Page 77 of In the Dark of the Past

She leaned in, read it, and went still in that specific River way. She wasn’t frozen, just processing, all the pieces moving behind her eyes at once.

“Jordyn?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“And she blatantly forwarded it.”

“Panic makes people sloppy.” I was already moving, finding my shirt on the floor, shoving my arm back into the sling. “Four forty in the morning means she must have gotten a call first. Someone activated her. Someone who probably heard what Graham wanted for Grant and told her to verify the specifics.”

River pushed herself upright. “So, Grant already has what we planted.”

“Grant’s had it for however long it took her to forward it.”

“Which means he knows about the fake name.”

“Which means,” I said, “he thinks he knows what we have.”

I looked at her across the dim room—hair loose, jaw set, already three steps into the problem.

“Get dressed,” I said. “We need to be there before Jordyn decides what her next move is.”

She didn’t argue. That, more than anything, told me how serious she understood it to be.

The roads were empty. That particular pre-sunrise emptiness that made Maple Ridge feel less like a town and more like a stage set, everything in place with nobody in it yet. The mountains were just shapes against a sky that hadn’t decided what color it wanted to be.

River had her hands folded in her lap and looked adorable in one of my sweatshirts and some leggings she’d had in her car. The tension in her shoulders was the working kind, not the scared kind. She was thinking.

“She’ll play it one of two ways,” River said. “Either she comes in and acts normal, puts on a performance, pretends she hasn’t seen the file. Or she comes in eager. Offers to help. Makes herself relevant to whatever she thinks we’re chasing.”

“The eager one’s worse,” I said.

“The eager one is worse,” she agreed. “Because it means she thinks she has something to gain by staying close.”

“She does. She still thinks we’re running blind.”

River turned to look at me. In the dark of the cab, her eyes were unreadable but steady. “Finn. If this goes sideways, if she gets to someone before we can contain the leak⁠—”

“It won’t.”

“That’s not what I was saying.”

I exhaled. “If it goes sideways, we adapt. We have the log. We have the forward trail. We have enough for an IA referral regardless of what she does this morning.” I glanced at her. “But it won’t go sideways.”

“You say that with a lot of confidence for a man who’s been stabbed in the last forty-eight hours.”

“I’ve been stabbed before.”

“That is not the reassurance you think it is.”

I almost smiled.

Almost.

The station came into view, the parking lot half-full already as the overnight shift wrapped and the day shift trickled in. I scanned the cars automatically. Atlas’s truck was at the far end. I looked some more. Good. Jordyn’s sedan wasn’t there yet.

She must have noticed my relief. “We beat her?” River said.

“Barely, I think.”