Page 43 of In the Dark of the Past

“I never stopped,” he said.

The words landed somewhere deep in my chest. Neither of us moved, and the rain started to fall. Just a few drops at first. One landed on his cheekbone and slid slowly down.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “My place. Dawn. Bring breakfast. And…whatever’s left of your sanity.”

I managed a shaky laugh. “Eh. Sanity’s overrated.”

A ghost of a smile tugged at his mouth. I think it was the first real one I’d seen from him since I moved back to town. He looked like he wanted to say something else. Instead, he just stepped back.

“Drive safe, River. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I climbed into the car before I could do something reckless. Like kiss him. As I pulled away, I saw him still standing there under the streetlight in the rain, watching until my taillights disappeared around the corner.

Chapter Sixteen

River

The real storm rolled in just after midnight, the one the sprinkle at the library had been hinting at.

I couldn’t sleep and had been sitting at my kitchen table long enough for the cheap wood chair to carve grooves into the backs of my thighs. Printouts fanned around me like paper shrapnel, highlighter uncapped and bleeding neon onto the edge of a ledger photocopy. Three empty coffee mugs stood sentry to my right. The laptop’s screen saver had kicked on twice, and each time I’d jiggled the mouse like maybe keeping it awake would keep me from thinking too hard.

Outside, the mountains had gone restless in the pre-dawn darkness. When the first rumble of thunder rolled down the valley, it rattled the window glass and thrummed through my bones.

A warning shot.

Maple Ridge didn’t get storms like this often. Not the full-body kind, the ones that felt like the sky was leaning close to whisper, “Pay attention.”

My phone buzzed beside my wrist.

FINN: Door’s open. Bring the ledger photos. And breakfast if you want to live.

A corner of my mouth twitched. Even on no sleep and a surplus of trauma, the man still managed a threat-adjacent joke.

I stared at the screen for a full ten seconds, thumbs hovering over the keyboard. There were too many words I could send and not enough that felt safe.

I finally tapped the only thing that didn’t weigh a thousand pounds. A thumbs-up. The little blue emoji looked ridiculous next to everything we were carrying.

Still, I closed my laptop, stacked the photocopies into a rough pile, and slid the flash drive with the digital record of everything we’d found so far into my pocket like a talisman.

Lightning flashed outside, bright enough to briefly turn the kitchen into a black-and-white photograph. The countdown between flash and thunder was short now. The storm had officially arrived.

I grabbed my keys and my jacket, and, because some habits never die, my notebook—tucked under my arm like a shield.

By the time I stood on Finn’s porch, I was soaked through. The drive hadn’t been long—Maple Ridge was compact that way—but the thirty-second dash from my SUV to his front door had been a gauntlet. Rain sheeted sideways, thick and cold, needling my skin through my clothes. My hair was plastered to my neck and cheeks, dripping rivulets down the inside collar of my jacket.

I clutched the paper bag from the all-night diner in one fist and my bag in the other like they were the last two solid things left in the world.

He opened the door before I could knock. No badge. No uniform. Just Finn. Faded jeans riding low on his hips, a black T-shirt that had lost the war with time at least a decade ago, bare feet on the hardwood. His hair was damp, darker at the roots, like he’d just showered the previous day off his skin and hadn’t expected anyone to arrive right at the vulnerable start of another.

Seeing him like that—unguarded, human, not the sheriff but just Finn Callahan—hit me harder than the thunder.

“You’re dripping,” he said, staring at the puddle rapidly forming beneath me.

“Observant,” I said, breathless from more than just the sprint.

One side of his mouth tugged up. Not quite a smile, but something close. He stepped back, holding the door wider.

Warmth wrapped around me the second I crossed the threshold. Heat and the faint scent of coffee, pine cleaner, and something distinctly him. Soap, maybe. Or just Finn. I took off my boots so I didn’t track half the storm into his house. The hardwood under my feet was worn and familiar in a way that made my chest ache.