comprising eight books (and counting).

ONCE GONE (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #1), BEFORE HE KILLS (A Mackenzie White Mystery—Book 1), CAUSE TO KILL (An Avery Black Mystery—Book 1), A TRACE OF DEATH (A Keri Locke Mystery—Book 1), WATCHING (The Making of Riley Paige—Book 1), NEXT DOOR (A Chloe Fine Psychological Suspense Mystery—Book 1), THE PERFECT WIFE (A Jessie Hunt Psychological Suspense Thriller—Book One),  IF SHE KNEW (A Kate Wise Mystery—Book 1), MURDER (AND BAKLAVA) (A European Voyage Cozy Mystery—Book 1), LEFT TO DIE (An Adele Sharp Mystery—Book One), A MURDER IN PARIS (A Year in Europe—Book 1), CITY OF PREY (An Ava Gold Mystery—Book One), and HER LAST WISH (A Rachel Gift FBI Suspense Thriller—Book One) are each available as a free download on Amazon!

An avid reader and lifelong fan of the mystery and thriller genres, Blake loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.blakepierceauthor.com to learn more and stay in touch.

Copyright © 2024 by Blake Pierce. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright Aastels used under license from Shutterstock.com.

BOOKS BY BLAKE PIERCE

JENNA GRAVES SUSPENSE THRILLER

IN HER SIGHTS (Book #1)

IN HER MIND (Book #2)

IN HER GRASP (Book #3)

IN HER SHADOW (Book #4)

IN HER PRAYERS (Book #5)

IN HER BED (Book #6)

IN HER DREAMS (Book #7)

IN HER FEARS (Book #8)

THE GOVERNESS PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE

ONE LAST LIE (Book #1)

ONE LAST SMILE (Book #2)

ONE LAST BREATH (Book #3)

ONE LAST GOODBYE (Book #4)

ONE LAST SECRET (Book #5)

ONE LAST WHISPER (Book #6)

ONE LAST REGRET (Book #7)

ONE LAST NIGHT (Book #8)

ONE LAST STEP (Book #9)

RACHEL BLACKWOOD SUSPENSE THRILLER

NOT THIS WAY (Book #1)

NOT THIS TIME (Book #2)

NOT THIS CLOSE (Book #3)

NOT THIS ROAD (Book #4)

NOT THIS LATE (Book #5)

NOT THIS NIGHT (Book #6)

NOT THIS PLACE (Book #7)

NOT THIS SOON (Book #8)

SHEILA STONE SUSPENSE THRILLER

SILENT GIRL (Book #1)

SILENT TRAIL (Book #2)

SILENT NIGHT (Book #3)

SILENT HOUSE (Book #4)

SILENT SCREAM (Book #5)

SILENT PREY (Book #6)

SILENT RITUAL (Book #7)

SILENT PRAYER (Book #8)

SILENT NEIGHBOR (Book #9)

SILENT SMILE (Book #10)

FINN WRIGHT MYSTERY SERIES

WHEN YOU’RE MINE (Book #1)

WHEN YOU’RE SAFE (Book #2)

WHEN YOU’RE CLOSE (Book #3)

WHEN YOU’RE SLEEPING (Book #4)

WHEN YOU’RE SANE (Book #5)

WHEN YOU’RE SILENT (Book #6)

WHEN YOU’RE GONE (Book #7)

MORGAN CROSS MYSTERY SERIES

FOR YOU (Book #1)

FOR RAGE (Book #2)

FOR LUST (Book #3)

FOR WRATH (Book #4)

FOREVER (Book #5)

FOR US (Book #6)

FOR NOW (Book #7)

FOR ONCE (Book #8)

FOR ETERNITY (Book #9)

FORLORN (Book #10)

FOR SILENCE (Book #11)

FORBIDDEN (Book #12)

FOR FEAR (Book #13)

FORSAKEN (Book #14)

JULIETTE HART MYSTERY SERIES

NOTHING TO FEAR (Book #1)

NOTHING THERE (Book #2)

NOTHING WATCHING (Book #3)

NOTHING HIDING (Book #4)

NOTHING LEFT (Book #5)

FAITH BOLD MYSTERY SERIES

SO LONG (Book #1)

SO COLD (Book #2)

SO SCARED (Book #3)

SO NORMAL (Book #4)

SO FAR GONE (Book #5)

SO LOST (Book #6)

SO ALONE (Book #7)

SO FORGOTTEN (Book #8)

SO INSANE (Book #9)

SO SMITTEN (Book #10)

SO SIMPLE (Book #11)

SO BROKEN (Book #12)

SO CRUEL (Book #13)

SO HAUNTED (Book #14)

SO SILENT (Book #15)

SO BLEAK (Book #16)

SO HOLLOW (Book #17)

SO DARK (Book #18)

SO TWISTED (Book #19)

SO WICKED (Book #20)

FIONA RED MYSTERY SERIES

LET HER GO (Book #1)

LET HER BE (Book #2)

LET HER HOPE (Book #3)

LET HER WISH (Book #4)

LET HER LIVE (Book #5)

LET HER RUN (Book #6)

LET HER HIDE (Book #7)

LET HER BELIEVE (Book #8)

LET HER FORGET (Book #9)

LET HER TRY (Book #10)

LET HER PLAY (Book #11)

LET HER VANISH (Book #12)

LET HER FADE (Book #13)

DAISY FORTUNE MYSTERY SERIES

NEED YOU (Book #1)

CLAIM YOU (Book #2)

CRAVE YOU (Book #3)

CHOOSE YOU (Book #4)

CHASE YOU (Book #5)

AMBER YOUNG MYSTERY SERIES

ABSENT PITY (Book #1)

ABSENT REMORSE (Book #2)

ABSENT FEELING (Book #3)

ABSENT MERCY (Book #4)

ABSENT REASON (Book #5)

ABSENT SANITY (Book #6)

ABSENT LIFE (Book #7)

ABSENT HUMANITY (Book #8)

CAMI LARK MYSTERY SERIES

JUST ME (Book #1)

JUST OUTSIDE (Book #2)

JUST RIGHT (Book #3)

JUST FORGET (Book #4)

JUST ONCE (Book #5)

JUST HIDE (Book #6)

JUST NOW (Book #7)

JUST HOPE (Book #8)

JUST LEAVE (Book #9)

JUST TONIGHT (Book #10)

NICKY LYONS MYSTERY SERIES

ALL MINE (Book #1)

ALL HIS (Book #2)

ALL HE SEES (Book #3)

ALL ALONE (Book #4)

ALL FOR ONE (Book #5)

ALL HE TAKES (Book #6)

ALL FOR ME (Book #7)

ALL IN (Book #8)

CORA SHIELDS MYSTERY SERIES

UNDONE (Book #1)

UNWANTED (Book #2)

UNHINGED (Book #3)

UNSAID (Book #4)

UNGLUED (Book #5)

UNSTABLE (Book #6)

UNKNOWN (Book #7)

UNAWARE (Book #8)

MAY MOORE SUSPENSE THRILLER

NEVER RUN (Book #1)

NEVER TELL (Book #2)

NEVER LIVE (Book #3)

NEVER HIDE (Book #4)

NEVER FORGIVE (Book #5)

NEVER AGAIN (Book #6)

NEVER LOOK BACK (Book #7)

NEVER FORGET (Book #8)

NEVER LET GO (Book #9)

NEVER PRETEND (Book #10)

NEVER HESITATE (Book #11)

PAIGE KING MYSTERY SERIES

THE GIRL HE PINED (Book #1)

THE GIRL HE CHOSE (Book #2)

THE GIRL HE TOOK (Book #3)

THE GIRL HE WISHED (Book #4)

THE GIRL HE CROWNED (Book #5)

THE GIRL HE WATCHED (Book #6)

THE GIRL HE WANTED (Book #7)

THE GIRL HE CLAIMED (Book #8)

VALERIE LAW MYSTERY SERIES

NO MERCY (Book #1)

NO PITY (Book #2)

NO FEAR (Book #3)

NO SLEEP (Book #4)

NO QUARTER (Book #5)

NO CHANCE (Book #6)

NO REFUGE (Book #7)

NO GRACE (Book #8)

NO ESCAPE (Book #9)

RACHEL GIFT MYSTERY SERIES

HER LAST WISH (Book #1)

HER LAST CHANCE (Book #2)

HER LAST HOPE (Book #3)

HER LAST FEAR (Book #4)

HER LAST CHOICE (Book #5)

HER LAST BREATH (Book #6)

HER LAST MISTAKE (Book #7)

HER LAST DESIRE (Book #8)

HER LAST REGRET (Book #9)

HER LAST HOUR (Book #10)

HER LAST SHOT (Book #11)

HER LAST PRAYER (Book #12)

HER LAST LIE (Book #13)

HER LAST WHISPER (Book #14)

HER LAST SECRET (Book #15)

AVA GOLD MYSTERY SERIES

CITY OF PREY (Book #1)

CITY OF FEAR (Book #2)

CITY OF BONES (Book #3)

CITY OF GHOSTS (Book #4)

CITY OF DEATH (Book #5)

CITY OF VICE (Book #6)

A YEAR IN EUROPE

A MURDER IN PARIS (Book #1)

DEATH IN FLORENCE (Book #2)

VENGEANCE IN VIENNA (Book #3)

A FATALITY IN SPAIN (Book #4)

ELLA DARK FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

GIRL, ALONE (Book #1)

GIRL, TAKEN (Book #2)

GIRL, HUNTED (Book #3)

GIRL, SILENCED (Book #4)

GIRL, VANISHED (Book 5)

GIRL ERASED (Book #6)

GIRL, FORSAKEN (Book #7)

GIRL, TRAPPED (Book #8)

GIRL, EXPENDABLE (Book #9)

GIRL, ESCAPED (Book #10)

GIRL, HIS (Book #11)

GIRL, LURED (Book #12)

GIRL, MISSING (Book #13)

GIRL, UNKNOWN (Book #14)

GIRL, DECEIVED (Book #15)

GIRL, FORLORN (Book #16)

GIRL, REMADE (Book #17)

GIRL, BETRAYED (Book #18)

GIRL, BOUND (Book #19)

GIRL, REFORMED (Book #20)

GIRL, REBORN (Book #21)

GIRL, HAUNTED (Book #22)

GIRL, UNSEEN (Book #23)

GIRL, SOUGHT (Book #24)

GIRL, ACCUSED (Book #25)

LAURA FROST FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

ALREADY GONE (Book #1)

ALREADY SEEN (Book #2)

ALREADY TRAPPED (Book #3)

ALREADY MISSING (Book #4)

ALREADY DEAD (Book #5)

ALREADY TAKEN (Book #6)

ALREADY CHOSEN (Book #7)

ALREADY LOST (Book #8)

ALREADY HIS (Book #9)

ALREADY LURED (Book #10)

ALREADY COLD (Book #11)

EUROPEAN VOYAGE COZY MYSTERY SERIES

MURDER (AND BAKLAVA) (Book #1)

DEATH (AND APPLE STRUDEL) (Book #2)

CRIME (AND LAGER) (Book #3)

MISFORTUNE (AND GOUDA) (Book #4)

CALAMITY (AND A DANISH) (Book #5)

MAYHEM (AND HERRING) (Book #6)

ADELE SHARP MYSTERY SERIES

LEFT TO DIE (Book #1)

LEFT TO RUN (Book #2)

LEFT TO HIDE (Book #3)

LEFT TO KILL (Book #4)

LEFT TO MURDER (Book #5)

LEFT TO ENVY (Book #6)

LEFT TO LAPSE (Book #7)

LEFT TO VANISH (Book #8)

LEFT TO HUNT (Book #9)

LEFT TO FEAR (Book #10)

LEFT TO PREY (Book #11)

LEFT TO LURE (Book #12)

LEFT TO CRAVE (Book #13)

LEFT TO LOATHE (Book #14)

LEFT TO HARM (Book #15)

LEFT TO RUIN (Book #16)

THE AU PAIR SERIES

ALMOST GONE (Book#1)

ALMOST LOST (Book #2)

ALMOST DEAD (Book #3)

ZOE PRIME MYSTERY SERIES

FACE OF DEATH (Book#1)

FACE OF MURDER (Book #2)

FACE OF FEAR (Book #3)

FACE OF MADNESS (Book #4)

FACE OF FURY (Book #5)

FACE OF DARKNESS (Book #6)

A JESSIE HUNT PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE SERIES

THE PERFECT WIFE (Book #1)

THE PERFECT BLOCK (Book #2)

THE PERFECT HOUSE (Book #3)

THE PERFECT SMILE (Book #4)

THE PERFECT LIE (Book #5)

THE PERFECT LOOK (Book #6)

THE PERFECT AFFAIR (Book #7)

THE PERFECT ALIBI (Book #8)

THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR (Book #9)

THE PERFECT DISGUISE (Book #10)

THE PERFECT SECRET (Book #11)

THE PERFECT FAÇADE (Book #12)

THE PERFECT IMPRESSION (Book #13)

THE PERFECT DECEIT (Book #14)

THE PERFECT MISTRESS (Book #15)

THE PERFECT IMAGE (Book #16)

THE PERFECT VEIL (Book #17)

THE PERFECT INDISCRETION (Book #18)

THE PERFECT RUMOR (Book #19)

THE PERFECT COUPLE (Book #20)

THE PERFECT MURDER (Book #21)

THE PERFECT HUSBAND (Book #22)

THE PERFECT SCANDAL (Book #23)

THE PERFECT MASK (Book #24)

THE PERFECT RUSE (Book #25)

THE PERFECT VENEER (Book #26)

THE PERFECT PEOPLE (Book #27)

THE PERFECT WITNESS (Book #28)

THE PERFECT APPEARANCE (Book #29)

THE PERFECT TRAP (Book #30)

THE PERFECT EXPRESSION (Book #31)

THE PERFECT ACCOMPLICE (Book #32)

THE PERFECT SHOW (Book #33)

THE PERFECT POISE (Book #34)

THE PERFECT CROWD (Book #35)

THE PERFECT CRIME (Book #36)

THE PERFECT PREY (Book #37)

THE PERFECT BETRAYAL (Book #38)

CHLOE FINE PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE SERIES

NEXT DOOR (Book #1)

A NEIGHBOR’S LIE (Book #2)

CUL DE SAC (Book #3)

SILENT NEIGHBOR (Book #4)

HOMECOMING (Book #5)

TINTED WINDOWS (Book #6)

KATE WISE MYSTERY SERIES

IF SHE KNEW (Book #1)

IF SHE SAW (Book #2)

IF SHE RAN (Book #3)

IF SHE HID (Book #4)

IF SHE FLED (Book #5)

IF SHE FEARED (Book #6)

IF SHE HEARD (Book #7)

THE MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE SERIES

WATCHING (Book #1)

WAITING (Book #2)

LURING (Book #3)

TAKING (Book #4)

STALKING (Book #5)

KILLING (Book #6)

RILEY PAIGE MYSTERY SERIES

ONCE GONE (Book #1)

ONCE TAKEN (Book #2)

ONCE CRAVED (Book #3)

ONCE LURED (Book #4)

ONCE HUNTED (Book #5)

ONCE PINED (Book #6)

ONCE FORSAKEN (Book #7)

ONCE COLD (Book #8)

ONCE STALKED (Book #9)

ONCE LOST (Book #10)

ONCE BURIED (Book #11)

ONCE BOUND (Book #12)

ONCE TRAPPED (Book #13)

ONCE DORMANT (Book #14)

ONCE SHUNNED (Book #15)

ONCE MISSED (Book #16)

ONCE CHOSEN (Book #17)

MACKENZIE WHITE MYSTERY SERIES

BEFORE HE KILLS (Book #1)

BEFORE HE SEES (Book #2)

BEFORE HE COVETS (Book #3)

BEFORE HE TAKES (Book #4)

BEFORE HE NEEDS (Book #5)

BEFORE HE FEELS (Book #6)

BEFORE HE SINS (Book #7)

BEFORE HE HUNTS (Book #8)

BEFORE HE PREYS (Book #9)

BEFORE HE LONGS (Book #10)

BEFORE HE LAPSES (Book #11)

BEFORE HE ENVIES (Book #12)

BEFORE HE STALKS (Book #13)

BEFORE HE HARMS (Book #14)

AVERY BLACK MYSTERY SERIES

CAUSE TO KILL (Book #1)

CAUSE TO RUN (Book #2)

CAUSE TO HIDE (Book #3)

CAUSE TO FEAR (Book #4)

CAUSE TO SAVE (Book #5)

CAUSE TO DREAD (Book #6)

KERI LOCKE MYSTERY SERIES

A TRACE OF DEATH (Book #1)

A TRACE OF MURDER (Book #2)

A TRACE OF VICE (Book #3)

A TRACE OF CRIME (Book #4)

A TRACE OF HOPE (Book #5)

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Ethan Holloway loved long weekends. He didn't really do anything different on a long weekend than on a short weekend. Just like every other weekend, he was camping this weekend. The difference is that on a long weekend, he could hike to his destination, while on a short weekend, he would have to take his truck.

Not that he didn’t like his truck. It was just that everyone had a truck in Alaska, so if you took a truck camping, you’d be camping near other people.

Not that Ethan didn't like people either. It was just nice to have some time to himself. And he had to admit it felt cool to trek twelve miles through the Alaskan wilderness over terrain that would stymie almost everyone else to arrive at a cabin that, as far as he knew, was the only manmade structure in the area.

He could breathe out here. He could get away from everything. All of the stress, all of the defeat, the bad memories… none of it mattered.

He crested the final ridge and came to the small alpine plateau where his cabin rested. The structure was a simple wood-plank lean that rested against the rock face of the mountain. It was waterproofed with clay and pitch, carefully treated and dried so it formed a hard protective shell over the cracks in the roof and walls. The interior was packed earth, and the bed was a raised wooden platform with a bearskin for a mattress and a pillow stuffed with moss.

It was home.

“More of a home than I ever had with Carol,” he muttered.

But he wasn’t here to think about his ex-wife. He was here specifically not to think about his ex-wife. So he pushed the thoughts from his mind and got to work. He set his pack next to the bed and gathered firewood. Night would fall in two hours, and he wanted a fire going and dinner caught before the sun went down.

This particular part of Alaska’s Nelchina Public Use Area was located in the Talkeetna Mountains, a range of peaks of medium height that for the most part represented fairly mild challenges to seasoned hikers. His cabin was located in one of the very few places that was reachable only by very experienced outdoorsmen.

Getting here was the hardest part, however. Once he was here, everything else almost literally fell into his lap. Firewood was ubiquitous. The mountains were covered in dense forests of spruce and hemlock. Water was just as easy. The plateau on which the cabin sat also contained a mountain spring fed by an underground river. It was as clean and pure as any water Ethan had ever tasted, and the natural minerals in the water made it healthier than the imported crap they sold for three dollars a bottle at the general store.

Food was marginally more difficult, but not especially so. He’d brought his crossbow, and due to the spring, the place was frequently visited by deer and smaller prey like squirrels and rabbits. What made food more difficult was the fact that brown bears also knew about the prey animals that came here. He had seen bears eight times and twice had to drive them off with bear spray. Fortunately, he hadn’t had to kill one since the animal that contributed the bearskin for his mattress. That animal attacked him when he and Carol were climbing Denali ten years ago.

Back when she still loved him.

He sighed and stacked his firewood next to the house, then picked up his crossbow and trekked out to hunt. There were no animals in front of the spring at the moment, but there were a couple of acres of land that were easy to access where he could look for game.

It was too bad that Carol was on his mind so much. Probably because tomorrow would have been their twelfth anniversary. They had enjoyed six wonderful years together and four shitty years before they finally admitted that they weren’t working out and went their separate ways. It wasn’t until a year ago that Ethan learned that Carol had been having an affair the entirety of their four shitty years and that the only reason she stayed with him was his money.

“I don’t even have that much money,” he groused.

He was worth just about one million dollars, a quarter of which was liquid. Everything else was just the property value of his land, all of which he’d gotten to keep in the divorce since Carol’s new husband had received a windfall from a deceased uncle and was now far wealthier than Ethan was. That wasn’t chump change, but in a place like Alaska, it wasn’t much. Not for a woman of Carol’s tastes.

“Should have known,” he muttered. “Should have known.”

He lifted his crossbow and fired. A snowshoe hare leapt into the air, beating its feet ineffectually as its last living instinct told it to flee. It fell to the ground dead, and Ethan retrieved it a moment later. It was a good-sized hare, probably three and a half pounds. Once he cleaned it, he’d have just less than a pound of good meat. Enough for supper.

He gathered some wild blueberries from a nearby bush and placed them in a small basket he’d brought for the purpose. He would eat well tonight.

He grinned as he thought of Carol and her husband spending two thousand dollars on some fancy prepared meal of food shipped and processed and mashed and spiced all to hell. Carol would imagine herself a princess, but she was only a fool.

“Enough of that,” he said as he walked into the cabin. “Time for my delicious solo dinner.”

He set the hare on the rough-hewn spruce counter and was about to clean the animal when it hit him. He frowned. He wasn’t sure why, but something seemed very off to him. The smell… it was…

Hell, he didn’t know. But he needed to find out. If it was a bear, he could be in real trouble.

He took a step toward the kitchen window and felt something twang under his feet. He registered the twang a split second before the pickaxe swung down from the ceiling and severed his brainstem.

CHAPTER ONE

Turk was the first to sense that something was wrong. The big German Shepherd, a K9 veteran of the Marine Corps and the FBI, came instantly to alertness when Faith turned into their neighborhood.

When Turk came to alertness, Special Agent Faith Bold also came to alertness. Like her canine partner, Faith was also a veteran of the Marine Corps and the FBI, and she had learned in both organizations to trust her fellow warriors.

“What is it, boy? What’s wrong?”

Turk looked at Faith with concern, then turned his head back toward the front. Faith reached into her shoulder holster and pulled her service weapon, laying it over her lap. She kept one hand on the wheel and one hand on the butt of the gun.

Several months ago, Faith had been attacked in her apartment by a ruthless serial killer named Franklin West, the infamous Copycat Killer who had obsessed over Faith for years. West was now in prison, where he would remain for the rest of his life, but Faith had made it a habit ever since to never leave home without her weapon, even when she wasn't on duty.

As it happened, Faith had just returned from a case, so she would have had her weapon anyway. She also hadn't been in her apartment in over a week. She had a state-of-the-art security system that was supposed to send an email to her if there were any disturbances, but West had gotten in without triggering it somehow, so she wasn't going to put her life in its hands.

She turned the final corner down her cul-de-sac. That’s when she saw the lights. There were a dozen law enforcement vehicles in front of the building: police cruisers, SWAT vans, a K9 truck and the coroner’s wagon.

She pulled to the curb and got out, Turk at her side. “Hey,” she called to the officer nearest her. “What’s going on?”

She holstered her weapon and pulled her FBI ID out as she asked. No need to scare anyone.

The officer looked at her ID and his eyes widen. “Oh shit.” He turned around and called to another officer. “Hey! This is her!”

Faith rolled her eyes. Since her work bringing West to justice, she had become mildly famous to the citizens of Philadelphia and very famous to the law enforcement of Philadelphia. She didn’t care for the attention.

The other officer approached, and Faith saw the stripes of a sergeant. “Sergeant, what’s going on here? Did something happen in my apartment?”

“Not in your apartment,” the sergeant replied, “but it’s better you don’t go upstairs right now.”

“What’s going on?” Faith repeated.

“We have it under control, ma’am. Just let us handle it.”

Faith’s eyes narrowed. She nearly snapped at the officer, but it would be terrible publicity for the Bureau if she got caught haranguing a police sergeant. Still, she needed to know what had happened.

“Sergeant, I appreciate that you have a job to do. You need to appreciate that this isn’t the first time something serious has occurred in my home, and I’m not going to sit around and wait for someone to get around to telling me a sterilized version of the truth. Now, do you tell me what happened, or do I walk upstairs and see it for myself?”

The sergeant appeared to wrestle with his decision, but after a moment, he shrugged. “Be my guest.”

He led the two agents into the building. Turk caught the scent of the other dogs and whined at Faith.

“It’s all right, boy. They’re here to help.”

He whined again. Faith reached down to ruffle his fur. Then she smelled it.

It wasn’t dogs. There were K9s there, three of them, but the rancid, coppery odor Faith smelled wasn’t German Shepherd.

The door to her apartment was cordoned off and surrounded by the K9s, their three handlers, and a detective in plainclothes. The detective was squatting down, examining the body propped in a sitting position against Faith's door.

Faith gasped when she got a good view of the body. “Oh God.”

The body was that of Faith’s neighbor, Eleanor Fields. Eleanor was a sweet, seventy-eight-year-old grandmother who baked the most delicious snicker doodle cookies Faith had ever eaten. She always had a dog treat waiting for Turk whenever the two of them returned from their morning runs.

She had been badly treated. Her face was brown and purple with bruises. Her nose had been broken and her throat had been cut so deeply, that her head was nearly severed.

The worst part was the hands, or rather what was in the hands. Eleanor’s eyes had been gouged out and placed in her open palms. Written in blood on her blouse was the message ARE YOU LOOKING NOW, FAITH?

“You’re Faith Bold?” the detective asked.

Faith turned to him, and he answered his own question. “Yep. That’s you. I recognize you from the news.” He pulled out a notepad and a pen and gestured with them toward the body. “Sorry about her. Were you two close?”

“We, um… I suppose so. She would bake cookies and give Turk treats every now and then. When did this happen?”

“About five hours ago.”

Or about an hour after her plane home from Chicago took off. “Jesus. No one heard her?”

“Not according to the other neighbors. They only found her because the neighbor down the hall was gonna run to the liquor store for smokes. Stepped outside and boom, there she was.”

Faith stared at the body of her neighbor and said nothing. The night before she left for Chicago to solve a string of murders, an electronics store clerk had been murdered and a note left for Faith on the screen of a portable tv resting in his carved-out torso. This new murder was at least as gruesome.

The first murder had been dismissed as a robbery gone wrong. The killers, it was believed, used Faith’s name to throw the police off the scent.

There could be no mistaking it now. This message had been left for Faith. Someone else was out there picking up where West had left off. Someone wanted to torment Faith, and they had chosen to do so by taunting her with murders.

Faith had been kept away from the first case, but this one was too close to home. She needed to investigate this one herself.

“All right. As of right now, this is officially an FBI case. Are we clear on that, detective?”

The detective sighed. “Sure. I figured you’d take over once you showed up. Can’t say I’m too upset about it. I’ve been a homicide detective for eleven years, and this is by far the worst I’ve ever seen.”

Not the worst I’ve seen, Faith thought grimly. I’m sorry, Eleanor. “Has anyone been inside the apartment?” she asked aloud.

“No. We got the call an hour and a half ago. CSI just finished examining the scene, and the coroner should be on his way up to take the body.”

As if on cue, the elevator opened and the coroner and a team of four orderlies entered the hallway. “Back up, everyone!” the coroner—a stern woman of around fifty—called. “Give us room!” She saw Faith and said, “Oh. I thought you were out of town.”

“Good evening, Dr. Brenner,” Faith said. “I just got back.”

“I see. Hell of a homecoming present.”

Faith didn’t reply to that.

“You want to take a look before I wheel her out of here?” Dr. Brenner asked.

Turk was sniffing around the body, but when Faith asked, “Got anything, boy?” he snorted and dipped his head, a negative.

“Go ahead and take her,” Faith said. “I want every piece of information you get the moment you get it. Someone’s targeting me, and unlike West, they’re not discriminating in who they target.”

“Boy, you sure have a way with men, don’t you?” Brenner said drily.

Faith didn’t appreciate the joke. She turned toward the detective. “You said CSI’s been over the scene already?”

“Yep. No prints, no bodily fluids that didn’t come from Ms. Fields. CSI thinks the killer wore latex gloves, but they have to wait on the coroner’s report to know for sure.”

Faith nodded. “All right. Dr. Brenner, she’s yours. Detective, you and I are inside the apartment looking for any sign of disturbance. Sergeant, get this floor roped off. No one enters unless they live here and can prove it. If that means someone gets locked out, I’ll take the heat. If someone lives here, and you haven’t talked to them yet, you talk to them. I want a timeline of tonight ASAP.”

They hurried to comply, and Faith, not wanting to watch as they took her neighbor away, turned toward the detective. “What’s your name?”

“Fatts.” She lifted an eyebrow, and he grinned. “Yep. Reggie Fatts. You can call me Reggie or Fatso.”

“Reggie’s fine,” Faith replied. “Who have you spoken to so far?”

"The neighbor that called it in, his wife, and the kid down the hall." He chuckled. "Never seen someone run weed through a garbage disposal before. You should have seen the kid's face when he opened the door, and we told him it was decriminalized up to thirty grams."

“Let’s stay focused on the murder, Reggie.”

Reggie’s grin faded. “Right. Sorry. Yeah, no one heard anything. I mean, they all heard people coming and going, but they hear that all the time. No one thought anything of it. It wasn’t until Mr. Young stepped out for smokes that anyone saw anything.”

Faith sighed. “Okay. I want you to go talk to them again. I want you to ask them if they noticed anything different about Eleanor’s behavior over the past week. Any changes in mood or behavior, was she expecting someone, did she have an unpleasant interaction with anyone… actually, an interaction of any kind with anyone new.”

“I’ll do that,” Reggie replied. “While we’re on the subject, I actually want to talk to you. You can do your thing first, but since this killer knows where you live and all, the going hypothesis is that the killer knows you.”

“They don’t,” Faith said. “I have very few friends, and none of them are capable of this.”

“You have acquaintances, though, right? The barista who serves your coffee, the groomer who keeps this guy’s fur so nice and shiny, the mechanic who replaces your engine every ten thousand miles ‘cause it’s a Ford… Someone has to be close enough to you to know where you live.”

Faith pressed her lips together. She hadn’t considered that, but now that Reggie brought it up, it made sense. “Okay. We’ll talk after I’m done—”

“Faith,” a familiar voice called.

