Finn leans against his truck, arms crossed, watching me approach. He's wearing the same work jacket and boots from yesterday, looking like he belongs to this landscape in ways I never could.
"Morning," he says.
"Morning." I stop a few feet away. "Where are we going?"
"Old mining corridor about forty miles northeast. Some of the homesteaders up there use the abandoned structures for storage." He pulls open the passenger door.
"Sounds perfect." I climb into the cab.
Finn settles into the driver's seat and pulls away from the café without looking at me. We drive in silence through town and into the backcountry.
Mountains rise around us, snow-capped peaks cutting into a sky that threatens more weather. Clouds gather on the northern horizon, dark and heavy with precipitation.
"What were you really looking for at the Kowalskis' place?" he asks finally.
"What do you mean?"
"When you went to help Judith with coffee." His eyes stay on the road, hands relaxed on the wheel. "You were studying the layout. Exit points, sight lines, approach vectors. That wasn't just agent instinct. You were looking for something specific."
Eight years of military training means he doesn't miss someone running tactical assessment.
"Trying to understand how the network could use remote homesteads," I say. "If they're moving people or goods through this area, they need infrastructure. Access points. Places off the main routes."
The mining corridor appears through sparse trees. Abandoned structures dot the landscape, weathered buildings slowly being reclaimed by forest and snow. Metal equipment rusts in place, monuments to an industry that died when the resources ran out.
Finn pulls to a stop near what looks like the main entrance to the mine shaft. Wooden support beams frame a dark opening that descends into the mountain. Snow covers most of the ground, but disturbed patterns mark the white. Fresh tracks cut through toward the mine entrance and back out again. The edges remain crisp—recent activity, within the last few days.
"I need to unload supplies at a homesteader's cabin about half a mile up the road," Finn says. "It should take me about twenty minutes."
He's giving me time to investigate. Deliberately creating space for me to do what I came here to do while maintaining plausible deniability about what I might find.
"Twenty minutes," I confirm as I exit the vehicle.
Finn holds my gaze for a long moment. Then he drives away, taillights disappearing around the curve. I'm alone with the evidence Tom died trying to expose.
My camera comes out first. I document everything before touching anything—the tire tracks, the disturbed snow, the pattern of activity around the mine entrance. Wide-angle shots to establish context, close-ups to capture details that might matter later.
The tracks lead to a section where snow has been scraped away near the mine entrance. I follow them carefully, stepping in prints that are already there to avoid creating new evidence of my presence. Something's buried here, just under the surface layer of snow and frozen ground.
I brush away snow with gloved hands. Metal gleams underneath. A cache box, military-grade weatherproofing,secured with a lock that's been opened recently based on the lack of ice in the mechanism.
This is it. This is the kind of thing Tom must have found. Physical evidence of the trafficking operation using abandoned infrastructure as storage and transfer points.
I pull out my camera and photograph the cache from every angle. The lock. The weathering patterns. The way it's positioned relative to the mine entrance. Document everything before I touch anything. The FBI training is automatic, muscle memory that survives even after the badge is gone. Metadata recording location and conditions. Building a case one photograph at a time, the way I always have.
I'm photographing the cache when the truck engine cuts through the silence. Finn's back early. Footsteps break through the snow crust behind me, and I look up to find him standing ten feet away, arms crossed, expression unreadable.
"Find what you were looking for?" His voice is calm, almost conversational.
"You knew I'd do this." Not a question.
"The moment I dropped you off." He moves closer, boots breaking through the snow crust. "You had that look people get when they're hunting something specific. Same look Tom had when he came through asking questions."
I straighten slowly, camera still in hand. "And you gave me space to investigate. Thank you."
"Figured it was time to see what you're really after." He glances at the cache box, then back to me. "Military-grade container. Fresh activity. This is what Tom was documenting before he died, isn't it?"
My throat tightens. "I think so."
