Page 50 of In the Dark of the Past

“So, the trail cam caught the movement at dusk yesterday,” he said, voice barely audible over the storm. “It’s the same ridgeline where Eleanor’s stuff turned up. If there’s a drop box or a Watcher stash there, the pickup will probably be tonight.” His jaw flexed, the muscle tight with something that wasn’t quite anger and wasn’t quite dread. “The weather’s gonna be shit. It’s perfect.”

Lightning flared, carving cracks in the misty gray sky. The woods looked skeletal in the flash—bare-limbed and hungry.

I nodded, even though my throat was too tight for words. I thought of us tossing ideas around after Rand’s text, both of us trying not to look too long at the couch that still held the ghost of what had almost happened.

What would have happened if the vandals hadn’t interrupted? Whatever that was wasn’t finished. Not remotely.

Finn handed me a compact flashlight to combat the gloom, a canister of bear spray, and a baseball hat with the Maple Ridge Sheriff’s Department logo. “Stay on my six. You see anything that isn’t rain or a tree, you yell.” He pulled his own hat on.

“Copy that, Sheriff Grumpy Pants.”

The corner of his mouth twitched into almost a smile, another almost real one. The kind I hadn’t seen in years but had lived in my memory anyway.

Then he was moving, a dark silhouette swallowed by rain and shadow.

We hiked fast. The trail was a treacherous ribbon of mud and pine needles, the ground slick underfoot. My boots slid more than once, the incline steeper than it looked under normal circumstances. Water sluiced down Finn’s hat, poured off the back of his jacket, dripped from the brim of mine into my collar like ice.

I focused on the steady sweep of his flashlight beam ahead of me, a narrow cylinder of safety cutting through the dark.

“You good?” he called back once.

“No,” I said honestly.

He huffed something that might have been a laugh if it wasn’t soaked in tension. “Stay close.”

“I am,” I murmured. If I were honest, my heart had been closer than either of us had been willing to admit for years.

Ten minutes in, Finn stopped so abruptly I stumbled into his back. His hand shot out, catching my elbow, his fingers warm even through the rain and adrenaline.

“There,” he breathed.

Ahead of us, half-buried under a fallen log, a glint of reflective tape flashed, and a crude set of two red eyes painted on a flat rock peeked out. It was the same symbol we’d seen all over the place lately. Only this time, like my car, the color was fresh. Too fresh. Even the rain hadn’t dulled it yet.

Someone had been here recently.

Finn crouched, sweeping his flashlight over the ground. I saw fresh boot prints, two sets, one deeper than the other, as if the person were carrying weight.

My stomach dropped.

He looked up at me, his eyes unreadable in the gloom and under the brim of his hat. “Stay here.”

“Like hell.”

He didn’t waste breath arguing. Just drew his sidearm and moved forward, slow and lethal, shoulders squared like he was ready to put himself between me and anything that moved.

I followed, quieter than I felt.

We found the drop twenty yards later.

There it was, the rusted army surplus ammo box wedged between some roots. The lid was cracked open a little, and mud splattered the metal.

He approached it carefully and nudged the cover up with his gun. Inside were three items:

A burner phone.

A flash drive.

And a Polaroid of my office door with a date scrawled in red Sharpie.