Normally, that voice was a welcome voice, but since Faith knew what hearing that voice now meant, it wasn’t welcome here. She turned to Special Agent Desrouleaux, her colleague at the Philadelphia Field Office, and frowned. “This is my case, Desrouleaux. This asshole left a body on my door with a message for me.”

“That’s exactly why it’s not your case,” Desrouleaux replied. “And it’s why you can’t go inside.” In a softer voice, he added, “I’m sorry, Faith. You know it’s not me making this call.”

Faith glared at Desrouleaux. His partner, Special Agent Chavez, paled even though Faith’s glare wasn’t aimed at her. “I’ll deal with the Boss in the morning,” she told him, “but I’m going in now.”

“Actually, you’re going to talk to him tonight. He told me to tell you to take your phone off silent and go to the office right now. He told me to use a few colorful words to make the point, but I left them out.”

Faith sighed and rubbed her temples. “How thoughtful of you.”

“I’m sorry, Faith.”

“I’m getting sick of hearing that.”

She looked at her door, then at Reggie. The city detective had adopted the impassive stare of an experienced police officer who had no opinion whatsoever on the actions of his superiors.

Faith pulled her phone from her pocket and saw that she had ten missed phone calls from the office. She sighed and sent the Boss a text. On my way.

“Come on, Turk,” she said. “Time to get our asses chewed out.”

CHAPTER TWO

Special Agent-in-Charge Grant Monroe—known semi-affectionately to his subordinates as the Boss for his no-nonsense attitude and drill sergeant demeanor—was at one time the most decorated field agent in the Bureau. He didn’t have the public notoriety of people like Ness and Hoover, but that only increased his mystique in the Bureau. Office politics kept him from the Directorship he had earned, but had guaranteed that he would maintain his stranglehold on the Philadelphia Field Office for as long as he wanted.

Faith was the current most decorated field agent in the Bureau. Unfortunately, she hadn't managed to fly under the public's radar the way Monroe had. In her defense, Monroe had earned his reputation breaking up organized financial crime while she had earned hers capturing serial killers. In the Bureau's defense, they didn't give a shit. She was a celebrity, and that made her a liability. Faith was certain that was the Boss's reason for boxing her out of the case.

His first words to her when she and Turk stepped into his office were, “Is there a reason you don’t answer your phone anymore?”

“I apologize for that, sir. I left it on silent so I could sleep on the flight and forgot to turn it back on when we landed.”

"You don't get to make mistakes like that, Bold. You've been here eleven years. I was trying to tell you to come straight here and avoid your apartment. You're lucky as hell, Desrouleaux said the crazy train hadn't arrived yet."

By crazy train, the Boss meant the gaggle of reporters who at any moment would gather around the building wanting to talk to Faith. Faith decided it wasn’t worth mentioning that the same gaggle would eventually make their way to the field office. It would happen soon enough.

"Again, sir, I apologize," she said thinly. "I was more concerned with the fact that one of my neighbors had been brutally murdered and left with her eyes in her palms in front of my door."

“And as a person, I sympathize. As your boss, you don’t get to fuck up no matter how much it sucks. We talked about this, Faith. You’re one bad day away from being forced to fly a desk.”

Faith sighed irritably. “That’s bullshit, sir. With all due respect.”

"That's cute. Eleven years with the Bureau, and you still think the brass cares about bullshit."

Faith’s lips thinned. “So because West’s case is the new primetime darling, I can’t investigate the case of the latest serial killer to directly threaten me by murdering people?”

"No one's blaming you for what's going on, but yes. Have you ever read those stories of people who lose their jobs because their crazy exes show up at their workplace and cause a scene?"

“Please don’t refer to West as my crazy ex.”

The Boss sighed. “I apologize for that. That’s not what I meant. But look, we talked about this. The more you’re in the media, the more the brass want you off the field. Turk’s up for retirement at the end of the month, and a lot of people want you to go with him. They can’t fire you, but they can promote you to ASAC of some Podunk town in the Midwest and stick you behind a desk for the next twenty years.”

To most other agents, a promotion to ASAC would be cause for celebration, but the Boss knew Faith well enough to know that she would rather eat glass than be pushed out of field work. She crossed her arms and looked past him at the shuttered window behind his desk.

“I don’t want that for you,” the Boss continued, “but you have to help me. You have to show that you’re willing to play ball.”

Faith rolled her eyes. “I played ball with West, and look where that got me.”

The Boss didn’t reply for a moment. When he did, his normally gruff voice was subdued. “Do you think this new killer is as dangerous as West?”

“I don’t know. I’m not allowed to look into it.”

The Boss's gruff tone came back. "You can be pissy about this, or you can suck it up and deal with it. Even if this wasn't a special case, you still wouldn't be allowed to close for safety reasons. Take Turk somewhere. He only has a month left, no matter what happens with you. Use up his vacation time and give him a nice quiet ride to retirement."

Faith looked at Turk. The dog sat straight up, head lifted, and looked proudly at the Boss. He didn't look old to Faith. He had a little gray around his muzzle and a few scars here and there, but he was still strong. His nose was still good. He was still the smartest and best dog in the Bureau.

She looked back at the Boss. “What if he doesn’t retire?”

The Boss stared at her for a moment. “He’s going to be nine years old, Faith.”

“I know that. But he’s still strong and alert and smart, and I think he’ll continue to be strong and alert and smart for years to come.”

“Not many years to come. Do you really want him to spend his golden years hunting criminals?”

“It’s the only thing he knows how to do. He loves this work.”

“It’s the only thing you know how to do,” the Boss corrected. “You love this work. He loves being with you.”

“That’s…” Faith didn’t finish her sentence.

Mostly because the Boss was right. She looked back at Turk. He gave her a grin. His eyes looked into hers with more love and trust than any human could show.

But if he retired, then all that was left for him to do was die. He was smart and strong and sharp now because he was always called upon to use that intelligence. If he stopped, then he would age fast. She wasn’t ready to watch him grow old.

“I looked it up, Faith. They live thirteen years on average. It’s rare that K9s make it even that long. They stay strong and sturdy for a while, but when they slow down, they slow down fast. Give Turk some time to enjoy life while he’s still strong. If you want, you can take him home and work as a field agent with another K9 partner. Or, if you’d feel better about it, I’ll remove you from the K9 handlers list.”

“But he’s helped me solve so many cases. I owe a lot of my recent success to him.”

“You were successful before you partnered with him. Honestly, Bold, he was only supposed to be a therapy dog for you. You were supposed to be a temporary handler until you both recovered from what you suffered at Trammell’s hands.”

Both Faith and Turk had been nearly killed by Jethro Trammell, the original Donkey Killer that Franklin West copied. Faith hadn’t wanted a dog at first, but she’d quickly fallen in love with Turk, and now the two of them were inseparable.

Faith had considered the Boss’s offer of taking Turk home as a pet while she continued to work in the field, but that would mean being separated from him at least half the time if not more. He could stay with David, but then he would only see Faith when she was off duty. They could still take their morning runs and watch TV together, but that wouldn't be the same.

And she was sure that he was happy. She could see it in his eyes whenever they were working together. It wasn’t just being with Faith. It was being with Faith and working together to catch bad guys. That’s what fulfilled him. If she took that away from him, he would know it was because he was too old. He would sense it, and that would age him fast, just like the Boss said.

“Let him work,” she pleaded. “Please. Until he begins to slow down, let him work. Trust me, I know him. He’ll decline so much faster if you take him out of the field. He’s happy, and he’ll live longer if he’s working.”

The Boss sighed. “Maybe, Faith, but not much longer. You’re only delaying the inevitable.”

“Well, then why don’t you retire?” she snapped. “You’re going to die one day. Why don’t you just go home, sit on your ass and wait for the heart attack?”

“You finished?” the Boss asked coldly.

Faith looked away, her lip jutting out in a pout. She knew what she looked like, but she couldn’t stop herself.

“We’ll table the discussion of Turk’s retirement for the moment except for the following bit of information that you should know. It’s not my decision if Turk retires. The mandatory retirement at nine years old is Bureau policy. In order for Turk to keep working, he’d need a special exemption signed by you, me, a licensed vet approved by the Bureau, and the chief of the Bureau’s K9 division.”

“I’ll sign. So will David.” Her boyfriend, Dr. David Friedman, was Turk’s vet and approved by the Bureau to work with their K9 units. “If you sign, then it’ll be easy to convince the K9 chief.”

“Naïve doesn’t look good on you, Faith,” the Boss said, “and anyway, I said the discussion’s tabled for now. What’s not tabled is the discussion of what you won’t do. Specifically, return to your apartment or involve yourself in this investigation.”

Faith sighed and crossed her arms. “Okay. I was planning to move in with David soon anyway.” She actually had serious reservations about that, but her opinion didn’t appear to matter. “I’ll stay with him.”

“Good. As for Turk’s last… next month, consider what I said. Take him out. Have some fun with him. Go traveling. Let him do something other than chase bad guys. Who knows? Maybe you’ll reconsider giving him a comfortable retirement.”

“Naïve doesn’t look good on you,” she retorted.

He chuckled. “I’ll let you have that one.” His smile vanished. “I mean it, Bold. No snooping, no harassing people, no charming cops into slipping you some details. You are off this case. I find out you’re not respecting my wishes here, then I will join the chorus of voices singing for you to be put to pasture yourself.”

“Loud and clear, Boss,” Faith said. She stood. “Is there anything else?”

“Nothing that’s an order. Plenty of advice, but you won’t listen to it.”

“Probably not. I’ll see you later, sir.”

She left the office in a terrible mood. It must have shown on her face because the other agents on night shift avoided eye contact. Turk looked at her with concern, not sure why she was suddenly so upset.

When they reached her car, he laid his head in her lap and looked up at her with his beautiful brown eyes. She smiled wistfully and scratched him behind his ear. “You’re a good dog. You’re not old yet. Look at you. I’ll bet you could beat up any of those young pups at the dog park.”

Turk barked firmly, not sure what he was agreeing with but sensing it was important to Faith that he agree anyway. She chuckled and hugged him close. “You’re not old.”

But he would be. Sooner or later—probably sooner—he would be. Maybe the Boss was right. Maybe it would be better to let him have some time in the sun while he was still strong enough to enjoy it.

But if she did that, would she hasten his end? With nothing left to do, what else remained but to grow old and die?

She sighed and said again, “You’re not old.”

CHAPTER THREE

Faith didn’t want to spend the night with David. She loved her boyfriend, and she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, but…

But did she?

She sighed and pressed her head to her steering wheel. “Ugh!” Turk nudged her, and she sat up and said, “I’m all right. I just have a lot on my mind right now.” What else is new?

It was just too much. Everything was changing all at once. She was a half-step away from being shuttled off to a desk for doing her job well. Turk was a few weeks away from being put to pasture and left to grow old and die. She had put away one serial killer who was obsessed with her, only for another killer to pop up out of nowhere just as obsessed with her. And now he wasn't allowed in her own home, and her own home wouldn't even be her own home a few months from now because she would be living full-time with a man for the first time in her life.

She loved David. He was kind and sweet and funny and drop-dead gorgeous. He loved Turk, and Turk practically worshipped him. He had put up with Faith’s moods and her stubbornness and the dangers her job posed to both of them. He had stuck with her through all of that. She should want to be with him. She should want to spend the rest of her life with him.

But…

But he didn’t understand her. He accepted her, and she thought that would be enough, but it just wasn’t possible for a civilian to understand the life of a law enforcement agent, particularly one whose career had been spent dealing with the most violent and depraved people on Earth.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t talk to him. It was just that when she did, all she would get was sympathy and affection.

God, that sounded so horrible. Like he was a bad person for sympathizing with her. It was just… well, she couldn’t talk to him. She could talk to him, and he would listen, but he wouldn't understand the feelings she had when she looked at an innocent body or interviewed a man who thought it was funny to watch his victims bleed to death.

Of all the people she knew, there was only one person who truly understood her. She felt horribly guilty for calling him now, but she had to talk to someone, and he was the only person she knew who would get what she had to say.

She dialed the number. A moment later, Michael replied, “If this is a case, then go fuck yourself. If this is a personal emergency, then get David to—”

“I need to talk to you,” she blurted out. Considering the doubts she was just having, she didn’t want to hear Michael joke about her and David being intimate.

“Okay. Do you want to come over?”

Heat climbed Faith’s cheeks. She definitely didn’t want to see Michael’s wife, Ellie, after the thoughts she’d been having.

Thinking of Ellie only increased her guilt. She didn't view Michael in a romantic light, but it still felt wrong to think of the two of them as the closest people in each other's lives. She almost said never mind, but she really did need to talk to someone, or she'd spiral out of control.

“Umm… a lot of it is work-related. Buy you a donut?”

He sighed theatrically. “Considering what you’re making me miss out on, you’re buying me two donuts.”

Her face flamed. “I really didn’t need to hear that.”

“And for the price of a cup of coffee to wash down those donuts, you won’t have to.”

“Find me a steak restaurant, and I’ll buy you a Kobe filet paired with a Macallan Fifty. Just change the subject, please.”

“Is it weird that I’d rather have donuts and coffee?”

“Yes.”

“Huh. Well, I’m weird then. I’ll meet you at Rafferty’s.”

“That place is still open?”

“I’m ashamed for you that you have to ask. See you in ten minutes.”

He hung up, and Faith started the car. When she looked into her rearview mirror, she saw that she was grinning. She felt…

Oh, to Hell with it. She felt happy. She’d deal with whatever else came later.

***

Special Agent Michael Prince, Faith’s partner for the entirety of her eleven years in the Bureau, had filled out a little after turning forty a year ago, but he was still handsome in his own boyish way. He wore his signature outfit of a trench coat and a fedora, both utterly unnecessary and completely ridiculous but also totally endearing.

“Boston cream pie and a maple bar,” he said. “And if there’s anything in my cup but coffee, I will throw it in your face and willingly allow Turk to eat me as punishment.”

She laughed. “Good to see you too, buddy.”

“I just saw you like twelve hours ago. It’s not like we’ve been apart for months.”

“What can I say? I have abandonment issues.”

“You certainly have issues.”

They ordered their coffee and donuts and took a table in the far corner of the shop. Rafferty’s was a hole-in-the-wall place, and at this time of night, it was empty except for the two of them.

“So talk to me,” Michael said. “What’s going on?”

Faith took a deep breath. “Oh boy, where to begin? Oh yeah, my neighbor’s body was propped up against my door when I got home tonight.”

Michael nearly spit out his coffee. He set the cup down and choked out, “What?”

She gave him a tight smile. “Yep. Eleanor. She was seventy-eight, and she always gave Turk treats. Someone beat the crap out of her, slit her throat, gouged her eyes out and left them in her palms staring right up at me. Guess what was written on her blouse in her own blood?”

His eyes widened. “Oh shit. Not the same guy who killed the clerk from the electronics shop.”

“If not, then there’s a cult of people who like fucking with me. This message read, ARE YOU LOOKING NOW, FAITH?”

“Jesus.” He shook his head, then his face hardened. “Well, they screwed up. I take it you are looking now.”

She sighed and picked at her donut, also a maple bar. “No. I was, but Desrouleaux and Chavez showed up and boxed me out. Sent me to the office for the Boss to rip me a new one.”

“Because of the publicity thing?”

She nodded.

Michael sighed. “Well, that’s bullshit.”

“Yep. That’s what I said.”

“What did the Boss say?”

She shrugged. “Same as always. A canned response about how the brass doesn’t care about bullshit followed by a lecture about how hard he’s trying to look out for me, and can’t I just be a good girl for a little while.”

He glanced at her coffee cup and picked it up, setting it out of her reach. “I don’t know why you came to talk to me. You know I agree with him, right?”

She sighed. “Did you move my coffee so I didn’t throw it in your face?"

“Yep. Should I move it farther? Can you reach from there?”

She chuckled. “I get what the Boss is saying, but it sucks. Some other wacko is coming after me, and I get told to go into hiding. I get that I can’t be in the news but won’t fleeing the area right after my neighbor gets murdered be worse publicity?”

“I don’t think you’re getting much bad press anymore,” Michael replied. “They stopped digging into the skeletons in your closet. It’s more just a lot of speculation about you and West.”

“What kind of speculation?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Tell me.”

He sighed. “Well, a lot of them are really leaning into this being a sex thing. Some people are suggesting that you two bumped uglies during your sessions, and—”

“Oh my God!”

“I know. I know. It’s horrible.”

She pressed her hands to her forehead and groaned. “Ugh! This is the worst night ever!”

Michael shrugged. “I mean… the maple bars are fresh, so it can’t be that bad.” She glared at him, and he lifted his hands again. “Just saying.”

She sighed and sat up straight. Turk laid his head in her lap, and she looked down at him. “And they want Turk to retire too.”

“That’s just policy, right?” Michael asked. “He’s turning nine, so that means he’s due.”

“Age is just a number,” she said, scratching Turk behind his ears and smiling at the way his eyes half-closed.

“Except when it isn’t.”

She frowned. “He’s not old, Michael. Look at him. I mean, he’s as fast and strong as he always was. He’s been doing a lot of strenuous stuff, and he’s fine. He still has the energy of a puppy. No arthritis, no fatigue, no poor eyesight or hearing, no dietary issues. If he didn’t have a little gray on his muzzle, you wouldn’t be able to tell he’s nine years old.”

“You haven’t thought about taking him home as a pet?” Michael asked.

“I’ve thought about it, but when would I see him? He’d spend all day at home with David and only see me mornings and evenings when I’m not on a case. It would be like he moved in with his dad, and I became the every other weekend parent.”

“But you’d be living with David,” he pointed out. “It’d be more like he has two parents who work.”

Faith looked away and pursed her lips.

“Ah,” Michael said. “Cold feet about the move again, huh?”

She hesitated before answering. She wasn’t sure how wise it was to share all of her thoughts on the subject with Michael. The two of them had dated for a year. Their relationship had ended before Faith met David, but it still felt weird to share relationship troubles with him. But he had Ellie, so it wasn’t like he was her hot ex she was complaining about her current boyfriend to. He was her friend, helping her get through some difficult personal struggles.

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“You’ve got to figure that out, Faith. You’ve been with him for over a year. Either you two are taking the next step, or you’re moving on.”

“Why can’t we be enjoying the life we have now? Would it really be so bad if we were just the type of boyfriend and girlfriend who date but live separately?”

“For you? No. It’s nice, low-maintenance fun, and I can see you being fulfilled by that. For David? Well, you know the answer to that."

Her shoulders slumped. “Yeah.”

“You’re not a bad person if you decide David’s not the one. You’re not a bad person if you decide there isn’t a ‘the one.’ But if you string David along because you’re too afraid to make a tough decision, then you’re being pretty shitty to him.”

She frowned at him. “This is what I get for talking to you about my problems.”

“Yeah, you’d think you’d have learned by now.”

His phone buzzed. He pulled it from his coat pocket and sighed. “Son of a bitch.”

“The Boss?”

“Yeah. You want to do me a favor and shoot my phone so I have an excuse not to return his call?”

She covered her mouth so the Boss wouldn’t hear her laugh when Michael answered.

“Prince, I have a case for you.”

“Of course you do,” Michael said glumly.

“Yeah, yeah, your life’s so hard. It’s in Nelchina, Alaska.”

“Alaska?”

“Yeah. You know, the really big state next to Canada?”

“Yeah, I…” Michael sighed. “Forget it. When do we leave?”

“As soon as you get your ass to the airport and purchase a flight. Screenshot the ticket and send it to me to expense it.”

“You got it.” He looked at Faith. “Should I take Bold?”

“No. Bold should take some goddamned time off so she doesn’t end up looking like me when she’s my age. But since she won’t, and since I need her to not be around her apartment for a while, yes. Take her. Oh yeah, her neighbor was killed. Same freak who left her a message at the electronics store.”

“I heard.”

“You heard? Is she there?”

“Hi, Boss,” Faith said.

The Boss sighed. “Should I plan to expense tickets for you and Turk too?”

She looked down at Turk and smiled. “What do you say, Turk? Wanna catch a bad guy?”

Turk barked enthusiastically. Faith grinned and said, “He says yes.”

The Boss sighed again. “It’s like raising kids only more stressful. All right. Get your asses to the airport.”

He hung up, and Michael groused, “He’s paying for first class then. That’s his price for pulling me away from—”

“Coffee,” Faith interrupted. “Remember? I bought you coffee, so I don’t need to hear it.”

Michael tapped on his phone for a minute, then said, "Well, he'll hear about it when he rips me a new one for the first-class tickets I just bought from Alaska Airlines."

Her eyes widened. “Jesus! Those are like five thousand dollars each!”

“No, just five thousand total. I’ll be fine. Besides, if the Anchorage guys are the ones that want us, the Boss will probably make them pay.” He stood. “Take the coffee to go. The flight leaves in an hour.”

Faith grinned and followed Michael outside. She felt a little guilty for her excitement, but this was the best thing that could have happened to her right now. She didn’t have to think about all of the crap in her life right now. She could focus on the case and leave all of the rest for later.

A little voice inside her head reminded her that she was only delaying the inevitable. Sooner or later, she’d have to deal with the issues she was running from now.

But not tonight. For now, that was enough.

CHAPTER FOUR

It was a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Anchorage to Nelchina, the small town where the victim lived. The two of them had slept on the flight. When they woke, the Boss had sent them the details of the case, and Faith reviewed them now as Michael drove the rental truck.

“The victim is Ethan Holloway, forty-two. Divorced, no kids. He was found when an emergency signal from his satellite phone alerted authorities that he hadn’t used the device in twelve hours. I guess that’s a safety feature you can program into some of these phones.”

“How was he killed?”

“Pickaxe.”

Michael grimaced. “Ouch. Was there a struggle?”

“PDs not sure. It looks like this case is a lot like a case from last week where a woman was killed in a cabin in the wilderness with similar injuries.”

“Details?”

“The Boss says local PD will give them to us. I guess he got the call right before he called you. PD’s weirded out by the whole thing. They can’t find a sign of anyone else there but the victim.”

“Suicide?”

“The pickaxe severed his brainstem from above and behind him. So no.”

“Ouch. That’s… creepy.”

“It gets creepier. The scene isn’t actually in the town of Nelchina. It’s in the mountains twelve miles west. Ethan Holloway has a cabin there that’s really hard to get to. Nelchina PD’s going to have to airdrop us in.”

“Airdrop? As in parachute?”

“No, ladder.”

Michael sighed. “Lovely. I no longer like Alaska.”

She rolled her eyes and patted his shoulder. “You’ll be okay.”

“So this second victim. Or first victim, I mean. What do we know about her?”

“Valerie North, thirty-eight. She was found with her head severed by a wire.”

“God. What happened to just shooting or stabbing people?”

“The normal cops handle that stuff. We get the psychos.”

He chuckled. “Yay us. How does someone get her head severed by a wire?”

“It looks like someone rigged a snare in her cabin.”

“A snare?”

“Yeah. It’s… well, it’s basically what I just described. A trip wire that tightens when an animal steps on a trigger. It snaps shut around the animal’s leg, back or neck. It’s a tool used by survivalists to hunt for meat.”

“And someone rigged it in her cabin?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“So definitely a homicide.”

“Most definitely. Two homicides.”

Michael sighed. “Well, I guess I signed up for this job.”

She grinned. “Oh, come on. It’s an adventure. We’re in the Alaskan wilderness hunting a dangerous hunter, pitting our wits against nature and evil at the same time. It’ll be fun.”

He frowned at her. “What’s gotten into you? You’re never this giddy over a case.”

She shrugged. “Just trying to make the best of it. This asshole would have killed these two people no matter what I did. But I’m happy that I’m going to bring him to justice.”

“Well, when you put it that way.”

***

It was after ten in the morning local time when the helicopter lowered the three of them along with a police detective down to the grass in front of a simple wooden cabin. Michael held on grimly as he descended the ladder and sighed with relief when his feet reached solid ground. Turk was no less grim as he descended in the basket they used to rescue stuck animals.

The helicopter moved off as soon as the last of them was down, and soon, the chop of the rotors was replaced with the silence of the Alaskan wilderness.

“All right,” Faith said to the detective. “Talk to me. What do we have so far?”

The officer was a middle-aged man with a husky build and a bushy handlebar mustache who introduced himself as Wyatt. He put his hands on his hips and affected a passable Midwestern drawl when he replied. “Well, the body’s gone already. Shipped it to Anchorage so the coroner could take a look. Just got that report back an hour before y’all showed up. Cause of death is what we told your boss. Pickaxe struck Mr. Holloway at the base of the skull and severed his brainstem.”

“And the blow was delivered from above and behind?”

“Mmhmm. Come on, I’ll show you.”

He led the three of them toward the cabin. They stepped inside, and Wyatt pointed to a pin with a red flag punched into the roof of the cabin. "Haven't had a chance to search everywhere yet, but I can tell you what we found so far."

“You haven’t had a chance to search?” Faith asked. “This murder occurred yesterday, correct?”

“We found the body yesterday, yes, but we’re spread pretty thin. We had some calls to take care of in Anchorage, so we had to get the body out of here ASAP and save the full analysis for later.”

Faith frowned. “And meanwhile, the killer could have erased or taken the evidence.”

Wyatt’s jaw tightened. “Like I said, ma’am, we’re spread pretty thin here.”

Faith decided she would have to let this go for now. This was a serious mistake on the part of the police, but there was nothing she could do to change it now. Better to learn what they could now and address this in their formal report. “All right. Go ahead and show us what you know.”

Wyatt nodded and pointed at the ceiling. "That there is where the handle of the axe was tied. It operated on a simple hinge. There was chicken wire that ran under the head of the axe here"—he pointed at another pin—" and went to the wall here."

Another red flag showed where the wire ran to the floor, and a final one indicated the tripwire Ethan would have stepped on. “Chicken wire was painted the same color as the wood so it would blend in,” Wyatt explained. “Holloway stepped on the wire, and the axe swung down and caught him right here.”  He turned around and tapped the hollow of his skull. “Killed him instantly.”

“That’s a silver lining, I guess,” Michael said.

“Was anything stolen?” Faith asked.

“Doesn’t look like it. All he had on him was a crossbow and a backpack with some survival gear: satellite phone, fire starting kit, a knife, a compass, a first aid kit. Killer didn’t take any of those.”

"Didn't take the satellite phone either," Michael said. "Where was that phone?"

“On Mr. Holloway’s person.”

“The killer wasn’t here when the murders were committed, though,” Faith said. “So he wouldn’t have been here to take any of Ethan’s belongings.”

“Looks like he never came back for them, though,” Wyatt said. “That’s the part that’s strange.”

“Not so strange,” Faith replied. “It just means that the motive for the homicide wasn’t theft.”

Wyatt nodded. “Kind of a cowardly way to do it,” he said. “Setting a trap and hiding somewhere instead of having it out man to man.”

“Killers are cowards a lot of the time,” Michael opined.

“They are,” Faith agreed. “And sometimes they just don’t think like you and I do. We would consider it cowardly to kill from a distance. But if our killer thinks of himself as a hunter, then he probably thinks of this as a victory. The smart hunter defeated the dumb animal.”

“Like that movie about the guy who hunts people?” Wyatt asked.

“I haven’t seen it,” Faith replied. “But sure.”

Turk barked suddenly, and the three humans turned. He had his nose pointed under the raised cot that served as a bed. The cot was covered by a bearskin that hung to the floor in front of Turk. He looked intently at the skin. Wyatt walked over, and Faith called, “Careful. Don’t touch anything yet.”

He stopped, and Faith moved slowly to Turk. “Hey, boy. What do you smell? What’s over there?”

Turk looked at her, then looked back at the bearskin. Faith stepped to the foot of the cot and stooped down. There was a sawed-off shotgun balanced on a tripod underneath the cot. She shined her light under the bed, and the beam reflected off of a thin filament that looped around the shotgun’s trigger. The filament was attached to the bearskin.

"Okay, everyone. Back up. There's a shotgun rigged to the bearskin. If you move it, it'll take out your legs."

Michael whistled. “Damn. This guy had a plan B.”

“And maybe a plan C and a plan D,” Faith added. ”Let’s look around for any other traps. Carefully.”

Michael looked around nervously. “Do we really need to? We can’t just assume that overpreparing for his remote murders is part of his profile?”

“I’m a little more concerned with not seeing one and accidentally tripping it,” Faith replied.

Michael shivered. “Yeah. Okay.”

The four of them scoured the cabin. Wyatt checked the fireplace and found nothing. Michael shone his light on the ceiling, but no wires or weapons reflected back at him. Turk and Faith walked outside and looked through the grass that covered the small plateau. Faith was checking underneath some rocks on the upper edge of the plateau when Turk yelped and leaped into the air.

Faith rushed toward him. “Turk? Are you all right?”

Turk barked in alarm and ran in a half-circle, pushing into her legs and shoving her to the ground. She landed using a breakfall technique she’d learned in the Marine Corps, but the fall still jarred her.

“Faith?” Michael called. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Faith called. “Turk bumped into me. I think he was trying to keep me from stepping on something.”

Michael shined his light on the spot Turk had prevented Faith from reaching and whistled. “Yeah. I’d say so.”

Faith got to her feet and followed his flashlight beam. It gleamed off of a thick iron bear trap.

“This guy really hated Ethan Holloway,” Michael said.

“And Valerie North,” Faith said. She reached down and scratched Turk behind the ear. “Good boy.”

“How long does it take to set something like this up?” Michael asked.

“Something like what?” Wyatt asked, walking toward the three of them.

Faith pointed at the bear trap. Wyatt chuckled mirthlessly. “Talk about overkill. To answer your question, the bear trap shouldn’t take long. These modern traps are pretty easy to set up. Maybe five minutes at the most. As for the other two? That requires a hell of a lot of precision, especially for the shotgun. Our killer was here for a couple of hours at least.”

Faith looked back at the cabin and imagined the killer carefully setting his traps, anticipating the places his prey was likely to walk and hiding his weapons, like a viper. No, not like a viper. Like a hunter.

And like any predator, he would hunt until he ran out of prey.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Do you think the killer’s targeting people?” Michael asked, “Or do you think he’s just rigging cabins and hoping people stumble onto them?”

