They found her in the forest, skin blue and chest cavity emptied by coyotes.  Sinclair rested his hand on the body bag zipped up over her blank face.  The stretcher swept out from under his hand, the paramedics whisking her body away in a silent ambulance.  He waited until the scene cleared to leave himself.  Steam rose from the road, the mid-morning sun turning the mountain into a sauna.  He drove aimlessly for a while, not eager to return to the precinct and mountains of paperwork, nor to find himself in his bed.  He dug a cigarette out of his pocket with one hand and popped out the lighter in the center console.  The end lit up, a red ember flaring with each puff he took.  The nicotine flooded his aching lungs.  He cut off on a side road, taking the long way round the town for a moment of peace -- a chance to think.

The looping mountain road turned to gravel as it crept up and around the peak.  Deep pits formed in the margins of the road where water rushed down to Kippling Creek.  The cruiser struggled through the mud, but eventually made it out the other side and descended into the winding roads into the valley until he met the highway again.

He stopped where his car had broken down that first evening.  The ridge overlooked mountain valleys and red buffs.  The deepest crevasses of the mountains hid within the mist.  Tops of trees poked out of the fog like the banks of a strange lake.  A buzzing sensation rang in Sinclair’s ears.  He lit another cigarette, smoked it, and crushed the butt under his foot before driving away.  He didn’t check the time.

Sinclair pulled up to the steaming ruin of two houses, burned to the foundations, and walked beneath the crime scene tape.  The rain washed away the last traces of Tiffany Bean’s blood on the gravel drive, now ashen gray.  The remnants of her life lay in the burned hollow of her house’s foundation.  Dust now, same as Tiff herself -- taken to the crematory, only a day ago.  The neighborhood reeked of burnt plastic.  The trees surrounding the house continued on, business as usual, with nothing but some singed pine needles to show for it.

Jericho was right.

The thought rang through his tired mind like a tolling bell.  Jericho’s absence in the commotion last night became conspicuous in his mind.  Jericho, the conspiracy theorist, the back country hiker, the man with no fear and a thirst for truth, never appeared.  A blank space in the event.  The lack of him became a gaping wound in the night.  Every runner was an omega, weren’t they?

The air in Sinclair’s lungs went cold.  His mind churned with the facts of the night, the fires and the storm, the people missing.  Sinclair set down the road towards Jericho’s cabin, planning out his apology.  How many times would he have to say sorry to argue away the anxiety churning his stomach?  As he turned down the road to Jericho’s cabin, he remembered Alex Stanton.  An omega, gay man, living just over the ridge -- and Sinclair found him an hour away by car, naked and cold, across two ravines in unfamiliar forest.  How far would Jericho have gotten?  Back country hiker, in a wild run, maybe dying some thirty miles from here.  

He turned into Jericho’s driveway, his mouth going dry.  Alice, omega.  Alex, omega.  The four children, all omegas.  The woman they found dead that morning, omega.  Jericho, omega.

The door of the cabin greeted Sinclair with a friendly wave, knocking against the wall.  Sinclair tasted dread at the back of his throat.  He stepped out of his cruiser, greeted by the chipper songs of birds in the clearing of Jericho’s front yard and bees buzzeing about the unkempt gardens.  They gossipped about him, oblivious to the strangeness settling over the cabin.

“Jericho?” He called, the woods swallowing his voice.

He approached the open door and looked into the house.  The upbeat tune of an infomercial blared from the television in the living room.  

“Jericho?” He stepped into the kitchen and through the empty living room to the darkened hallway.  

He peeked into a dark and messy bedroom, the door ajar.  Sheets lay across the mattress in a tangle, no blankets.  Books and papers stacked along the walls and in corners remained undisturbed.  As he entered the room, a stupor settled over him.  He smelled Jericho on the unkempt sheets, on the papers tacked to the wall above the bed.  Before he realized what he was doing, he picked up a shirt from the ground and pressed it to his face, inhaling the scent until it filled his mind with a feral hunger.

Coming to his senses, he dropped the shirt, disgusted with himself.  He shifted, adjusting his pants as they tightened uncomfortably.

Still, Jericho’s scent lingered in the air.  Sinclair backed out of the bedroom, following the trail back out the front door until he stood on the porch.  The scent of wet dirt faded away in his mind and he turned, shoes sinking into the soft duff of the yard, until he found himself standing above a soaked comforter dropped where the cleared property gave way to the forest. 

 In the humid blanket hanging over the world, the scent trickled away from him.  Some wild part of him strained for it, finding it in the soaking folds of the comforter at his feet and softer, muted, clinging to bark and leaf.  He passed the threshold of trees, the forest around him a mosaic of light and sound.  Vapor rose from the branches of trees, draping an ephemeral web over the world.  He broke into a run, his thudding footsteps navigating the uneven ground as readily as the potholes and alleys of the city he’d grown up in.

The forest passed him by in a rush of green and brown.  Vanilla wafted off the bark of ponderosa, mixing with the earth churned up by his frantic run.  He didn’t know where he was going.  He was going to get lost.  He slipped into a ravine, a stream trickling at the bottom and stopped when a rock caught his ankle wrong.  He panted, heavy breathing catching something familiar in the wind -- sweat?

“Jericho?” he called into the woods, his voice the edge of a growl.

A thicket of bushes rustled in answer.

Sinclair approached it, crouched as though ready to pounce on what might emerge.  He pushed the branches aside, revealing Jericho crouched beneath, soaked and shivering.

