Page 80 of In the Dark of the Past

“She is.”

“She’ll reach out to Grant or whoever’s handling her the second she thinks she’s clear.”

“I’m counting on it.” I turned to the window, watching Jordyn settle back at her desk—too straight-spined, too deliberate with every motion. “Let her.”

River folded her arms, her head tilting slightly. It was the motion of someone organizing pieces she didn’t quite like the shape of yet.

“What?” I asked.

“I was reading her lips through the window. She didn’t blink when you said ‘good catch,’” River said. “She flinched. There’s a difference. Blinking is surprise. Flinching is⁠—”

“Fear,” I said.

She met my eyes. “She’s not sure how much you know.”

“Which means,” I said slowly, “someone told her to come in this morning. Someone told her to make contact and feel out the situation. She’s not acting on her own.”

“No. She’s following instructions.”

“Which means whoever gave those instructions knows about the tripwire file—or thinks they do—and they want to know if we reacted.”

River went still.

“If they’re already watching for our reaction,” she said carefully, “then they’ve been watching for longer than just today.”

The truth of that settled over the room.

My phone buzzed.

Unknown number.

I answered on the second ring, putting it on speaker.

A voice came through. Male, deliberate, and run through something that flattened its edges into nothing recognizable. Not distorted. Just empty.

“Sheriff Callahan,” it said. “Busy morning.”

River’s eyes went sharp. I held the phone so she could hear.

“You’ve been digging,” the voice continued. “Digging has a way of collapsing the hole on the person doing it. We’d hate for that to happen. Especially now that you’ve got more to lose.”

My pulse sat in my throat. I kept my voice flat. “Who is this?”

“Someone who’s been watching a good deal longer than you’ve been looking.” A pause. Just long enough. “Tell her hello.”

The line went dead.

The silence after it was the worst kind—the kind that meant they’d already said everything they needed to.

River stood very still across from me. When I looked at her, I saw that her face had lost some of its color.

“They know about the tripwire,” she said.

I shook my head slowly. “No,” I said, then looked at her. “They know about us.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

River