Chapter 6 — Over the Border and Through the Woods

"Ashe, your clearance just came in!"

Jeremy leaned out of his chair, glancing through his open door and across the bullpen to the Chief's office. "Canadians are on board?"

"I pulled a few favors. You've got the lead. The mounties will stay out of your way til you need 'em."

Jeremy grinned at Lani. "Want to go to B.C.?"

His partner nodded. "It's the best lead we've had since this started. I'm in."

Jeremy leaned back to shout at Aderholt again. "Coach?"

"First class, motherfucker. We've still got tons of discretionary you never used. I took the liberty of spending it for you."

Jeremy sighed. He wasn't going to turn it down, but he didn't feel like he deserved the pampered treatment. Lani looked excited though, so he went along with it. If anyone had earned it, Lani certainly had. After Jeremy had spotted the car, Lani had painstakingly traced its journey through every piece of footage they'd gathered, until it finally left their scope heading north and out of the country.

They'd been sitting and waiting for the Canadians to give them the okay to expand their investigation into the country. Jeremy had been packed and ready in his office anticipating the call. He'd never felt so eager to pursue an investigation before, even when he was just getting started as a detective back in Seattle. Then again, he'd never had a real personal connection like this to a case before. This one was special.

In spite of that, he still had an hour until the flight Aderholt had got them on to Vancouver. Jeremy spent the first twenty minutes pacing the office impatiently, while Lani went home to get his things. When he got bored of pacing, Jeremy sat down and went through the last piece of video they'd found. A tech team was currently going through other shots again, just in case, but all they had to go on was the car blazing down the highway in the dead of night. Jeremy had no inkling of where to start looking once he arrived in Vancouver, but damned if he was going to slack off in Seattle and let the Canadians take his case.

What are you running from Jackie? What the hell could spook you this much? It was a sobering thought. If Jackie Nossinger, one of the strongest women he'd ever known, was fleeing the country in the middle of the night… he might have a real reason to panic.

They hadn't spoken in years, but they'd enjoyed a solid eight as partners in the Seattle homicide division. Jackie had eventually put in for a transfer after a few particularly bad cases in a row. Jeremy hadn't wanted to deal with the new partner they'd assigned him, and finally took up the offer for a position in the Bureau. It had been a little bit political, given his family ties, but he didn't mind. The bump to the federal level meant he got to deal with way fewer bullshit cases at the end of the day, and that suited him just fine.

"Hey Ashe?"

Jeremy looked up. It wasn't Lani. Aderholt had come over to his office with a serious look.

"I won't piss off the mounties," Jeremy assured him.

"Not that. Look, man," he started, leaning back against the doorframe casually. "I get how personal this case's gotten for you—"

Fuck you. You aren't taking this from me. "You think I need to step away?"

To his surprise, Aderholt shook his head. "Hell no. If I was in your shoes and the chief suggested that to me, I'd slug him in the face." He looked Jeremy in the eye. "Don't forget: whoever did this killed over a hundred people and God knows how or why. And whoever they are, they aren't done. You watch your back up there."

"Killer's still down here in Olympia," Jeremy pointed out.

"As far as we know. Unless there were multiple killers."

"Any luck in the forests yet?"

He shook his head. "They found fuck-all so far. I'm going out to the site myself today."

"You're leaving the building sir?"

"Ha ha, fuck you." Aderholt shot him a glare. "Someone's gotta go hold the rangers' dicks so they don't piss all over themselves."

"I'm sure they appreciate your sacrifice, sir."

The elevator door down the hall pinged. "Just be careful, shitbird," Aderholt called over his shoulder as he returned to his office. Lani had returned with his bag, packed and ready to go. "I want Lani back in one piece."

"And me, sir?"

"As many fucking pieces as you like. If you happen to lose your tongue, I'll get you a goddamn medal."

Their Canadian counterparts greeted them right off the plane. They were ushered into vehicles and brought straight to their local station, where a task force headquarters had been set aside.

