Page 83 of The House of Cross

“Not yet.”

“Then I am going with you to protect the Canadian government’s interests.”

“Great,” I said. “Let’s go.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Dr. Cross, I completely understand your eagerness to get out and see if your wife is there. But we’ve got only two hours of daylight left and a storm that’s still puking snow. We won’t even get close before dark. Storm is supposed to end during the night. We’ll go first thing in the morning.”

CHAPTER 62

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Expecting trouble?”

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

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

“Not if we can help it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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