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So, what?” the pilot asked. “Should I put you down at the border, let you hash things out with the Mounties?”

In the back of the helicopter, Windermere shook her head. “No time. We need to find Finley and Leland Hurley before we take any meetings. Which means we’re better off in the air.”

Beside her, Stevens was studying a topographical map, comparing it to the view out his window. The country at the border was flat, farmland and river valley, bordered to the west by long, narrow Lake Koocanusa, which stretched fifty miles north from the Libby Dam to the border and another forty miles into Canada. This was the Rocky Mountain Trench, the Kootenay River valley, and it was surrounded by mountains on both east and west. North of the border, the highway continued up into Canada, following the lake and the Kootenay River toward civilization.

They’d commandeered the Flathead County chopper, rode north over Stryker and west to Butcher’s Creek, searching the roads for any sign of Kerry Finley’s Explorer. Hadn’t found any trace of her, and turned their search north.

“We can assume Hurley wouldn’t try to fool a border guard,” Stevens said. “Which means if he’s up here, he’ll be trying to sneak across.”

He was trying to push down the empty feeling in his gut, trying to avoid jumping to any conclusions. They’d maintained a search presence on the east side of the Whitefish Range, the Nicola Pass area. Moved agents to Stryker, Butcher’s Creek, the forestry roads between Eureka and Libby. Held out hope they’d hear from Eureka, Kerry Finley’s voice on the radio, safe and sound, and they’d all breathe sighs of relief and laugh about the big misunderstanding.

But somehow, Stevens knew that wasn’t going to happen.

“So if a person wanted to make it into Canada without showing his passport, how would he do it?” Windermere was asking the pilot. “Or better yet, where?”

“Well, he’d do it in the forest, and he’d do it at night, if he had any sense.” The pilot leaned across the cockpit, pointed down. “That land’s so flat down near Roosville, you could watch your dog run away for three days, if you care to.” He paused. “Or your wife, for that matter.”

“Right.” Windermere checked her watch again. Noon already, daylight a limited-time offer. “I see forest to the west, all the way to the lake. And east to the mountains. So what are we thinking?”

“Better roads by the lake,” the pilot said. “You go into those eastern mountains, you got a long, tough slog ahead of you.”

“Long and tough sounds right up Hurley’s alley,” Windermere said. “Take us east.”

—

The pilot wasn’t joking. To the west, the forest grew gradually out of the flatland at the bottom of the Rocky Mountain Trench, extending to the shore of the lake in a more or less orderly manner. What roads had been cut through the trees followed a vague kind of grid pattern, unencumbered by any major topographical irritations.

To the east, the Rocky Mountains rose in earnest from the valley floor, and the roads were thinner, rougher, and fewer in number. They wound up the sides of steep hillsides, curved and doubled back on one another, arced up toward the border and back down again. Stevens guided the pilot across the terrain, one eye on the map, searching out any path through the wilderness that might have conveyed Leland Hurley north.

“I see three potential entry spots,” he told Windermere and the pilot. “Each of these roads loops up to within three hundred yards of the border. Unless Hurley’s a total masochist, he would have had to follow one of them.”

“Except our guy is a masochist,” Windermere said. “We’ve already established that.”

“Sure,” Stevens said. “But still.”

But Hurley hadn’t followed any of the three roads—at least not in Kerry Finley’s Explorer. And if he’d left footprints, they were obscured by the snow. None of the occupants of the Flathead County helicopter could see any evidence that Hurley had passed this way.

“Maybe he ditched the truck farther back,” Windermere said. “Hiked through the forest. Or he hid it.”

“Or maybe we’re wrong and he stayed west, after all,” Stevens said. “Or maybe he took a different tack entirely.”

The pilot gestured out the window to the west, where the sun had started dropping toward the mountains already. “If you want to check the lake before dark, we’re going to have to move,” he told the agents. “We’re going to start losing daylight faster than you think.”

Stevens and Windermere looked at each other, and Stevens felt a gnawing indecision, made worse by the pressure of the situation. If they couldn’t track Hurley within the next couple of hours, they would lose him for the night. And giving Hurley another night in these mountains was tantamount to buying him a plane ticket, as far as Stevens was concerned.

Windermere was still waiting. Time was wasting. Stevens rubbed his face with the palm of his hand. “Damn it,” he said. “I guess we’d better check out the lake.”

—

And they would have checked the lake, and as many of the logging roads west of Roosville as they could manage before dusk—were headed that way, chasing the sun—when the helicopter’s pilot happened to take a pass over a low earthen dam and the snow-covered lake behind it. And Windermere, eyes attracted to the break in the monotony of the tree-covered mountain, happened to glance down at the dam and the lake and the road that ran beside it, and as she followed the road north with her eyes, she caught the glint as the sun’s rays landed on something that wasn’t rock, snow, or forest, but chrome and steel and glass.

“Hold up.” Windermere leaned forward, made to grab the pilot’s arm. Decided, on second thought, that wasn’t the best idea. Settled for pointing down instead, through the bubble windshield and back toward the truck—Finley’s truck, she was sure of it—where it sat a couple hundred yards from the dam and a solid three miles from the border.

“There it is,” she told Stevens, her heart starting to pound. “Now, where the heck is Kerry Finley?”