“These are private cabins,” Faith replied. “So I’m leaning to the former.”

They were at Valerie North’s cabin now. Like Ethan Holloway’s cabin, it was spartan. It had no electricity or running water and no modern conveniences of any kind. It was larger than the cabin and had a wood-burning stove made of stone with a clay chimney that extended through the roof, but other than that, it was just as simple as the other one.

"That's not necessarily true," Wyatt corrected. "It's true that private citizens build these cabins, but this is public use land. You can't claim ownership of it. Strictly speaking, you can't build dwellings on public-use land either, but they get around that rule by claiming that since there's no electricity and running water, these are temporary shelters. The Park Service lets them get away with it because they'd rather not find people dead out here from exposure. They still do, but this means they find less of them. The point is, just about anyone could use this shelter if they were of a mind to it and could get here. It's not common out in this part of the park, but that's because people aren't common in this part of the park."

Faith could understand why. If anything, Valerie’s cabin was even harder to reach than Ethan’s. It sat atop a sheer rock bluff underneath a glacial plateau. A trickle of clean water from the glacier collected in a hewn stone pool just outside of the house. To get there, the helicopter had dropped them off in front of a narrow and steep path that rose a hundred feet from a larger rock face. The four of them had to climb up, a task that only Turk handled easily. Faith wasn’t looking forward to the journey down the bluff.

“He’d have to be an outdoorsman too,” Michael said. “Or outdoorswoman. These are not easy places to reach.”

"He'd have to know where the cabins were, too," Faith replied. "There's too much land out here for him to accidentally stroll up to multiple cabins and rig traps."

“Are there a lot of people who come out here and do survival stuff like this?” Michael asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Wyatt said. “Alaska’s one of the most popular destinations for that sort of thing. We have—as Miss Bold pointed out—a lot of unspoiled land. We also have a very robust first responder network, so if you do get lost or hurt out here, we’re more likely to find you.”

“Or find a body,” Michael added.

Faith frowned at the rude comment, but Wyatt didn’t seem offended. He replied with dead seriousness. “Or find a body.”

“How did you find Valerie North’s body?” Faith asked.

“Her friend called us about a week ago saying she hadn’t checked in for the day. She was supposed to call us if that happened. She gave us some GPS coordinates that Valerie had given her. That led to this cabin, and… well, we found her.”

Faith looked around the cabin. There were multiple red pins throughout the large single room. The police apparently had better luck finding the traps here. “Walk me through what you saw.”

Wyatt pointed to a large dark stain in the middle of the room. “That’s where her body was. As you can tell, it was completely exsanguinated by the time we found it. The head rolled all the way here to the stove and came to rest against the left side right here. We think there was a fire going at the time of death because the head was burnt severely on the side that came to rest.”

Michael groaned and turned away. Faith didn’t feel nauseous, but she could understand it. The image of an innocent woman’s head searing against a hot stone while her body bled out was a rough one. She’d spent her entire career confronting such images, but it never got easier.

“How did the snare work?”

“So that’s the part that we’re trying to figure out. I mean… we know what happened, but we don’t know how the killer got it to work the way it did.”

“Let’s start with what happened,” Faith said.

“Well, what happened is she stepped on a tripwire here.” He pointed at a red pin stuck in the ground behind the dark stain in the floor. “When she stepped on that tripwire, somehow a loop of chicken wire descended from the ceiling suspended by two hinged rods here and here.” He pointed at two red pins about eight feet apart on the ceiling. “Once the rods reached full extension, springs released that caused them to snap back up toward the ceiling, stretching the rope taut instantly. The wire went through her neck like a cheese slicer.”

Michael groaned again. “Christ. And this happened fast enough that there was no time to react?”

“We can only assume so. We weren’t able to replicate the weapon’s action. It was, pardon me for using the term, very sophisticated.”

“How tall was Valerie North?” Faith asked.

“Five-foot-nine,” Wyatt replied.

Faith thought a moment. That was relatively average height for a man, tall for a woman. It was possible that the trap could have been meant for anyone, but it seemed like an awful lot of work for no guarantee of success. “I think he targeted them. I think he designed his traps specifically to work on these particular victims.”

“Have you talked to their families?” Michael asked. “Their friends?”

Wyatt chuckled. "This is a small town country. Most of the people that live out here fall into two camps: people with family in Anchorage or people with family out of state. Ethan and Valerie were the latter."

“What about friends?”

“We’re working on that,” Wyatt replied. “We don’t have anything just yet.”

“You haven’t checked social media?”

"Neither of them were active." Faith and Michael looked at each other, and Wyatt explained, "This is a different country out here. People live differently. We're so far away from everything else that social relationships out here are a lot more like things were back in the old days. You talk to people. You see them face to face. You help your neighbors out, help your community out. You don't have friends from a distance. Maybe a little bit in the cities: Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau, but in the country, you have to rely on the people who are right there in front of you. Or you have to rely on yourself. Ethan and Valerie were the kind of people who relied on themselves."

“In other words, they were the perfect target,” Faith summarized.

“Yeah. Looks that way. We’re talking to people. Nelchina’s a small town. Everyone knows each other. Someone will have something for us. We just have to be patient.”

“In my experience, Wyatt, killers like this count on patience. The slower we move, the faster they move.”

Wyatt met Faith’s eyes. “We have a saying up here. The worm eats what the eagle misses. Believe me, Special Agent, I have as great of a sense of urgency to solve this case as you do, but trying to find information as fast as possible only means that we don’t notice the crucial details. In a haystack as big as Alaska, we can’t afford to miss details.”

Faith frowned. Wyatt was right, but it frustrated her to be stuck, even if it was only the beginning of the case. Killers moved so quickly these days. The worm might eat what the eagle misses, but while the worm gorged itself, the sparrow could swoop in out of nowhere and tear the worm from the Earth.

There was no point in arguing, though. Being angry wouldn’t make anyone move faster, and it wouldn’t make the evidence more noticeable. “All right. Then let’s look at details. Besides the snare, are there any more traps you’re aware of?”

“No, ma’am, but with your dog here to help, we might have better luck.”

“Then let’s start looking.”

The team split up to look for evidence of more traps. Faith and Turk moved carefully along the narrow ring of stone surrounding the cabin. With no grass here, any traps laid would be easier to see. Unfortunately, the killer seemed to have realized the same thing, and they didn’t find any evidence.

Once, when they passed the small glacial waterfall, Turk barked and stared up the nearly sheer cliff face. “See something, boy?” Faith asked.

She looked up the face but didn’t find anything that could have piqued Wolf’s interest. “What is it?”

Turk whined and looked back at Fath, then back up the cliff. Faith followed his eyes, but whatever Turk picked up on, it wasn’t noticeable to her. “Do you smell something?”

Turk looked up at the cliff face one last time. Then he hesitantly moved away, dipping his head in the negative. Faith kept her eyes to the top of the cliff for a while longer, then followed Turk away.

The men stepped outside of the cabin just as Faith and Turk reached them. “Anything?” she asked them.

“We found one of the springs to the snare mechanism,” Michael said. “It looks like an ATV coil spring.”

That could be something. “Any thoughts on the brand?”

“Something OEM. I’ll send it to the crime lab in Anchorage and have them take a look. If we’re lucky, we’ll get fingerprints. If we’re less lucky, we’ll figure out what make and model of ATV this came off of.”

“Are ATVs popular out here?” Faith asked Wyatt.

“No, not really. There isn’t a lot of vehicle accessible wilderness, and what’s there is better suited for trucks and SUVs.”

“That’s good,” Faith said. “It means there won’t be a lot of people with ATVs. Gotta hand it to you, Wyatt. Slowing down was the better choice.”

“Thank you, ma’am. Did you and Turk find anything?”

Faith looked back at the cliff face by the waterfall. “I’m not sure. Turk stopped by the glacier for a moment. It looked like he was onto something, but then he lost the scent.”

“Hmm,” Wyatt replied. He looked at the cliff face, then said, “I wonder if the killer came from above instead.”

“Could he climb down that?” Michael asked.

“He’d have to be a very high-level climber, but it’s not impossible.”

“How would he get to the other side?” Faith asked.

“That’s the real question. I don’t know of any safe path that would take you up the other side of the mountain. Even if there is, you’d have to cross the glacier to get here. That alone would take four days to do safely.”

“What about unsafely?”

Wyatt chuckled. "Well, unsafely depends on how skilled, how lucky and how unsafe you want to be. I've heard of people climbing Mount Everest naked, and I've heard of professional hunters stepping on a porcupine and dying from an infected cut. It's just hard to tell."

Faith pressed her lips together and looked behind at their relatively easy climb. "We'll save that question for later," she said. "What we know is that he set multiple traps for Ethan Holloway and one very elaborate trap for Valerie North. I find that odd. More traps increase the likelihood of success."

“He was successful with Valerie,” Michael reminded her.

“Yes, he was.” She cocked her head. “That means he knew his victims. He put failsafes in place for Ethan but not for Valerie because… that’s what we need to find out.”

She turned to Wyatt. “You can take us back now. Is there a place to stay in Nelchina?”

“There might be room at the lodge in town. I’ll find out for you.”

“Thank you. I want to look into Ethan Holloway’s and Valerie North’s backgrounds. Whoever committed these murders not only had to be a capable outdoorsman himself, but he also had to have an intimate knowledge of his victims’ habits.”

“So we don’t like the crazy opportunistic hunter hypothesis?” Michael asked.

“Oh no,” Faith said. She thought of the snare snapping shut around Valerie’s neck and the pickaxe burying itself in Ethan’s head. “No, this was personal.”

She dwelled on that thought as they headed to Nelchina. It took a special kind of hatred to kill someone this violently. Usually, this violence was accompanied with insanity or rage, sometimes both.

But to lay a trap for someone took time and patience. They were after a very different kind of killer this time.

And they were hunting him in his own backyard.

CHAPTER SIX

The hunter gripped the steak with his tongs and flipped it over to sear the other side. He was rewarded with a loud sizzle and the pleasant aroma of the fat melting within the meat. He’d taken the buck the night before just outside of his cabin. The meat was some of the best he’d ever taken from elk, sweeter and more tender than the moose he’d caught last month.

When he finished with the sear, he lifted the steak to the upper rack of the grill and left it to cook. As he checked the carrots and potatoes in the stockpot on the other side of the long, wood-burning grill, he reflected on his other hunts.

He’d been worried about Ethan. Valerie was a superior survivalist, but she was also predictable. He knew the exact steps she took every time she visited her cabin, even down to where her feet would fall. That’s why it was so easy to place the snare and why he didn’t bother with a bear trap or a firearm. Well, that and the terrain and cabin layout wasn’t conducive to another trap.

Valerie’s habits were built from long weeks living off of the land. She had a deep understanding of how to set herself up for long-term survival and that meant obtaining her resources in a specific order. Shelter first, then fire, then water, then protein, then vitamins and nutrients. It was easy to know the basics of all of that but very difficult to know how to apply that understanding in the real world.

Of course, she took it to an extreme, planning every single detail out down to the moment. That rigidity, that unwillingness to accept different points of view, or anything that differed even the slightest amount from “the way things are done,” was ultimately what got her killed.

It was so easy to lure her out there, so easy to convince her that her estranged lover had reconsidered her life and wanted to get back with her and live the way “nature intended.” Once the message was sent, it was only a matter of time.

But Ethan was more difficult. He was more of a casual outdoorsman, the kind of person who might travel for a weekend but might also show up out of nowhere somewhere hundreds of miles away or who might decide to overnight a hike. More importantly to the killer, he might show up to his cabin with a backpack full of rations, a radio, a satellite phone, a gun, and on one notable occasion, a woman. Or he might show up with the clothes on his back and a knife and live off the land.

He never lived off of the land for long. He was a reasonable hunter, but he wasn’t a survivalist. He didn’t have the intuition that a true outdoorsman had. That also worried the hunter. Valerie could be counted on to leave for weeks, so no one would miss her if she left. Meanwhile, if Ethan was gone for more than a few days, plenty of people would start to wonder.

That couldn’t be helped, though. He had to get his revenge. They had earned this, and if the hunter was anything, he was fair.

He took the steak off of the grill and cut into it. The juices ran deliciously over his knife, and steam rose, filling his nostrils with the heady aroma of prepared meat.

Medium-rare. Perfect.

He left the meat to rest and checked the vegetables. Soft with just the slightest hint of crunch. He took the pot off of the grill and carefully drained the water into the basin. Steam filled the air, and the lye bubbled and frothed as it reacted with the water, dissolving the soil and the blood and rendering his clothing clean again.

He smiled as he watched this. It was like cleansing his past. It was as though it never existed.

He had a few more stains to take care of. The next one would be the leader of the little group that had decided to foolishly reject the hunter’s contribution. He’d silenced the loudest voices calling for his dismissal. Now he would silence the person who by her own silence had allowed those voices to triumph.

This one would be easy, too. She'd dug her own grave. All that remained was to convince her to step inside of it.

He sent the pictures, and following those, he sent the warning. Then he sat down to eat.

The meat was as tender and juicy as the first steak he’d eaten the day before. The elk were wonderful this season. The warm summer combined with the unusually cold winter had left the meat sweet and soft and well-seasoned. He wondered idly if bear would be similarly tender. He preferred black bear when possible. They ate more berries and less meat. That made their meat sweeter than brown bear meat. They were also harder to find during winter. Maybe when this was over, he’d take a trip inland and see if he could find any stray young males who’d eschewed hibernation in favor of gleaning what the larger bears had left behind in their slumber.

His phone buzzed. He read the message and smiled. The trap was laid, the prey was lured. Now, once more, all he had to do was wait.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The lodge in Nelchina was a quaint wooden structure with small but comfortable rooms. The nearest restaurant was in Glenallen, twenty miles east, so the agents stopped by the Nelchina General Store for food to make at the hotel instead. The sun had set hours ago, and in small towns like Nelchina, that meant businesses were closed and people were home for the evening, even though sunset occurred several hours earlier in Alaska in January than it did in Philadelphia.

Wyatt had to return to Anchorage with the helicopter, so the agents were on their own for the evening. They ate their microwaved meals quickly and without relish and drank the coffee the hotel provided with considerably more relish as they touched base after the first day of their investigation.

“Bullet points,” Michael began. “The killer’s a survivalist and probably a hunter.”

“Which is just about the same as saying a resident of rural Alaska,” Faith countered.

“True. But we also know that he had a personal grudge against the victims. At least, we strongly suspect that.”

“Considering the effort it would take to lay different traps for different people, I’m pretty confident in that,” Faith confirmed. “I also think that the killer was close with them at one point. He might still be close.”

“I agree,” Michael said. “He knew where their cabins were, and Wyatt made it clear that wasn’t likely.”

Faith leaned back in her chair and sipped her coffee. “What’s your impression of Wyatt?”

Michael thought a moment. “He’s not happy to have outsiders here.”

"I got that impression, too," Faith replied. "He's been perfectly polite and helpful on the surface, but he's been a little vague with his details."

“Yeah,” Michael agreed. “I don’t buy that bit about friendships living off of handshakes and conversations. I know people from Alaska, and they have internet and cell phones just like everyone else. Hell, we have internet here in a town of what, fifty? And each time we point out an opportunity in the investigation, we get some corny response about how ‘things are different ‘round these parts.’ Seems like a nice guy, but I don’t think he’s going to be helpful to us.”

“Do you think he’ll interfere with us? If we expose skeletons in the town’s history?”

Michael thought for another moment, then shook his head. “He’s an Anchorage native. They’re a decent-sized city. He might feel loyalty to the state, but I don’t think he would feel a need to protect the reputation of a little mountain town a hundred fifty miles away. I think he just wants to do things his way and doesn’t like that he’s not the shot-caller.”

“He wasn’t wrong about moving slowly to find details, though,” Faith replied, playing devil’s advocate. We did find more evidence when we slowed down.”

“I’m not saying he’s going to make things harder for us,” Michael replied. “I just think we’re going to need to do the legwork ourselves. If we use the locals, it’ll need to be for mundane tasks like go talk to this person or go find out where this ATV spring came from. Basically, what we’re already doing but without the expectation that he’ll take initiative with that information or that he’ll get us those results without extensive follow up. In short, we’re on our own.”

She scoffed. “What else is new?”

“Exactly.”

She sipped more of her coffee and sighed. "Okay. So we have a survivalist hunter who was once close with our victims and used that to his advantage to set up traps to kill them. I'm leaning toward coward since he used traps instead of direct attacks, but the hunter outsmarting the prey angle can work too. If we want to learn more, we need to find out who Ethan Holloway and Valerie North are associated with. We should start by looking at social media. Wyatt says they weren't active, but I'll bet we can find something helpful there."

“Agreed. I’m going to make more coffee first, though.”

“Already? You just had a cup.”

“Do you anticipate sleeping before we find a new lead?”

“Good point.”

“Yep.”

Michael made the coffee while Faith looked up Ethan’s and Valerie’s social media accounts. It wasn’t encouraging at first. Wyatt might harbor some resentment at the arrival of two outsiders to take over his investigation, but he wasn’t lying when he said the two of them weren’t active. Valerie North had social media accounts, but she didn’t appear to have ever used them.

Ethan had once been very active on social media, but that ended abruptly two years ago. His last post read, “No point in connecting with people anymore. Those who say they love you only lie to you.” This accompanied a notification that his status had changed from married to divorced. He’d never actually deleted his social media accounts, but he hadn’t been active since then.

Still, it was something to follow up on. “Michael, can you look up Carol Holloway please? Ethan’s wife of ten years. They split two years ago, and Ethan stopped being active on social media after that.”

“Got it. Any connection to Valerie?”

“Valerie doesn’t seem to have ever posted on social media,” Faith said. “Looks like Wyatt wasn’t pulling our chain there.”

“Jeez. I guess I was wrong to assume.”

Faith rested her hand on her chin and looked pensively at the screen. Nearly all of their previous cases had been in proximity to cities. Even the few exceptions had city-like amenities. This area did too since they were fairly close to Anchorage, but Anchorage was an island in a very extensive stretch of very sparsely populated land. To add to that, the culture of Alaska so far seemed very much to be one of self-reliance, as Wyatt had said. They had caught most of their killers so far by looking at how the killers’ actions impacted the friends and family of his victims. Without that visible impact, it would be difficult to find this killer.

“Stop biting your nails,” Michael scolded.

Faith pulled her hand away from her face and reddened slightly. “Sorry.”

“Have you been doing that again?”

“Not that I’ve noticed.”

“Well, you never noticed.”

Heat climbed further up Faith's cheeks. When she and Michael were together, he would always scold her for biting her nails. It was a nervous habit that flared up every few years, starting her first combat tour in Afghanistan.

It wasn’t a good sign that it was happening again. It meant that her stress was getting more difficult to handle, and her mind was compensating by falling back on old coping mechanisms.

“Okay, got her. Took a while because she’s not Cindy Holloway now. She’s Cindy Levinson. She split with Ethan and married a guy named Tucker Levinson, who also happened to be her boss for the last four years of her marriage.”

“Ouch. Also motive. Where do Cindy and Tucker live?”

“Miami.”

Her face fell. “I don’t suppose they’ve been out this way recently?”

“Nope. I have a picture dated two nights ago of the two of them in Dubai having cocktails on a restaurant in the Burj Khalifa.”

She sighed. “Well, shit.”

“I mean, that would be more of a motive for Ethan to kill Tucker than the other way around,” Michael said, “but we’ll keep looking.”

With social media a dead end, they checked public records first. That proved to be a slog as well. Alaska’s public records system was horrifically outdated, and every request seemed to take forever to process.

“Progress really is optional here,” Faith groused as she sipped her third cup of coffee.

“When your state has half the population of Philadelphia, you can get away with a slow-moving records system,” Michael replied. “I do wonder how many people just slip through the cracks up here.”

“Not Ethan and not Valerie,” Faith replied firmly. “They don’t slip through the cracks.”

She expected Turk to give his ordinary bark of solidarity, but when he didn’t, she turned to see him sleeping soundly next to the mattress. The single mattress.

“Um… did they not have double rooms?” she asked Michael.

“I didn’t think we’d sleep tonight,” Michael replied. “But I’m fine sleeping on the easy chair. I do that a lot at home.”

“I mean… we could sleep back-to-back.” He gave her a fishy look, and she shrugged. “Just saying.”

He smirked. “You afraid of bears?”

She rolled her eyes. “Change of plans. You can sleep outside.”

“Hell no. If anyone’s sleeping outside, you are. You’re skin and bones. Bears won’t want you. Meanwhile, I am a plump and luscious treat for the discerning bear.”

She giggled. “Plump and luscious?”

“Like a pound cake, honey. Here are the records. Anything specific we should be looking for?”

“Not yet. I just want to get to know the victims a little bit better.”

“Wonderful. You want Valerie or Ethan?”

“I’ll take Valerie this time.”

“Be my guest.”

He emailed her the records. They did have internet, but it was slow. While she waited for the documents to arrive, she looked back at Turk. In this light, she could see the gray in his muzzle more clearly. Her eyes traveled from there to the scar that ran from the left side of his forehead down his eye and across his lips. That wound had been left by Jethro Trammell. There was another scar—not visible now—where Franklin West had stabbed Turk in the side and a third high up on his ribs where a disturbed former Marine Corps medic had stabbed him as well.

He really had suffered a lot. Maybe the Boss was right. Maybe it would be better to give him a little bit of rest before he reached the end of his road.

Her computer chirped to let her know the emails had been received. She opened them and introduced herself to Valerie North.

She was born in Anchorage and lived there until she was twelve years old. She’d spent the following six years in Juneau, then returned to Anchorage for college. After graduation, she’d lived in Eureka Roadhouse, a small village a few miles west of Nelchina. She’d been there ever since.

As for a criminal record, there wasn’t any. A few traffic violations, one which had gone delinquent and led to a bench warrant that was dismissed without ever being enforced. And that was it. Nothing that suggested a lead Faith could follow to find out what happened to her. Just the basic vital statistics of a woman who had wanted to live apart from others and by all accounts succeeded in doing so.

“I’ve got something,” Michael said.

Her spirits jumped. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. It looks like Ethan Holloway once filed a civil suit against a company named Tundra Outfitters. It looks like a product quality issue, and they refused to make things right. Guess who was named as a witness for the complainant?”

Faith raised her eyebrow. “Might that be Valerie North?”

“It might be,” Michael replied. “It looks like the suit was settled out of court, but the details are sealed by the court. I could get a warrant to have those details released, but I think we have enough for our purposes.”

“Agree,” Faith said. “Let’s get an address for Tundra Outfitters and go talk to them. How long ago was this suit, by the way?”

“Seven months. Settled three months ago.”

“And now, three months later, the complainants are dead.”

“Hell of a coincidence.”

Michael looked them up and said, “Okay. I have an address in Glennallen. They open at eight tomorrow.”

“We’ll be there.”

The two agents showered quickly and dressed for bed. Long practice had given them experience in doing so without compromising each other’s modesty.

Michael was asleep almost immediately, but Faith lay awake a while longer. She had once been much like the victims: aloof and scornful of human connection. She couldn't imagine how hard it would be to face death, knowing you left behind no one who cared about you.

I care, she thought. I’ll fight for you two.

When she finished that thought, she was finally able to sleep.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Glennallen was a much larger community than Nelchina, but still tiny by Faith’s standards. The community consisted of a small cluster of homes and businesses just west of the junction between Alaska Highways One and Four.

Other than its greater size, the main cluster of Glennallen looked much like Nelchina. Old, faded buildings of wood and occasionally sheet metal lined the roads, faded signs announcing their wares to the public. The people looked much like the people of Nelchina too. Rugged, aloof, polite but mistrustful. They stared at the agents as they pulled into the parking lot of Tundra Outfitters, a small wooden building that advertised the sale of every wilderness need.

Turk went on high alert the moment he stepped out of the vehicle. He looked at the shop the way he had stared at the top of the shelf behind Valerie North’s cabin. Faith noted the reaction immediately.

They walked into the shop to find a heavyset man in a cowboy hat with a handgun in a belt holster leaning on the shop's counter, talking to a tall, wiry man in a gray polo shirt above khaki pants. The wiry man also carried a gun.

Turk growled softly when he saw the two of them. Faith resisted the urge to draw her own weapon, but she waited for Michael to casually walk to the other side of the shop and find a good line of sight to cover her in case things went south. The two men seemed to take no notice of them but continued their conversation, something about increased bear activity on the volcanic shield.

She waited for Michael to stop before calling to the two men. “Excuse me. I’m looking for Garrett Pines.”

The two men stopped and turned toward her. Their eyes were flat and hard. The heavyset man remained where he was with his elbows on the counter. The wiry man stepped aside so Faith could see his gun more clearly. Neither of them spoke. Turk growled more loudly this time, but that only prompted a brief chuckle from the heavyset man.

“I’ll rephrase,” Faith said. “I’m Special Agent Faith Bold of the FBI. The man standing in the corner over there is my partner, Special Agent Michael Prince. This is my K9 unit, Turk. I need to speak to Garrett Pines.”

The wiry man spoke. “Why?”

“Are you Garrett Pines?”

No answer. Faith resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Battles of wills like this were always pointless. They always ended with the person of interest agreeing to talk to them or getting dragged into custody and made to talk to them.

Then again, their persons of interest weren’t usually armed and in the company of other armed men.

“I need to speak to Garrett Pines regarding the murders of Valerie North and Ethan Holloway.”

That got a reaction from both men. The heavyset man’s eyes widened. The wiry man’s eyes narrowed.

“I’m Garrett Pines,” the wiry man said. “Why do you need to talk to me?”

“Would you like to have this conversation in front of your friend?” Faith asked.

After a brief pause, Garret said. “Go on ahead, Quint. I’ll see you later.”

Quint stood slowly, raising himself to his full height and resting his hand on his gun. Faith kept his eyes on Garrett as Quint walked slowly toward her. He stopped in front of her and waited for her to step aside. She kept her eyes on Garrett and didn’t move. After a moment, Turk growled. Quint chuckled and walked slowly around Faith on his way to the door.

When the door closed behind him, Garrett said. “If you wouldn’t mind flipping that open sign around to closed, I’d be happy to talk to you in my office.”

Faith obliged, then followed Garrett to the small back room of the shop. The “office” consisted of a small desk and a single chair, which Garrett took. Faith and Michael stood in front of him, Turk ahead of them.

“Do I need a lawyer?” Garrett asked.

“Did you kill Valerie North and Ethan Holloway?” Faith replied.

“No.”

“Then I don’t see why you would.”

Garrett scoffed. “In my experience, law enforcement is more interested in completing a case than they are in solving it.”

“In my experience, murderers are more likely to withhold information than innocent people.”

Garrett smiled thinly. “That’s because most people aren’t aware of their rights.”

“Such as the right to not be murdered in one’s own cabin?”

Garrett sighed. “You obviously think it’s me. Why?”

“You were forced to pay money to the two victims after losing a lawsuit, correct?”

“No.”

When he didn't offer any more than that, Michael said, "The strong silent act is cute, Garrett, but you can drop it now. You were an eight-year veteran of the Marine Corps, and rather than renew your enlistment, you decided to go to prison for three years for aggravated assault with great bodily harm. What did you do to the guy?"

“I broke his jaw and both of his arms.”

“Ooh,” Faith said mockingly. “You’re so tough.”

“I stand up for myself,” Garrett corrected. “And I don’t particularly care what you think of me.”

“Fair enough. Let’s focus on what Ethan Holloway and Valerie North thought of you. You were sued for refusing to honor your product guarantee, is that correct?”

Garrett looked irritated. He shifted his feet and said, “That’s what they claimed, yes.”

“What’s your version?”

“The two of them didn’t know what they were doing. For the record, Valerie North never sued me. Ethan Holloway did. Miss North was called as a witness to the complainant. Ethan claimed that I sold him a defective ice pick. The handle snapped when he was using it to climb Denali. Valerie was on the climb with him, and she witnessed the handle fail. Here’s the thing: I sold him an icepick designed to chip pieces of ice off of a block.”

“That a common item out here?”

"It's not uncommon," Garrett confirmed. "The winters are long and cold, as I'm sure you know, and a lot of people don't have electric refrigerators. So for the summer, they use iceboxes. They're usually kept in the basement, where the temperatures don't rise as much. They'll chip off huge blocks of ice and place them in the bottom of the icebox. The pick I sold is for that purpose. It's very sharp, and the pick is very strong, but the handle's not designed to hold a person's body weight. You're supposed to place the pick at a weak point in the ice, then use a hammer on the flat side to drive the wedge deeper and separate the ice. It's a very different use case."

“And this never came up when you sold him the product?”

“It’s written very clearly in the item’s user manual.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Garrett lifted his hands and let them drop. “I’m not obligated to protect people from their own stupidity.”

“Not even yourself, huh?” Michael interjected.

Garrett gave him a stony glare that Michael returned with an easy smile.

“Here’s what I think happened,” Faith said. “Stop me when I’m wrong. Ethan came in asking for something. It was clear that he didn’t know what he was looking for. Rather than help him, you unloaded a product that wasn’t what he needed and hid behind the ‘it’s not my fault you’re stupid’ defense. His lawyers pointed out that it is your fault that you misrepresented a product by omission of pertinent information and allowed their client to put himself in mortal danger so you could… actually, why did you? Wouldn’t it just have been easier to sell him the product he needed?”

Garrett laughed nervously and planted his hands on his knees. The cracks in his façade were beginning to show. “I don’t need to talk about this. We settled everything. I ended up reimbursing him for the product and paying for his medical bills. I even paid his court fees. No one forced me to do this, I decided to do it.”

“Because you were backed into a corner and had no choice.”

“If it makes you feel better to believe that, sure.”

“Must have frustrated you,” Faith said. “To have been caught like that by an annoying idiot like Ethan.”

“It’s always frustrating when you end up paying someone twenty thousand dollars because they didn’t read a warning label.”

“Not to mention the loss of goodwill your business must have suffered. That would be enough to drive a lot of people to kill.”

“And yet, I didn’t kill them. Sorry, agent. I’m not your guy.”