"We're as eager to solve the mystery as yourselves," said their chief, shaking Lani and Jeremy's hands enthusiastically. Jeremy tried to remember his name, but came up empty. "Everyone here's wondering what this is all about."

Jeremy had to fight to suppress a laugh at how strong his accent came through on the last word. Lani stepped in to save him, with a deft diplomatic gesture.

"Thanks. I believe you were sent a preliminary case file with some notes on where to start?"

"Yeah. We've already got teams running the border video back. You're lucky we upgraded our storage. We used to not keep video that long." He scratched his head. "You really think they went through a checkpoint though?"

"Nah," Jeremy replied. "But better safe than sorry."

They hadn't. The Canadian teams worked through all the videos fast, and not a one showed Jackie's vehicle or anything resembling it passing over the border. Their network wasn't as sophisticated as the FBI system, but they had more than enough coverage on their side of the checkpoints for Jeremy to believe the results.

He wasn't about to give up that easily.

Within the day, Jeremy managed to persuade the Canadians to give them airspace clearance to send several helicopters across the entire expanse connecting Washington and B.C. Thanks to the new lead, Aderholt had gotten them more resources to access, so Jeremy was able to divert much more than he usually could in support. The helicopters trawled inch by inch across the forests, watching for absolutely anything unusual, while Jeremy watched the feeds from an array of laptops they'd provided him in their hotel room. In the meantime, Lani collected updated scans from the satellite that had been retasked for their use.

Between the satellite and the helicopters, they found her car. The satellite picked up a strange metallic reading underneath the forest canopy, plenty large and right on the surface level. When Jeremy directed one of the helicopters to investigate more closely, he got enough of a glimpse to be sure.

They were in a rugged jeep and on their way within minutes.

"So," Lani started as they pulled onto the highway. "Your old partner."

Jeremy didn't reply. He was busy staring out the window, thinking about his sister. She'd flown back to D.C., where she faced endless meetings and committees amidst the never-ending drama theater of modern politics. Unlike many of her colleagues, Madelaine Ashe had fought her way up from almost nothing. They hadn't even used their mother's remarriage to Walter Milton and their newfound connections to high society in the campaign. Maddie worked her way in as an aide to almost everyone, one after another, until she finally broke through with her own campaign.

When she was elected, her first order of business was to ditch the entire existing staff in her office. Having been an aide herself for so long, she knew better than anyone how much power they could wield. Many senators and representatives were really just public faces, while their aides and subordinates ended up doing most of the work.

Maddie didn't trust any of them, so she fired all of them. She brought in her own people, much smaller and more focused (as it was all she could afford without support), and she did the work of ten all on her own. She'd sacrificed everything in her life to keep up with the more privileged and wealthy around her—never even considering dating, raising a family, or anything personal. Hell, she doesn't even have any fucking hobbies.

His sister was trying to change the world for the better. If it weren't for Jackie Nossinger, he'd have lost Maddie fourteen years ago. He had to find the missing sheriff, no matter what it took.

"Jeremy?" Lani asked, as he merged them into the off-ramp.

"Sorry. Just thinking."

"You got any ideas about what we're heading into?"

"An empty ditched car from when they hopped the border without a single clue on it." Jeremy shrugged. "But we've gotta check anyway."

Lani sighed. "With our luck, it won't even be her car."

"Now you're catchin' on." Jeremy's phone buzzed with a pile of text messages. "Chief found two more bodies in the woods with the rangers. Harrison and one other older male. Probably Smith. Both dead back in May. We can knock two more off our count."

Lani glanced over at him. "Do you think we'll find other survivors? At this rate, it sounds like the entire town was killed off."

"Can't be sure. You made the count. You think it's actually accurate?"

"It's the most recent census plus the last submitted university records and voter registration cross-referenced. It's the best we're going to get."

"So we've got no fuckin' clue," Jeremy grumbled. Lani pulled the jeep off to the side of the road. "What's up?"

"This is where we break off," he replied. The jeep bounced with an angry thump as they started rumbling through the underbrush into the wooded hills. "You'd better hope it's clear all the way there."

"The forest didn't look that thick."

