"Lee!" Her sister is terrified. "Please!"

He is at the ledge. A sheer drop of five hundred, maybe six hundred, feet.

"Guess what I'm going to do."

Slowly, he extends his arms.

"No! Oh--Lee!"

Slowly, he holds Rachel over the cliff, chuckling as she tries in vain to reach it with her toes. Gasping, breathless, sobbing.

"Please!"

Rocky Mountain winds are curling through the ranges, shooting up. The earth below is a dizzying drop.

She is stretching to reach Rachel's wrist, but his arms are longer.

"Lee! Oh, please! Oh, please!"

"Guess what I'm going to do. I'm going to see if she can walk on air!"

"Noooo!"

"But you help me, big sister."

Suddenly, Hood releases one of Rachel's wrists.

"You get her now, big sister. You save her now! Unless she can walk on air." He laughs.

She reaches for Rachel's free, flailing hand, brushing it, touching it in time to feel it slipping from hers as Hood releases his grip.

Rachel is suspended for an instant.

Their eyes meet. Rachel, horrified, terrified. Knowing. Face is contorted with fear. "No, Sun Ray." Hand brushing hers, a feathery touch so fast, Rachel's head lifting.

Falling. "NOOOOOOO!" Her screams rising to the heavens as she plummets.

"Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!"

She cannot breathe, cannot think. Horror is hammering her senses. Pounding.

Laughing. Hood is laughing.

"Guess she can't walk on air and she can't fly. No better than anybody."

His brown teeth turn to her.

"How about you, big sister?"

She scurries up the ledge, sobbing, gasping; his laughter chases her as she runs and runs and runs from the monster.

Running all of her life.

Running from her sister's falling eyes, the death brush of her little hand stained with mountain flowers and the powder of butterfly wings. The last touch, the last look of horror. "Watch over your little sister."

"I'm not scared anymore, Lee."

Running all of her life.

Free-falling from the horror that destroyed her family; now feeling a measure of comfort from an FBI agent investigating the suspected homicide of her daughter.

THIRTY-NINE.

Paige and Kobee ran for high country, scrambling along treacherous ridges, ledges. Dipping into forests only to gain elevation or traverse a difficult section.

It was the only way to stay ahead of the thing chasing them. The only tactic keeping her alive. She continued moving as fast as she could for much of the day. The grunting thing never emerged. She stopped to examine Kobee's wound. Did the thing do that? She tore a strip from a shirt in her pack, bandaging him with it. Far off, she heard the helicopters. At times she waved, but they always missed her. Paige forced herself to keep moving.

Oh God, I am so hungry.

So afraid.

Please help me! Somebody!

When Paige stopped to eat one of her granola bars, she began crying and could not stop.

Does it hurt to die?

Paige whispered weakly. "Mommy, please help me."

Kobee licked her salty tears. She shared some of her food with him.

"Don't worry. I'll look after you, puppy."

Paige moved on, but later as the sun began dropping, fatigue, exposure, and fear continued taking their toll.

Got to keep moving. Climb higher and maybe they'll find me.

She believed it was safer at higher levels.

It gave her the advantage of distance to see what might be ahead, waiting for her, or behind, gaining on her.

As dusk approached, Paige sensed that it was going to rain again. It was clouding up, getting colder. She began thinking of searching or trying to build a shelter as she continued ascending a rocky region.

Earlier in the day, she frequently spotted deer and big horn sheep. It gave her comfort seeing harmless forms of life keeping her company.

But as she worked her way up the harsh slopes of this region deep in the Devil's Grasp, the deer and sheep became scarce.

Wonder where they all went.

The few she did spot seemed to be moving downward in the opposite direction of her ascension.

Why?

Finally, with little light remaining, Paige chose a spot atop jagged zone of high cliffs, which was dotted with forests. The ledges overlooked a sweeping valley from several hundred feet up.

Paige began building a lean-to shelter, using some spruce boughs against a large fallen tree. She used some as a floor, to soften the hard, rocky ground. She crawled in, hugging Kobee for comfort and warmth. Meanwhile, hunger and exhaustion battled within her.

Thoughts of a huge pizza with ham, tons of cheese, spicy sauce, pineapples, taunted her. As the night neared, she slipped into sleep.