“Can you tell us where you were two nights ago?” Michael asked.

Garrett laughed and looked up at the ceiling as though appealing to Heaven for help. “This is Alaska, agents. People don’t go out at night here unless they’re heading into the wilderness.”

“Or murdering people in the wilderness.”

“I was at home,” he snapped. “Watching television. Where I am every night when I’m not working here or on a hunting trip.”

“What about last week? Take any hunting trips then?”

“No. I was at home.”

“And no one can prove that?”

“No.”

Faith considered her options. At the moment, they didn’t have enough to arrest Garrett for the murders. There was no evidence of the killer at the scenes other than the scenes themselves. No fingerprints, no boot prints, no hair, nothing. Garrett had motive and no alibi. He had the equipment necessary to commit the crime, but she had no way of proving that.

She tried another tack. “We recovered the murder weapons, Garrett. We’re looking into them right now. Are we going to find out that they came from your store?”

“I sure hope not, but who knows? I sell knives, guns, snares, bows, bear traps… you name it. There’s a lot of lethal stuff in this building, and I don’t do background checks on everyone who walks in here.”

“Might want to start,” Michael suggested.

“You might want to go screw yourself. This is America. We have a right to bear arms.”

“Someone bore those arms to murder two people,” Faith reminded him. “There’s no constitutional right to murder people.” She handed Garrett a card. “If you think of anything, please call us. And postpone any of your upcoming hunting trips. We’d like you to stay close to home.” She smiled. “In case we need anything.”

Garrett shook his head. “All right. If it’ll make you feel better.”

They started to leave, but Faith thought of one more question on their way out. “You like ATVs, Garrett?”

He stared blankly at her. “What?”

“I thought I might rent an ATV while I’m out here,” Faith said. “I was wondering if you had a suggestion?”

He stared at her a moment longer. “Use the truck instead.”

Worth a shot. “I’ll think about. Thank you.”

They stepped inside the truck, and Michael turned to Faith. “So what do you think?”

“He’s shady as hell. And he has motive and resources. He’s clearly an asshole, and he has a tough guy shell that masks an anxious and insecure personality.”

“So you like him for it.”

“I do. But we don’t have enough to bring him in right now.”

Michael frowned. “Yeah. We can watch him, though.”

Faith nodded. “That’s what we’ll do. We’ll get some supplies and set up down the street. When we see him leave, we’ll follow him.”

“You don’t want to have the police do that?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. We’ll watch him today. If we don’t notice anything, then we’ll go from there.”

Michael checked something on his phone. “Well, we have internet, so I’ll accept that for now, but I don’t think we should put all of our eggs in a Tundra Outfitters basket.”

She raised her eyebrow. “You don’t like him?”

He rubbed his chin. “I don’t know. The guy who set those traps prides himself on being unseen. He wanted his prey to have no idea what was coming to them. Garrett strikes me as more of a peacock. He’d want them to know it was him. If they had been shot in the face, I’d like Garrett, but… yeah, I don’t know. We’ll watch him for now, but I think we should look for other options too.”

Faith looked at Turk. He still stared at the shop, his eyes alert, his body coiled like a spring. “You like him, boy?”

Turk met her eyes. She recognized uncertainty in his gaze and sighed. “We’ll get him,” she said. “Whoever he is. We’ll get him.”

She had a good feeling about Garrett, but after talking to Michael, that good feeling was a lot less powerful. And if it wasn’t Garrett, then they were back to square zero, and that was a place she very much didn’t want to be. Not when their killer was already two steps ahead.

CHAPTER NINE

The rest of the day was a series of disappointments. Wyatt called around lunchtime to tell them that they had cleared every member of each victim's family. The reason was a simple and common one: they were thousands of miles away at the time of the murders.

As for friends, that proved to be as difficult as Wyatt predicted. They had neighbors, but they were both of the self-reliant type and rarely interacted with them. People knew that Ethan and Valerie had left for excursions into the wilderness, but they didn’t know why or for how long or if anyone followed them or went before them. Alibis began to arrive for the neighbors as well, timestamped receipts and photographs from local businesses and occasionally security camera footage.

It was incredible in the worst possible way how difficult it was for them to find suspects. The pool was so small. There were fewer than a thousand people within a hundred miles in either direction. It should be easy to find people who knew them or had motive, but other than Garrett, there was nothing.

Faith wondered if this was the way cases went in the dark ages before computers. Nowadays, it was so easy to learn everything there was to know about someone with a few hours and a search engine, but up here, that tool was almost useless. She hated to think that someone could get away with crimes like this, but with no record of anyone’s activities or relationships, it was getting easier to see how people could walk out into the wilderness and just disappear.

They got snack foods and drinks from the local general store and sat in their truck waiting for Garrett to leave his shop. The sun rose high—well, actually, low—and set just after four o'clock.

“I wonder why we’re handling the cold so well?” Michael asked out of nowhere. “I mean, we have thick coats and stuff, but I feel like we should be in a lot more pain than we are.”

“We’re probably more focused on the dead-in-the-water murder investigation,” Faith suggested.

“Jeez. I was just going to say that we’re badass.”

“Sure. I’ll go with that.”

Michael looked at her for a moment. “We’ll get this guy, Faith. We always do.”

“And I always say I’m not afraid we won’t catch him; I’m afraid we won’t catch him in time. However, this time, I do wonder. The normal avenues of investigation are closed to us. People here love their privacy a little too much.”

“Yeah, but we always find a way. We just don’t know what that way is yet.”

She managed a soft smile. “You’re right. I just wish things could be simple sometimes.”

He looked at her again. “Is this about the case or about everything else in your life?”

Her smile faded. "Well, it was just about the case.”

“Shit. I’m sorry.”

Before she could tell him not to worry about it, the door of the shop opened, and Garett stepped outside. The agents snapped to attention and watched him as he loaded two duffel bags into his truck. He got into the driver’s seat and pulled onto the highway heading west.

“What do you suppose are in those?” Michael asked.

“I don’t know. But I would love to find out.”

Michael followed him from a distance. With the sky dark, they didn’t have a choice but to use their headlights, so they kept a mile in between themselves and Garrett’s vehicle. He drove west for six miles and turned off onto a rough dirt road heading north into the forest.

The two of them followed, again keeping distance. The road quickly went from rough to very rough. Their truck had four-wheel-drive and all-terrain tires, but they wouldn’t be able to follow much farther if the road got any worse than it was now.

Fortunately, just as Faith was about to tell Michael to cut the engine, Garrett pulled to a stop in a clearing of about ten acres. The agents stopped where they were, left the vehicle and quickly made their way to the clearing.

Garrett pulled the bags from the back of his truck and set them on the ground. When he opened them, the agents’ eyes widened as they looked at the snare wire, various knives and guns, and other survival equipment that he unloaded.

They heard the sound of an engine behind them and turned around to see a van climbing up the same road. The driver didn’t seem bothered at all by how rough the road was as he made his way up the hill.

Garrett lifted his head toward the van and grinned. He lifted his hand in a wave, and when the van stopped, he walked to the side door. Faith put her hand on her weapon and watched closely.

The door opened, and children spilled out. Actual children. Fourteen of them. Faith watched in amazement as over a dozen grade school children greeted Garrett with hugs and smiles and enthusiastic questions.

Garrett laughed and lifted his hands. “All right, all right. Calm down everyone. You’ll all get a chance to look at my equipment, and more importantly, you’ll all get to learn some valuable survival skills that will help you when you find yourself enjoying the Alaskan wilderness!”

“So he’s like a youth group instructor?” Michael asked.

“Hey guys?”

The voice was soft but familiar. Faith spun around, her weapon in her hand. Michael did the same, and the heavyset man from Tundra Outfitters lifted both of his hands. “I’m unarmed,” he said quietly. “I just want to talk to you two for a moment.”

“So talk,” Faith said curtly. “Did you follow us?”

“Yes. Can we please talk away from the children? You can search me if you feel more comfortable.”

Faith looked over her shoulder. Garrett was listening to the children introduce themselves, a bright smile on his face. She looked back at Quint and said, “Okay. We’ll follow you.”

“Thank you.”

Quint led them a couple dozen yards away from the clearing. Faith saw that they were in a small depression next to the road, about halfway to their parked truck. Behind their truck was a Jeep Wrangler on oversized tires. That must be Quint’s vehicle.

“I want to start by apologizing for our behavior earlier,” Quint said. “We get a lot of tourists here, but we don’t get the FBI. We’re not really trusting of outsiders. Tourists are one thing, but tourists just make us money. FBI… well, I don’t have a good way of saying this. We just prefer to handle our own business.”

“The problem is that someone here handled their business by murdering two innocent people,” Faith said.

“I know. But you came in looking like you’d already decided it was Garrett. He’s been my best friend my whole life, and I got defensive. I know I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

Faith looked at Michael, then back at Quint. “Can you confirm his whereabouts the nights of the murders?”

“I can tell you that I believe him when he says he’s at home. I know that’s not enough. I can also speak to his character. That might not be enough either, but it might help you understand why I feel so protective of him.”

“You called us away,” Michael said. “Talk.”

Quint nodded. “Well, you know Garrett has a violent past. He called me after you left, so I know you two talked.”

“He has a very violent past,” Michael agreed. “And he has a motive for wanting Ethan Holloway and Valerie North dead.”

“I wouldn’t say that. And neither would Garrett. He might be angry with them, but he wouldn’t kill them over twenty thousand dollars. He has enough money that it’s not the end of the world to lose that judgment. That’s why he settled.”

“He’s still the same person who broke a man’s jaw and both of his arms twenty years ago.”

“No, he isn’t,” Quint said firmly. “He spends most of his time teaching children wilderness skills. He’s donated twenty times what he paid to Holloway in that lawsuit to help improve our community’s infrastructure and save people who were underwater on their homes. He does handyman work for free, and he travels to Juneau twice a year to speak to the state government about getting electricity, gas and water utilities to every community in Alaska. Not just here, but up north as well. You can verify everything I’ve just told you.”

Faith and Michael looked at each other again. Faith sighed and said, "I'll accept that he has some good qualities, Quint, but look at it from my perspective. I have two people murdered in remote cabins both killed with improvised traps that suggest a high level of knowledge and experience as a hunter and more importantly, a high level of knowledge about each victim. And both victims happen to have been recently involved in legal action against Garrett. Then I show up, and you two act like thugs when we try to talk to him. Maybe he's a good person, but he was once violent, and what I've seen so far doesn't suggest to me that his violent streak has disappeared. And he had a reason to want them dead whether you think the money was a big deal or not."

Quint nodded. “I can understand where you’re coming from. Please try to look at it from my perspective and from Garrett’s. He made a very big mistake many years ago, a mistake that nearly ruined his life. He did his time, and let me tell you, time in Alaska is cold and lonely. He got out of prison and fought hard to change himself. He became a respectable business owner. He dedicated himself to his community. He went out of his way to be kind to others. He asked for nothing in return. He fought for twenty years and over time managed to become the kind of person he always wanted to be instead of the pariah he once was.

"Then someone buys a tool from him and doesn't use it properly. You can pick at the interaction all you want, but the fact is that it was Holloway's choice to use the wrong tool when ten seconds of research would have shown him what he really needed. Holloway puts his own life in danger, and instead of being grateful that he's still alive and learning his lesson, he wants to attack and blame Garrett for his own mistake. And his lawyers… I'm sure you have experience. They tore Garrett apart. They aired all of his dirty laundry. All of it. In front of his friends and neighbors, people who respect him. They risked the life he worked so hard to build for himself because their idiot client didn't bother reading a warning label."

“Who reads warning labels, though?” Michael interrupted. “Garrett could have taken ten seconds to say, ‘Hey, use this pick, not that one.’”

“I wasn’t there, so I don’t know if Garrett was given the information he needed to give proper advice.”

“In any case,” Faith replied, “what you’ve just described is called motive.”

Quint sighed. “I was trying to explain why we were upset when you showed up. I wish I could think of something to say to convince you other than to promise you that the man who’s teaching those children up there is the real Garrett, not the man who went to prison for assault a quarter of a lifetime ago.”

“That’s the thing,” Faith said. “Both of them are the real Garrett.”

Quint pressed his lips together and looked down.

Faith and Michael looked at each other again. “We’ll let Garrett finish his class undisturbed. But we’re going to keep an eye on him. On both of you. I know we’re outsiders and we don’t know him as well as you do, but we’re looking out for two people who can’t look out for themselves anymore.”

“I understand,” Quint said softly.

“If you want to help your friend,” Michael offered, “Make sure he doesn’t try to leave the area. Make sure he doesn’t go out into the wilderness alone. I would follow the same advice as well if I were you.”

“Okay,” Quint agreed. “I’ll do that.”

“And stay in town,” Faith added. “For the moment, you’re both persons of interest in the case.”

Quint didn’t look happy about that, but he didn’t protest the decision. “All right. We’re just trying our best, you know. Both of us.”

“I sympathize with you,” Faith said. “I sympathize with the two dead people a lot more.”

Quint didn’t try to argue with that. “We’ll stay in town.”

CHAPTER TEN

The three agents made their way back to their vehicle. Faith was torn. On one hand, her experiences with Garrett hadn’t been encouraging. On the other hand, Quint’s statement made a lot of sense too.

When they were on the road back to the highway, Michael asked, “What do you think about what Quint said?”

She sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t buy that Garrett’s a saint now.”

“I don’t either, but I kind of get the disdain for outside interference. We’ve been dealing with that since the beginning.”

“We haven’t though. Not really. Wyatt might not agree with us, but if we need him to do something, he does it. And he wasn’t an asshole to us.”

“Well, we didn’t accuse him of murder.”

“We didn’t accuse Garrett of murder. We said we wanted to question him.”

“And he reacted the way a lot of innocent people we’ve questioned have reacted,” Michael pointed out. “Aggressive at first and increasingly defensive and nervous when it became clear that he couldn’t intimidate us.”

“So you think he’s innocent.”

“I don’t know yet. I think he’s a strong suspect, but I’m not ready to close the investigation. I’m just trying to look at this thing from all angles.”

She sighed. “Yeah, I know. It’s just frustrating.”

“It always is.”

She rolled her eyes. “Thank you, oh great sage, for your wisdom. I’m only saying that I don’t believe that Garrett’s the person Quint says he is. Maybe he does all of that charity work Quint talked about, but plenty of murderers did charity work. Hell, John Wayne Gacy was a clown at a children’s hospital.”

“Plenty of murderers do charity work and plenty of good people are assholes.” She raised an eyebrow, and he clarified. “More or less good people. Once again, I’m not saying we stop investigating him, “I’m just defending my earlier assertion that we shouldn’t put all of our investigative eggs in this one basket.”

Faith sighed. “Yeah. You’re right.”

“So what do you want to do?”

Faith sighed. “We should have PD watch them. You were right before. We need to be the brains and let them do the legwork.”

“In your defense, I agreed with your decision to do the legwork ourselves. So we both fucked up.”

She glared at him. “You are shit at comforting people, you know that?”

“And yet, you still come to me with your problems.”

That thought hit her powerfully. “Yeah. I do.”

They pulled onto the highway and regained cell signal. Faith called Wyatt. “I need you to put a tail on two people in Glennallen.”

“Who’s that?”

“Garrett Pines and his friend, Quint… damn it. I didn’t get a last name for Quint. He’s a heavyset man in his mid-fifties. Wears a cowboy hat. Both of them are armed and should be considered dangerous.”

“Everyone’s armed and dangerous out here,” Wyatt replied. He didn’t put any emotion behind that statement. It was just a statement. “All right. I’ll put tails on them. Won’t be too hard to figure out who Quint is in a town as small as Glennallen. Do you think they’re responsible for the murders?”

Faith looked at Michael. She hadn’t even considered the possibility of the two of them working together. “It’s possible. Garrett was involved in a legal dispute with the two victims that worked out not in his favor a few months ago. Quint was very vocal and earnest in his defense of Garrett, so it’s clear the two of them are close.”

“I see. Very well, I’ll get some officers up there. Good work, you two.”

It didn’t really mean anything in a practical sense to here an Anchorage cop tell them that, but Faith still glowed at the praise. Maybe the locals didn’t hate them after all.

“We don’t have enough to make an arrest at the moment,” Faith told him, “but Michael and I are going to brainstorm tonight and see if we can come up with anything else that’ll help us know where to go from here.”

“I’m sure you’ll have what you need soon enough. Stay safe, okay?”

“You too.”

She hung up, and Michael said, “Wow. He went from annoyed local cop to protective older gentleman in three seconds flat.”

She batted her eyelashes at him. “What can I say? Men want to protect me.”

“Men want to protect themselves from you,” he corrected. “If they know what’s good for them.”

She looked out the windshield at the cone of light the truck projected onto the highway. “Was it that bad being with me?”

“What? Where did that come from?”

“Nothing. Nevermind. I think I just need some more coffee.”

“I second that motion.”

***

Twenty minutes later, they sat, coffees in hand, across from each other at their room’s small table. Turk slept in the same spot as the night before, out cold despite the light from the table lamp and his partners’ conversation.

"While we're treading water on the Garrett Pines lead," Faith said, "I want to explore the connection between our victims. They knew each other well enough that they were on a mountain climbing trip together, and Valerie was willing to testify against Garrett for Ethan. So they were friends. If they were friends, then they might have other friends, and one of those other friends might be our killer."

“I’m in favor of that,” Michael said, “but how do we figure out who their friends are? They have zero social media presence.”

“We’ll start by looking at local adventure groups: mountain climbers, campers, survivalists, and stuff like that. They’re bound to have pictures up on the website, and when we find one that has Valerie and Ethan, we follow up with them.”

“Sounds good to me. You want to start with campers, and I’ll start with mountain climbers?”

“That works.”

The two of them got to work. Not surprisingly, there were dozens of tour companies that offered packages and memberships catered to wilderness adventures and hundreds of informal groups of people with similar interests in the area. Most of them were clustered in Anchorage, but a few of them were located in the smaller communities that lined Highways One and Four. Faith started with those. Business hours were over, so she couldn’t call and ask specifically about Ethan and Valerie. For this reason, she saved the results in case pictures didn’t reveal anything. This was another task they could have the police department do, but they weren’t doing anything themselves at the moment, and Faith wasn’t tired enough to sleep.

Might be the four cups of coffee you've had today, she thought.

“Five,” she said as she got up to pour herself a refill.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing. You want more coffee?”

“Have I ever said no to coffee?”

“Once or twice, I think.”

“Really? Were we at a suspect’s house?”

“I think so.”

“Oh, that makes sense. I was afraid to get murdered.”

“Probably.”

She refilled their cups, then got back to work. The camping groups didn’t yield anything, so she moved onto survivalist groups while Michael moved onto adventure groups that offered more generalized wilderness exploration packages.

Faith noticed a difference right away between the survivalist groups and the other groups. While the businesses and more activity-based groups had bright websites with lots of color and announced their activities enthusiastically, the survivalist groups were far more muted in tone and focused on education and experience. They were catered to people who took wilderness survival very seriously, and a lot of what the websites offered and discussed wasn’t accessible to casual adventurers.

They also tended to be much smaller. While the camping groups had memberships that numbered in the dozens or sometimes even hundreds, the survivalist groups were usually small, close-knit friends who seemed to have known each other for years. The largest group Faith found had ten members. Most were between four and six.

She finished her coffee and was preparing to go for another refill when she found it. “I’ve got it!”

“What?” Michael asked. “You found them?”

She grinned. “Yep. This group here. Nature’s Guardians. ‘Responsible citizens and stewards of planet Earth.’”

“Sounds like a political action group.”

“I’m sure they’re active enough politically, but all of the pictures I’m seeing are of them on extreme survival expeditions. See? Here’s the group camping on a glacier in the Talkeetna Mountains. Notice the two in the foreground next to the petite woman in the center?”

Michael looked and said, “Well, I’ll be damned. If that isn’t Ethan Holloway and Valerie North.”

"Yes, it is. And they're also in this video that teaches you how to waterproof your shelter with pine tar and moss. There's another one of them spearfishing, and one of them climbing Denali."

“Is that the infamous bad icepick incident?”

“They don’t mention anything about it here, but that could just be because they don’t want the information on their website.”

“Good point. So we know it’s this group. Do we have a membership list?”

“Let me see.”

She clicked on the link that said memberships. It led to a page with the following simple message: memberships by referral only. For questions, call Lisa Blackwood.

The message was followed by a phone number, presumably Lisa Blackwood’s, and business hours. The business hours looked more like suggestions. Nine-thirty to five-thirty “most days.”

“Quite the exclusive little club,” Michael said.

“So it seems,” Faith replied. “But I say we give it a shot.”

“Works for me.” He yawned. “I’m going to turn in now. I’m beat. Get her address and whatever else you think we need to know. We’ll visit her in the morning and see what we can learn about these Guardians.”

“Sounds good. Get some sleep, Papa Bear.”

“Eww.”

“What?”

“Don’t call me that. Papa Bear? Where the…” he sighed. “Just… eww.”

She chuckled and said, “All right. Get some sleep, dumbass.”

“I’ll take that over Papa Bear any day.”

Faith wasn’t tired yet, but she stopped drinking her coffee. She looked through the Nature’s Guardians website and tried to get a sense of the people in the photos. They all looked… intense. They smiled, but there was an edge to their smiles. Their eyes looked both haunted and passionate. It was an odd mix of personality traits, but it somehow made sense. They made a hobby out of putting themselves in situations that would kill other people.

But maybe for one person in that group, that was no longer enough. Perhaps that rush had become dull, and they had to up the ante by taking the lives of their fellow survivalists.

Faith looked at those intense smiles and wondered if one of them had crossed the line from survivor to killer.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lisa Blackwood lived in Eureka Roadhouse, an equally tiny community a few miles west of Nelchina. Her property consisted of a small cabin with a wire fence that contained a vegetable garden, a chicken coop, a stand of berry bushes and a couple of odd structures that Faith didn’t recognize. On one side of the house, animal skins were stretched out to cure. Lisa clearly took her survivalism very seriously.

She answered the door wearing more animal skins, including shoes that appeared to be made from hand-stitched leather. She was a rather petite woman of around forty with curly, mouse-brown hair and honey-colored eyes. She looked at the agents and went white as a sheet. Interesting.

“You need a warrant to search my property,” she said tersely.

Faith raised an eyebrow. “Is there a reason we should search your property?”

“I don’t answer questions,” she said just as tersely.

She started to close the door, but Michael stopped it. “Let me tell you why we’re here before you decide to kick us off of your porch. I’m Special Agent Michael Prince and this is my partner, Special Agent Faith Bold with her K9 unit, Turk. We’re here because two members of your survivalist club were murdered, and we’d like to determine if you have any information that can help us solve this case.”

She blinked. “Murdered? What…” A look flashed across her face that looked suspiciously like relief to Faith. “Oh. Well… I guess I should talk to you then.”

She opened the door and ushered them inside. The heavy smell of incense washed over Faith. She coughed a little and looked at Turk. He shook his head irritably and sneezed.

“Yeah, that stuff’s pretty strong,” Lisa said apologetically. “But it’s good for the soul. Really cleansing. This one’s, uh… poppy, I think?”

Faith had smelled poppies before, and this was nothing like that. She wasn’t here to talk to Lisa about her choice of potpourri, though. “Two of your members were murdered recently. Valerie North and Ethan Holloway.”

Lisa sighed. “I’m sorry to hear that. They were good people.”

She didn’t seem too broken up over the news. “If you’ll forgive me,” Faith said, “you don’t seem very upset.”

"Of course I'm upset. I just… I'm a little shocked, is all.”

Faith’s eyes narrowed. “Can you confirm your whereabouts three nights ago?”

“Three nights ago? Yes, Robert and I went out to dinner in Anchorage. I’ll give you the number for the restaurant. They’ll confirm we attended our reservation there. I’m not really a restaurant person, but Robert likes it, so once a month, I let him take me out. That was our night. Was that when the two of them were murdered?”

“That’s when Ethan Holloway was killed. Valerie was killed a week before.”

Her eyes widened. “And I’m just hearing about this now? I can’t believe the others haven’t said anything!”

“What others?”

“The rest of the group! That’s why you’re talking to me, right? Because I’m the leader of Nature’s Guardians? Well, was the leader of Nature’s Guardians.”

Faith raised her eyebrow. “Nature’s Guardians has disbanded?”

“Yes. We… well, I didn't really think through how difficult it would be to get a bunch of egotistical people like me to get along. Or a bunch of independent free-livers to work together as a group. I don't know. I guess I just wanted people to talk to. Don't get me wrong, Robert's amazing, and he puts up with all of my crap, as you can tell by our house."

She gestured around, and Faith took in the handmade goods, and most especially the lack of appliances. There was a fireplace and a wood-burning stove, but no electrically powered items of any kind except for the lights.

“But he doesn’t have a passion for this,” Lisa continued. “He’ll go out with me on short camping trips, but… well, I would live forever like this if I could. Off the land, I mean. I wouldn’t even have lights or books or anything that I didn’t make with my own hands.” Her eyes came alive. “I just feel so… real… when I’m out there. God gave us this beautiful world, and we insist on masking it and covering it up and pushing it away. I feel like we’d be so much happier if we just enjoyed the gift God’s given us.”

She sighed. “Anyway, I founded the Guardians because I thought I might meet some people who really understood what living off of the land meant. And I did. It just so happens that most other people who think like I do are extremely introverted. We did a few group activities, but it all just turned into haggling over who knew better about x or who should listen to who about y or some other crap. We had a final meeting two months ago, and I just said frankly, ‘If everyone thinks that they’d have more fun doing this on their own, then let’s say goodbye here and go our separate ways.’ And they said goodbye. Without hesitating.”

“Who’s they?” Faith asked.

“The others in the group.”

“Names?”

“Oh yeah. Um. There was me, Ethan, and Valerie. There was Jake, Kelly and Graham. That was it. Just the six of us.”

“Do you have full names for the last three?”

“Sure. Jake Thornton, Graham Nash and Kelly… Connell? Connelly? Connor! Kelly Connor.” She chuckled. “I had trouble remembering her name for some reason. I dated a Connelly for five years before I met Robert, so I get it confused.”

“How well did the group get along?” Faith asked. “Well, I guess you said not well. Did it ever become serious?”

“The squabbling? No, not serious. There were no fights or anything. People would just talk crap to each other. It was honestly really juvenile. I was kind of embarrassed for them sometimes.”

“Did anyone hold any particular animosity toward Ethan or Valerie?”

“Not that I could see. Valerie was really quiet, probably the quietest of the group. She kind of kept to herself. She’d talk to Ethan sometimes, but even then, not much.”

“Did they have a romantic relationship with each other?”

Lisa seemed to find this utterly hilarious. She threw her head back and laughed uproariously. “Valerie and Ethan? Oh no. No.” She stifled her laughter. “Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh. Um, no.”

“Why is that funny?” Michael asked.

“Well… Ethan was divorced, and it wasn’t pretty. His wife was cheating with her boss for years. He was crushed when he found out. He never got over her. I don’t think he ever had eyes for another woman. As for Valerie, she never had eyes for a man ever, if you know what I mean.”

“She was lesbian.”

“Yes.”

“All right. And the others? Tell me more about them.”

“Well, Kelly was the youngest of the group. The rest of us were in our late thirties to our late forties, but Kelly was twenty-three.”

“Is that unusual?”

“It’s…” she cocked her head. “Not especially common. There are young survivalists, but they’re not usually so committed to the lifestyle. That’s something that really set us apart from other groups. We are all, for the most part, deeply committed to this lifestyle, or as deeply committed as we can. We’re all held back in our own ways. I’m held back by my husband. Oh God, that sounds terrible! I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I understand your meaning,” Faith assured her. “Besides being serious about survivalism, what else can you tell me about Kelly?”

Lisa chuckled. “Well… she was twenty-three. I think that sums it up nicely.”

Michael smiled slightly. “Expand on that anyway.”

She shrugged. “She was very pretty, and she knew it. She was very knowledgeable but also very naïve. Unfortunately, she didn’t know that. Between you and me, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that everyone in the group slept with her at one point. Except for me, of course.”

“Did anyone seem to be jealous?” Faith asked. “Anyone who might have felt betrayed by Kelly’s promiscuity?”

“Oh no. No, I don’t think anyone would have admitted to sleeping with her. I don’t know that anyone even did, I was just pointing out that she knew she was pretty.”

“Let’s confine ourselves to concrete statements from now on,” Faith requested. “Tell me about Jake Thornton.”

“Jake was a very moody man. He’s my age, forty-four, but he’s not a happy person. I think he took up survivalism to escape something in his past.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, he was just always so surly. Not angry, really. He would talk to people, he was just… well, surly.”

“Was there anyone in particular who annoyed him?”

“No, but Kelly definitely annoyed him the least.”

“But you don’t know if they were involved with each other?”

“I don’t know, but like I said, I wouldn’t be surprised. Kelly knew she could get it from anyone if she wanted it.”

“Were you jealous at all of the attention she received?”

Lisa laughed again. "Oh no. Very much no. Robert only has eyes for me. And I make very sure he doesn't need to go looking for anyone else. That's another aspect of survivalism that I think could really help people. Sex is still viewed as a taboo thing in our society, even between married couples sometimes. I don't understand it. I love satisfying Robert. It’s so exciting to see his face change like it does when he—”

“We don’t need to hear about your private life with your husband,” Faith interrupted.

Turk made a coughing sound that Faith recognized as laughter. Sometimes, Faith thought he understood more than he let on.

Lisa shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’m not ashamed of it.”

“Nor should you be,” Michael said. Faith gave him a fishy look, and he cleared his throat. “And Graham Nash?”

Lisa’s eyes widened in admiration. “Graham was the most committed of all of us for sure. And the least tied down. No family, no job, enough money to survive without working, enough skills to survive without money… He was, I think, only a half-step away from doing it.”

“Doing what?”

“It.” Lisa said. “Getting out of here. Going off the grid and just living as God intended us to.” Her eyes shone. “I really admired him. I’ll bet you anything that’s where he is right now. Somewhere out there in the wilderness living in a hut he’s built with his own hands, picking berries, fishing, hunting and just enjoying life far away from all of the distractions we’ve created for ourselves.”

