"You were assigned to patrol this area this morning.The overlook where Robert Yamada was found."
"Yes."
"But you weren't there when his body was discovered.And you haven't been responding to radio calls."Isla let the implications hang in the air, watching for any crack in Wells's composure.
The ranger's jaw tightened.For a long moment, she said nothing—just stood there in the frozen clearing, her breath fogging in the cold, her eyes fixed on some middle distance that Isla couldn't see.
Then she broke.
It wasn't dramatic—no sudden collapse, no theatrical sobbing.Just a slow crumbling, like ice giving way under accumulated pressure.Wells's shoulders dropped.Her hands began to tremble.And when she finally spoke, her voice carried the particular rawness of someone who had been holding something in for far too long.
"Three people," she said."Three photographers, dead within a day.And I couldn't stop it.I was right there—right there on that trail—and I couldn't stop it."
Isla exchanged a glance with James.The emotional response was intense, but it wasn't the reaction of a guilty person.It was the reaction of someone who felt responsible for something she hadn't done.
"Tell us what happened this morning," Isla said, her voice gentling slightly."Walk us through it."
Wells took a shuddering breath."I started my patrol at five, same as always.Walked the lower falls first, then worked my way up to the upper overlook.Everything was quiet—no vehicles in the lots, no hikers on the trails.I was maybe a hundred yards from the overlook when I heard something in the trees."
"What kind of something?"
"Movement.Branches breaking."Wells's eyes went distant, reliving the moment."I thought it might be a person—someone who shouldn't be there, someone I could actually stop before..."She trailed off, her voice catching."But it was just a deer.A doe, foraging in the underbrush.I must have spent ten, fifteen minutes tracking it before I realized what I was doing."
"And by the time you got to the overlook?"
"It was too late."Wells's voice cracked."He was already dead.I saw the body from the trail and I just—I froze.I couldn't move, couldn't think.I must have stood there for five minutes before I even remembered to reach for my radio."She looked at Isla directly for the first time, her eyes red-rimmed and desperate."I should have been faster.I should have checked the overlook first, not gone chasing after some goddamn deer.If I'd just—"
"Ranger Wells."Isla cut through the spiral of self-recrimination."Have you been conducting additional patrols?Beyond your assigned shifts?"
The question seemed to catch Wells off guard.She blinked, some of the raw emotion receding behind a mask of caution.
"Who told you that?"
"It doesn't matter who told us.Have you been patrolling at night, on your own time, without authorization?"
A long pause.Then, slowly: "Yes."
"Why?"
Wells's hands clenched at her sides."Because I knew something like this was going to happen.I could feel it—the way the parks have felt different lately.Wrong somehow.And when those photographers started dying..."She shook her head."I couldn't just sit at home and wait for the next body to show up.I had to do something."
"You were trying to prevent the murders."
"I was trying to protect the places I've spent my whole life caring for."Wells's voice hardened with sudden intensity."These parks—they're not just pretty pictures for tourists to photograph.They're living things.They have moods, rhythms, dangers that people don't understand.And when someone comes along and treats them like nothing more than backdrop for their Instagram feed..."
She stopped herself, seeming to realize how the words might sound.
Isla filed the reaction away—the passion, the possessiveness, the barely-contained anger toward people who treated the wilderness as aesthetic rather than sacred.It echoed Thomas Kramer's philosophy in ways that made her uncomfortable.
"If you were trying to prevent deaths," James said, his voice carrying the edge of an interrogation, "how did Robert Yamada get past you this morning?He was killed on your patrol route, during your shift."
Wells flinched as if she'd been struck."I told you—I was investigating the sound.The deer.I wasn't at the overlook when—"
"A deer that you tracked for fifteen minutes, during the exact window when the murder occurred."James took a step closer, his bulk casting a shadow over the smaller ranger."That's a hell of a coincidence."
"It's not a coincidence, it's a mistake."Wells's voice rose, cracking with frustration."I made a mistake.I got distracted, and someone died because of it.Don't you think I know that?Don't you think I'll carry that for the rest of my life?"
The words hung in the frozen air, raw and wounded.Isla watched Wells's face—the genuine anguish, the self-directed fury, the desperate need to be believed.Either she was an exceptional liar, or she was telling the truth about her guilt.