A large branch cracked.

What is that?

Paige was fully alert. Pulse racing with fear.

A horrible, foul smell filled her nostrils.

It was back!

Kobee whimpered softly.

"Shhh."

Like her first night.

Ohgodpleasehelpme!

Snorting. She heard guttural snorting. Then a woofing, popping sound. More branches snapping.

It was so close. She heard paw pads, slapping on rock; claws, scraping near her. Panting. Growling.

It brushed by her in the twilight.

A massive wall of fur, stinking fur, matted with excrement.

A bear. A giant bear. So close she could touch it.

Paige went numb.

She was going to die.

She prayed. Mommy. Daddy.

A massive claw swept the branches away; fur brushed against her, Paige shut her eyes. The second swat sent her hurling across the ledge top, rolling like a rag doll toward a yawning crevasse.

Paige opened her mouth to scream, hearing the beast charging and snarling. Its claws scratched across the rock, driving an unstoppable, unconquerable, carnivorous force as old as time toward her.

Mommy, Daddy, please save me.... Please, oh please, don't let it hurt!

FORTY.

In the pre-dawn light deep in Search Sector 23, a vast slope of lodgepole forest blistered by rock cliffs and fissures, excitement awakened Lola.

The three-year-old Belgian shepherd's wagging tail was brushing the interior of the green nylon pup tent as she worked to rouse Todd Taylor, her nineteen-year-old handler. Nuzzling, panting and licking his ear to no avail. Taylor groaned, pulling his goose-down sleeping bag over his head. He was exhausted. Lola persisted.

"Just a few more minutes, girl."

Taylor pulled her into the warm sleeping bag with him and listened to her heartbeat. It was racing, stirring him to the sudden realization she had detected something.

"OK, OK. Take it easy."

He sat up, shivering, in the frigid morning air. He quickly pulled a sweatshirt over his T-shirt, then whipped on his fluorescent yellow windbreaker, which bore the words TALON COUNTY SEARCH AND RESCUE, COLORADO. The volunteer group was one of the first out-of-state agencies to arrive. Taylor, a college freshman from Boulder, was studying to be a paramedic. Lola was regarded by SAR people across America as one of the best scent-trackers in the field.

"Coffee," Taylor moaned, pouring a cup from his thermos.

Sipping it cleared his drowsiness. He faced the dreadful fact it had rained again in the night. Cripes. Theirs was one of the most remote eastern search zones, and between sunrise and sundown yesterday, they grid-swept it twice. Taylor kneaded Lola's neck. He never ceased to marvel at the ability of tracking dogs to locate people, or traces of them.

Humans constantly give off streams of scents that flow into the air like vaporous clouds, emissions originating from the bacteria in the millions of cells in hair, skin, blood, urine, sweat, saliva, which the body replaces each second. The process produces a distinct human odor that trained scent dogs like Lola can detect. But Taylor knew the success of the so-called probability of detection all depended on scores of variables, like the dog's health, wind conditions, time of day, air quality and density.

Taylor hustled, pulling on his jeans and boots. Lola had picked up something and would bolt the instant he opened the tent. But he had to take care of business fast; afterward, they would go.

"You stay, girl! Sit!"

Lola yelped, but sat. Her tail wagged her impatience as Taylor crawled out to relieve himself by a tree. Quickly, he slipped on his lighter pack, affixed a fresh battery to his radio, clamped a peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich in his mouth, gave Lola a dog biscuit, opened the tent.

"Go find it, girl."

Lola yelped, leading Taylor at a trot deep through the forest they had gridded early yesterday. He knew they were skirting the edge of a grizzly's feeding zone. He double-checked his pack for his bear spray and bell.

During a search for a lost woman in the Rockies in Colorado, he had startled a sow. Miraculously, he backed away without a scratch, although he trembled uncontrollably for the rest of the day. The next morning, he and Lola found the woman, or what was left of her. The grizzly had disemboweled her. One of her arms was missing. The woman, a tourist from Germany, was the mother of a little boy and little girl. Taylor cried that night. Rangers tracked and killed the bear. Lola was now moving faster, leading him out of the forest to the rocky edge.

"Whoa!"