Faith was very interested in Graham Nash. He fit the profile of someone who had reached the peak of survival skill and might need to up the ante to gain a thrill. “Do you have contact information for these individuals?” she asked Lisa.

Lisa chuckled. “I mean, I do, but it’s a tossup whether any of them will be available. Graham probably won’t.”

“You seem sure of that.”

She sighed. "Not sure. Just hopeful. I want to live vicariously through him. I could never give up, Robert, you understand. Not even to live my dream life." Her smile grew wistful. "Love is a wonderful thing. It catches hold of you and never lets you go. I thought my whole life that I'd end up like Graham and eventually live off the grid. Instead, I met Robert, and that became more important than anything. Don't tell him I said so, but I would even move to New York City if he asked me. God, I really love him."

“Good for you,” Faith said. She wasn’t really sure what to say, but that sounded all right.

“Thank you for your time, Lisa,” Michael said, handing her a card. “If you think of anything else, please give us a call.”

“Oh, for sure. It was nice talking with you. Have a safe drive, and I really hope you find whoever’s responsible for this.”

“Yes,” Faith agreed. “Me too.”

She was troubled as they returned to their truck, but not because of the three new leads they had. Lisa’s comment about giving up everything to be with the person she loved disturbed her. She realized with sudden clarity that she didn’t feel that way about David. That was why she didn’t want to move in with him. She loved him, but she loved her life more. She didn’t want it to change.

She heaved a sigh as Michael pulled away from the property and headed back toward Nelchina. So much in life was out of her control. She just wished she could get a handle on the few things that were in her control.

Maybe just going off the grid and leaving it all behind wasn’t such a bad idea.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Lisa’s heart pounded as she hiked through the forest. She was sober. She didn’t like being sober. That was the first problem.

The second problem was that the source of her ability not to be sober was about to be threatened. Technically speaking, the plants weren’t illegal. Recreational marijuana had been allowed in Alaska for years. What was illegal was the fact that she sold weed without the appropriate state licenses.

Robert didn’t know about that. The poor fool actually thought that she harvested twelve ounces of weed per month for her own personal use. In a heavy month, she might go through a third of that herself, but usually, she barely smoked an ounce in a month. It didn’t really take much to get her lifted, and the stuff she grew was potent.

What she didn’t use, she sold. Not for profit. Well, not really for profit. Eight to ten ounces of weed at twenty dollars an eighth was about fifteen hundred a month. Once she paid for all of her equipment, she maybe cleared three hundred dollars of that. It was just fun to grow weed. And anyway, why did the government always get to tell people what they could or couldn’t do? She was an adult, and she wasn’t hurting anyone.

And now all that was going to be taken from her.

She shivered as she looked around at the looming shadows of the trees. She didn’t mind the forest at night. The forest at night was just like the forest during the day if you were knowledgeable and experienced, and she was both. She’d faced bears before, both black and brown. She’d endured hunger and cold and damp and thirst. She didn’t think of herself as a superhero or anything. She just knew how to live out here.

But she liked her life. She’d lied a little bit to the agents when she said that if not for Robert, she’d just go off the grid like Graham. That might have been true twenty years ago, but she’d gotten used to the way she lived now. She liked their monthly trips to Anchorage. She liked beer in her icebox and the chocolates Robert would bring home every so often. She liked surviving in the wilderness, and she liked living in her cozy cabin.

She didn’t want to lose her life. That’s why she risked it right now.

“He said he wants money,” Lisa whispered. “That’s all. He just wants money. I can give him the money I have saved that Robert doesn’t know about. That should be enough, right? I mean, he knows that I’m a small-time grower. I don’t have a million in cash.”

She had, in fact, just over a hundred thousand dollars in bills tucked away in a small compartment she’d carved out of the wall of their root cellar. She wasn’t sure what she planned to use the money for, but she figured it would come in handy one day.

And it would. Today. Tonight.

She saw the stump ahead and sighed with relief and trepidation. She'd found the spot. Now, it was up to the man who had texted her to show himself and make his demands.

Maybe she would stop selling after this. Yeah, that was a good idea. She’d stop selling and just keep her three favorite plants for personal use. Well, maybe six. The sativa, the indica, the Afghan and her three favorite hybrids. There would be a little extra weed, but she’d just turn it into hash or extract the oil and use it when she baked. Maybe she would even convince Robert to try some with her. He would enjoy it, she knew he would. And the sex… oh, if only he knew!

She tried to think about the way Robert would react the first time he had sex high, but as she approached the stump, her fear drove away every attempt she made at lightheartedness. Behind her happy-go-lucky exterior was a woman who had been an adult for longer than she'd been a child. A poor adult, yes, but one who understood that at some point, running was no longer an option. You had to suck it up and face the consequences of your actions head-on.

She took a deep breath and released it slowly. Time to face her consequences.

She sat on the stump to wait. As soon as she touched the wood, a spear thrower snapped up from the ground and hurled a three-foot-long sharpened oak branch through her abdomen.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The agents endured another frustrating day after finishing their conversation with Lisa. All three of the individuals she mentioned were unavailable. Phone calls went to voicemail, and homes were empty.

It wasn’t an entirely useless day. Faith called Jake Thornton’s office and confirmed that he worked late into the night most days and had only left the previous morning. He couldn’t have killed Ethan Holloway and Valerie North.

He wasn’t available to interview either, though, so any information he might have they would have to wait for. The other two were still up in the air as well. Kelly Connor didn’t work. She lived on a trust fund left to her by her grandfather. That explained why she could be “committed” to survivalism and probably also why she thought herself entitled to sleep with whoever she wanted.

It could also mean that if she was denied something she wanted, she would react violently. Usually, though, people like that reacted in the moment. It took a lot of concentration and patience to set the traps the killer had set. In any case, she wasn’t home.

That left Graham Nash. He hadn’t been seen in months. Faith passed the information along to Wyatt, who promised to see about a search party but couldn’t promise much unless they got real evidence that he might be involved. Which they couldn’t do until they could talk to people. Unless a miracle fell into their lap, but Faith had a feeling they were fresh out of miracles.

So night found them frustrated and bored in their hotel room with nothing to do but speculate or make small talk. With precious little to speculate about, Faith focused on their most recent interviewee.

“What did you think of Lisa?” she asked.

Michael chuckled. “Seriously?”

She frowned. “Yes? Why not?”

“You couldn’t tell?”

“Tell what?”

“Oh, come on, Faith. Tell me you could tell.”

Her eyes narrowed. “If you think you’re being funny, I promise you aren’t.”

He laughed again. “Faith. She was high as a kite.”

Faith blinked. “You mean pot?”

“Yes! Come on, you couldn’t tell? She was floating through the clouds. What did you think the incense was for? I guarantee you that she had plants in the basement she didn’t want us to see. That’s why she gave us that guff about not searching her property.”

“I thought the incense was part of the whole ‘return to nature’ lifestyle.”

“No! Oh wow. You surprise me every day. Have you never smoked weed?”

“No. Have you?”

“Yeah, in college. Not often, but it happened. I think you’re the only person I’ve met who’s younger than me and hasn’t smoked weed.”

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, ha ha. I couldn’t tell she was high. Does this have to do with the case at all?”

“No, it’s just funny. Wow. Good thing you went FBI and not DEA.”

“Yeah, yeah. But it wasn’t just the weed, was it?”

“What do you mean?”

“She was hiding something from us. It wasn’t just the weed.”

“I’m pretty sure it was the weed.”

“No,” she insisted. “I don’t think so. When she talked about the group, she treated it like a soap opera. She talked about them like they were characters in a TV show."

“Well, that’s how a lot of people see others: as characters in their own lives. She was relieved when she heard we were here for murders and not the weed. The group was full of introverts who didn’t really care for each other. Lisa was looking for conversation, and she didn’t find it. They disbanded amicably, but Lisa was the one who officially threw in the towel. Is she a pleasant person for all of that? Not really, but we already know she has an alibi for the murders. As far as the others? I don’t think she lied about them. I don’t think she was correct about all of them. In fact, we know she wasn’t because Kelly isn’t committed to being a survivalist. It’s just one of many interests she has. I just think she gave her best impression, helped along by her altered state of mind.”

Faith pressed her lips. That didn’t seem satisfying to her, but she didn’t know why, so she just let it go. “Yeah. Maybe you’re right.” She sighed. “I think I’m just frustrated. We’ve had two very useless days in a row, and I’m concerned that all three of the other group members are out in the wild.”

“You think there will be another murder?”

“There always is, isn’t there?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, there is.”

He looked out the window of their hotel room toward the darkening sky. It was only four in the afternoon. It wasn’t the first time Faith had noticed that, but it just felt so strange. It was like night was eager to fall here.

She looked at his profile as he looked through the window. He was maybe twenty pounds heavier than the trim one-ninety he was when they dated. Gray crept gradually up his temples, and a few strays had already made their way into the rest of his hair. There were lines in the corners of his eyes, and the lines in his forehead didn’t completely disappear anymore when his face was at rest.

He was getting older too.

She looked at herself in the mirror and tried to see if she looked different too. It hit her that she rarely looked at herself in the mirror. Even when she stood in front of it, she didn't really look at herself. It felt weird to do it now, but Faith felt weird in general right now. Maybe it was the chilly weather the long nights, or the frustration of the case. Maybe it was all of that combined with all of the changes in her life.

But she looked at herself now. Her face was still pretty. She was never exceptionally beautiful, but she was pretty enough. She had soft blue eyes that paired well with her long light-brown hair, and her features were symmetrical if not striking.

She thought she saw crows’ feet in her eyes, but she couldn’t be sure. They weren’t as obvious as Michael’s. There were no lines in her forehead, and the rest of her skin was as smooth as she remembered. Things were still firm where they were supposed to be firm and soft where they were supposed to be soft.

All in all, she thought she looked the same as she always did. If anything, the expression in her eyes was the only thing that indicated she wasn’t the fiery young field agent of five years ago. They were calmer and more mature than before. More tired as well. They had seen darkness enough times to realize that light was an illusion.

So she was getting old too.

“Feeling self-obsessed tonight?” Michael asked.

She looked away and returned his smile. “I don’t ever look at myself. I just thought maybe I should.”

He nodded. “I have absolutely no idea how to respond to that.”

She laughed, a genuine, full-bodied laugh. It felt good. As though a dam had been broken, the not-so-good feelings flooded out right after. She sighed and looked at Turk, who was calmly eating his dinner in a corner of the room. "I just hate that he's getting old."

Michael smiled sympathetically. "Yeah. I get that. I had a hard time when Rooster died." She met his eyes, and he quickly said, "Which won't happen to Turk for many more years. Look, retirement sneaks up on everyone, but it's not the end of his life. He's healthy and strong, and he has all of his faculties. I know that German Shepherds don't usually live past thirteen, but I've heard of a lot that make it past fifteen, and a couple who even make it to twenty."

She smiled at Turk. “Yeah. I know. I just… I got used to this. To us. You and me and Turk fighting crime together. I liked having a dog.”

“Told you so.”

“What?”

“I told you you’d like him. You remember? You said you didn’t want a dog, and I made you take him.”

“What? No, I… really?”

“Really. You even used curse words.”

She looked back at Turk. “Huh. I guess I forgot that part. I don’t really think about the whole hospital stay, but that’s where it all started. We both had to recover from Trammell, and we did that together.”

“You did. And he’ll be your dog whether he’s out fighting crime with you or chasing squirrels in your backyard. He did good. He had a good run. Now it’s time for him to rest. And hey, if you want to join him, there are ASAC jobs all over the country. You could even stay close to home. The Boss will never take an ASAC, but you could go to New York or Baltimore. That’s only a couple of hours away.”

“I’m not coming out of the field,” she said. “I can’t run a desk any more than the Boss can kiss Director Smythe’s ass.”

Michael chuckled at that. “Well, my point with Turk still stands. Besides, he’ll have David.”

“I don’t want to live with David,” she said.

Michael looked at her in shock. Faith didn’t need to look at her reflection to know that the same shock was written on her own face.

Michael broke the awkward silence that followed. “Again? I thought you dealt with your cold feet.”

“I thought so too,” Faith said, “but after everything that’s happened recently with West, this new killer, Turk’s retirement, my own possible forced retirement, therapy… it’s just a lot. It’s a lot of changes, and… thinking about all of them, the move is one that I really don’t want to make.”

“You don’t want to make any changes, Faith. I love you, but that’s not a strength of yours.”

Faith felt a jolt of emotion at those words. She knew he didn’t mean them the way they sounded, and she knew that they had their shot together and had missed. Still, she remembered when they did mean something, and when she meant something back. She had felt that way about David once, but that was then and this was now, and there was so much going on, and she couldn’t talk to David about them, but she could talk to Michael, and—

She sighed. “He just doesn’t understand me the way you do.”

Michael stiffened at that. Faith frowned, not sure why he was reacting that way for a moment. Then she replayed what she’d said in her mind. Her eyes widened. “Oh God. Oh. No, I didn’t mean…”

Her phone buzzed. Grateful for the distraction, she picked it up. It was Wyatt.

“Hey, Wyatt,” she answered. “Um… glad you called.” Michael frowned at her, and she cleared her throat, then said in a far more professional voice, “What do you have for me?”

“We just got a call from a Mr. Robert Blackwood.”

Faith’s emotions faded in the face of the shock and fear that came to the surface. She put the phone on speaker and said, “What did Mr. Blackwood have to say?”

Michael immediately paid attention to the phone as well.

“He came home, and his wife wasn’t there. That’s not normally unusual, but he said the two of them had an evening planned together, and she would always call him if their plans changed. She didn’t call him, and he’s been home for an hour now. He’s worried that something happened to her.”

Faith and Michael shared a grim look. Personal issues would have to wait. “Where are you now?”

“We’re at the Blackwood residence still.”

“We’ll meet you there.”

She hung up and called Turk. The three of them rushed to their truck, all thoughts of the future forgotten. The worst-case scenario had happened. Faith tried to tell herself that there was a chance Lisa was still alive, but she knew better.

The hunter had taken his prey once more.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Robert Blackwood was distraught when the agents arrived at the house he shared with Lisa. A police truck was parked in the driveway, and Wyatt had a hand on the terrified husband’s shoulder.

Wyatt nodded at the agents and offered a wan smile. Robert lifted his head, and his eyes widened with desperate hope. “You’re the FBI agents, right?”

“That’s right,” Faith said. “I’m Special Agent Faith Bold. This is my partner, Michael Prince, and my K9 unit, Turk.”

He nodded. “Robert.”

“Okay, Robert. When did you last hear from your wife?”

“Um… right around lunchtime. She called me to ask if I wanted her to save dinner for me since I was going to be home late. I said not to worry, I’d pick something up on the way home. Um…” he ran his hands through his hair. “Yeah, that’s about it. We were, uh, going to watch a movie tonight. She wanted to watch this new movie about dogs. I forget what it’s called.”

“Have you tried contacting her?”

“Oh yeah. I’ve called about a dozen times and sent texts, but everything gets left on read or goes to voicemail.”

Michael looked at Wyatt. “Do we have a search organized?”

“We have people looking in the area,” he said.

His eyes said what his voice couldn’t. But it’s a big wilderness.

“Does your wife frequently leave without telling you where she’s going?” Faith asked.

“She goes out pretty much whenever she wants to,” Robert replied, “but never without telling me.  And with what happened to Ethan and Valerie…” His lip trembled, and he folded his hands and squeezed them tightly on top of the table.

Turk walked up to him and laid his head on Robert’s lap. It was a technique he often used to comfort grieving family members, but it didn’t work this time. Nothing would calm Robert’s terror but seeing his wife alive and well. Faith wished she could be confident of finding Lisa like that.

“Where does she usually go when she heads into the wilderness?” she asked.

"Everywhere," he replied with a nervous chuckle. "Nelchina, Denali, Wrangell… sometimes on longer trips, she'll go north past Fairbanks into the tundra. Sometimes, she'll head to the Yukon. She's happiest when she's out there. I'm fine with it too. I'm not a hardcore camper, but I like seeing her so happy. I just wish… I don't get it. Why would she go out now?"

AN uncomfortable possibility occurred to Faith that Lisa might be working with the killer. She had an alibi for the nights of the murders, but if there was more than one person involved, then she might be out there helping with another murder. Or she was scared by her talk with the agents and was fleeing before she could be caught.

Faith thought of her options. With no information, there weren’t many. But how could they get more information now?

“Does Lisa have an office somewhere?” she asked. “Or a room where she would keep personal correspondence?”

Robert frowned. “Like letters?”

“Yes. We’re looking for anything that might tell us where she went.”

“Um…” his eyes shifted to the left. “I can go look for you if you want.”

Guessing the reason for his hesitation, Michael said, "We don't care about the marijuana. If that's where we need to look, you need to take us there."

Robert hesitated a moment longer, but his fear for Lisa’s life was greater than his fear of any legal repercussions that might come about as a result of his wife’s habit. “All right. It’s in the basement.”

Wyatt and the agents followed Robert down a narrow staircase. When he opened the door to the basement, the pungent smell assailed Faith’s nostrils.

The small basement was filled with pot plants growing under powerful spotlights. Faith didn’t know much about the drug, so she didn’t know how much this setup might be making for Lisa, but it had to be making some money. The lights and irrigation equipment couldn’t be cheap to operate.

As Michael had said, though, they weren’t here for the marijuana.

“If there’s anything for her, it’s going to be here,” Robert said, heading toward a desk sitting on the far wall of the room. “We keep most of the mail in a drawer in the kitchen, but I already checked there, and I didn’t see any notes or anything. Nothing in the bedroom or the garage either.” He opened the drawer and cried out. “Oh God!”

“What?” Faith asked. “What is it?”

“Her phone.” His shoulders began to shake. “Her god damned phone.”

“Can you unlock it?” Faith asked,

“Um… yeah. I know her password.”

He unlocked the satellite phone with trembling fingers and placed it in Faith’s outstretched hand.

“Is it normal for her to leave her phone behind?” Wyatt asked.

Robert shook his head. “That’s my one hard and fast rule. I need to be able to contact her at all times. That’s why I got her the satellite phone.”

Faith opened the messaging app and found a series of texts from an unknown number. The texts consisted of pictures of the grow house in which they were standing, followed by threats to send these images to the authorities if Lisa didn't give the sender one hundred thousand dollars. The final texts were a list of instructions that told Lisa how to get to the meeting spot.

“Do you have a safe on the property?” she asked Robert.

He frowned. “Yeah. Why? Did she… she didn’t take the money, did she?”

“It appears that someone was blackmailing her. Do you recognize this number?”

Robert took the phone. He released a choked sob when he saw the texts. “Oh, Lisa. Oh no.”

“Robert, I need you to focus. Do you recognize that number?”

He sniffled. “No. The area code is Alaska, but I don’t recognize the number.”

“Where in Alaska?”

“Huh?”

“The area code is for which part of Alaska? Anchorage?”

Robert’s face fell. “Alaska has the same area code for the entire state. There’s a town in the southeast that borrows area codes from the Yukon Province, but almost the whole state uses nine-oh-seven.”

Faith sighed. “All right. Where is your safe?”

“It’s in the root cellar. Do you want me to check?”

"Yes. If the money was still there, Lisa could have left for another reason. If it's missing, then we know she's going to meet this caller."

“How would she know where to go without the instructions?"

Faith could understand Robert’s hesitation. If he could find a reason why Lisa hadn’t met this mysterious caller, he could cling to the hope that she hadn’t been lured to her death. Faith didn’t have the luxury of that hope, nor did she have the luxury of gentleness.

“She’s an experienced survivalist. It’s possible she memorized the instructions.”

Robert sighed and pressed his palms to his temples. “Okay. All right, um… the root cellar’s outside. Follow me.”

He led them up the stairs and around the house. “I don’t know why they didn’t just connect the root cellar to the basement,” he said. “Seems like it would make more sense that way. Then again, this is an old house. Maybe they did things differently back in the day.”

He opened the hatch to the root cellar and descended the small staircase into the room. A musty smell hit Faith. It reminded her of damp, cold Earth, the sort of Earth one might find in a cemetery.

“Oh, shit!” Robert cried.

“What is it?” Wyatt called. “What did you find.”

He came to the door. “It’s gone. The money’s gone. All of it. Oh, God. Lisa.”

Faith didn’t waste any more time. “Wyatt, stay with Robert. Robert, you stay here.”

“I want to help,” he insisted. “I want to help find her.”

“The best thing you can do is stay here in case she comes home,” Faith countered. “We’ll look for her.”

Robert didn’t look pleased, but he didn’t argue further. “Okay. Bring her home safe. Please.”

Faith wished to hell that she could make that promise.

***

The three of them trekked rapidly through the forest. The phone had led them to a thick stand of hemlock three miles from Lisa’s house. The instructions were fairly clear, for which Faith was grateful.

Not that it would matter how clear the instructions were if they arrived too late to save Lisa. At this point, all they could do was hope that she hadn’t yet sprung any of the traps the killer might have set.

Turk kept his nose to the ground, trotting ahead of the humans as he searched for Lisa’s scent. The cold was sharp and biting, piercing Faith’s skin even through her thick parka. Her breath escaped her lips in a cold fog that seemed to freeze in front of her eyes.

Turk, thankfully, didn’t seem to mind. His coat was fairly average for a German Shepherd, but his short hair evidently sheltered him from enough of the weather for him to move without discomfort.

Maybe he should keep working, and I should retire, Faith thought. Aloud, she asked, “What do you think the likelihood is that this is just blackmail?”

“It’s at least a small chance,” Michael replied, huffing a little. “That’s a lot of money. If other people found out about her operation, then it makes sense they would assume she has money to pay for their silence. But if I’m being honest… it’s not a big chance.”

Faith sighed. “Yeah. I’m not very hopeful either.”

Just then, Turk barked and sprinted forward. The agents drew their handguns and followed, their flashlights tracking the K9 as he followed the scent he had found. Faith thought of the bear trap that had nearly caught Turk at Ethan Holloway’s house and called to her dog. “Careful, Turk!”

Turk didn't slow. Faith pushed as much of her anxiety away as possible and instead focused on watching her own step. Her reflexes weren't as good as Turk's, and if she was caught in a bear trap, she would be in serious trouble.

Turk came to a stop in front of a massive stump in the middle of a small clearing. He lifted his head and released a mournful howl.

Faith and Michael slowed to a stop in front of him. “What is it, boy? What do you see?”

“Oh shit,” Michael whispered. “Faith.”

She followed his flashlight beam and found the reason for Turk’s howl and Michael’s epithet. A trail of blood led from the opposite side of the stump deeper into the forest.

"There's nobody," Faith said. "She must have survived this trap, whatever it was. Come on, she could still be alive."

They moved carefully forward, following the blood. Turk followed in between them this time, his tracking skills not needed at the moment.

The trail led to a small path or perhaps a game trail about a hundred yards into the forest, then turned right to follow that trail. The three of them ascended a narrow slope for another eighty yards and came to a small wooden shack similar in design to Ethan’s and Valerie’s cabins but much smaller.

Turk’s howl brought the news to Faith’s mind moments before the smell did. Her flashlight was the last to inform her of the tragedy when it fell on the body of Lisa Blackwood. Her left hand was pressed against the small door of the shack. Her back was soaked in blood.

Michael stepped forward and checked for a pulse. Faith wasn’t surprised at all when he said, “She’s dead.”

She didn’t realize until she heard the words aloud how much she hoped they would be in time. She knew better than to hope, but she still did.

They were too late. Instead of rescuing Lisa Blackwood, though, they only stumbled upon the hunter’s freshest kill.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Over three thousand miles away from the agents, Lillian Martin sat at her table and wrote a letter. It was the ninth such letter she'd written since being discharged from Freedom Falls Psychiatric Hospital. The other eight were organized in chronological order in a shoebox Lillian kept under her bed. One day, she'd send the letters. Maybe she'd even hand-deliver them.

Her heartbeat quickened at the thought, and her pen paused while she bit her lip and imagined the rush she’d feel if she met Franklin West face to face.

“When,” she corrected. “When I meet him face to face.”

Reason asserted itself when the flush of emotion passed. She couldn’t send the letters because the letters incriminated her. She couldn’t hand deliver them either, because those thugs at the prison would take them from West, and she’d be incriminated again. She couldn’t even visit him because conversations at the prison were recorded, and if she saw him, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from telling him all about her plans for Faith Bold and how she would avenge West of that scheming bitch. She didn’t really mind the idea of prison as long as she got sent to the same place West was, but she couldn’t get caught until she finished with Faith Bold. She owed that to West. So for now, all she could do was write these letters and dream of the day she could tell him all about it.

She resumed writing. It’s like she doesn’t even care. I mean, I put the woman right in front of her door with her eyeballs ripped out of her head, and the same damned night, she’s on a plane to… I don’t even know where.

She stopped again to relish the memory of the murder. It was so hard not to be angry, and it felt so good to let that anger go for a little while.

She looked at her bandaged hands and grinned. She’d told her manager that she fell off of her bike, and the stupid dick had bought it. What she’d really done was hit that old bag until her knuckles bled.

God, that felt good. To just release all of that pent-up energy and hurt someone. That’s all they deserved, anyway. Pain and death.

She kept writing. You should have seen it, Frank. By the time I ripped her eyes out, she was so out of it all she could do was whimper. But she twitched though. It was so… she stopped there and thought again. What she was going to say was that it was so hot to watch the old woman jerk around in pain, barely conscious from the beating but alive enough to know that something even more horrible than the beating had just happened to her.

Lillian almost wanted to leave her like that for a while. She wanted to drink up her victim’s suffering, to relish that pain for as long as she could. But it wasn’t safe. The woman had neighbors, and at any moment, Faith Bold could return with her damned dog. Lillian wanted to hurt Faith, but it wasn’t the right time. She needed Faith to panic first. She needed the walls to close in around her.

So she put the old woman out of her misery, cutting her throat and satisfying herself with watching her last failed attempts at breathing. Then she put the body in front of the door, wrote her message and left.

And she still isn’t paying attention! I don’t get it. Why did she pay attention to you and not to me? I mean… you’re awesome, but I’m awesome too! I’m a scary and dangerous killer, so why is she ignoring me? Why, why, why, why WHY WHY WHWYWWHWYHW…

The tip of the pen snapped, and a blotch of ink smeared underneath her words. Lillian watched it spread, covering up the gibberish that ended her letter. Her nostrils flared as she breathed, and her bandages flexed around her palms as she curled her hands into fists.

She tossed the pen into the trash and used a paper towel to carefully blot the ink she’d spilled. She read the letter again, then fetched a pair of scissors and carefully cut off the end of her note past why is she ignoring me?

Then she folded the note, placed it in the envelope and carefully sealed it. After neatly writing West’s prison address on the front of the envelope, she placed it at the bottom of her shoebox and returned to the kitchen to make herself dinner.

She’d chosen the wrong victim, that was all. Who talked to their neighbors anymore? Faith wouldn’t care that some woman who lived a few apartments down was dead. Old people died all the time.

No, she needed to pick someone important to Faith. But who?

She loved her job. That was clear. She’d captured West and a bunch of other serial killers with her colleagues at the FBI.

That’s what she would do. She would kill an FBI agent. Ooh, that was good! Then Faith would know that she wasn’t safe either!

Lillian giggled and clapped her hands. That would be so exciting! FBI agents were like cops. They thought they were badass and invincible. It would be fun killing one of them and watching them slowly realize that they died just as easily as any other animal.

She’d spy on the Philadelphia Field Office and pick a target. Then Faith would know. Then she would look at Lillian. She would see that she had finally met her match.

And Lillian would finally have earned her audience with Franklin West.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Dawn came as a surprise to Faith. She'd lost track of time after getting the call from Wyatt about Lisa going missing. Apparently, they'd spent the entire night talking to Robert, learning about the blackmail message to Lisa, finding her body, scouring the place for more traps, and getting emergency services out there to recover the body. Now they were back in the Blackwood house, sipping coffee that Wyatt had made and trying to hold back the despair that threatened to overwhelm them.

This happened in every case. Every damned case. They would work their asses off to find the killer before he got anyone else, but he always got someone else, sometimes two, before the case was over. Faith had seen numerous bodies, numerous people she couldn't save, but it never got easier. One of her old mentors warned her that if she wasn't careful, she'd become desensitized to death. Dead bodies would begin to mean as much to her as paperwork did.

Eleven years and counting with the Bureau, and Faith had yet to look at a victim and not take it personally. It was her job to save Lisa Blackwood’s life, and she had failed. Never mind that she had done everything she could. Never mind that by the time they learned Lisa was missing, she was probably already dead.

Turk slept in a corner of the room. Faith felt just as exhausted as he did, but she couldn’t rest. Even if she were in their hotel room in bed, she wouldn’t have been able to rest. Not with their killer out there reveling in the joy of his most recent victory.

Robert, of course, was inconsolable. He was on his front porch talking with Wyatt. Or rather, Wyatt was talking with him and also making sure that Robert didn’t jump into his truck and go off to God knows where to do God knows what. It wasn’t unheard of for distraught spouses to break with reality for a while after losing their loved one. Faith had never seen a suicide or an accidental death resulting from such an event, but she’d heard of many.

“She was five feet away from first aid,” Michael said.

“Hmm?”

“First aid. She was five feet away. Maybe… I don’t know, ten minutes more, and she would have had time to stop her bleeding, disinfect her wound, and maybe even call for help.”

The cabin Lisa had died trying to reach was a cache of survival supplies, including medical kits. Lisa had tried to reach it after the spear thrower pierced her liver. Liver punctures were invariably fatal unless they happened right in front of a trauma ward, so it was a miracle she’d made it as far as she did.

And anyway…

“She didn’t have a phone, Michael. There was no way for her to call for help.”

He sighed. “Right. I just…” He lifted his hands and let them drop.

“Yeah. I feel you.”

“A fucking spear thrower? Like…” Michael laughed mirthlessly. “Who is this guy? It’s like he’s a villain from some slasher movie.”

