CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The search for Catherine Wells took them through terrain that seemed designed to swallow people whole.
Isla followed James along the frozen trail that wound through Gooseberry Falls State Park, her sensible boots finding purchase on ground that alternated between patches of dirty snow and stretches of bare rock slicked with ice.
The morning sun had risen higher now, casting long shadows through the birch and pine that pressed close on either side, but its warmth hadn't yet reached this section of the park where the canopy blocked out everything except occasional shafts of pale light.
"She could be anywhere," James said, his breath fogging in the cold air. "The park covers over three thousand acres."
"She's not anywhere. She's somewhere specific." Isla paused at a fork in the trail, studying the two paths that diverged into the frozen forest. "Hendricks said she knows this place better than anyone. If she's avoiding us, she's doing it deliberately."
Her phone buzzed in her pocket—the callback she'd requested from the field office. She answered while James continued to scan the tree line.
"Rivers."
"Agent Rivers, it's Diaz." Marcus Diaz was one of the younger techs at the Duluth office, a recent transfer from Minneapolis who had proven himself invaluable for quick background checks. "I pulled what you asked for on Catherine Wells."
"What have you got?"
"Thirty-four years old, born and raised in Two Harbors.
Been with the State Park system for eight years, clean employment record until about six months ago when she started calling in sick more frequently.
No criminal history, no red flags in her financials.
" Diaz paused, and Isla heard papers rustling.
"But there's something in her personal history you should know about. "
"Go on."
"Five years ago, she lost her brother. Andrew Wells, twenty-nine.
He died of hypothermia during a winter hiking accident in the Boundary Waters.
Search and rescue found him three days after he went missing—he'd gotten lost in a snowstorm, tried to shelter under an overhang, but the temperatures dropped below minus twenty that night.
" Another pause. "Catherine was the one who reported him missing.
According to the case file, she blamed herself for not going with him on the trip. "
Isla felt the information settle into place, another piece in a puzzle she couldn't yet see clearly.
A brother lost to the wilderness. Five years of carrying that weight.
And now photographers were dying at scenic overlooks, their bodies staged like monuments to the landscapes they'd tried to capture.
Was there a connection? Or was she seeing patterns where none existed?
"Anything else?"
"That's all I've got so far. Want me to dig deeper?"
"Do it. And Diaz? Look for any connection between Catherine Wells and Thomas Kramer. University records, photography associations, anything that might link them."
"On it."
She ended the call and found James watching her, his expression carrying the particular focus of a partner who'd learned to read her silences.
"What is it?"
Isla told him about Andrew Wells—the hiking accident, the hypothermia, the guilt that Catherine had carried for half a decade. James listened without interrupting, his jaw tightening as the implications settled.
"Grief can make people do strange things," he said quietly.
"Grief can make people do terrible things." Isla turned back to the fork in the trail, her eyes scanning the paths ahead. "But it doesn't explain why she'd target photographers. Her brother wasn't an artist—he was just a hiker who got caught in a storm."
"Unless the connection isn't about photography at all.
Unless it's about the wilderness itself.
" James moved to stand beside her, close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating from his heavy parka.
"Her brother died in a place like this. Remote, beautiful, unforgiving.
Maybe she blames the people who romanticize these landscapes—who capture them in photographs without respecting their danger. "
It was a theory. Thin, speculative, but not impossible. Isla filed it away and started down the left-hand path, the one that seemed to lead toward a maintenance area marked on the trail map.
They found Catherine Wells fifteen minutes later.
She was standing at the edge of a small clearing where park equipment was stored—snow shovels, trail markers, the kind of utilitarian supplies that kept the park functional through Minnesota winters.
Her ranger uniform was rumpled, as if she'd been wearing it for longer than a single shift, and her blonde hair had escaped from its ponytail to hang in limp strands around a face that looked hollowed out by exhaustion.
She saw them coming and didn't run.
That was the first thing Isla noticed. Whatever Catherine Wells was hiding, whatever secrets she carried, she wasn't the kind of person who fled when cornered.
