The bass boat cruised silently across the lake. Trygg balanced on her three legs in the shallow bow with her head draped over the edge and her nose hovering just above the water. The dog’s head swung slowly from side to side like a pendulum, and the walls of her nostrils flexed in and out as she tested the air for scent. She wore a different bandanna this time—a green one with a checkered pattern—the one that reminded her to search for submerged remains. Alena knelt in the bow beside the dog, studying her eyes and the movements of her body, watching for any sign of an alert.

Nick sat on the casting deck behind them, steering the boat with two foot pedals; they used an electric trolling motor to keep gasoline fumes from obscuring the scent. He glanced back over his shoulder; on the distant shore he could see Kegan and Danny and the FBI’s forensic tech crew excavating the remains of Alena’s father. He looked at Alena. Her eyes were red and swollen; she had cried most of the night while Gunner sat beside her and held her and Nick watched helplessly from across the room. Nick knew she was exhausted and he knew she deserved to be left alone to grieve, but he had no choice; they had to find this body soon—for Alena’s sake. Nick knew that a decomposing body was like a ticking clock; with every passing hour valuable forensic evidence would be lost. So far they had been trying to find a killer with nothing but a handful of ancient bones. The bones of Ken Savard were more recent, but even they were already more than two decades old. But Marge—she had been dead only a day or two, and the killer’s hand-prints might still be all over her body—if they found it in time.

But mountain lakes can be deep, and the pressures at greater depths can keep a body from bloating and rising to the surface—it could stay down there for weeks, even months. Deep lakes can have thermal layers where icy water at the bottom slows the process of decomposition, keeping the body submerged. And this killer wasn’t stupid—he might very well have taken the time to weigh the body down, in which case it would remain submerged even if it did bloat. That could be a big problem, because mountain lakes have craggy bottoms littered with rotting tree stumps, where a body can stay hidden for years. But they didn’t have years to wait; they needed to find this body now, and Nick knew they might never find it without Alena’s help.