“A lot of the people we chase are like that,” Faith said. “That’s the downside of being good at finding people like that. They keep asking us to find people like that.”

He sighed. “Yeah. It just sucks. I feel like we’re the cops in a superhero comic book. Like we’re dealing with some guy with powers and gadgets and crap, and we’re just the normal beat cops trying to keep our city safe from freaks.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I realize that this is no different from any other case we’ve had. It just sucks.”

“It does,” she agreed.

The front door opened, and Robert and Wyatt walked inside. Robert looked shellshocked. He tried to smile at the agents, but his mouth couldn’t do more than twitch. Faith wondered that he would even make the effort. Maybe that was just a habit ingrained into humans as social creatures.

She wondered if those same habits were ingrained into the killer. Did he smile at people? Did he greet new acquaintances with a handshake? Did he open doors for strangers and offer to help old people cross the street? If so, was it all a ruse to hide the darkness underneath, or was it something he did without thinking, just a part of being human?

And if the latter was true, then why kill people? And why this way? What motivated him to want to kill his victims in this particular fashion?

Robert sat in front of the agents and sighed heavily. Wyatt poured him a mug of coffee, then sat next to him.

Faith broke the silence by following another social convention, perhaps one of the emptiest social conventions there were. “We’re so sorry for your loss, Mr. Blackwood.”

Robert returned the mandated response. “Yeah. Thank you.”

Michael folded his hands in front of him and asked, “When we spoke to your wife earlier today, she talked to us about her old survivalist group: Nature’s Guardians. Were you close with any of them?”

Robert shook his head. “Not really. The group was more Lisa’s thing. Even within the group, it didn’t seem like anyone was close.”

“Did they fight a lot?”

“No, not really. They just… This is going to sound mean, but it’s like you got all of the shy, awkward kids in school and plopped them in a room with one extrovert. Well, two, I guess. Kelly was pretty outgoing too.”

“What can you tell us about the group?” Faith asked. She had heard Lisa’s side, but she wanted an outside perspective. Besides, she wasn’t sure how much of what Lisa had told them was the truth.

"Um, it was basically a social media group, but they met in person instead of talking online. That's all they really did, though, was talk. I think Lisa organized three trips in the four years the group existed. A couple of them paired up for excursions every now and then, but it was really informal. Mostly, they just shared stories. I showed up to a few meetings, but I was never really a part of it."

“How did people treat Lisa during those meetings?”

“They were fine. No one was especially loving or anything, but they were polite to her like they were to everyone else. Why? Do you think someone from the group is killing the former members?”

“It’s a possibility we’re considering,” Faith admitted.

He nodded. “Makes sense. The three victims are from the group. I don’t know who, though. They seemed awkward, but no one seemed violent.”

“How many people were in the group?”

“No more than six at any time.”

“But there were others who were only in the group part of the time?” Faith asked.

“A few. I can get you a list of members. Lisa has their contact info on her phone. I can send it to you if you want.”

“Please do,” Faith said.

"The thing is, most of them moved away. Or they weren't from here, and they joined thinking it was an online thing that organized annual trips. Sorry." He rubbed his forehead. "I'm all over the place."

“That’s all right,” Faith said. “Get the list, and we’ll go through the names together and see if there’s anyone who could be involved.”

“I just don’t get it,” Robert said. “Why would any of them hurt her? Why would anyone do this kind of shit? Like… you guys see this a lot, right? This kind of fucked up shit?”

“More than we would like,” Faith replied.

“So why? Why do people do this?”

She looked at Michael. The two agents shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. “I think you should let us handle that part,” Michael said. “The honest answer is that reasons differ in each case. None of them are good enough to justify the murders. You focus on mourning your wife and honoring her memory. We’ll find whoever took her from you.”

“I know you will, but damn it, why?” Tears streamed from Robert’s face. “Just…”

He fell silent and buried his head in his hands. Faith’s heart ached for him. These were the worst conversations she ever had to have. It was impossible for normal people to put themselves in the headspace of murderers, and these murderers were far beyond the ordinary spectrum of killers. The sad, brutal truth was that whatever reason the killer had would seem ludicrous to anyone who wasn’t as sick and violent as the killer was.

“You’re going through a lot right now,” Faith said. “Why don’t you send us the list when you’ve had a moment to process everything?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head and standing. “No, I’ll get it now. It’s…” he chuckled bitterly. “Well, it’s not all right, but it’s life.”

He left the kitchen, and the agents shared a glum look with Wyatt. The police officer looked ten years older than he had when they first met him.

“Did you get anything from the murder weapon?” Faith asked.

Wyatt shook his head. “We sent it to the crime lab in case they could find something, but we didn’t notice anything on the spear or the thrower. Same thing as before, the killer’s being very careful not to leave anything behind.”

“Any thoughts on why he used a spear thrower this time?”

Michael answered that one. “I could be off base, but it seems like the killer might be going from easiest to kill to hardest to kill. Valerie was a snare from right up close. He had multiple traps at Ethan Holloway’s place. Here he rigged a trap from a distance. Maybe it’s not that Lisa was harder to kill, but she might have been better at noticing things up close or…” he sighed. “So basically, the same thing we already know. He’s adjusting his method for each victim. Christ, I hate this.”

He sipped his coffee and frowned across the table. Robert returned a moment later with the list.

“Looks like nine names,” he told them. “I forget how many I said earlier. Anyway, there was Lisa, Ethan and Valerie. Graham Nash, Kelly Connor and Justin Thornton. Those six were the permanent members. Then we have George Von Karman, uh, Henry Duchamp and Uma Parker. They were the out-of-towners who showed up to a meeting or two but figured out that this wasn’t like a social media adventure site.”

“We can probably rule out those three,” Faith said. “Wyatt, go ahead and call the numbers anyway and get alibis for the nights of the murders.”

She kept her tone professional, but inwardly she was disappointed. This revealed no new information to them, and the three permanent members were all unavailable right now. Could they be working together?

She was tired. Her mind was all over the place. She needed to get some rest and then attack this with fresh eyes. She stood and called for Turk. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Blackwood.”

“Sure. Don’t mention it. Just do me a favor.” His face set grimly. “If you find the asshole who did this, I want to talk to him. I want to know why he did what he did.”

Faith and Michael shared another look. Obviously, they couldn’t grant this request, but Faith didn’t want to argue with Robert right now. So she deflected. “Get some rest, Robert.”

The three of them left the house and started back toward their hotel. Part of Faith’s depression was due to exhaustion, but there was no doubt that seeing the impact of Lisa Blackwood’s murder made the pain of their failure to capture the killer harder to handle.

She might save other lives. She might even find this killer. But nothing she did would ever bring Lisa Blackwood back. Now and forever, Robert had lost the woman he loved.

Somewhere in the wilderness, her killer was still roaming free. He could already be stalking his next victim.

But then, so could the hunter in Philadelphia, the one who had killed Eleanor. Faith should be able to put that aside and focus on the hunter she was tracking, but it was hard to do when she had to worry about her friends and loved ones being targeted by another violent murderer.

Only a few months ago, Faith thought that she had finally found stability in her life. Now her world was crumbling around her, and all she could do was watch it happen.

She looked out of her window at the pristine Alaskan forest and wondered which part of her life would collapse next.

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.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

While Michael drove them back to their hotel, Faith sent a warning to the surviving former group members warning them of the danger and asking them to avoid going into the wilderness. Jake replied with a thumbs up, but Kelly and Graham remained incognito.

“I’m beginning to worry about Kelly and Graham,” Faith said.

“Graham? You don’t think he’s the killer?”

“I’m not convinced yet,” Faith said. “But if he is, then there’s still Kelly to worry about.”

“Do you want me to call Wyatt and see if we can put an alert out for her?”

She nodded. “Yes, please. Both of them. Just in case.”

Michael dialed the number while Faith thought about what their next move was. Finding Kelly Connor and Graham Nash was obviously step one, but the police were going to have to handle that. They knew this area far better than the agents did, and the Alaskan wilderness was far too vast a place for them to trust Turk’s nose to lead them to the killer fast enough.

The distance really complicated things. The killer could effectively disappear whenever he wanted to. Once he was finished taking his revenge or having his fun or whatever it was he was doing, he had hundreds of thousands of square miles of empty land he could go to. Hell, millions if he hopped the border into Canada. If he was a survivalist like his victims, then he could survive out there indefinitely and maybe even be happy that way. Faith was taught that there was no such thing as a perfect crime, but this spree sure as hell came close.”

Michael sighed. “Right. I understand. Just do your best.” He hung up and looked at Faith. “So he put the alert out, and they’ll do their best, but he wanted to reiterate to us that there are far more square miles of land than their resources can cover. He would also like to remind us that eventually, the Anchorage Police Department and state and national park services are going to stop pouring the limited resources they have into this case. He didn’t say this out loud, but I’m starting to get a strong impression that to a lot of people out here, these tragedies are just ‘something that happens.’”

Faith hadn’t considered that, but now that Michael mentioned it, it made sense. People here were like people everywhere else in that they were mostly concerned with things that affected them and not concerned with things that didn’t affect them. That was why Quint could downplay Garrett Pines’s history of violence and play up all the good qualities he had. Garrett was Quint’s friend. Ethan Holloway and Valerie North were not. That was why Wyatt felt a need to remind them at every turn that they probably wouldn’t find anyone looking in the wilderness. Part of it was simple pessimism, since it truly was a daunting task, but part of it was the wilderness mentality that “the wild” just took people.

“Except this isn’t the wild,” she said out loud.

“Huh?”

“Sorry. I was just thinking that you’re right. About the people here, I mean. Other than Robert Holloway, everyone has this stoic attitude about the murders. It’s not like they’re flippant about it, but no one’s acting like it’s a big deal. It’s odd. In most places we’ve gone, there’s an undercurrent of fear and tension in the community. Sometimes it’s near-panic like Philly when West was on the loose, and sometimes it’s under the surface like D.C. when Langeveldt was paralyzing people and dressing them up as his family, but it’s always front-page news. Out here, it’s like…”

“Like it’s just the price you pay for living in the wilderness.”

“Exactly. I guess part of the difference is that people here are more self-confident. They’re more self-reliant, they carry guns, everyone has at least basic survival skills. They can probably fool themselves into believing that they can handle it if the killer comes after them, so they don’t need to be afraid of this guy.”

“They probably also know better than to go into the wilderness alone. I know there are ‘hardcore’ survivalists, as Jake put it, but I think most people know to never travel without a partner.”

“That too.” She sighed. “Do you think we should look into their personal lives more? While we’re waiting for a word on Graham and Kelly?”

“I think it’s better than nothing,” Michael agreed. “But if I’m honest, I don’t think it’s much better than nothing.”

“Hey, none of that,” she scolded. “They get to be pessimists, not us.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I guess the landscape out here is getting to me.” He looked out the window at the already dimming sky. “Sunset at four in the afternoon. I don’t know how people can live like this.”

“I guess some people prefer darkness.”

They fell silent again, but a moment later, Michael chuckled. “You know, we’re never pessimistic at the same time.”

“What’s that?”

“You and me. We’re never both pessimistic. Either we’re both optimistic or one of us is down and the other is up. I think that’s why we work so well together.”

“We’re a perfect match,” she agreed.

She met his eyes, and her heart fluttered. She wanted to look away, but it had been so long since she felt those butterflies that she risked holding his gaze a moment longer. It was so weird to have these feelings for Michael again.

Michael lifted an eyebrow. “Do I have something on my face, or what?”

She looked away quickly. “No, sorry.”

He grinned. “It must just be my rakish good looks then.”

She laughed a little nervously, then said, "Michael… do you ever…"

Her voice trailed off as she struggled to find the courage to form the words. After a moment, Michael said. “It’s hard to know if I do when you don’t tell me what exactly it is.”

“Do you ever think about us?”

His smile faded. He straightened in his chair and gave her a pensive look. Faith’s face flamed, and she started to stammer an apology when her phone rang. She jumped and knocked the phone off of the table.

“Damn it. Sorry. I… hold on.”

She picked up the phone and answered. “Hello? Who is this?”

“Hello, am I speaking with Special Agent Faith Bold?” a pleasantly inflected female voice asked.

Faith put the phone on speaker and set it on the table. Could this be a lead? “Yes, this is she.”

“Sweet!” There was murmuring from the other side, then the woman said, “Miss Bold, what are your thoughts on Justice Schraeder’s decision to allow live public broadcasts of Franklin West’s trial?”

Faith sighed and rolled her eyes. A reporter. Great. That’s what she got for not checking the caller ID. “I have no comment at this time.”

“You don’t feel that this is an opportunity for transparency in the most sensational legal case in the nation’s history?”

She sighed again. “Have a nice day.”

She hung up and pressed her palms to her eyes with a groan. “Seriously? They’re going to start harassing me about West again?”

“Did they stop?”

She slumped. “No. I just usually let the calls go to voicemail and block the number.”

“Well, now you have another number to block.”

Her phone buzzed again. Another number she didn’t recognize. She decided to let this one go to voicemail, but no sooner had this call finished than another followed. And another. And another.

“What the hell is going on? Is today bug Faith day?”

“I guess they just made the announcement,” Michael said, looking up the story on his phone. “They’re ready to begin the trial portion of his case, and they were deliberating over whether it would be a public or a private trial. I guess West’s lawyers wanted a private one, but the state successfully lobbied for a public one.”

“Well, whoop-de-god-damned-do,” Faith snapped. “Lovely. Now I’m going to be story numero uno once again.”

Michael shifted in his seat. “Yeah, there’s something else.”

Her phone buzzed. With a huff, she declined the call, then shut her phone off.

“Faith…”

“Yes, what is it?” she said curtly.

“The other murders. The electronics store clerk and your neighbor. People are starting to talk about how there’s a new killer calling you out. That’s right up there with West’s case. Your name is in the news again. It looks like they tried to call the Boss, and he also declined comment.”

Faith imagined the Boss's phone ringing uncontrollably like hers was. She imagined him sitting at his desk, staring out the window of his office and thinking to himself that it was time for Faith to rest on her laurels. She'd done good work, but now she was bringing bad press to the Bureau.

“Damn it!” she swore. “He’s doing it!”

“Who is? Doing what?”

“Breaking me. West is breaking me. He said he would, and now he’s doing it. Just by being on trial, he’s putting my name out there and ruining my career. It’s bullshit!”

“Relax,” Michael said firmly. “West isn’t doing shit. He’s grabbing at every last ounce of attention he can have before he gets put in a concrete box and the world forgets about him.”

“Yeah, and in the process, he’s turning me into a liability. He might not have driven me insane, but he’s taking me off the battlefield. He can’t kill anyone, and I can’t save anyone. The little prick!”

“Faith! Enough!”

Faith pressed her lips together and looked out the window. Her shoulders were bunched up by her ears, and her mouth was curled into a frown. Michael didn’t say anything for a while. It hit Faith that her little outburst came right before the tantrum she’d just thrown about being an unwilling media darling. She lowered her eyes and said, “I’m sorry,” in a voice barely above a whisper.

“Don’t be sorry,” Michael replied. “Let’s just focus on this case, yeah? Then we can deal with… everything else… later.”

Her shoulders slumped. She knew that everything else included more than just the attention she was receiving in the media. Damn it, why did she have to open her big fat mouth?

“Yeah,” she replied. “Good idea.”

Turk whined softly, and Faith scratched him behind the ears. “I’m all right, boy. Just… a lot on my mind.”

They sat quietly for a moment. Then Michael said. “I’m going to run to the general store for some dinner. You want anything?”

“Whatever you want.”

“All right.”

He headed out, leaving Faith to wonder if she’d just witnessed the end of their friendship. And how long before her relationship with David ended too? If only she could go back to when things made sense.

But that wasn’t how life worked. Once you made a mistake, you suffered the consequences of that mistake. Even if you lost everything.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Michael returned fifteen minutes later with some TV dinners and a couple of apples. "Here you go," he said, tossing Faith one of the apples. "Keep the doctor away."

“Thanks. Um, Michael. Forget what I said earlier. I was—”

“I won’t forget it,” he said. “I also won’t talk about it right now. And neither will you. We have a case to solve. We’ll deal with the rest later.”

She lowered her eyes. She hated leaving the air unclear between them, but he was right. They needed to focus on the case. Personal issues had to wait. If only it wasn’t so much easier said than done. “Right. Sorry.”

He sighed. “It’s okay. Just… stop bringing it up, all right?”

She looked away, then, so she didn’t look too obviously upset, she bit into her apple. Michael started one of the TV dinners and said, "I'm going to reach out to Kelly's neighbor again. Graham Nash's personal life is a black hole, but hers isn't. I'm going to talk to the neighbor and see if I can figure out where she might be. Why don't you call Jake back and get his impression of Graham Nash? I'm sick of sitting around, so if we can find anything that gives us an excuse to get out of this hotel, I'm all for it."

She nodded. “Yeah. That sounds good.”

“Good.”

She dialed Jake’s number, and when he answered, she said, “I realize I forgot to talk to you about Graham Nash.”

"Graham? Was he one of the victims, too?"

“No. But the killer is targeting members of Nature’s Guardians, so Graham is either a target himself, or he’s… well, he could be the killer.”

“Huh. You know, that wouldn’t surprise me.”

Faith’s eyes widened. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. He was an asshole.”

“Really? How so?”

“He was… I guess asshole isn’t the right word. He was just a big shit-talker. You know, he always had to act like he was better than everyone else. And he was good, don’t get me wrong. It’s just tiring to hear someone talk about themselves all the time.”

She frowned. “Interesting. We heard from Lisa that he mostly kept to himself.”

“Really? That’s surprising. He couldn’t shut up. He talked almost as much as Lisa.”

Faith leaned back in her chair. “Why would Lisa lie to us about that?”

“I don’t know. She liked him. Not the way I liked Kelly, but she admired him. She bought into his bullshit, I guess. He acted like he was the greatest survivalist the world had ever seen, and she believed him. The rest of us all thought he was full of hot air. It got to the point where we couldn’t take it anymore. We voted to kick him out of the group.”

Faith’s frown deepened. “Lisa told us he left of his own accord.”

“I mean… you could say that. We had a meeting, and we all told Lisa our thoughts. He told us we could… Well, he made a very rude comment. When we all said that either he left or we did, he repeated his sentiment and stormed off. Lisa chewed us all out, called us names and didn’t speak to us again for days. We had the camping trip the following week, and she was cheery and polite again, but the tension was there. I left after the camping trip, like I already told you, so I don’t know how much Graham’s departure influenced the end of the group, but I do know that he was Lisa’s favorite, and she was very upset when he left.”

Faith tried to wrap her head around this new information. “He almost never texted any of you, though. Not even Lisa.”

“How do you know that? Were you spying on our cell phones?”

“We pulled your phone records for this investigation, yes.”

“You don’t need a warrant for that?”

“We got one. I’ll send you a copy.”

He sighed. “Jesus. Okay, before I talk anymore, is there anything else I should know? Anything else you did without my consent?”

Faith resisted the urge to snap at him about being more concerned for his privacy than his safety and the safety of others, but she kept herself in check. It was forever the struggle of law enforcement to know how to balance safety and privacy. Law enforcement—used to liars who leveraged dishonesty to hide criminal activity—pushed for a greater focus on safety. Understandably, private citizens who rarely if ever found themselves victims of a crime, felt differently.

Unless they were the ones left murdered in a remote Alaskan cabin, of course. “So far, no, but just so we’re clear, you’re still a person of interest in the case. You might not have been present at the scene of the murders, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t need more information from you. I’ll tell you in advance about any further warrants, though. I apologize for not keeping you in the loop.”

He chuckled, and the frustration he felt was evident in his voice when he replied, "Wonderful. No, he didn't text any of us. He preferred to tell us all how wonderful he was and how shitty we were to our faces."

“Do you know if Graham contacted anyone after he left the group?”

“Not that I’m aware of. He never talked to me, that’s for sure. Everyone assumed he found some other group to terrorize.”

“Do you think it’s possible he could be behind the murders?”

“That sounds like your job a lot more than my job. But to answer your question, I would be very surprised. I always thought he was full of hot air. He didn’t strike me as the kind of person who could back up what he said.”

“I see. Final question.”

“Forever or for now?”

She rolled her eyes. “For now. Are you sure you have no idea where Kelly Connor could be?”

“No idea. I cut off contact with her when I left the group. It was part of my attempt to reconcile with my wife. Didn’t work.”

“And after it didn’t work, you didn’t try to reconnect with her?”

“No. She wasn’t… I wasn’t in love with her. She was just young, adventurous, and beautiful and… I guess I missed when my wife was the same way. I thought that I could recapture that feeling for a moment. Anyway, now my life has fallen apart, and if I could go back, I would leave the group before I ever even saw her. No offense to Kelly. It’s not her fault I couldn’t control myself. I just… no, I haven’t tried to reconnect with her.”

Faith sighed. “Okay. Thank you. Keep your phone on, and don’t leave for the wilderness until we capture this killer.”

“All right.”

After he hung up, Faith leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. Jake had just painted her a very different picture of Graham Nash. Clearly his and Lisa's versions couldn't both be true. Either Lisa was lying, or Jake was. Or maybe Graham behaved differently around the others than he did around Lisa.

But why would either of them lie? They both had solid alibis for the nights of the murders. Lisa could have been covering for Graham, and her murder could have been just eliminating a witness. Or Jake could be lying about Graham to deflect from the real suspect. She had a hard time believing Kelly could be responsible for all of this, but stranger things had happened. And he could always be covering for someone they hadn’t identified yet.

It was so frustrating. Every time they found a lead, it either led nowhere or forced them to question everything they knew so far. Usually both. And it took so much time and effort to find these leads. It was sobering to think that this killer really could strike and then just vanish until the clouds obscured the evidence of his crimes. Or hers. Or theirs.

She looked at Turk. “What do you think, buddy? What am I missing?”

Turk walked to her and laid his head on her lap to comfort her. She smiled down at him and scratched him behind his ears. “You’re a good dog.”

He gave her a toothy grin, and she laughed and pulled him close for a hug. “I’m not going to let them put you out to pasture,” she said. “You’re not ready.”

She felt a pang in her chest when she said that. It was Faith who wasn’t ready. It had nothing to do with Turk.

But that didn’t mean she was wrong. Turk was a strong and capable dog who thrived when he was on an assignment. With nothing to do all day but play, he would lose his purpose, and without purpose, all he was doing was waiting around to die. She couldn’t let him waste away like that. At least let him go out doing something meaningful.

The door opened, and Michael walked back into the room.

“I didn’t even realize you stepped outside,” Faith said.

“I couldn’t hear what Kelly’s neighbor was saying while you were talking to Jake.”

“Got it. Well, wait until I tell you what Jake told me about Graham Nash.”

Michael gave her a grim expression. “You need to listen to me first. Kelly Connor is missing.”

Faith’s blood froze. “What?”

“She went on a solo hiking trip two days ago, and no one’s heard from her since. She’s supposed to check in with her neighbor once a day, but she hasn’t.”

“Shit. Did she tell her where she was going?”

“Him, but I guess that’s not really relevant. She was going to hike to the mouth of the Tazlina River, follow it to the Copper River and then hike back to a cabin she has on St. Anne Lake. I don’t know where any of those places are, though.”

“Find out and get authorities and rescue services there ASAP. Get Wyatt to put search parties out too. If he protests, tell him we’ll name him as part of the reason this girl dies.”

Michael nodded. “I’ll make the calls.”

“Good. As soon as we get locations, we’re going out looking for her. Dress warmly. We might be out all night.”

Michael dialed Wyatt while Faith dressed in her parka and boots. Turk looked at her, and his eyes showed similar concern.

Kelly had left two days ago. Lisa Blackwood was murdered last night. The killer could be out hunting Kelly right now.

Or she was already dead.

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…

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Kelly Connor sat cross-legged in front of the fire and held her hands over the blaze. The temperature tonight was no colder than it was any other night, which meant it was about as cold as the deep freezer at her most recent ex-boyfriend’s workplace. He was a resident in the maternity ward at Alaska Regional Hospital, and like most doctors, he was very fond of showing off how much he knew, including how freezing breast milk to twenty degrees Fahrenheit or below almost eliminated chances of spoiling since bacteria couldn’t survive such low temperatures.

She didn’t mind his arrogance so much at first, since he also knew a lot about how to please a woman. For the five weeks they’d dated, she had more fun in bed than she’d had with anyone before him.

“And that’s how I learned that sex isn’t everything,” she muttered.

Kevin just wouldn’t shut up. Like, at all. Anything she said, he had to give his two cents about. Any decision she made, he had to pick apart.

The last straw came when she shared some of her survival knowledge with him, and he tried to correct her three different times. The one thing she was certain she knew more about than he did, but he had to be right about it.

So, she broke up with him and came out to the wilderness to get over him. Not just him. The only reason she was with Kevin in the first place was to get over Jake. Jake was good in bed too, or well, in sleeping bag. She’d never actually been with him in a bed.

It wasn’t that she missed, though. He was kind and strong, and he didn’t feel a need to treat her like a little girl. He was the only man she’d dated that she could have seen herself falling in love with.

“Except that he’s married, so there’s that.”

She sighed and stirred the fire. Whatever. She didn’t need men. Her friends kept telling her to stop looking to relationships for happiness, and they were right. Hell, she was happier now than she’d been in months. She was doing what she loved, and she was doing it without having to constantly worry what other people thought about her.

Maybe she’d do what Lisa did and start a survivalist group. For women only. No men to get entangled with and no men to act like they were smarter than you. That sounded like—

A noise broke through her musing. That sounded like a branch snapping.

Kelly carefully reached into her pack and pulled out her bear spray. She never carried a gun, even though the "experts" insisted you needed one. Polar bears didn't come this far south, and humans weren't good sources of food for brown bears and black bears, so they would always move on if they got a good whiff of extra strength mace. It worked on wolves, too, although she had yet to encounter a wolf pack.

Another branch snapped, and a soft curse reached her ears.

That sent a chill down her spine. Bears most definitely didn’t say, “Shit,” under their breaths after stepping on a branch.

She wished desperately that she had a gun with her.

“Who’s out there?” she called, trying to sound brave and failing utterly. “I can hear you.”

Silence followed, and that was the final straw. A bear wouldn’t be silent if a human warned it that she could hear it. Only a man would do that.

It hit her hard just how alone she was. She was so confident that she could handle anything the wilderness threw at her that she’d forgotten the more mundane and arguably more deadly threat a violent man could present to a woman alone.

She got to her feet and grabbed her pack, unhooking the flashlight from its strap before shouldering it. She lit the flashlight and looked through the trees around her. She saw nothing at first, but when she lowered the beam and started to kick dirt over the fire, she thought she caught a flash of movement.

She spun around and aimed at the spot, but she saw nothing there. “You’d better fuck off!” she shouted, hating the terror evident in her voice. “I have a knife!”

Nothing.

Her heart pounding, she quickly put out the fire and started into the forest. She made it three steps before she tripped over a root and fell. As she fell, she felt something whip through her hair. She spun around to see what had touched her and found a crossbow bolt buried in the trunk of the tree. If she hadn’t fallen, the bolt would have speared straight through her head.

Her father’s voice echoed absurdly in her mind. In one ear and out the other.

She heard another branch snap, and her paralysis broke. She got to her feet and sprinted away, leaping over rocks and ducking under branches. Her flashlight shook and bounced as she ran, and it took all of her strength not to scream for help. All that would do was draw the attention of the man chasing her.

Images flashed in her mind. Her parents in Fairbanks. She hadn’t spoken to them in months. Her sister in California who she hadn’t talked to in years. Jake and Kevin and all of the other men she’d dated, all brief flings that meant nothing, but all memories. Her life.

Her life was flashing before her eyes.

She ran, tears streaming down her face, and prayed silently that she would make it through this and have a chance at a real life, one that mattered.

She looked up at a towering Sitka Spruce tree a few yards from her. In the beam of the flashlight, she could see the twisted whorl of a large knot the size of a dinner plate growing around chest height. She recognized that tree.

The cabin! She was close to her cabin! Like many survivalists in the area, she had constructed a few lodges to serve as shelter and supply caches in case she ran into trouble and couldn’t reach civilization in time.

There was a satellite phone in that cabin and a small portable generator. It would take time to warm the generator and heat the gasoline enough that she could fuel it and use the energy to charge the phone, but there was a crossbow there as well with twelve bolts, and once the generator was on, she could stay inside the cabin and bar the door until she could call for help. If she moved quickly enough, she could be safe before she was caught by whoever was chasing her.

She started south, navigating by memory to the next landmark, a hemlock that had been struck by lightning years ago and now grew branches only on one side. She figured she was a mile away from the cabin. If she could reach it before her stalker did, she would be safe.

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.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Victor moved slowly through the forest toward the cabin. There was no need to run and risk overheating. Sweat was deadly in temperatures like this. It would freeze and create a layer of ice around the body. It could even freeze in the pores at extremely low temperatures. If that happened, death would occur within minutes.

He wondered if Kelly would freeze to death before reaching the cabin. She was smart enough to know not to overheat in low temperatures, but she was also on the run and terrified. It was one thing to know that when you were facing a grizzly bear, your best chance of survival was to lie down in a ball and cover your head. It was another thing entirely to have the strength of will to do it when a seven-hundred-pound animal was charging you with an open mouth full of fangs.

It would be a little disappointing, he supposed, if her own fear killed her instead of his traps, but he’d get over it. That was the risk he assumed when he stepped on those branches and swore loudly enough for her to hear. The crossbow bolt he’d fired when she fell might have been a step too far, but she was his last target in Alaska, so he allowed himself a little theatricality. Well, more theatricality than usual.

Graham lived in a commune now. He didn’t come into the wilderness anymore, not even the Montana wilderness. That would make him the most difficult to kill. He’d have to sneak into his home and stab him, or maybe even buy a rifle and kill him from a distance.

That would be hugely disappointing. Anyone could kill a person by shooting them. It was easy to do that. But to outsmart a person and drive them into traps? That was real hunting.