She stood her ground as they approached, her hands visible at her sides, her posture carrying a kind of resigned acceptance that Isla had seen in suspects a hundred times before.
But also in witnesses. Also in victims.
"Catherine Wells?" Isla showed her badge, watching the ranger's face for any flicker of recognition or fear. "I'm Special Agent Rivers with the FBI. This is Special Agent Sullivan. We need to ask you some questions."
Wells nodded slowly, her eyes moving between them with the careful assessment of someone who had spent years reading the wilderness for threats. "I figured you'd come looking eventually. After what happened this morning."
"You know about the murder?"
"Heard it on the radio. A photographer, found at the upper falls overlook." Wells's voice was flat, controlled, but something flickered beneath the surface—a tension that seemed barely contained. "Same as the others."
"You were assigned to patrol this area this morning. The overlook where Robert Yamada was found."
"Yes."
"But you weren't there when his body was discovered. And you haven't been responding to radio calls." Isla let the implications hang in the air, watching for any crack in Wells's composure.
The ranger's jaw tightened. For a long moment, she said nothing—just stood there in the frozen clearing, her breath fogging in the cold, her eyes fixed on some middle distance that Isla couldn't see.
Then she broke.
It wasn't dramatic—no sudden collapse, no theatrical sobbing.
Just a slow crumbling, like ice giving way under accumulated pressure.
Wells's shoulders dropped. Her hands began to tremble.
And when she finally spoke, her voice carried the particular rawness of someone who had been holding something in for far too long.
"Three people," she said. "Three photographers, dead within a day. And I couldn't stop it. I was right there—right there on that trail—and I couldn't stop it."
Isla exchanged a glance with James. The emotional response was intense, but it wasn't the reaction of a guilty person. It was the reaction of someone who felt responsible for something she hadn't done.
"Tell us what happened this morning," Isla said, her voice gentling slightly. "Walk us through it."
Wells took a shuddering breath. "I started my patrol at five, same as always.
Walked the lower falls first, then worked my way up to the upper overlook.
Everything was quiet—no vehicles in the lots, no hikers on the trails.
I was maybe a hundred yards from the overlook when I heard something in the trees. "
"What kind of something?"
"Movement. Branches breaking." Wells's eyes went distant, reliving the moment.
"I thought it might be a person—someone who shouldn't be there, someone I could actually stop before.
.." She trailed off, her voice catching.
"But it was just a deer. A doe, foraging in the underbrush.
I must have spent ten, fifteen minutes tracking it before I realized what I was doing. "
"And by the time you got to the overlook?"
"It was too late." Wells's voice cracked.
"He was already dead. I saw the body from the trail and I just—I froze.
I couldn't move, couldn't think. I must have stood there for five minutes before I even remembered to reach for my radio.
" She looked at Isla directly for the first time, her eyes red-rimmed and desperate.
"I should have been faster. I should have checked the overlook first, not gone chasing after some goddamn deer. If I'd just—"
"Ranger Wells." Isla cut through the spiral of self-recrimination. "Have you been conducting additional patrols? Beyond your assigned shifts?"
The question seemed to catch Wells off guard. She blinked, some of the raw emotion receding behind a mask of caution.
"Who told you that?"
"It doesn't matter who told us. Have you been patrolling at night, on your own time, without authorization?"
A long pause. Then, slowly: "Yes."
"Why?"
Wells's hands clenched at her sides. "Because I knew something like this was going to happen.
I could feel it—the way the parks have felt different lately.
Wrong somehow. And when those photographers started dying.
.." She shook her head. "I couldn't just sit at home and wait for the next body to show up. I had to do something."
"You were trying to prevent the murders."
"I was trying to protect the places I've spent my whole life caring for.
" Wells's voice hardened with sudden intensity.
"These parks—they're not just pretty pictures for tourists to photograph.
They're living things. They have moods, rhythms, dangers that people don't understand.
And when someone comes along and treats them like nothing more than backdrop for their Instagram feed. .."
She stopped herself, seeming to realize how the words might sound.