“Shit,” Whit said.
“Did we miss it?” Holden asked. “Did we take a wrong fork?”
“There wasn’t a fork,” Delilah said. “There was one trail in, and this is it.”
“Noelle?” Beau looked at me.
I shook my head. “We didn’t go wrong. We wenttoo far.”
“What does that mean?” Shane asked.
Before I could answer, his phone buzzed in his hand, loud in the silence. He jumped, then frowned down at the screen.
“Trail cam,” he said. “One of mine just pinged.”
Everyone stilled.
“Which one?” I asked.
He flicked through his screen. “Cam Four. That’s…two miles deeper into the woods.”
“Something tripped it?” Delilah asked.
Shane nodded slowly. “Yeah. But there’s nothing in the image.” He tilted the screen toward us. Just grainy trees. Mist. A faint smear of light, like fog catching moonlight.
Then the phone buzzed again.
Cam Six.
Same thing.
No movement. No animal. Just…that smear.
Another ping.
Another camera.
“Okay,” Holden said tightly. “What the hell does that?”
Shane was pale now, thumb frozen over the screen. “I don’t know. There’s no wind. No debris. It’s like they’re getting triggered by…nothing.”
Not nothing.
I didn’t say it out loud, but I knew. Something was moving. Something we couldn’t see. The Painter had been a warning, and whatever it had been warning me about?—
It was already here.
Milo whined.
Everyone fell silent again.
“Back to camp?” Whit asked, voice low.
“No,” Beau said. “We keep going. Trailhead has to be close. Ithasto be.”
We kept moving, slower now, like walking through water. My flashlight flickered once, and my stomach dropped.
“I think we’re being herded,” I whispered.