Not that the Nature’s Guardians ever understood that. They called themselves survivalists, but they were just common outdoorsmen and women. Hikers and campers and hunters. They had satellite phones and compasses and cotton blankets and generators and guns.

His lip curled. Traps were the real sign of intelligent hunting. Finding an animal and using a gun to kill it was easy. Knowing that animal, understanding its habits and movements, knowing where it was going to be and putting traps in place to kill it was a superior demonstration of one’s capability.

And they thought he was the incompetent one. They said he was the poser. Why? Because he wore furs he had taken from the animals he’d killed? Because he wore shoes made of leather he had cured from the same moose that contributed the antlers he’d carved into the two knives he carried around his belt, and used a bow made from another set of antlers, this one taken from an Elk he’d killed with a snare just like the one he’d used to sever Valerie North’s head?

His lips thinned as he recalled how they laughed at him. At him! Pretenders. Liars. City dwellers. They didn’t deserve to call themselves survivalists. They played survival games, but they didn’t know how to last out in the wilderness. Take away their cabins with their stashes of processed food, their technology, their gas generators, and where were they? They had no chance out here.

He heard a branch snap ten yards ahead of him, and a moment later, he saw the beam of a flashlight spin around. He lowered his head and froze in place. In the middle of a thick stand of spruce, his brown clothing would look like another tree trunk if he didn't move.

As it turned out, the beam never even passed over him. Kelly was so panicked she didn’t even look where her beam was moving. He waited a few minutes, then continued toward the cabin, moving more slowly. Jesus, this dumb bitch couldn’t even run properly.

Maybe he should just catch up to her and brain her over the head. If he really wanted to see her caught in a trap, he could just carry her to one and toss her in it himself. That wasn’t really the point of the traps, but it was getting embarrassing following someone who lost all composure the minute she was faced with real danger.

That was real proof of their weakness. The instant they were pushed outside of their comfort zone, the “Nature’s Guardians” fell apart. Ethan Holloway would be lost without his satellite phone. Valerie North could only go a day without food before she gave up and ran straight back home to her microwave dinners and her dried pasta. Lisa Blackwood would rather talk about survival than do it. Graham couldn’t survive without someone stroking his ego every damned second. Jake was more interested in avoiding his wife and finding something warm to hold at night than he was about being a true wilderness man.

Jake. Damn it, he’d nearly forgotten about Jake. He had to take care of Jake before he made the trek to Montana.

To be fair, Jake was the least annoying of the group. He was the only one who didn’t pretend to be someone he wasn’t. He was fully aware of the fact that he was a hobbyist and not a survivalist and made no attempt to convince others that he was a wilderness man.

Still, he hadn’t stood up for him when he was denied entry. Maybe Jake didn’t need the help, but the others did. He should have recognized that and fought against the people who made fun of him instead of just laughing along with Kelly.

Kelly. She annoyed him the most. She just showed up to shake her ass and flash her tits and see which of the boys dropped to their knees and begged for the privilege of seeing it again. He hated women like that even more than he hated the chatty bitches like Lisa or the weak ones like Valerie.

Deep within the recesses of his mind, deeper than he acknowledged, he was hurt that she hadn’t tried to flirt with him the way she had with the others. She had taken one look at him and sneered like he was something she had stepped in. She claimed to be interested in survival, and he was the man who could have taught her more about survival than anyone else.

He didn't even want sex with her. He had never really been interested in that. Sex was how animals bred offspring, and he was too old to raise children. Not when he knew that the moment they saw an electric light or heard an automobile engine, they'd forget all about the true life of the wilderness and run straight to the nearest damned convenience store.

But he could have given Kelly something more meaningful than sex. He could have taught her how to survive in the wilderness as he had.

Victor remembered very little of his childhood. His mother had never been in the picture. His father was a stern man who spoke very little. They lived in a cabin in the Yukon and ate whatever they hunted or gathered. His father must have taught him some things, but Victor didn’t remember the lessons. Not the one his dad taught him anyway.

His dad was taken by a bear when Victor was ten years old. After that, Victor was on his own. And he’d done fine. He hunted, fished and gathered, chopped firewood, and made clothing from the skins of the animals he killed. He couldn’t remember if he missed his father or not. Probably he had. The old man was the only company he’d had for any length of time, and he’d never abused Victor.

But death happened. That was part of life. Sometimes you beat the bear, and sometimes, the bear beat you.

He’d learned to set traps because his small size made it difficult for him to use his bow effectively for anything larger than geese or hares. He had to protect himself from bears and wolves, and he needed to take elk and moose every now and then, and snares and traps were the only way he could manage big game.

But he’d managed. He’d grown bigger and stronger, and when he was fourteen, he decided he was strong enough to leave the cabin and strike out on his own.

So he had. He’d headed north first, but past the tundra there was nothing but ice. He knew it was possible to live up there. The natives built igloos and hunted seals and whales for blubber. They protected themselves from polar bears using spears made from whale bones and opened holes in the ice to fish.

He respected the hell out of those natives. They were one of the few peoples on Earth that remembered how to live the way nature intended. They survived in an environment even harsher than the one in which Victor thrived.

But that wasn’t for him. He liked the forest. He knew it. It was his home, and it was even more vast and beautiful than the ice cap.

So, he headed south again. He went east for a while and for many years explored the empty Canadian wilderness. He traveled far, how far, he didn’t know, but hundreds of miles, at least. When he decided he’d journeyed east as far as he wanted, he turned west.

It was here, in Alaska, that he first came into contact with other people. That was ten years ago now. He had walked into the small village of Copper River out of curiosity and found people who would accept him even if they didn’t quite understand him.

Those were good days. Sometimes, Victor wished he could be content with being the slightly odd frequent visitor who would share tales of the wilderness to listening ears around the bar. Alcohol was the only modern human convenience that he enjoyed, and the people who listened to his tales didn’t laugh. They looked at him like a sage, and damn it, that’s what he was.

But it wasn’t enough. Seeing fathers with their sons reminded him of his own father. He realized painfully that he hadn’t fathered any children to carry on his family legacy. There was no one who would remember how to live free from the protection of the herd and the holes they built for themselves.

So, he decided he would teach. He would find people interested in learning, not just listening. He looked around throughout the small towns scattered across the wilderness and found a group he was certain would understand and want what he had to offer them.

And they had laughed at him. They had scorned him. They had even dared to suggest that he was a fraud, a crazy drunk who wandered in looking like a caricature and tried to make friends so he could… what had Kelly said? Find some money for booze?

She would learn. She would live long enough to understand her mistake.

A scream split the night, and Victor grinned. She’d reached the cabin and found one of the traps. He moved less carefully now, pushing through the trees and stepping into the small clearing in front of the cabin Kelly had built so she could have supplies to rescue her from her incompetence in the wilderness.

Kelly sobbed. She tried to pry open the bear trap that had snapped shut around her right leg. She managed to open it about two inches before it snapped shut around her leg again. She screamed once more, and he watched, drinking in the sound.

Then she opened her eyes and saw him. Her face blanched. “You…”

“Me,” he agreed. “Hello, Kelly.”

“Oh God… Oh, God! Help! Help me!”

He threw his head back and laughed. “Come on, Kelly. You know there ain’t no one out here but you and me. Besides, God helps those who help themselves, not those who whore around for men who can help them.”

“You bastard! Leave me alone. Help!”

He shrugged. “I’m a bastard. That’s all right. I know better than to run straight into a damned bear trap.” He grinned at her again. “Hey, I have an idea. How about I drag you into the cabin, hang you up on the hooks I’ve built and cut pieces off of you until you die.”

She sobbed, and he nodded. “Yeah, that sounds good. Gonna have to break your other leg and both your arms first. Can’t have you flailing around.”

He stepped forward and caught a blur of motion out of the corner of his left eye. He spun around, hand flying for his knife, but the wolf sank its fangs into his shoulder and dragged him to the ground just as his fingers found the carved bone handle.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

“You bastard! Leave me alone. Help!”

Turk pivoted to the left, honing in on the sound. Faith and Michael followed. Through the trees, she could see a flashlight beam about forty yards ahead. Turk lowered his head and charged toward it, barking and snarling as he sprinted ahead.

He leaped through the trees, and Faith heard a cry of pain, then a thump. A moment later, she and Michael ran through the trees. Michael cried out and skidded to a stop, holding out his arm so Faith stopped too.

Kelly Connor was on the ground, weeping. A bear trap was clamped shut around her leg, and judging from the amount of blood, and the odd twist in her foot, it had broken her leg above the ankle.

She sobbed when she saw the agents. “Help me! He’s going to kill me!”

“No, he won’t,” Faith promised. “My dog has him—” she couldn’t finish the sentence before Turk yelped and flew past her vision to land on the ground behind her. “Shit! Michael, get her out of that trap and tourniquet her leg.”

The man Turk had taken down looked like something out of an adventure novel. His hair and beard were long and matted. He wore clothing that appeared to be handstitched animal skins. He bared teeth that were yellowed and crooked, and he held a knife made of carved bone.

He switched the knife to his uninjured arm and rushed toward Turk. Faith sprinted at him and drove her shoulder into his side, knocking him to the ground.

“Damn it!” Michael called at the same instant as a loud snap sounded in the air.

“Michael?” she called.

“I’m all right! Fucking bear traps! Be careful!”

Faith turned back to the killer to see his knife thrusting toward her. She cried out and twisted to the side. The blade sliced her parka open but didn’t reach her skin. She threw a punch, but her hand connected only with his thick beard.

I guess we’re both wearing body armor, she thought sardonically.

Turk had better luck than she did. He leaped into the air and planted all four paws on Victor, throwing him to the ground and narrowly avoiding a jab from the knife. He landed easily and jumped in front of Faith, snarling at the killer.

The killer jumped to his feet with the grace of a cat. In his condition, it was hard to guess at his age, but he was older than Faith for sure. Perhaps in his fifties.

He circled the agents, moving lightly on his feet, carrying the knife like an extension of his arm. He was a good fighter, though whether that came from training or years of fending for himself in the wilderness, Faith didn’t know.

“What the hell are you doing?” Michael called to her. “You have a gun!”

Faith quickly drew her weapon, but the killer heard Michael too. He snarled and rushed Faith, once more moving with almost inhuman speed. He ducked under her aim and drove his knife toward her ribs on the left side.

Turk jumped up and caught his arm, falling to the ground and twisting. He dragged the killer down with him, but the killer rolled, throwing Turk onto his back. He lifted his knee up high and brought it down hard.

“No!” Faith cried.

She fired, but everything happened so fast that she didn’t aim right. Her bullet sailed harmlessly past him. Fortunately, Turk saw the blow coming and released the killer’s arm, rolling out of the way just before the killer’s knee slammed into the ground.

Faith stepped forward and planted a kick in the man’s ribs. He gasped and rolled onto his back.

“Move and die, asshole!” Faith shouted, aiming her weapon squarely at the man’s head. “You know what a gun is, right?”

“A coward’s tool,” the man spat.

His voice was hoarse and gravelly. There was an accent to it that Faith couldn’t place, but that could just be that he wasn’t used to speaking to people.

"It'll kill you just fine, whatever kind of tool it is," Faith said. "Don't move."

Moving faster than Faith would have expected, the killer kicked out, catching her wrist and knocking the gun from her hand. It landed with a loud snap. Faith glanced behind her and saw that it had landed in another bear trap. The trap had slammed shut and broken the slide off of her gun.

She felt something slice her ribs and cried out.

“Damn it, Faith!” Michael shouted. “Pay attention!”

She turned back to the killer to see Turk’s jaws once more shut around the killer’s knife hand. Faith felt something wet and looked at her right side. The parka was sliced open just under her breast, but she couldn’t see the wound underneath the thick coat, and she couldn’t tell how badly she was hurt. She could still move, so she didn’t think she was hurt that badly.

The killer lifted Turk off of the ground and drew his fist back. Faith lunged forward, grabbed his shoulder and threw him over her hip. Turk released and landed on his feet. The killer landed on his stomach.

Faith dropped on top of him, planting her knee onto his back. He cursed and struggled, but she held him still, reaching for her handcuffs and saying, “I don’t know your name yet, but you’re under arrest.”

She looked over at Michael. He had freed Kelly from the bear trap and was now getting the tourniquet placed above her knee. Michael glared at her and shouted, “Faith! For fuck’s sake! Secure the damned prisoner first, then worry about everything else.”

She looked down to see that the killer had somehow freed his knife hand and was preparing to swing behind and catch Faith again. Fortunately, Turk rescued her once more, grabbing his wrist in between his jaws. This time, he bit down hard and twisted. Faith heard a crack as the bones in the killer’s arm snapped. He screamed and kicked his legs futilely, but Turk held on until he dropped the knife.

“Damn it!” the killer wailed. “Damn it! You’ve killed me!”

“Not yet,” Faith said, “but keep it up, and I’ll just let Turk have a go at your throat.”

“Go to hell!” he cried. “You and your wolf.”

Faith chuckled at that and handcuffed the killer behind his back. “You hear that, Turk? You’re a wolf.”

Turk bared his teeth at the killer. They gleamed an ethereal white in the glow of Faith’s flashlight. He did look an awful lot like a wolf right now.

“How’s Kelly looking?” she asked Michael.

“She’s lost a lot of blood,” Michael replied. “We need to get her to a hospital ASAP.”

“Not Alaska Regional,” Kelly said groggily. “Kevin works there. He’s an arrogant prick. Amazing with his hands, though.”

Michael shared a worried look with Faith. Kelly was going into shock. Her words might have sounded funny in other circumstances, but not knowing the reason for them.

She pulled her satellite phone out and called Wyatt. “Wyatt, we’ve got her.”

“You do? Where? Is she alive?”

“I don’t know exactly where. We ran for a while off the trail. Can you track my satellite phone?”

“Let me see. Okay, yeah. I’ve got you. You’re about five miles from us. We can get to you in two hours.”

“It needs to be faster than that. She’s injured. Badly. The killer set up bear traps around the cabin, and one of them nearly severed her right foot. We have a tourniquet around her leg, but she’s lost a lot of blood. We need her life flighted to a hospital as soon as possible.”

“Oh, shit. All right. I’ll call the hospital for a helicopter.”

“Do you have a police helicopter out here?”

“I do, but it’s not equipped for patients. Medical helicopters have ambulance facilities that can stabilize her and even give her a few units of blood. They’ll reach her faster than we’ll get her to the hospital.”

“How fast?”

He sighed. “Probably one hour.”

“It can’t be sooner?”

“No. I’m sorry. You’ll have to keep her alive until then. Keep the leg elevated above her heart and keep talking to her. We’ll get to you as soon as we can.”

Faith relayed the instructions to Michael. He lifted her leg and rested it over her shoulder. Kelly smiled at him and slurred. “Hey. You have to at least take me to dinner before you get to do that.”

“You survive for me, and I’ll buy you any dinner you want.”

“Ooh, I like that,” she crooned. “Are you married? Because I dated a married guy once, and it didn’t go well.”

He chuckled. “I’m married, but as long as we don’t sleep together, my wife won’t mind.”

She pouted. “Man. Why are the good ones always taken?”

Faith turned her attention back to Wyatt. "I have the killer in custody, too," she said.

“You have him? He’s there?”

“He’s here. Send that police chopper too. You can take him to jail.” She glared down at the man underneath her. “No more freedom for him. Just the rest of his sorry life in a concrete room.”

"No," the killer whispered softly. Then he shouted. "No! No, no, no!”

With a roar of effort, he bucked Faith off of his back. She fell to the ground hard. When she got up, the killer was rushing toward the woods, Turk hot on his trail.

Just before he left the clearing, Turk snapped at his ankles. The killer cried out and stumbled, then fell onto the forest floor. Faith heard a loud snap, and the killer jerked, then lay still. From where Faith stood, she couldn’t see what had happened, but when she approached, the grisly truth made itself known.

The killer had fallen face-first into one of his bear traps. Faith's stomach turned. She looked away and saw Turk staring at the scene with similar shock on his face.

“Bold? Are you there?” Wyatt called over the phone. “Special Agent Bold, what is your status?”

"I'm all right," Faith said. "The killer… he's dead. He fell headfirst onto a bear trap, trying to escape."

“Jesus. All right. We’ll send another medical flight. I assume he’s dead.”

Faith didn’t need to check the mess the bear trap had left behind to answer that question. “He’s dead.”

“Got it. Any idea who he was?”

She shook her head. “No. No idea.”

“All right. Well, keep Kelly alive. We’ll be there as soon as we can. Good work, agent.”

“Thank you.”

She hung up and looked at Turk. Her dog had turned away from the dead killer and was now staring into the distance. He looked shellshocked.

She reached down and scratched him behind the ears. “Good boy. It’s not your fault. He made his own choices.”

She wasn’t sure if Turk could feel any guilt at what had happened, but the shock was clear on his face. Just like with her, she supposed he never truly got used to the grislier aspects of their job.

She looked around at the array of bear traps the killer had set up. It was ironic. The great hunter had caught himself in his own trap.

Maybe that was better for him. The fear in his voice at the thought of spending his life in a prison cell was as great as the fear in Kelly’s voice when she called for help escaping her would-be killer. Perhaps to this man, a death in the wilderness was preferable to a life in a cage.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

The helicopter lifted into the sky, bearing the body of the killer. They still didn’t know his name. When Faith had overcome her queasiness enough to search him for identification, she’d found nothing. Wyatt hadn’t recognized him, and Kelly still wasn’t lucid enough to talk about what had happened.

She had been evacuated twenty minutes ago. She was still conscious, but barely. Faith asked if she would survive, and the EMT had shaken her head and said, “We’ll do our best.”

Now Faith, Michael and Turk waited for Wyatt to arrive. He had told them over the phone that he was forty minutes out.

Faith was beginning to succumb to the cold. Her blood had frozen over her right side, and the holes in her parka let in far too much of the frosty air. The EMT had examined her wound and told her it wasn’t serious. He’d offered to take Faith with her, but Faith didn’t want to leave Michael and Turk behind.

The wound wasn’t serious, but the cold was. She was no longer surviving off of the adrenaline from her fight, and the wilderness now reminded her how truly dangerous it was.

Michael built a fire while Turk huddled close to her, sharing his body heat to keep her warm until then. She watched Michael stack the logs and start the fire, and a sense of longing came over her. She wished she could know for sure if that longing was for him or just for safety. Not physical safety, although that would be nice. Emotional safety. A knowledge that everything would be okay, no matter what. It had been a long time since she'd felt that way.

Once the fire was started, Michael sat opposite Faith and sighed. He stared at the fire for a minute, then looked at Faith. “Okay, Faith. We can have that talk now.”

“Now? Right now?”

“Well… I guess not right now. Sorry. We’ll wait until you’re recovered.”

She sighed. “No, that’s all right. I guess we have to talk about it sometime, and it might as well be right now. It’s not like waiting is going to change anything.”

She took a deep breath and stared at the fire so she wouldn’t have to see Michael’s face as she talked. “You’re right. I have a very difficult time handling change. I think I’ve never really gotten over the fact that the world as I know it was shattered when Trammell hurt me.”

Michael nodded. “Yeah, I know. I can see it. You’ve been grabbing for something to hold onto, and… it seems like you can’t find it.”

Hearing her thoughts coming from Michael’s mouth brought tears to Faith’s eyes. “Yes. Exactly. Anyway, I feel like for the past two years, I’ve come close to finding that thing that will be a new constant, but each time I find it, it gets taken away. I had your partnership, but now you’re married to Ellie, and our partnership isn’t the most important thing in your life anymore. I had West, but… well, we know how that worked out. I have my job, but now it looks like I might not have it for much longer. I have Turk, but he might get put out to pasture soon, and then I don’t think there’s even a point to me keeping my job. I’ve gotten used to it being the three of us, and with no Turk, there’s… I don’t know.”

She poked at the fire. Michael waited patiently for her to finish. That was another thing to love about him. “And… I thought I was in love with David. I mean, I still think I’m in love with him. But he doesn’t understand me. It’s not his fault. He loves me. He tries really hard. He wants to be there for me, but…” she shrugged. “He’s a civilian. A normie.”

She chuckled, and Michael smiled a little. Faith sighed and continued. “It’s true what they say. You can’t understand our job unless you work it. I just saw a guy’s head get crushed by a bear trap. That’s… how do you talk about that? How does David comfort me? How does he help me deal with that image? He doesn’t. Because he’s never seen anything like that. He’s never seen dead people. He’s never talked to serial killers. He doesn’t go to work every morning wondering what new brand of human psychopathy is going to rear its ugly head in front of his face. He didn’t choose a career that not only has to witness that ugliness but has to dissect it, dwell on it, examine it and form conclusions about it. You know that old saying that if you stare too long into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you?”

“I’ve heard it.”

“Well, it’s true. And at some point, I guess you learn to live with it.” She shook her head. “That’s not right. You don’t live with it like you become okay with it. You just… I guess in a way you do accept it. You understand that it’s a part of life.”

He smiled slightly. “Things like that just happen in the wilderness.”

"Exactly." A lump formed in her throat. "And that's why I miss you. That's right there. In one sentence, you just summed up my feelings. You know how to talk to me because you work the same job. You know what it's like to see the shit we see every day, do the shit we do every day and have to somehow not turn into basket cases. I can talk to you. I can't talk to anyone else. It's…"

She poked at the fire again. She was getting fidgety now that she was approaching the point of what she had to say. “I just need you. I need to talk to you. It’s not even about being in love with you. I just need to have you around. I have no one else. No one who can talk to me about all the crap in my life. I don’t think it’s even change that I’m afraid of. It’s losing you specifically. Because if I lose you, I have no one to help me make sense of the world I’m forced to live in. I have Turk, and he’s wonderful, but I need someone who can speak English.”

He chuckled a little at that, and Faith did as well. She sighed, and her shoulders slumped. "I'm not asking you to leave Ellie for me. I would never ask that. I just…" she lifted her hands and let them drop. "I don't know. I don't know how to deal with the fact that you're pulling away, and I'm… moving on, I guess? Or not. Or… I don't know. I just feel really alone, and I really need you, and I don't know how to deal with that."

She fell silent. Michael didn’t respond for a long while. She stared at the fire while she waited for him to reply, not wanting to meet his eyes. Turk sensed her tension and laid his head in her lap. It helped, but only a little.

Finally, Michael took a deep breath. “Wow. That’s a lot to unpack.”

She chuckled, and the lump in her throat tightened. “Yeah.”

After another moment, he said, "There's really nothing I can say that's going to be very encouraging. So, I'll just apologize in advance for the hurt and be blunt.

“First and foremost, you’re right. I won’t leave Ellie. She is my first priority. She’s my wife, and I love her very much. I plan to spend the rest of my life with her, and yes, one day that will mean leaving the FBI. Probably not in the near future, but probably not in the far future either.”

The lump constricted further. Faith only nodded, not trusting herself to speak without the pain showing in her voice.

“Second, and I know I’m beating a dead horse here, but change is unavoidable. I know it sucks that a lot of things are changing in your life, but that’s just the way it is. I am married to Ellie. Turk is getting older. Your career is in jeopardy because, frankly, you’re good enough at your job to earn the notice of the wider world, including the latest wacko who’s obsessed with you. Does this all suck? Yes. Is there anything you can do about it? No. You can leave your career, but that’s the only way you can affect anything I’ve just mentioned. The rest comes along with the territory.

“And that leads to the first thing you can control. You haven’t been forced to live this life, Faith. You haven’t had this job thrust upon you. You can leave.” She started to protest, and he lifted his hand. “Before you start protesting, let me say this. You love your job, but you also hate it. Maybe you don’t see it, or maybe you aren’t ready to admit it, but you do. You used to be happy when we worked cases. Not happy that people were getting murdered, but you liked doing this kind of work. It fulfilled you. Lately, though, it’s more of an obsession. You have to find these killers, and until you do, you’re under so much stress, it seems like you’re going to have a heart attack. You’re irritable and anxious and exhausted. You can’t handle media attention at all. The thought of Turk retiring terrifies you. Each time you see a victim, you die a little inside. You’re working yourself into an early grave, and I’ll be honest, a part of me hopes you are forced out of the field because maybe then you’ll give yourself a chance to heal instead of picking at old wounds every few weeks.”

She looked back at the fire. A lot of what he said was true, but especially the part about work being an obsession. She just blocked out the thought of not being a field agent. The idea that she might not be doing what she’d done for the past eleven years was inconceivable.

But did she still want it? Or was it just the only thing she knew how to do? Was losing this what terrified her, or was she just afraid to step into a new future?

“I won’t tell you to leave,” he said. “You wouldn’t listen even if I did. But I will tell you to stop acting like this is happening to you. You can choose to stop this at any time.”

He shifted to face her. “Now, as for your feelings for me and David. I can’t tell you if you’re in love with David or not. It’s up to you to decide what kind of future you want with him. As for me, I can promise you one thing. We will always be friends, and I will be there for you when you need to talk. I’m married to Ellie, and I still met you for donuts at ten-thirty at night so you could vent to me.”

“Yeah. Thank you for that, by the way.”

"You're welcome, but let me finish. If what you need from me is a friend who knows what it's like to be the janitor who cleans up after murderers, then you have that. That won't change just because I go home to another woman.

“But I am going home to another woman. And the part of you that thinks we need to be lovers to be friends needs to die. I know that’s harsh, but it’s reality. It’s one of the things you can’t control but also one of the things you can. You can’t control that I’m unavailable as a romantic partner, but you can control the fact that you’re conflating your fear of losing me as a friend into a belief that you’re meant to be with me instead of David.”

He sighed. “Final piece of advice, and this one you can take or leave because I’m talking a little bit out of turn. I think you need to tell David everything you just told me.”

Her eyes snapped to him. “What? Are you serious?”

“I am. It’s not fair to him to think that you’re ready to take a huge step forward in your relationship when you’re struggling with whether or not you’re in love with another man.” He cocked his head. “Maybe not everything you just told me. We still need to be partners, and Ellie and I nearly broke up because she thought I still had feelings for you. But tell him that you’re unsure about your future.”

“The last time I told him that, he nearly broke up with me.”

"I know. And he might break up with you this time. But you owe it to him, to be honest. You might not see a future with him, but he sees one with you. If that future doesn't exist, he deserves to know."

Faith lowered her eyes again. Once more, Michael was right. Damn it, why couldn’t one thing in her life be easy?

She heard footfalls, and a moment later, Wyatt and seven other police officers walked into the clearing. They moved carefully to avoid any traps and rendezvoused with the three agents.

They left the forest together. Behind them, the first grays of dawn shone through the branches. Light wouldn’t come for a while yet, and when it came, it would last only briefly.

But it would be enough for them to find their way out of the wilderness.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Three weeks later

Faith sat at attention and hoped she didn’t look too stiff. In her eleven years with the FBI, she had seen Deputy Director Smythe only once before, and that was in passing when he showed up to meet with the Boss. She’d never seen Chief Lasseter of the Bureau’s K9 Division. She was a broad-chested woman with close-cropped brown hair and a face as impassive and unreadable as a sheet of paper.

The Boss was easier to read only because she’d worked with him for over a decade. He wore his usual stony scowl, but a hint of softness around the eyes and the slightest touch of a slump in his shoulders betrayed his exhaustion. He was tired of fighting on Faith’s behalf. He had done what he could to rescue her career, but he wouldn’t protest whatever decision this board arrived at.

It would be so much easier if Michael or Turk were here. She felt very vulnerable and alone, sitting by herself.

But she would stay strong, and she would stay in control. She wouldn’t make any more trouble for herself. She was terrified to hear what they had to say, but she had promised herself that whatever happened, she would face the future with dignity and strength.

Smythe spoke first. “Before we address your K9’s future, let’s talk about your future. I understand you’ve made it clear to SAC Monroe that you will decline any offer of a promotion to ASAC. Have you had a chance to reconsider your position?”

“I have, sir,” she replied, “and my decision remains the same. I will not accept a promotion to ASAC.”

Smythe leaned back in his seat and tapped his pen on the desk twice. “May I ask why?”

She took a deep breath. “I feel I can be of more help to the Bureau and to my fellow countrymen as a field agent. The job of ASAC is an administrative position.”

“It’s a leadership position as well,” Smythe added. “Do you not feel that your expertise would be invaluable as an example to less experienced field agents?”

"I do, sir," she admitted, "but I don't feel I would execute the duties of that position well. Competently, perhaps, but not well. I am good at solving cases. I'm good at finding criminals. I'm good at bringing them to justice. I'm not good at teaching. I'm not good at managing. And… frankly, sir, I'm not good at leading outside of the boundaries of a single investigation."

“You would learn all of those skills. We wouldn’t expect you to be an expert right away any more than we expected you to be an expert detective when you first started as a field agent.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied. “But I would be deeply unfulfilled in that role.”

The Boss lowered his head. Lasseter raised an eyebrow. Smythe remained stoic. After a moment, he said, “I have to say, Miss Bold. It’s highly unusual for me to hear a field agent tell me that she doesn’t want to be promoted. Most field agents consider ASAC and eventually SAC the pinnacle of their career.”

"I understand that, sir," she said, "and I thank you very much for your consideration. I apologize as well for sounding ungrateful. Believe me, I am humbled to know that you would think so highly of me. But… well, to be blunt, sir, I can't sit behind a desk. I'm not the type of person who can file paperwork, manage schedules, and assign cases when I have the ability to be out there solving a case. I'm sure SAC Monroe has informed you of my past struggles with remaining away from cases."

The Boss sighed audibly at that. The corners of Smythe’s mouth turned up slightly. “Yes. He has kept me apprised.”

He sighed and tapped his pen on the desk again. “The issue, Miss Bold, is that you have become the subject of an uncomfortable amount of media attention.”

Faith pressed her lips together. “Yes, sir.”

“Now, I want to be clear. We don’t blame you for that. You are receiving media attention because you are an exceptional field agent who is responsible for apprehending some of the most vicious serial killers this nation has ever seen.”

"Thank you, sir. I didn't do this work alone, though. My partner, Special Agent Michael Prince, and my K9 unit, Turk, have been and continue to be an invaluable component of my success."

