A perfect hiding spot.
Finn parks the snowmobile under an overhang that conceals it from aerial view, then unlocks a door so well fitted to the frame that the seams are nearly invisible. Inside smells like wood andcold stone, but it's dry. Finn produces a flashlight, sweeps the beam across the interior.
One room, maybe fifteen by twenty feet. A wood stove in the corner with a chimney that must vent through the hillside in a way that disperses smoke. Sleeping platforms built into the walls. Storage cabinets sealed against moisture and animals. Shelves stocked with canned goods, medical supplies, tools. Everything you'd need to survive in isolation for weeks.
"You built this?" I ask.
"Restored it. Old hunting camp from the seventies. Previous owner abandoned it when the access road washed out." Finn sets our gear down, starts checking the stove. "I've been maintaining it for a while. Good place to weather storms or lay low when the world gets too loud."
He doesn't elaborate on when or why he's needed to lay low, and I don't ask. Some things you learn about people through what they don't say.
"Power situation?" I ask before unpacking. "I'll need to run the laptop."
"Solar panels on the roof charge a battery bank. Enough for lights, satellite equipment, charging devices." He gestures to an outlet near the table. "No generator noise to give away our position."
Smart. A generator would announce our presence to anyone within half a mile.
I unpack the waterproof cases while Finn gets the stove going. The laptop comes out first, then the files. Physical documents in protective sleeves. USB drives with encrypted backups. All those months of investigation work compressed into packages small enough to carry on the run.
Tom's coded notes are in here. References to supply routes, mentions of "the northern route" and "Alaska connection." Nothing explicit enough to be evidence on its own, but enoughto point me in the right direction. Tom hid them in that safety deposit box before he died, protecting what he'd found in the only way he could.
I spread everything out on the largest flat surface available—a folding table Finn produces from storage. Financial records here. Witness statements there. Operational timelines arranged chronologically. The evidence from the supply cache we found days ago, cross-referenced with Tom's notes about federal protection.
Finn finishes with the stove and comes to stand beside me. Heat begins filling the space, taking the edge off the cold that's seeped into my bones.
"What are you looking for?" he asks.
"Patterns. Connections." I open files on the laptop, start matching names and dates. "Tom left breadcrumbs, not a map. He knew if he documented everything explicitly, it would get seized when they came for him. So he hid pieces in different places, coded references that would only make sense to someone who understood the context."
"And you understand the context."
"I lived it." Another file loads on screen showing dates of trafficking busts that failed. "Every operation I've documented over the past three years, every raid that went sideways, every witness who disappeared before they could testify—they all have one thing in common. Someone with access to operational details leaked information ahead of time."
He leans over the table, studying the timeline. "How high up would someone need to be to have that kind of access?"
"High enough to see classified briefings. High enough to redirect resources without raising flags. High enough that questioning their decisions looks like insubordination rather than investigation." I pull up another file. "Tom was tracking financial connections. Payments from shell companies to federalemployees. He couldn't prove who was receiving the money, but he documented the pattern. His notes pointed to someone in senior FBI leadership, but not a specific name or rank."
The laptop screen glows in the dim light, casting shadows across Finn's face as he processes what I'm showing him. Outside, wind picks up, howling through the canyon we just navigated. The sound carries for miles out here, bouncing off rock and ice.
I cross-reference Tom's financial data with my own investigation into the Alaska trafficking routes. Supply deliveries to remote communities. Federal officials traveling to supposedly inspect operations. Timing that correlates too perfectly to be coincidence.
Then I see it.
The name appears in three separate documents I've never compared side by side before. Julian Montrose. Deputy Assistant Director in the FBI. Direct oversight of multiple field offices, including the one that ran the Stormwatch operation. Including the one currently investigating trafficking in Alaska.
My hands go still on the keyboard. The world narrows to those two words on the screen. Julian Montrose. A name I've seen in briefings, in administrative emails, in the organizational charts that map the Bureau's hierarchy. A face I've passed in hallways, nodded to at interagency meetings. Someone I thought of as just another career bureaucrat grinding toward retirement and a pension.
He wasn't a bureaucrat. He was a predator.
Three years I've been hunting shadows. Following breadcrumbs and half-truths and leads that evaporated like morning mist. Wondering if I was chasing ghosts, if maybe I really was the negligent agent the official reports said I was. If maybe Tom died for nothing and the corruption was just paranoia born from grief.
But it wasn't paranoia. It was real. And his name is Julian Montrose.
"What?" Finn asks, reading my expression.
"Montrose." The name tastes like ash. "Julian Montrose. He's the Marshal."
My voice sounds strange even to my own ears. Hollow. Like someone speaking from the bottom of a well. He moves closer, studies my face with the same focused attention he used navigating the canyon. Reading me the way he reads terrain.
