I nod, adrenaline sliding into my bloodstream with purpose.
Callum steps away, and I gather the folder, closing itgently, letting the weight of it settle into my palms. This might be nothing. Or it’s the start of something I can’t quite see yet.
Either way, I need to follow it.
I reach for my keys…and freeze.
The Monarch Hills keychain with my new house key catches the light.
I close my fingers around the keychain, thumb tracing the metal.
What if my so-called gut is inventing this all just so I have a distraction?
I can face the quarry. I can face a case that doesn’t sit right. I can face Callum’s caution and Ingram’s stare.
But Anton? That’s something different altogether.
I grab my jacket and stand. It’s fine. Everything is going to be just fine.Lead with your mind and the rest will follow.
When I get into the police car, I plug in the quarry coordinates; just seeing them on my Satnav sends a distinct shiver down my spine.
Something out there isn’t adding up.
But if I’m honest…a lot inside me isn’t either.
13
I turnonto the quarry road, my tires thumping over the uneven dirt track as pines and bare-limbed trees crowd both sides. Dead, skeletal branches claw at the thinning midday sun. Beams of light slice through in sharp, angled stripes, flashing across my windshield every few seconds like warning signals. By the time the forest breaks and the clearing opens ahead, my pulse has already started that slow, steady climb reserved for places you don’t want to admit scare you.
I pull into a broad, gray expanse of stone—the only break in the trees along the quarry’s edge. The clearing stretches out about the size of a football field, exposed andbarren, before the forest swallows everything again on the opposite side.
I park, what I think is about thirty feet from where Zoe’s car went over by the missing guardrail.
I kill the engine, but I don’t get out right away. I’m a furnace these days, and my window is still cracked from the drive. The air up here is sharper and colder with the elevation shift. Crisp air slips under my jacket, reminding me this place is empty, isolated, and haunted by what happened here.
Callum was right: daylight here is better in the afternoon because the trees are shorter to the west lip. But suddenly, I don’t want the daylight for visibility.
I want it for safety.
This place is creepy.
Abandoned. Soulless.
I step out, and my car door slams louder than it should. The sound ricochets off rock and open air with nowhere to land. There’s nothing soft to absorb the noise. I wasn’t here that night, but imagining Zoe’s car bursting through the barrier, the echo rolling across this crater… God. It must’ve sounded apocalyptic.
The haunting echoes of my car door disappear, leaving nothing but eerie silence and the whistling wind full of warning.
Pine needles and ashy stones crunch under my feet as I walk toward the spot marked in the report. I follow a guardrail that runs along most of the expanse of the parking lot area and look down into the abyss. The quarry is a dead pit. A jagged wound carved into the earth.
A giant grave for anything unfortunate enough to reach the bottom.
I can’t imagine anyone coming here because it’s scenic.No one would come here for the view. There’s no romance to it, no adventure. Just isolation. And if someone wanted solitude, Echo Valley has a thousand safer places nearby to be alone.
I arrive at the spot where Zoe went over, where the guardrail is still gone, and I step inland a few feet, immediately queasy from the steep drop. I sweep the area to see if there are even faint tire tracks left. More than five months have passed since the accident, and the weather has done its work. The dirt has settled, the wind has brushed away whatever faint tire impressions might’ve survived. I crouch near the approximate area anyway, hoping for anything—a groove, a pattern, a sign I’m not imagining things.
I blow out a breath.
The poor photo quality makes more sense now; this packed stone and earth was never going to hold clear impressions for long.