“Yes. But no serial killer has obsessed over them the way Franklin West and this new Messenger Killer have obsessed over you.”

Faith barely stifled a flinch at hearing the new killer given a nickname. Damn it. Bullshit like this was what got the media’s attention in the first place.

Smythe saw the irritation on her face and misinterpreted it. “Again, we don’t blame you for this. But the fact remains that you are a lightning rod for unwanted attention, and that impacts the Bureau’s ability to accomplish its mission.”

“I believe I can address that, sir.”

All three of them looked at her with surprise. The Boss searched her face, probably trying to determine if he should step in and prevent her from saying something foolish or if he should trust her and let her finish.

He chose to trust her.

“How so?” Smythe asked.

She took a deep breath. “I have chosen not to renew my lease at my apartment in Fitler Square. I’ve found a residence in Allentown, and I will be signing a lease there. I move in three days.”

The Boss stared at her in shock. For the first time during this meeting, he spoke. “What? That’s an hour away Bold. Twice that in traffic.”

“Yes, sir,” she agreed. “It will be a difficult commute. But one I can handle. It will also remove me from the hunting grounds of this new killer and away from the lens of the media. My lease in Fitler Square is active for another five months. I will keep this move quiet so the media and the killer don’t become aware. I will also change my phone number and my personal email address to avoid contact with the media. In addition, I have discontinued my personal social media accounts. I will be going very low-profile for a while.”

She took another breath, then said, “I will also agree not to take any cases in the Philadelphia, Wilmington, Trenton or Allentown areas so that I’m not recognized by local law enforcement.”

“This includes the case of the Messenger Killer?” Smythe asked.

Her fingers flexed slightly. “This includes the current open investigation in Philadelphia, yes.”

Smythe lifted his eyebrows and looked at The Boss. The Boss shrugged. “I’ve been keeping her far from home since the West case broke open. I can keep pushing her outside of the area.”

Smythe nodded. “Well… in that case, I will approve your continued employment as a field agent.”

Faith released a sigh of relief. “Thank you, sir. I really appreciate it. I promise you, I won’t do anything to jeopardize my anonymity or the Bureau’s need for secrecy.”

“I’m sure you won’t,” he said. “Though I do have to ask. Do you truly feel you don’t have the qualities of an ASAC?”

She considered her answer for a moment. "I believe I have the skill set of an ASAC. But the qualities? No. I'm not particularly patient. I'm not willing to step away and let others handle the grunt work. I…" She stopped herself. It wasn't a good idea to admit that she wasn't good at distancing herself emotionally from a case. Instead, she said, "I am a poor teacher. I could check the boxes off of a list of ASAC duties, but I couldn't excel at that job. More importantly, it would be very difficult for my agents to work with me."

“A surprisingly frank self-analysis.”

She smiled slightly. “I know it’s not the wisest career move to tell you that I’m unpromotable, but I don’t want to be dishonest with you. I’m an asset where I am right now. In a different role, I don’t believe I would be as much of an asset.”

“Well, that’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Smythe replied. “Your own SAC Monroe has twice turned down an offer for Deputy Director because he feels he’s best suited as SAC of a field office.”

Faith turned to the Boss in surprise. She’d heard that he was blacklisted from promotion because of a fight with Smythe earlier in his career. The Boss looked decidedly unhappy that Smythe had revealed that tidbit, but he didn’t deny it.

"Very well. Then, your future is secured. Now I will turn the conversation over to Chief Lasseter to discuss your K9 unit.”

Faith took a steadying breath and fixed Chief Lasseter with what she hoped was a calm expression.

Lasseter shuffled the stack of papers on her desk and reached into her pocket for a pair of reading glasses. “All right. Concerning K9 unit six-four-seven, Turk, German Shepherd male, you’re petitioning to have the mandatory retirement requirement waived in his case.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Why is that?”

“He’s still an incredibly capable K9,” Faith replied. “In my most recent assignment, he helped prevent the escape of a serial killer while defending myself, my partner and an innocent civilian from the killer in question. If you look at his record, you will see that he does so in nearly every single one of my cases.”

“Yes, he is as celebrated in the K9 division as you are in the operations division.”

Even considering the seriousness of this conversation, that praise caused Faith’s heart to glow. She sat up a little straighter and said, “As I told Director Smythe, he is instrumental to my success. He is an incredible asset to me, and without him, I will not be as capable at my job.”

“And you don’t believe another K9 unit could provide the same benefit?”

“As you said, ma’am, he’s as celebrated as I am.”

She smiled slightly. “We all assumed it was the handler, not the K9.”

“With all due respect, ma’am, you assumed wrong.”

Smythe chuckled. The corners of the Boss’s mouth turned up. Lasseter’s slight smile widened into a grin. “We like to see our handlers attached to their K9s.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“But not too attached.”

Faith’s smile faded. Her heart began to pound.

“The reason is that, like you, the handlers have difficulty letting go of their K9 units when the time comes. They all believe that their particular unit is capable of performing at an acceptable level in spite of age, and they all insist that they won’t be as capable themselves without that particular dog. Frankly, Miss Bold, when we perform objective tests of the older K9s ability, they always fall short. Invariably.”

Faith pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling. Over the past week, Turk had undergone a battery of tests to determine his ability to continue working. They hadn’t yet shared the details of those tests with Faith. She had a feeling she was about to learn those results now.

“However,” Lasseter continued. “Turk has scored exceptionally well.”

Faith’s heart leaped. “He has?”

“He has. Off the charts in mental aptitude. In the ninety-sixty percentile when it comes to physical strength, agility, durability and stamina. In the ninety-fifth percentile when it comes to empathy and once more off the charts when it comes to obedience and training. In fact, he scored higher in every category than the entire complement of available K9 units. It seems, at least based on these results, that no other K9 really could measure up to him.”

Faith was grinning now. “He’s the best damned dog in the Bureau, ma’am.”

“He is. And in recognition of his and your success, we will allow him to continue working with you. He will be subject to retest every six months, and we reserve the right to enforce his retirement at any time. However, for now, he will remain on active duty and assigned to you.”

Faith couldn’t hold herself back anymore. She pumped her fist and cheered, much to the chagrin of the Boss and the amusement of Director Smythe. “Thank you so much, ma’am. You don’t know what this means to me.”

Lasseter smiled. “One day, Special Agent, I’ll tell you about Rooster, and you’ll believe that I know exactly what this means to you. For now, I will only congratulate you and tell you to continue taking excellent care of your dog.”

“I will, ma’am. You have my word.” She grinned at the Boss. “Looks like you’re stuck with both of us for a while longer, sir.”

Smythe and Lasseter both found that hilarious.

EPILOGUE

Faith’s good mood lasted until she arrived home. She walked through the door and David shouted, “Surprise!”

She blinked and looked at the table to see a birthday cake with a candle lit on top of it. Turk barked happily and ran around her like a puppy.

David grinned. “We’re going to do a bigger celebration on Sunday. I invited Michael and Ellie to come to dinner with us. But for tonight, I thought we could do something a little special ourselves.”

Faith stared at the cake, her expression blank. She’d completely forgotten that today was her thirty-fifth birthday.

“Boy,” David said. “I have to say, your enthusiasm is just overwhelming. I’m truly humbled by your gratitude.”

“Yes,” she said tonelessly. Then she managed to smile. “Yes! Thank you. I’m sorry, I just had a long meeting.”

“A good one, I hope?”

“Yes, very good.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Turk and I get to keep our jobs.”

His eyes popped open. “That’s wonderful! I’m so proud of you.”

He pulled her into his arms and kissed her passionately. When they separated, he caressed her cheek and said. “I love you so much. I must be the luckiest man on Earth. God, I can’t wait until you move in with me.”

She fought back the lump forming in her throat. “If you say so.”

“I do say so,” he said. “Come on. Blow out the candle. Make a wish.”

I wish I didn’t have to break your heart.

She blew out the candle, and Turk barked, excited. He looked pleadingly up at David and whined.

David laughed and said, “Dinner first, Turk. Then cake.”

Turk groaned and tried the same pleading look with Faith.

“Sorry boy,” she said. “I agree with David. Good food first, then snacks.”

He snorted in irritation, and Faith and David laughed. “It’s all right, boy,” he said, patting his head. “I made lamb roast. Your favorite.” He grinned at Faith. “I saved the best cut for the birthday girl.”

She smiled at him. “Thank you, David. You’re very sweet.”

“Only for you, my love. Just think; soon you’ll be having dinners like this every night.”

She swallowed and nodded. “Sounds wonderful.”

“It is. We have a wonderful life.”

She decided to let David have one more night. Tomorrow, she would tell him about the move to Allentown and the break she would have to take from their relationship. Tonight, she would pretend that everything was simple and easy.

NOW AVAILABLE!

SO TWISTED

(A Faith Bold Mystery—Book 19)

FBI Agent Faith Bold faces her most beastly case yet when former zoo employees start turning up dead in animal enclosures. With her loyal companion Turk by her side, Faith must separate the human scents from the wild to catch a cunning killer.

“A masterpiece of thriller and mystery.”

—Books and Movie Reviews, Roberto Mattos (re Once Gone)

SO TWISTED is Book #19 in a long-anticipated new series by #1 bestseller and USA Today bestselling author Blake Pierce, whose bestseller Once Gone (a free download) has received over 7,000 five star ratings and reviews.

FBI Special Agent Faith Bold doesn’t believe she can ever return to the force after the trauma she’s been through. Suffering from past demons, she feels unfit for duty and content to retire—until Turk walks into her life.

Turk, a former Marine Corps dog, wounded in battle, suffers from his own demons. But he never lets it show as he gives everything to Faith to get her back on her feet.

Each are slow to warm up to each other, but when they do, they are inseparable. Each is equally determined to hunt down the demons chasing them, whatever the cost, and to watch each other’s backs—even at the risk of their own life.

A page-turning and harrowing crime thriller featuring a brilliant and tortured FBI agent, the Faith Bold series is a riveting mystery, packed with non-stop action, suspense, twists and turns, revelations, and driven by a breakneck pace that will keep you flipping pages late into the night. Fans of Rachel Caine, Teresa Driscoll and Robert Dugoni are sure to fall in love.

Future books in the series are now also available.

“An edge of your seat thriller in a new series that keeps you turning pages! ...So many twists, turns and red herrings… I can't wait to see what happens next.”

—Reader review (Her Last Wish)

“A strong, complex story about two FBI agents trying to stop a serial killer. If you want an author to capture your attention and have you guessing, yet trying to put the pieces together, Pierce is your author!”

—Reader review (Her Last Wish)

“A typical Blake Pierce twisting, turning, roller coaster ride suspense thriller. Will have you turning the pages to the last sentence of the last chapter!!!”

—Reader review (City of Prey)

“Right from the start we have an unusual protagonist that I haven't seen done in this genre before. The action is nonstop… A very atmospheric novel that will keep you turning pages well into the wee hours.”

—Reader review (City of Prey)

“Everything that I look for in a book… a great plot, interesting characters, and grabs your interest right away. The book moves along at a breakneck pace and stays that way until the end. Now on go I to book two!”

—Reader review (Girl, Alone)

“Exciting, heart pounding, edge of your seat book… a must read for mystery and suspense readers!”

—Reader review (Girl, Alone)

SO TWISTED

(A Faith Bold Mystery—Book 19)

Did you know that I've written multiple novels in the mystery genre? If you haven't read all my series, click the image below to download a series starter!

Blake Pierce

Blake Pierce is the USA Today bestselling author of the RILEY PAGE mystery series, which includes seventeen books. Blake Pierce is also the author of the MACKENZIE WHITE mystery series, comprising fourteen books; of the AVERY BLACK mystery series, comprising six books; of the KERI LOCKE mystery series, comprising five books; of the MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE mystery series, comprising six books; of the KATE WISE mystery series, comprising seven books; of the CHLOE FINE psychological suspense mystery, comprising six books; of the JESSIE HUNT psychological suspense thriller series, comprising thirty-eight books (and counting); of the AU PAIR psychological suspense thriller series, comprising three books; of the ZOE PRIME mystery series, comprising six books; of the ADELE SHARP mystery series, comprising sixteen books, of the EUROPEAN VOYAGE cozy mystery series, comprising six books; of the LAURA FROST FBI suspense thriller, comprising eleven books; of the ELLA DARK FBI suspense thriller, comprising twenty-five books (and counting); of the A YEAR IN EUROPE cozy mystery series, comprising nine books, of the AVA GOLD mystery series, comprising six books; of the RACHEL GIFT mystery series, comprising fifteen books; of the VALERIE LAW mystery series, comprising nine books; of the PAIGE KING mystery series, comprising eight books; of the MAY MOORE mystery series, comprising eleven books; of the CORA SHIELDS mystery series, comprising eight books; of the NICKY LYONS mystery series, comprising eight books, of the CAMI LARK mystery series, comprising ten books; of the AMBER YOUNG mystery series, comprising eight books; of the DAISY FORTUNE mystery series, comprising five books; of the FIONA RED mystery series, comprising thirteen books; of the FAITH BOLD mystery series, comprising twenty books (and counting); of the JULIETTE HART mystery series, comprising five books; of the MORGAN CROSS mystery series, comprising thirteen books; of the FINN WRIGHT mystery series, comprising seven books; of the SHEILA STONE suspense thriller series, comprising ten books; of the RACHEL BLACKWOOD suspense thriller series, comprising eight books; of the THE GOVERNESS psychological suspense thriller series, comprising nine books (and counting); and of the new JENNA GRAVES mystery series, comprising eight books (and counting).

ONCE GONE (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #1), BEFORE HE KILLS (A Mackenzie White Mystery—Book 1), CAUSE TO KILL (An Avery Black Mystery—Book 1), A TRACE OF DEATH (A Keri Locke Mystery—Book 1), WATCHING (The Making of Riley Paige—Book 1), NEXT DOOR (A Chloe Fine Psychological Suspense Mystery—Book 1), THE PERFECT WIFE (A Jessie Hunt Psychological Suspense Thriller—Book One),  IF SHE KNEW (A Kate Wise Mystery—Book 1), MURDER (AND BAKLAVA) (A European Voyage Cozy Mystery—Book 1), LEFT TO DIE (An Adele Sharp Mystery—Book One), A MURDER IN PARIS (A Year in Europe—Book 1), CITY OF PREY (An Ava Gold Mystery—Book One), and HER LAST WISH (A Rachel Gift FBI Suspense Thriller—Book One) are each available as a free download on Amazon!

An avid reader and lifelong fan of the mystery and thriller genres, Blake loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.blakepierceauthor.com to learn more and stay in touch.

BOOKS BY BLAKE PIERCE

JENNA GRAVES SUSPENSE THRILLER

IN HER SIGHTS (Book #1)

IN HER MIND (Book #2)

IN HER GRASP (Book #3)

IN HER SHADOW (Book #4)

IN HER PRAYERS (Book #5)

IN HER BED (Book #6)

IN HER DREAMS (Book #7)

IN HER FEARS (Book #8)

THE GOVERNESS PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE

ONE LAST LIE (Book #1)

ONE LAST SMILE (Book #2)

ONE LAST BREATH (Book #3)

ONE LAST GOODBYE (Book #4)

ONE LAST SECRET (Book #5)

ONE LAST WHISPER (Book #6)

ONE LAST REGRET (Book #7)

ONE LAST NIGHT (Book #8)

ONE LAST STEP (Book #9)

RACHEL BLACKWOOD SUSPENSE THRILLER

NOT THIS WAY (Book #1)

NOT THIS TIME (Book #2)

NOT THIS CLOSE (Book #3)

NOT THIS ROAD (Book #4)

NOT THIS LATE (Book #5)

NOT THIS NIGHT (Book #6)

NOT THIS PLACE (Book #7)

NOT THIS SOON (Book #8)

SHEILA STONE SUSPENSE THRILLER

SILENT GIRL (Book #1)

SILENT TRAIL (Book #2)

SILENT NIGHT (Book #3)

SILENT HOUSE (Book #4)

SILENT SCREAM (Book #5)

SILENT PREY (Book #6)

SILENT RITUAL (Book #7)

SILENT PRAYER (Book #8)

SILENT NEIGHBOR (Book #9)

SILENT SMILE (Book #10)

FINN WRIGHT MYSTERY SERIES

WHEN YOU’RE MINE (Book #1)

WHEN YOU’RE SAFE (Book #2)

WHEN YOU’RE CLOSE (Book #3)

WHEN YOU’RE SLEEPING (Book #4)

WHEN YOU’RE SANE (Book #5)

WHEN YOU’RE SILENT (Book #6)

WHEN YOU’RE GONE (Book #7)

MORGAN CROSS MYSTERY SERIES

FOR YOU (Book #1)

FOR RAGE (Book #2)

FOR LUST (Book #3)

FOR WRATH (Book #4)

FOREVER (Book #5)

FOR US (Book #6)

FOR NOW (Book #7)

FOR ONCE (Book #8)

FOR ETERNITY (Book #9)

FORLORN (Book #10)

FOR SILENCE (Book #11)

FORBIDDEN (Book #12)

FOR FEAR (Book #13)

FORSAKEN (Book #14)

JULIETTE HART MYSTERY SERIES

NOTHING TO FEAR (Book #1)

NOTHING THERE (Book #2)

NOTHING WATCHING (Book #3)

NOTHING HIDING (Book #4)

NOTHING LEFT (Book #5)

FAITH BOLD MYSTERY SERIES

SO LONG (Book #1)

SO COLD (Book #2)

SO SCARED (Book #3)

SO NORMAL (Book #4)

SO FAR GONE (Book #5)

SO LOST (Book #6)

SO ALONE (Book #7)

SO FORGOTTEN (Book #8)

SO INSANE (Book #9)

SO SMITTEN (Book #10)

SO SIMPLE (Book #11)

SO BROKEN (Book #12)

SO CRUEL (Book #13)

SO HAUNTED (Book #14)

SO SILENT (Book #15)

SO BLEAK (Book #16)

SO HOLLOW (Book #17)

SO DARK (Book #18)

SO TWISTED (Book #19)

SO WICKED (Book #20)

FIONA RED MYSTERY SERIES

LET HER GO (Book #1)

LET HER BE (Book #2)

LET HER HOPE (Book #3)

LET HER WISH (Book #4)

LET HER LIVE (Book #5)

LET HER RUN (Book #6)

LET HER HIDE (Book #7)

LET HER BELIEVE (Book #8)

LET HER FORGET (Book #9)

LET HER TRY (Book #10)

LET HER PLAY (Book #11)

LET HER VANISH (Book #12)

LET HER FADE (Book #13)

DAISY FORTUNE MYSTERY SERIES

NEED YOU (Book #1)

CLAIM YOU (Book #2)

CRAVE YOU (Book #3)

CHOOSE YOU (Book #4)

CHASE YOU (Book #5)

AMBER YOUNG MYSTERY SERIES

ABSENT PITY (Book #1)

ABSENT REMORSE (Book #2)

ABSENT FEELING (Book #3)

ABSENT MERCY (Book #4)

ABSENT REASON (Book #5)

ABSENT SANITY (Book #6)

ABSENT LIFE (Book #7)

ABSENT HUMANITY (Book #8)

CAMI LARK MYSTERY SERIES

JUST ME (Book #1)

JUST OUTSIDE (Book #2)

JUST RIGHT (Book #3)

JUST FORGET (Book #4)

JUST ONCE (Book #5)

JUST HIDE (Book #6)

JUST NOW (Book #7)

JUST HOPE (Book #8)

JUST LEAVE (Book #9)

JUST TONIGHT (Book #10)

NICKY LYONS MYSTERY SERIES

ALL MINE (Book #1)

ALL HIS (Book #2)

ALL HE SEES (Book #3)

ALL ALONE (Book #4)

ALL FOR ONE (Book #5)

ALL HE TAKES (Book #6)

ALL FOR ME (Book #7)

ALL IN (Book #8)

CORA SHIELDS MYSTERY SERIES

UNDONE (Book #1)

UNWANTED (Book #2)

UNHINGED (Book #3)

UNSAID (Book #4)

UNGLUED (Book #5)

UNSTABLE (Book #6)

UNKNOWN (Book #7)

UNAWARE (Book #8)

MAY MOORE SUSPENSE THRILLER

NEVER RUN (Book #1)

NEVER TELL (Book #2)

NEVER LIVE (Book #3)

NEVER HIDE (Book #4)

NEVER FORGIVE (Book #5)

NEVER AGAIN (Book #6)

NEVER LOOK BACK (Book #7)

NEVER FORGET (Book #8)

NEVER LET GO (Book #9)

NEVER PRETEND (Book #10)

NEVER HESITATE (Book #11)

PAIGE KING MYSTERY SERIES

THE GIRL HE PINED (Book #1)

THE GIRL HE CHOSE (Book #2)

THE GIRL HE TOOK (Book #3)

THE GIRL HE WISHED (Book #4)

THE GIRL HE CROWNED (Book #5)

THE GIRL HE WATCHED (Book #6)

THE GIRL HE WANTED (Book #7)

THE GIRL HE CLAIMED (Book #8)

VALERIE LAW MYSTERY SERIES

NO MERCY (Book #1)

NO PITY (Book #2)

NO FEAR (Book #3)

NO SLEEP (Book #4)

NO QUARTER (Book #5)

NO CHANCE (Book #6)

NO REFUGE (Book #7)

NO GRACE (Book #8)

NO ESCAPE (Book #9)

RACHEL GIFT MYSTERY SERIES

HER LAST WISH (Book #1)

HER LAST CHANCE (Book #2)

HER LAST HOPE (Book #3)

HER LAST FEAR (Book #4)

HER LAST CHOICE (Book #5)

HER LAST BREATH (Book #6)

HER LAST MISTAKE (Book #7)

HER LAST DESIRE (Book #8)

HER LAST REGRET (Book #9)

HER LAST HOUR (Book #10)

HER LAST SHOT (Book #11)

HER LAST PRAYER (Book #12)

HER LAST LIE (Book #13)

HER LAST WHISPER (Book #14)

HER LAST SECRET (Book #15)

AVA GOLD MYSTERY SERIES

CITY OF PREY (Book #1)

CITY OF FEAR (Book #2)

CITY OF BONES (Book #3)

CITY OF GHOSTS (Book #4)

CITY OF DEATH (Book #5)

CITY OF VICE (Book #6)

A YEAR IN EUROPE

A MURDER IN PARIS (Book #1)

DEATH IN FLORENCE (Book #2)

VENGEANCE IN VIENNA (Book #3)

A FATALITY IN SPAIN (Book #4)

ELLA DARK FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

GIRL, ALONE (Book #1)

GIRL, TAKEN (Book #2)

GIRL, HUNTED (Book #3)

GIRL, SILENCED (Book #4)

GIRL, VANISHED (Book 5)

GIRL ERASED (Book #6)

GIRL, FORSAKEN (Book #7)

GIRL, TRAPPED (Book #8)

GIRL, EXPENDABLE (Book #9)

GIRL, ESCAPED (Book #10)

GIRL, HIS (Book #11)

GIRL, LURED (Book #12)

GIRL, MISSING (Book #13)

GIRL, UNKNOWN (Book #14)

GIRL, DECEIVED (Book #15)

GIRL, FORLORN (Book #16)

GIRL, REMADE (Book #17)

GIRL, BETRAYED (Book #18)

GIRL, BOUND (Book #19)

GIRL, REFORMED (Book #20)

GIRL, REBORN (Book #21)

GIRL, HAUNTED (Book #22)

GIRL, UNSEEN (Book #23)

GIRL, SOUGHT (Book #24)

GIRL, ACCUSED (Book #25)

LAURA FROST FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

ALREADY GONE (Book #1)

ALREADY SEEN (Book #2)

ALREADY TRAPPED (Book #3)

ALREADY MISSING (Book #4)

ALREADY DEAD (Book #5)

ALREADY TAKEN (Book #6)

ALREADY CHOSEN (Book #7)

ALREADY LOST (Book #8)

ALREADY HIS (Book #9)

ALREADY LURED (Book #10)

ALREADY COLD (Book #11)

EUROPEAN VOYAGE COZY MYSTERY SERIES

MURDER (AND BAKLAVA) (Book #1)

DEATH (AND APPLE STRUDEL) (Book #2)

CRIME (AND LAGER) (Book #3)

MISFORTUNE (AND GOUDA) (Book #4)

CALAMITY (AND A DANISH) (Book #5)

MAYHEM (AND HERRING) (Book #6)

ADELE SHARP MYSTERY SERIES

LEFT TO DIE (Book #1)

LEFT TO RUN (Book #2)

LEFT TO HIDE (Book #3)

LEFT TO KILL (Book #4)

LEFT TO MURDER (Book #5)

LEFT TO ENVY (Book #6)

LEFT TO LAPSE (Book #7)

LEFT TO VANISH (Book #8)

LEFT TO HUNT (Book #9)

LEFT TO FEAR (Book #10)

LEFT TO PREY (Book #11)

LEFT TO LURE (Book #12)

LEFT TO CRAVE (Book #13)

LEFT TO LOATHE (Book #14)

LEFT TO HARM (Book #15)

LEFT TO RUIN (Book #16)

THE AU PAIR SERIES

ALMOST GONE (Book#1)

ALMOST LOST (Book #2)

ALMOST DEAD (Book #3)

ZOE PRIME MYSTERY SERIES

FACE OF DEATH (Book#1)

FACE OF MURDER (Book #2)

FACE OF FEAR (Book #3)

FACE OF MADNESS (Book #4)

FACE OF FURY (Book #5)

FACE OF DARKNESS (Book #6)

A JESSIE HUNT PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE SERIES

THE PERFECT WIFE (Book #1)

THE PERFECT BLOCK (Book #2)

THE PERFECT HOUSE (Book #3)

THE PERFECT SMILE (Book #4)

THE PERFECT LIE (Book #5)

THE PERFECT LOOK (Book #6)

THE PERFECT AFFAIR (Book #7)

THE PERFECT ALIBI (Book #8)

THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR (Book #9)

THE PERFECT DISGUISE (Book #10)

THE PERFECT SECRET (Book #11)

THE PERFECT FAÇADE (Book #12)

THE PERFECT IMPRESSION (Book #13)

THE PERFECT DECEIT (Book #14)

THE PERFECT MISTRESS (Book #15)

THE PERFECT IMAGE (Book #16)

THE PERFECT VEIL (Book #17)

THE PERFECT INDISCRETION (Book #18)

THE PERFECT RUMOR (Book #19)

THE PERFECT COUPLE (Book #20)

THE PERFECT MURDER (Book #21)

THE PERFECT HUSBAND (Book #22)

THE PERFECT SCANDAL (Book #23)

THE PERFECT MASK (Book #24)

THE PERFECT RUSE (Book #25)

THE PERFECT VENEER (Book #26)

THE PERFECT PEOPLE (Book #27)

THE PERFECT WITNESS (Book #28)

THE PERFECT APPEARANCE (Book #29)

THE PERFECT TRAP (Book #30)

THE PERFECT EXPRESSION (Book #31)

THE PERFECT ACCOMPLICE (Book #32)

THE PERFECT SHOW (Book #33)

THE PERFECT POISE (Book #34)

THE PERFECT CROWD (Book #35)

THE PERFECT CRIME (Book #36)

THE PERFECT PREY (Book #37)

THE PERFECT BETRAYAL (Book #38)

CHLOE FINE PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE SERIES

NEXT DOOR (Book #1)

A NEIGHBOR’S LIE (Book #2)

CUL DE SAC (Book #3)

SILENT NEIGHBOR (Book #4)

HOMECOMING (Book #5)

TINTED WINDOWS (Book #6)

KATE WISE MYSTERY SERIES

IF SHE KNEW (Book #1)

IF SHE SAW (Book #2)

IF SHE RAN (Book #3)

IF SHE HID (Book #4)

IF SHE FLED (Book #5)

IF SHE FEARED (Book #6)

IF SHE HEARD (Book #7)

THE MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE SERIES

WATCHING (Book #1)

WAITING (Book #2)

LURING (Book #3)

TAKING (Book #4)

STALKING (Book #5)

KILLING (Book #6)

RILEY PAIGE MYSTERY SERIES

ONCE GONE (Book #1)

ONCE TAKEN (Book #2)

ONCE CRAVED (Book #3)

ONCE LURED (Book #4)

ONCE HUNTED (Book #5)

ONCE PINED (Book #6)

ONCE FORSAKEN (Book #7)

ONCE COLD (Book #8)

ONCE STALKED (Book #9)

ONCE LOST (Book #10)

ONCE BURIED (Book #11)

ONCE BOUND (Book #12)

ONCE TRAPPED (Book #13)

ONCE DORMANT (Book #14)

ONCE SHUNNED (Book #15)

ONCE MISSED (Book #16)

ONCE CHOSEN (Book #17)

MACKENZIE WHITE MYSTERY SERIES

BEFORE HE KILLS (Book #1)

BEFORE HE SEES (Book #2)

BEFORE HE COVETS (Book #3)

BEFORE HE TAKES (Book #4)

BEFORE HE NEEDS (Book #5)

BEFORE HE FEELS (Book #6)

BEFORE HE SINS (Book #7)

BEFORE HE HUNTS (Book #8)

BEFORE HE PREYS (Book #9)

BEFORE HE LONGS (Book #10)

BEFORE HE LAPSES (Book #11)

BEFORE HE ENVIES (Book #12)

BEFORE HE STALKS (Book #13)

BEFORE HE HARMS (Book #14)

AVERY BLACK MYSTERY SERIES

CAUSE TO KILL (Book #1)

CAUSE TO RUN (Book #2)

CAUSE TO HIDE (Book #3)

CAUSE TO FEAR (Book #4)

CAUSE TO SAVE (Book #5)

CAUSE TO DREAD (Book #6)

KERI LOCKE MYSTERY SERIES

A TRACE OF DEATH (Book #1)

A TRACE OF MURDER (Book #2)

A TRACE OF VICE (Book #3)

A TRACE OF CRIME (Book #4)

A TRACE OF HOPE (Book #5)