Page 64 of In the Dark of the Past

Chapter Twenty-One

River

If the Hollow Oak had felt electric last night, the station this morning felt radioactive.

The moment I walked through the doors with Finn beside me, the entire building seemed to hum, like the storm that’d been gathering all these years had finally blown the roof off Maple Ridge and left the truth exposed and sparking.

Linton sprinted past us carrying three case files, nearly collided with a female uniform on break—I think it was the woman Finn and I had seen at the trailhead—apologized, then kept running. Phones rang nonstop. Dispatch muttered under her breath like a witch weaving protection spells, fielding calls from freaked-out citizens. Someone in evidence dropped a box, cursed loudly enough to rattle glass, and I heard someone shout something about “Chain of custody, Doyle, Jesus Christ.”

Normal was a thing of the past in this building. A body had been found. A body of someone most of the town knew and loved.

Finn nodded toward his office with a tilt of his chin. “Five minutes,” he murmured. “Just the two of us.”

My pulse rebelled at that, hope and fear colliding in a way that made my breath hitch. Five minutes alone with Finn tended to rearrange my brain chemistry. But when I stepped into his office, the reality that greeted me wasn’t romantic.

It was war.

His desk had photos spread out from edge to edge, and thumbtacked maps on the corkboard were layered with hand-drawn circles. A whiteboard had been dragged in from an old conference room and had seven columns drawn across it.

All blank for now.

Seven.

A shiver crawled down my spine.

“You okay?” he asked quietly.

“No,” I said honestly. “But I’m functional.”

His mouth twitched. “I’ll take functional.”

Finn closed the door, then leaned against it for a breath. For the first time since the woods, I saw the fatigue dragging at him. The pallor beneath his tan. The way the sling made him look somehow both breakable and stubbornly immovable.

“You need sleep,” I said.

“Later.”

“Finn—”

He stepped in close, brushing a strand of hair away from my cheek. The gentleness of the gesture nearly undid me.

“If I close my eyes,” he said softly, “I’m going to see you in the trees with three masked men. I’m going to hear you yelling my name. I’m going to feel that knife slicing through my arm again.” His throat worked. “More sleep than I got isn’t happening. Not yet.”

I swallowed hard. “Okay, fine. Then we work.”

He nodded. The movement was slow and somehow grateful. “Yeah. We work.”

We stood shoulder-to-shoulder facing the mess of the case. Seven possible Watchers. Seven layers of corruption. Seven people who believed the Fund was their divine right to shape Maple Ridge in their image.

Seven people willing to bury citizens like trash when they got in the way, which meant seven possible victims.

Finn tapped the board with a knuckle. “So, the seven behind the scenes. Not all hands-on. Maybe not even all fully aware. Darren indicated levels. Some might be sending memos. Some might be digging graves. We need to figure out who’s who and what the chain of command is.”

“And how it works. Who’s closest to panicking after the things we’ve dug up lately,” I murmured.

Finn glanced at me. “The level of anxiety matters, you think?”

“Yes.” I pointed to a circle on the map pinned to the far-right wall. “People in conspiracies follow patterns—loyalty patterns, fear patterns, guilt patterns. Someone in this structure is going to break sooner than the others.”