Page 117 of In the Dark of the Past

I thought about River’s father, who had refused something—or found something or asked something—and had been framed for it and had died believing himself disgraced.

I thought about Marta Bennett writing a letter in pieces, in whatever minutes Stonybrooke allowed her, and hiding it in the false bottom of a chest because she needed her daughter to have the truth, even if she couldn’t deliver it herself.

I thought about River losing her mother. Then losing her father. Then leaving Maple Ridge with a story she’d carry for nine years that had been fabricated from end to end.

Sean had known. Not all of it, but enough.

I walked back to the cruiser.

Atlas was leaning against the hood with his arms crossed and the expression of a man who had been awake for way too long and was running on something that was no longer identifiable as caffeine.

“How’d you get here?” I asked.

“Rideshare,” he said. “Well?”

“I gave him twenty-four hours.”

Atlas studied me. “You okay?”

The question sat there.

“No,” I said. “But that doesn’t matter right now.”

Atlas nodded once, slowly. He’d been a cop for long enough to know that some losses you processed in the field, and some you processed later. Right now was not later.

“AG filing at nine,” I said. “Let’s go.”

He got in the SUV without another word.

I looked back at the DA’s office once—the lit window, the shape of a man I’d known my whole life sitting somewhere behind it with a choice in front of him.

Then I got in and drove.

Chapter Thirty-Five

River

Finn came back at 8:20.

I heard the SUV on the gravel and was at the door before he reached it. He looked the way he’d looked at the quarry after Sean walked out of the vehicle. Not destroyed, not even visibly broken, just reorganized around something that had been in a different configuration the day before.

I stepped back from the door without being asked, and he came inside.

Atlas moved to the kitchen to make coffee, then set mugs on the counter.

Finn picked one up. Held it.

“He knew,” Finn said. “He’s known for years.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Grant came to him the week before he took office. Framed it as infrastructure. Said every DA going back to the eighties had been part of it.” His voice was even. Controlled. It was the voice he used when the alternative was something he wasn’t going to do in front of people. “In year two, Sean figured out what the Fund actually was. He went to Grant and said he was done. Grant showed him that the exits were already closed.”

“And he stayed,” I said.

“He stayed.”

Atlas turned around, leaning against the counter with his arms folded. He didn’t say anything either. There were moments that didn’t need editorial commentary, and this was one of them.