“Sinclair?” he choked out.

The feral ache drained from Sinclair.  He pulled Jericho from the bushes, his scent washing over him.  He cradled Jericho’s weak body against him, his bare skin cold to the touch.  Sinclair leaned against the far bank, holding Jericho’s body against him.  Sinclair lost himself in the shallow rise and fall of Jericho’s chest against his.  A fluttering took hold in his stomach, traveling lower as he inhaled the potent pheromones radiating from Jericho.

“Sinclair, what happened?” Jericho asked, voice weak.  His hands grasped for Sinclair’s shirt, leaving dirty handprints on the cotton.

Sinclair snapped out of it.  He moved out from under Jericho and stabilized him against the side of the ditch.  “I don’t know,” he said, “I’m taking you home.”  Even as he said it, he noticed the ache in his legs and the strange angle of the sun.

“Oh,” Jericho mumbled, “did I drink too much again?”

Jericho flopped over Sinclair’s shoulder as he hauled him into a fireman carry.  “No, you didn’t,” Sinclair assured him, “just let me take you home.”

Jericho, relaxed over Sinclair’s shoulders.  Sinclair struggled through the undergrowth, picking his way back to the cabin with his eyes half-closed, trying to retrace his own wild run.  His heavy footfalls carved deep holes into the pine needles, breaking sticks as he shoved through the undergrowth.  He thanked his lucky stars for his frantic run.  

Sinclair’s knees shook beneath Jericho’s weight and he stumbled on the uneven ground, but Jericho’s breathing remained slow and shallow as he dozed in the warmth of the sun.  Sinclair cursed himself silently, scolding himself for the relentless erection in his pants and the heat delirium taking ahold of his mind.  He turned his head down and trudged along his own breakneck trail.

Sinclair stopped, panting and leaning against a tree as his sleepless night caught up with him.  Jericho shifted atop his shoulders, throwing him off balance.  He scrambled to keep himself from falling over, dropping to his knees on the damp ground.

“I’ll walk,” Jericho offered weakly, pushing against Sinclair’s shoulder.

“No.” Sinclair hauled himself to his feet with a growl and surged forward again, tunnel vision worsening until he finally saw his cruiser through the trees.  

He stumbled to the door of the cabin and dropped Jericho off his shoulders.  They both collapsed on the front porch.  Jericho rested a hand on his bare stomach, staring half-lidded at the spiderwebs in the rafters above him.  Sinclair rested his forehead against the doorframe for a moment before he picked Jericho up and tumbled inside.  He placed Jericho on the couch and draped a dry blanket over him.  Jericho groaned, his body shuddering.  He tugged the blanket tight around him.  Sinclair hobbled to the phone, adjusting the half-chub in his pants, and dialed the police station.

“Cobalt Police Peak Department, what’s your emergency?” Deputy Gaye’s exhausted voice answered.

Sinclair chuckled.  “Deputy, hey, it’s Sinclair.”

“What do you want, Vitale?” she asked deadpan.

“Can you route an ambulance to 103 North Drive?  I just pulled Mr. Khalid out of a ditch and he could use a med check.”

She grumbled to herself and Sinclair heard her snap at someone on the other end of the phone.  She returned quickly.  “Yeah, I’ll send one over.  Hang tight, sheriff.”

Sinclair sank into a kitchen chair with a sigh.  “You send Edie home?”

“Yeah,” Deputy Gaye mumbled, “she’s been manning the phones for 28 hours.  I told her I’d take over for a bit,” she yawned into the phone, “is Jericho okay?”

Sinclair looked at the bundle on the couch.  Jericho shivered.  “I think he’s okay.  Just need to make sure.”

The hold tone beeped for a few moments, then Deputy Gaye returned.  “Medics are already in your area,” she informed him, “no sirens.  They said they’ll be there in 15.”

“I’ll leave the door open,” Sinclair said, looking at the open front door. 

He hung up the phone and dozed in the kitchen chair, stretching his legs out in front of him.  He woke to a paramedic shaking his shoulder and jolted to his feet.

The paramedic backed off.  “Just checking, sheriff,” she assured him.

He blinked, recognizing her from earlier in the day.  “Jericho’s on the couch.”

Two paramedics already crowded around Jericho, moving him onto a stretcher for transport into the ambulance.

“We’ve got him, you want a ride out to the hospital?  Let you sit up front, you can catch some sleep and we’ll drive you back out once he’s checked in,” she offered.

“That’s sweet of you, but no.  He’s fine in your hands.  You got a pen and paper on you?” Sinclair asked, preemptively offering his own.

She took them and poised to write.

“His name is Jericho Khalid.  I found his door open and him missing.  He probably went out around the same time as the others.  Took shelter under some bushes in a ditch, found him in a state of undress and carried him back.  Some scratches and bruises, but nothing broken.  He wasn’t very responsive, but he was conscious when we got to the house.  Sorry, I don’t have any more for your medical history than that.”  Sinclair sat back down.

“Thanks, sheriff.  You take care, hope it slows down for you soon.” She ripped out the paper and handed the notebook and pen back to him.

“You too.” He waved her out the door, following the two men carting Jericho to the ambulance.  

It took a few minutes for the sound of tires on thecounty road to drift into silence.  Sinclair waited until they faded away to leave the cabin and pull his car into the shade of some trees for a nap before getting back to work.