"We're in a car."

"We'll make it," Jeremy said firmly.

"...She's alive."

Jeremy looked at him sharply. "You don't fuckin' know that."

"You don't know she isn't."

"Why d'you think we're in fucking Canada?"

"Hey, it's actually pretty nice up here. It's better than the city."

"I don't need reassuring, Lani," Jeremy said, leaning back and trying to relax while the jeep tumbled along the rough ground. "We're gonna find her either way, and she's gonna tell us what the fuck happened back in Rallsburg. Simple as that."

It was slow going through the forest. As the tree cover thickened, they were forced to take longer and longer detours to get back on track with the GPS map Lani had on his phone. Jeremy spent most of it running through the details of the case in his head, but as they reached the halfway point, Lani broke the silence.

"You know what this all seems like to me?"

A psychotic serial killer with way too much firepower? "What?"

"It's all a sign. It's warnings."

Jeremy didn't have anything better to do, and he didn't feel like going into the field with animosity from his partner, so he decided to entertain Lani's train of thought. "Warnings of what?"

"The end of the world."

He barked out a short laugh. "Christ, Lani, people have been callin' out end of the world for way too long. What makes this pile of bodies different from Jim Jones or Heaven's Gate?"

"Those were all suicides. These people didn't kill themselves. We don't have any reason to believe they were crazy."

Jeremy shrugged. "Jury's out on the crazy, but how'd you get from mass death to end of the world?"

"The way those bodies were laid out in the street sure looks like a sign."

He frowned. "You said it yourself, they were trying to reach somethin' in the middle. Probably whoever killed 'em."

"I'm not so sure anymore," Lani muttered. He paused while navigating a particularly tricky section of forest. "The people getting torn up, and now with Hauserman dying so much later… This is end of the world stuff."

"Or it's confirmation bias."

"What?"

"Look, I mean this with all respect," said Jeremy, "but you're a lot more superstitious than me. Fair?"

"Yeah."

"So you're way more likely to believe in somethin' supernatural occurring here. Even if it doesn't make sense."

"You're saying I don't make any sense?" Lani asked, without any hostility.

"I'm saying you gotta watch your biases, that's all. So does the whole fuckin' world, from the shit we get on the tip line. Apocalypse is fucking trendy these days."

"What do you mean?"

"People want the world to change, but they don't feel like they got the power to do it themselves. So they want a redo." Jeremy sighed. "They feel so powerless that the majority of the world gettin' knocked off is preferable to trying to fix our shitty real world."

"That could just be our tip line."

He shook his head. "You wanna know how the world is feeling? Don't watch the news, check out what entertainment people love the most. When we were inventin' space flight, people wanted science fiction with rubber suited aliens, humanity reachin' for the stars, optimistic shit. Go way back to Shakespeare, and people loved it because he wrote for the fuckin' peasants, not the royalty. He got what they were feelin'. Or look at all the anti-war songs and movies around 'Nam."

"And now we're in the apocalypse?"

"Well, there's so much shit these days that it's got thinned out. But yeah, check out what's popular. People love the 'pocalypse, they love the whole world gettin' reset or blown away. Shit, there's even post-apocalyptic books for kids now."

"You were reading kids books?" Lani asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Saw 'em in the store," Jeremy replied without missing a beat. "Point is, it's saturating everything. That's where our culture's at, and culture reflects the times. People want an apocalypse, and something this crazy? Mass unexplained death and an entire town evaporating into thin air?" He closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat as they bumped along. "They might be so desperate that this kicks it off all on its own."

"Are they wrong?"

Jeremy's eyes snapped back open. He glared at his partner. "Of course they're fucking wrong!"

"But—"

"Just because our country's fucked up doesn't mean it's a lost fuckin' cause," he growled. "People fought for this place. Fuck if I'm gonna let some looney tunes serial killer and a bunch of end of the world addicts ruin our home."

"Even if it might actually be a lost cause?"

"Lani, do you really believe that?"

"...No. But I get where they're coming from."

Jeremy sighed. "You and me both."