Page 1 of Legacy Found

Chapter one

Jessica

Working retail doesn’t come with a lot of perks, but a day off is definitely one of them.

I say it out loud to my empty flat. "Day. Off."

Rain streaks the window, because — this is England, where the sky treats sunshine like a limited-edition drop. But the forecast app swears the Peak District will clear by ten, and I've learned to trust the little cartoon cloud with the hopeful yellow peeking behind it.

I'm dressed before my brain fully wakes up — leggings, my flannel, washed soft, boots that know my feet. My pack's been loaded since last night, because past-me is occasionally a genius: trail mix with the dark chocolate chunks I pick out first, two water bottles, my camera wrapped in a spare sock like the precious thing it is.

I sling it over one shoulder and reach for my phone to check the weather — and the app I actually open isn't the weather one. It's the horoscope. My thumb just goes there, muscle memory.

Sagittarius. "The stars align for the unexpected. Today's journey may take a turn you didn't plan for. Stay open — the universe has a lesson waiting."

I read it twice. This one is true. I can feel it. The stars are talking straight at me. "Okay," I tell the screen. "I'm listening." My horoscope has been right more times than not. It once told me, in so many words, not to cross an ocean for a man with a great accent — and I did it anyway, and I now live alone in a country that isn't mine with a judgmental lizard for company, so. Point taken, universe. Loud and clear. Since then, I've learned to pay attention when it bothers to lean in and say something. To me, that's exactly what it is: the weather for the parts of a day you can't see coming.

"A lesson waiting," I murmur, grabbing my keys, already half-wondering what it'll turn out to be.

I head out.

By the time I reach the trailhead, the cartoon cloud has kept its promise. The rain's burned off into that clean, washed-bright light you only get after a storm, everything so green it looks like someone bumped the saturation.

I take a breath so deep it goes all the way to my toes. This. This is the thing the office people never understood when they asked why I "settled" for a hiking store instead of finishing my degree. They saw a name tag. I see this — trails to talk about all day and walk on my days off, legs strong enough to carry me anywhere. My old boss back in California once told me I lacked ambition. I think about him out here sometimes, and I don't feel a single thing he wanted me to.

The trail starts easy, dirt curving up through wildflowers. My boots find their rhythm, a skylark shows off somewhere overhead, and I hum along to nothing, the way I do when I’m peaceful and happy.

Twenty minutes in, a ruined shepherd's cottage ambushes me — grass grown up through the old hearth, a doorway with no door, tiny purple-and-gold wildflowers at the base of a collapsed wall. I get the camera out and take too long over all of it, because it’s really beautiful. There's a mossy plaque, and I read every word, because I am physically incapable of walking past history: the wall's three hundred years old, and people once lived up here with nothing but sheep and sky. I press my palm flat to the cold stone for a second, like I can say hello to whoever stacked it — then feel slightly unhinged for petting a wall, and move on.

The paw print stops me cold about an hour in.

It's pressed into a patch of mud where the trail dips toward a stream, and it is — okay, it's big. Not big like a Labrador. Big like something that made me do an involuntary double-take and then crouch down beside it before my brain caught up with my knees.

I set my hand next to it for scale, the way you're supposed to, and immediately regret it.

My hand does not win.

The print swallows my splayed fingers with room to spare. Four toes, a broad pad, and — I lean closer — claw marks at the tip of each toe. Deep ones. Not the neat little retractable situation a cat would leave. These dug in.

"Okay," I say to the mud. "That's a big dog."

The wind picks up, hissing through the grass, and the back of my neck prickles.

"England doesn't have wolves," I say out loud, standing and brushing my hands on my leggings. "You people hunted them all to extinction ages ago. I’m sure of it."

I photograph it, obviously — my hand in frame for scale, so later I can show someone at the store and they can tell me it's a Great Dane and I can pretend I wasn't briefly, genuinely, six years old and scared of the dark. Big dog. Somebody's off-lead monster having the time of its life up here. Same as me, honestly. Good for it.

I step over the print and keep climbing, and I only look over my shoulder twice.

Maybe three times.

The trail turns mean about a mile later. The gentle dirt gives way to rock — proper rock, dark and slick, stacked into a steep scramble that hugs the side of the hill. The stream is louder now, tumbling down beside me in a rush of white water, and the morning's rain has left everything glazed and shining.

I love this part. I know, I know. But there's something about a scramble that switches my whole body on. My hands find holds without me thinking. My core engages. My heart's working, but it's happy work.

I'm maybe two-thirds up when my boot finds a rock that looks exactly like all the other rocks.

It isn't.